So Zantai gave us an impromptu dev stream on the 27th February. As usual THE question was what was asked most so let’s get that out of the way first.
Rickjamesyies : the juiciest question available to date: when is the release date?
Well, it’s in March.
Hypocritcat : Has there been any performance optimization with this expansion? I know you’re limited by the games engine to an extent.
Game engine is a thing that is malleable. It can be changed however we like. It’s a matter of resources we’re prepared to dedicate to it. To answer your question though I think there’s actually a possibility that we’re going to get more optimization from the Xbox port coming our way. I’m not sure it’s going to make the release of the expansion or might be post release, but I do expect it’ll probably squeeze out a few more frames out of this thing for you guys.
Hypocritcat : I assume that with added constellations we’re going to see more points being available, or are we limited to what is currently there?
We’re not increasing the Devotion cap limit, it’s staying at 55 because I feel that it is actually in a very good place as it is and to give you more skill points we’d actually start to see more overlap in different builds. Whereas now it’s just so tantalizingly close to maximising another constellation. A few more points could make all the difference in that.
malawigw : is Judgement “pull monsters towards you” gonna work on bosses?
Most bosses are immune to knockdown so no, they will not be pulled in.
oshballz : what caused that hammer spinning around?
That’s a constellation known as Targo’s Hammer.
Zenny_X_Gaming : how’s the overall progress of FG coming along?
At this point we are wrapping up item art. I expect that will be done pretty soon, next couple of days I think. And then we’re going to be preparing to lock the build down for release and that’s why it’s coming in March.
MrSkill6969 : late march or early march!!???
That’s still up to some debate. We do want to get it some more time to test to make sure there are no issues for you guys to put up with when it’s released, you know smooth polish and all that. Also a matter of speaking to Valve, speaking to GOG Humble about release dates and how it’ll all work out kinda with them, whether they want to do any promotions, whether they want to promote it in any way which some stores do want to, I think GOG want to do something on that for sure, but that is the kind of discussion we’re now having.
TruGrzybas : any news / ETA on items and devotions update for grimtools ?
I’m going to say soon. I think the next build we’re going to push to playtesting will have everything so that is when Dammit, the creator of grimtools, will have access to that data and shortly after that we’ll probably give him permission to upload it to you.
ChrisGamingtv : @CrateEntertainment what is next? after this expansion ? new game or another exp ?
That remains to be seen. I’m not going to say with certainly what the next step will be. It will most likely be a different game. There will be some post release content updates. We’re almost certainly going to add more to our Shattered Realm mode for you guys, some new items.
AngryMoustache : are you invincible while charging?
No, you are not invincible. Odds are you’re going to dodge a lot of things coming at you when you do that because you are moving very quickly, but you can be hit by AoE’s and stuff.
JayNyne : did krieg get buffed?
I think I actually did bump up his health just recently because as we release more content and make some balancing changes a lot of the older bosses have actually fallen behind in terms of their health value and I felt that for example Krieg and other such like could use a bit of a boost ao yeah, I actually increased his health just recently.
BajiNaji : Is there creative burnout after developing the same game for so long?
I mean there is certainly something to be said about doing new to refresh your creativity a bit. I think I could see us coming back to Grim Dawn some day, either for a project that’s not necessarily an ARPG; it could still be set in the same world and maybe a Grim Dawn 2 some day, we’ll see.
ChthonicSonic : @Zantai_GD What will you devs be doing in the 2 weeks after release?
Well, we’re going to be looking out to see how the expansion’s doing for one, going to see if there’s any issues we can fix in short order.
Oh look, here’s a new guy. Maybe I should talk to him.
weriot4cobearz : @CrateEntertainment also, very excited to see the expansion boss of FG…heard you guys were very “proud” of this one.
I am personally very proud of how that boss turned out. I think it’s one of the most fun boss fights in the game that we’ve ever come up with.
Angelsergiuboy : and chance the next game will be a new Action RPG on a new engine? or you are done with Action RPGs for a while?
Well, we’re not going to make a game that competes with ourselves so not very likely we’re going to have another ARPG come out right after Grim Dawn. If we do another ARPG it would almost certainly be a Grim Dawn 2 and that’s going to take time.
emkyooess : Will 1.1.0.0 come same time as expansion, or a few days before?
Might be a few days before or same day, we’ll see how that works out.
Vods : @CreateEntertainment : Does Forgotten Gods change anything on the savegame structure that will require a Grim Dawn - Item Assistant update? And if so, will the creator of Item Assistant get the changes before release?
Yes, the save format is changing and yes, the creator of GDIA … actually no, that guy I don’t think is in there, but the Grim Internals guys is now in playtesting so he does have the stuff and the time. But I imagine GDIA will get updated pretty quickly for you guys, but that’s entirely up to the mod creator.
p44vo : any eye of reckoning chaos damage MIs?
There isn’t a Monster Infrequent, I believe there is a Legendary of it.
emkyooess : Is it me, or does Oathkeeper feel like a Commando, but all in one? Why so much narrow concentration on fire?
Not really sure what you mean, there’s a ton of physical damage on Oathkeeper. There’s transmuters that turn him into acid and vitality, so really we’re talking about supporting three different archetypes here. We’ve got physical, we’ve got fire, we’ve got acid/vitality. So I would say the Oathkeeper is very versatile in terms of damage choice. Fire did feel sort of like a logic direction to go with the holy archetype cause we literally don’t have holy damage in the game, but as I said you can transmute that damage and a lot of the skills aren’t actually fire.
JayNyne : any support for 2h melee pierce?
I believe so.
TruGrzybas : @CrateEntertainment are there any skill modifiers for judgement that would allow 100% uptime on aura dmg ? like reduced cd or increased duration ?
Definitely some cooldown stuff yeah.
ChthonicSonic : Are there already concrete ideas about games to be developed after the town builder?
Yeah, we definitely have some ideas of what we’re going to do next. Some things we’re excited to do.
AlexGabrielov : why was Crucible made to have these obstacles that make mobs be stuck/lose agro and make you lose a streak? why not just a flat area ?
Well, a flat area would not be that exciting to fight in, but if you have particular areas you think they are getting stuck on please report it as a bug and we can look into it.
Cologne_Steve : @CrateEntertainment Any news about the Xbox version? I hope the release is shortly after the release of FG
I don’t know if it will be shortly after, but it will be after the expansion because most likely we’re going to include everything and it all needs to be certified.
emkyooess : How soon are transmutes unlocked? How expensive are they?
Oh you’re talking about the set transmutation. There’s a quest in Forgotten Gods that unlocks that feature, I’d say it’s about halfway through the expansion. And as soon as you do that it unlocks everywhere. Actually I think it unlocks in the Crucible immediately because we don’t really have a way to check which tokens you have for the main campaign. So if you’re really desperate to do it right away you can just go to the Crucible.
Gunturan : Hey Zantai, why is the stream today instead of Friday, just out of curiosity?
It’s a bit impromptu I admit. I was just playtesting Oathkeeper today and it occurred to me I might as well just stream it for you guys so here I am. I think we might do an official stream this Friday in addition to this one. So you guys get two streams for the price of one, look at that.
morpheus____ : @CrateEntertainment is there any chaos love with Oathkeeper?
Primarily through gear, yes.
manitou_monster : Did you guys consider adding cosmetic items like the wings in Diablo 3?
I don’t think we’d ever add a new slot like wings. We do have the Loyalist pack which is a cosmetic helm if you’re into that. We might do another pack down the line because people like them a lot and I think having some more gear that matches those helms would be pretty sweet. Although I don’t know what the decision on that would be.
SkullFire58 : How many weeks ahead of release do you think you’ll announce the release date?
Not sure what Medierra wants to do on that. He needs to talk to the various store fronts and figure that out.
RoamerGFX : GD is awesome. And the only thing i don’t like - is the lack of displacement skills with fairly low CD (so the game could be more dynamic) @CrateEntertainment
Well, you’ll be happy to know that the expansion that’s coming has all sorts of movement abilities that don’t require targets so I guess that fulfils your one complaint.
EXTREMEGAMER29 : @CrateEntertainment Will the 64 bit version fix the 4 player extreme lag in crucible?
I don’t expect the x65 bit version of the game to make a substantial impact on people’s performance. It’s really about how the company uses memory, it doesn’t really change how the calculations are processed.
RoamerGFX : @malawigw with 10 sec CD and only 1 displacement skill for each character? Its not a dynamic
First off, yes it’ll be one per character unless another one through your masteries - for example Oathkeeper has one baseline. I could have another one through my medals. And they’re not 10 second cooldowns, I don’t know where you’re getting that from. They’re more like 2 to 5 second cooldowns and I will tell you that it’s plenty.
GrimTwitchery : Zantai - I don’t mean to poke but about how much development goes into a game like GD? or say the expansions either hour or money wise. I’ve always been curious about just how much goes into a game, say a mill, more? 10k man hours?
I could not tell you off the top of my head. It’s been about a year, a little over a year actually of a team of 6, 7 people working full time for over a year. And not a single one of us works just a 40 hour week. All of us here work at least 45 if not more and recently Allminoxy’s been pulling more than that.
EXTREMEGAMER29 : @CrateEntertainment How likely is Grim Dawn 2 in the future and have you thought about it?
Well of course we’ve thought about it. I’m not really sure how likely it is and certainly not any time soon. There’s gonna be at least a few other projects that have to happen before we really work on a Grim Dawn 2 and then the programmers have to get in there first, work out all the kinks, figure out whether we do a new engine or update this one.
Darkstalix : I always wanted to ask tho: if ever GD2 comes the mod-ability will be over right?
I honestly can’t answer that question. It really depends on what engine we’re doing, what it’s ability to be modded is. Are we doing online only or doing an offline and online mode rather like Diablo 2 did. I honestly can’t tell you right now.
Asskicker_5150 : it needs a new engine I hate the freeze and go.
If your game is stuttering that much, it might be something to look into on your end honestly, but a new engine doesn’t necessarily change that. And this engine can be updated to effectively be a new engine. this is TQ engine 2.0, that’s what you’re looking at when you play Grim Dawn.
gilavar : Any changes to MP difficulty in FG?
We did adjust multiplayer tuning a little bit for 1.1, I don’t think it’s going to be as much as some people want it to be because some people want some really high difficulty, but honestly there’s a mod that actually exists right that adjusts it.
ZZZi : any more xp leveling enhancements? besides lokarr set and malmouth xp potion
I guess you’ll just have to find out.
TwstedTV : @CrateEntertainment What coding language is GD coded in ??
GD is coded in C++.
Angelsergiuboy: are the milestones in the endless dungeon? or you always start at wave/lvl 1 there?
Every 5 Shard you will get a waystone that you can skip to in the future and you can craft those across all your characters.
Darkstalix : What about those 2 shadows in the Happy birthday thread?
What about them?
nomanual : how far did ppl reach in SR?
Playtesters have gotten to somewhere over a hundred, but that was actually before it was made harder. So it’s hard to say where they’d get now.
frogsarepeopletoo : at what shard is ravager gonna spawn?
Superbosses do not spawn in the Shattered Realm - for your sake.
Angelsergiuboy : any chance for a special boss that we haven’t seen at like wave 1000 or smt or like an easter egg or anything to make us feel good that we got that far?
I don’t think we’ll be doing a special boss that you only see at a certain wave. Honestly the amount of people that would see it at wave 1,000 or shard 1,000 would be typically nobody.
AdiosOcelote : if GD is coded in C++, why is LUA recommended or whatever in the modding tutorial?
Well because when you’re doing mods you’re not actually writing code. LUA is sort of hooked into the C++ so you have certain functions that exist that LUA can call which then run through the engine. But you’re not literally rewriting the engine when you’re doing LUA scripting. That’s kinda the difference between coding and scripting.
CapTripps : Can we see a non expansion that is/was changed to add mutators.
Sure. Welcome to Hallowed Hill which is now considered one of the challenge areas.
Xiphan : With regard to the infinity of the shattered realm does item rewards also scale appropriately so that you could effectively get to level 1,000?
Well, no one’s going to get to a thousand for one, but they do scale up as you progress. But you are going to get higher quality rewards than average if you get to Shard 80 than if you got to Shard 20.
lucidlucipher092 : Will we ever get mounts ?
We’re not adding mounts to an action RPG.
Rickjamesyies : i really want Oathkeeper to be able to convert all physical damage to fire, but i doubt it is possible LuL
Um, why not? Even looking at Vire’s Might here, the transmuter makes it all fire.
mordecai_mike : When you convert thorns to main hand damage does it do a set % amount of damage or can the conversion damage then crit?
It’s just like adding % weapon damage to your attacks.
emkyooess : Can we get all the mutators listed on a page in the Game Guide so we can study them and learn them?
That’s something that’s been on my list for a long time, but then I also have to get the artists to make me icons because the ones we use in the game aren’t exactly the same as the ones that we post on the Game Guide.
Locaron : how does the spin to win skill scale with attack speed? Does 100% attack speed make the spin tick all 0.1s? @crateentertainment
Yes, that’s what it’ll do.