Grim Dawn's Loot Filter

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

On a recent Crate Entertainment stream hosted by our favorite Aether boy, Zantai, the topic of Grim Dawn’s loot filter was brought up by a twitch chatter asking about “improving” the options available within that filter. Zantai’s response was for users to take to the forums and drop their feedback and suggestions on the filter, particularly with what users like, dislike, or specifically desire from a potential loot filter upgrade.

There have been some further complaints and whimsical dreams of a loot filter better than what we’ve got, but no thread - that I’ve seen - has cropped up since that stream to consolidate that feedback.

So now we’re here.

Before I get into my own feedback and insights, I want to state some questions up front for all the rest of you to answer and think about in the comments below:

What do you like about Grim Dawn’s Loot Filter as implemented in the current game version (v1.2.0.2)?

What do you dislike about Grim Dawn’s Loot Filter as implemented in the current game version (v1.2.0.2)?

What would you like to see in addition to our current Loot Filter, without reinventing the system from the ground up?

If you could redesign the Loot Filter from the ground up, what would you do differently/what features would you make a higher priority out of?

I think it’s worth bearing in mind that Grim Dawn is VERY deep into its lifecycle and that fundamental engine reworks are not the most likely thing. However, this discussion could still lead to improvement for Grim Dawn, and may contribute to a more profound experience for Grim Dawn 2 in the hopefully-not-too-far future.

So, discuss.

My own feedback, then, follows from here.

The big, big thing that I think a loot filter needs is shareability. In Path of Exile, this manifests in the form of going to a website like Filterblade, downloading a file, and jamming it in your documents folder. In Last Epoch, this manifests in going to grimtools lastepochtools, generating a special link/text sequence, and importing that sequence through in-game menus to create a loot filter dynamically.

Not only does this encourage use of community resources and intra-community engagement, but it also makes bootstrapping new characters significantly faster/less tedious. In Grim Dawn, loot filters are per-character, meaning every new character needs to manually toggle on/off each setting with careful consideration as to what that character may/may not be interested in. There is no out-of-game means of expediting this process for you; no matter who you are or how technologically adept you may be, you are manually going through up to a couple dozen checkboxes with each and every character.

I think it’s fair to say this approach is very antiquated and all-around needlessly tedious.

I won’t turn my nose up at the means to filter specific items by their affixes, statlines, or even specific numerical stat rolls. These sorts of things would be a welcome addition! Being able to colorize each of the above would also be most welcome, as is seen via the almost-universally-used Rainbow Mod. (I myself still don’t use it…) Path of Exile even lets users change the drop sound effects that play when something of interest drops for them; I think this could be both funny and lead to better personalization/accomodation of the game experience.

I’d love all of these things.

But I think the big change that should happen soonest is the means to expedite the filtration setup process.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

1 Like
2

“almost-universally-used Rainbow Mod.” Wot? Bias;) Items look horrible with this mod imho :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
3

I wanted to filter out weapons by type (axe/sword/mace) and armour by slot (boots, helmets, body…) once.

1 Like
4

:point_up_2: this man knows what’s up

anyway, there was actually a recent steam thread that had a good suggestion, one that even made me think why it wasn’t included
currently we have the issue MIs are technically classed as rares, which causes some “intermingling” in the filter settings

having an option to “always show MI” could then leave you a custom filter for rares, while never losing out on MIs

3 Likes
5

I think any loot filter needs to be customizable during the life of the character. Typically early level characters when starved for money will take anything. Later during its lifetime when money is no longer an issue that same character can chose to be far pickier.

6

One thing I’m kinda missing is the ability to exclude categories. For example, I want items with resists, but don’t want items with pet bonuses on them. Or want weapons with physical damage only, no combined phys + cold for example, like Spectral Longsword.

And what Res said about filtering by type as well. Seems like a neat addition.

And perhaps filter by item level, 'cause I don’t wanna see that lvl 92 junk, although I would much rather prefer it not being a thing in the first place, but alas. Also not sure about its usefulness aside from this scenario, so yeah…

7

What I like/works well:
1st column of the filter is an easy and effective way to control loot level. Works fine with the exception of “MI” and “rare” having that weird overlap, so you can’t filter out “double magic affix” MIs because they are still “rare”.
But for having a few simple checkmarks that are easy to figure out/explain, they work well.

What I dislike:
The other 3 columns do not reflect how you collect gear in GD, or why you collect it.

3 reasons to gather gear:

  • For the character you are playing right now
  • For (several) other alt character(s)
  • For selling greens for cash
    Most of the time, for me, all three of those modes are going at the same time.
    Often I am happy to find something that I don’t even have a character for, yet, as it gives me a reason to make one.

For those purposes, selecting by item type or damage type is entirely pointless. If I select anything there, it will filter out most of the best items I could find.
Formidable Pants of Vitality? Dream item, but I’d never see it, if I change any setting in column 2 or 3.

4th column leaves the biggest question mark, because the stats are so generic, they’ll just show up on pretty much any rare item.

Simply sorting/filtering by any of the keywords on an item will never be sufficient.

On the topic of selling greens:
In PoE and (as far as I understand) in Last Epoch, you can filter much more strictly, because selling items is mostly pointless. You only want to pick up and vendor/scrap certain types of items you need for crafting.
So filtering out most of the trash is desirable, even if it means you could miss a few good items.

In GD, to craft properly, you need to pick-up and vendor all of the trash.
Selling greens is still by far your best source of iron. Outside of SR, the pure iron bits drops are pitiful, so you actually want to fill you inventory with garbage and carry it to the vendor.

So that would have to be addressed first, imo, before any kind of filter would actually make sense.

Assuming I’d no longer want to pick up green non-MI junk:
For farming MIs, there are too many combinations of good prefix and suffix for too many items to just filter them sensibly with a simple <OR> .
Ideally it would be some type of regex that can be adjusted via an XML file, so the community can adjust it to individual needs and make tools to edit it comfortably.

8

Fair points. Maybe buffing iron drop and nerfing green drop would be good fix? What would you say?

9

An option for transmog collectors.

For example, you have active “don’t show white items”, but it show you dropped white item if you don’t have it in your transmog inventory => you pick it up => you drop it => item is not showing anymore.

It would be nice to have that option in the filter.

4 Likes
10

whites are the same as yellows and non MI greens; so you will get those with regular or other filter settings throughout the game
*unless you totally filter out magicks and rares from the start ofc

11

There are some occasions where the loot filter does not work well:

  1. No option for elemental damage specifically.
  2. Physical damage option doesn’t work properly and seems to include stats like “physical damage converted to x” which actually lower physical damage output.
  3. The inability to exclude lower level gear drops. Something like “only show items x levels lower than my level” would be great.
  4. Inability to always force MIs to show (as opposed to enabling rare items in general).
  5. The inability to opt to “Only show caster body/head gear”.
  6. Limited ability to enable specific magic affixes to be seen.

Last epoch is much more complex than the loot filter in GD. In GD it never takes me more than a minute or two to setup the loot filter due to it being very simple with not many options.

I prefer the filter in GD compared to LE due to its simplicity. I have no intention of downloading a filter made by another person but I also don’t want to spend long creating my own. However there isn’t really any need for GD’s filter to be complex like LE because loot/affix drops are not nearly as RNG (In LE you need RNG to get useful affixes, there are many more affix slots and you additionally need good tiers of affix). Thankfully GD has far less RNG to fight against.

Very much agree. I dislike it too.

12

If we’re talking about Item-Names itself, i can understand and even agree on that. I don’t like that on Rainbowfilter either.
But for stats to have specific colorization which even makes sense in the context of it (like red’ish for fire, darker-blue’ish for lightning, lightblue for frost/ice) i’ve to disagee on your stance and i’m geniunly surprised that people exist who can’t see how the game could profit from it in terms of readibility, esp. for a game like Grim Dawn which tends to drop quite some stats on you esp. for the later Items. This isn’t like a Torchlight or such with a very basic stats-systme, gd is quite more complex. And it geniunly frustrates me as i play on Xbox GD right now, that this isn’t a native QoL feature (and for people who geniunly dislike it i wouldn’t mind if it’s only “toggable” either) because it does kill sometimes my mood to play GD esp. when i’ve to sort through items.

And unlike PC you can’t just fix that stuff with mods and such. So yeah - if i’d have to point out a specific aspect of GD where i find it somewhat bad or what i miss in terms of QoL or related to Lootfitler (didn’t know we count that as part of the lootfilter) it would be def. the Rainbow-Filter for Stats on Items/Tooltip. (Xbox Related i’ve have like 2-3 other stuff too but that’s outside of the topic).

Except that i’m pretty happy / fine with the Lootfilters of Grim Dawn. Sure when you play a Game like Last Epoch you see how it could be potentially even done better, though it also would mean more setup, which i’d also can see as annoying for some people (than again in the best way possible it might be possible to offer both, similiar to settings for certain programms /tools where you can toggle off/on enhanced settings, maybe an enhanced lootfilters option). And yes it would cool to be able to save and share lootfilters, but overall i’m fine as it is right now.

Only a native Rainbow-Filter as an option to colorize types of stats would be an amazing (and for me neccessary) addition.

13

I would be very disappointed if a loot filter similar to Last Epoch was put in. I find the necessity to use tools outside of the game to be pretty lame. Also, I just think that playing a game should involve using what is available in the game and it should have an intuitive UI. Last Epoch has some weird loot filter that utilizes a bad barebones UI and I will probably never use it the way you suggested. So I hope Grim Dawn doesn’t go that route.

With 1.2 we received double rare and MI notation on items, which is fantastic. I think searching for specific affixes would be neat.

Honestly, the thing I want most of all isn’t really loot filter specific, but it would be nice if there was some way to denote what affix was giving each bonus. I think rainbow does this? If it were in the actual game that would be sweet.

14

I’m curious when you last played Last Epoch, as this doesn’t sound like the current implementation at all.

15

Probably… 4-5 months ago? It could definitely be the case. I still don’t want an overly complex system that begs for getting text strings from an outside source or downloading some sort of file.

16

honestly current loot filter is almost allright for me, the only thing i would like would be something toggeable in the options like rainbow filter, so i could recognize quickly the kind of dmg something have just looking the colors instead of reading the wall of text some items have

also sidenote, for the hoarders like me who want to collect all mythics, add the option to buy extra tab stashes to a big number? like 20~50~100? so we don’t have to keep making extra mule characters

and before someone says “just download xyz mod” i don’t like modding my games if don’t have to, kinda tired of mods breaking when the game updates or keeping track of all the extra steps each time i install/unisntall the mods/game, besides for console players that can’t use mods is a big extra having the options already ingame

17

Hello,

I’ve played pretty much all the ARPGs in existence since Diablo. Having a verbose loot filter like Last Epoch’s or POE’s is a dream compared to the current iteration. I think giving players more tools to sort through loot is always better. If players don’t want to check an external site for loot filter strings, that’s fine, they don’t have to. As I see it, it’s not required with the way drops are in this game. But I find myself just walking past walls of green sometimes not bothering to check them just because I’m more interested in killing the mobs. Less loot on screen to check = more mobs dead = better chance of getting that item. We’re in the age of the 2nd and 3rd monitor, it’s time to realize that external sites are part of the game.

1 Like
18

We’re in the age of short attention span.
I agree with too much loot on the screen. I would limit it with lower drop rates, rather than filters, but I also sometimes think: “Why did this totem drop so many items? Now I have to compare them all to see I won’t use them anyway.”

External resources have been part of the game ever since printed manuals. But the big difference is, that websites rely on factors beyond player’s control: network connection, server’s availability, contributor’s willingness. One day or after one update this resource may be gone. Meanwhile a manual is yours to keep.

19

Wholeheartedly disagree. With the amount of complexity within each class and between them lowering drop rates would make the gearing process incredibly painful, especially if target farming for a specific build. I think most players fall into the “tunnel on one build and play it” rather than “play what drops.”

My point is referring to a loot filter like Last Epoch or POE, in which users can share their custom filters. Those systems are fairly complex and I understand why some people might have some trepidation about using them after looking at a build guide and seeing rows and rows of loot filter text. But it is generally quite easy to set up something basic and then fine tune it as you go along and want to see less “trash.”

1 Like
20

19 posts were split to a new topic: Twinking Characters Discussion