Grim Dawn Lore System Improvements

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

In Grim Dawn, players can discover numerous lore notes and journals scattered throughout the world. Currently, when you pick up a note, the UI menu opens immediately, and the note is instantly marked as “read.” While this is functional, it creates several quality-of-life issues:

  • The “Combat Interruption” Problem: Because there are so many notes, it is difficult to find the time to read them immediately. Often, you are attacked by enemies while the menu is open, forcing you to close it instantly to defend yourself.
  • Difficulty Relocating Notes: Once the menu is closed, finding that specific note again among the hundreds of collected entries is tedious.
  • Loss of Narrative Flow: Many notes are part of a series or a specific story arc. If you collect them hours apart, you lose the “thread” of the story.

Proposed Solutions & Features

To improve the player experience, I suggest the following changes:

  1. “Consume” instead of “Open”: Allow players to pick up a note (consuming the item) without the UI menu forcing itself open. The note should be added to the journal in the background.
  2. Manual “Mark as Read”: New notes should remain highlighted or marked as “Unread” until the player manually opens them in a safe area (like Devil’s Crossing).
  3. The “Mark as Unread” Toggle: It would be very helpful to be able to manually mark a note as “Unread” again. This would allow players to flag a series of related notes so they can read the entire story arc in one sitting later on.

Feature Request: Contextual Map Markers for Collected Notes

In addition to the UI improvements, it would be highly beneficial if the World Map displayed a marker at the exact location where a lore note was discovered.

  • Environmental Storytelling: Often, the impact of a note comes from the environment where it is found (e.g., next to a specific corpse or inside a ruined home). Being able to see the discovery point on the map allows players to revisit the location.
  • Greater Narrative Depth: Re-reading a note while standing in the area where the events took place adds a much deeper layer of immersion. Currently, once a note is picked up, its geographical context is lost.
  • Tracking Progress: Map markers would help “completionist” players identify which areas they have fully explored and which lore entries they might still be missing in a specific region.

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the game doesn’t do this btw :thinking:
it loots the lore note like an item, leaving it in your inventory (doesn’t even auto open inventory) - you then have to manually open the inventory and consume to lore note to get the window interaction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSCFA6sYv9E edit. clip is for live version but double checked it’s indeed the same on 1.2.1.6 and upcoming v1.3

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I agree about background interruption, but even further, any window that’s open should automatically pause the game.

I also would like to see a search function for notes. I found myself the other day searching for a particular keyword about a certain subject (the origins of Dalia). A search function would have been a lot quicker.

1 Like
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Yeah, that’s what i want to say. But this video is a good example on how the mechanics works. You have to open the inventory and then “consume” it. So this is the point. This is the reason why it’s in the inventory. I would say notes or lores shouldn’t be anymore in the inventory.

Maybe it would be better if you pick up the note and the note is immediately in you’re notes list. Maybe there is an option in the menu where you can say, that the notes menu is open immediately or not. But it’s always a manual task to say, that the note was read.

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ye but my point is, it doesn’t do what you say vanilla, so you’re free to read the notes “when you wish”, and not in combat
You can already safely read them in devil’s crossing if you want (i just didn’t do that in the clip), because you control when they open/they are not auto opened on pickup. There should be no combat interrupt unless player chose so :thinking:
(basically i’m suggesting a bug or thirdparty tool? causes the auto consume on pickup for you atm)

You can even put them in stash to consume for later (not that it matters much for request here)/more a point about how much window control we have, - it being an “item” in inventory is what (currently) gives you this window/consume read control