Grim Misadventure #175 - A Look Back at 2020

Grim Dawn Development Updates
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A Happy New Year and a Grim Misadventure for you! Grim Dawn is going to be five years old this year, how surreal is that?

To say that 2020 was a weird year would be an understatement. For many, it was a devastating period filled with hardships as the human race endures a once a century pandemic. We hope that Grim Dawn could bring you some solace in trying times, a small bright spot in a dark year.

Let us take a moment to reflect upon how Grim Dawn grew over the last year. In 2020, Grim Dawn had a total of 8 patches, three of which were major content and feature updates. New options to farm loot were introduced alongside dozens of new items. Hundreds of balance changes gave rise to new viable playstyles and gave old ones a chance to shine again.

From the Pastā€¦

  • Monstrous Totems ā€“ V1.1.6.0 spiced up the leveling experience and endgame loot hunt with the introduction of Monster Totems. Built off of Corrupted Devotion Shrines, the totems spawned waves of tough enemies and rained loot in return. With a high chance of dropping otherwise extremely rare Legendary items added in the same update, there was something for everyone.

    The totems turned out to be one of the best new additions to Grim Dawn and proved really fun to tackle while leveling.

  • Shattering Performance ā€“ A few mad lads went ahead and beat the Shattered Realm. Yup, that wasnā€™t supposed to be possible, but they did it. With excellent coordination and some of the toughest characters ever assembled, this crew preserved all the way through to the Deathly Waystoneā€™s cap of Shard 160.

    With v1.1.6.0, we acknowledged their triumphs byā€¦raising the bar! The Deathly Waystones now enable access all the way to Shard 210, for anyone brave enough to try and beat their record.

  • Impartial Components ā€“ An arguably small change but with a big impact. V1.1.6.0 saw the end of Partial Components in Grim Dawn. Inventories everywhere sighed in relief!

  • Raining Infrequently ā€“ V1.1.7.0, along with being the largest changelog to the game ever, brought with it a staggering 35 new Monster Infrequents. Along with this update, we also made the decision to introduce item skill modifiers to the base game. While skill modifiers started out as a mechanic exclusive to the expansions, we felt that new players joining our adventures in Cairn should get a taste of this great feature.

  • All Crucibled Out ā€“ With v1.1.7.0, Crucible lovers got some more variety in their rotation with the introduction of four new maps themed after expansion areas. The Crucibles of the Bog, Woods, Stars and Crags brought new layouts and challenges for Grim Dawnā€™s arena mode.

    Alongside these additions, we were finally able to crush a notorious bug plaguing the Crucible. Monsters no longer randomly decide to camp out in the spawn zones. We thank our players for providing enough information for us to finally track the source of this one down.

  • Rarely Applicable ā€“ Another subtle change with big ramifications, we scoured our loot tables with v1.1.7.0 and made all gear favor affixes with appropriate damage types. This meant that a fire scepter now almost always rolls with some combination of prefix and suffix that favor fire damage. Some hard to get Monster Infrequents became within reach by mortals that day.

  • Sidelined Areas ā€“ V1.1.8.0 expanded the vast world of Cairn by opening up previously inaccessible areas. We went through all of the gameā€™s content and found all the nooks and crannies that were not explorable and filled them with content. The update breathed new life into old areas and introduced new challenges to boot.

    Celestial Monster Totems, a higher tier challenge for the feature from v1.1.6.0, were added exclusively to the new areas and new mini-bosses meant new Monster Infrequents!

Whatā€™s Next?

As you may have hoped, we are nearly finished with v1.1.9.0, our latest major addition to the game. As shown in our previews, fans of the Shattered Realm are about to get some awesome new content.

Alongside the newness we are also doing away with a well-known exploit. However, as the gameplay it enabled in the Shattered Realm Guardian Domains has become popularized by the current meta, we are going to simply make it possible to pull bosses without resorting to gimmicky abuse of game mechanics. Should be a refreshing change for those that have been playing with camera zoomed in, rotated, flipped inside out and inverted for the sake of pushing higher shards!

All this comes packed with nearly 300 changes to items, so there is something for everyone to look forward to.

Of course, this isnā€™t all thatā€™s been happening at Crate Entertainment lately. Keen eyes have spotted a little tease of our town builder recently. We are immensely proud of the work thatā€™s gone into Farthest Frontier. And after years in development, we are ready to unveil it to you in earnest!

Stop by the site to feast your eyes upon the gorgeous in-game images from Farthest Frontier. You can also stop by the Steam page to wishlist the game if youā€™re looking forward to Crate Entertainmentā€™s next project!

This announcement also marks an end to our grim misadventures together.

Even as we focus our energy on Farthest Frontier and projects we canā€™t wait to share, the end of Grim Misadventures is by no means an end to our support for Grim Dawn though. We are excited to have Grim Dawnā€™s v1.1.9.0 in your hands later this month, and Farthest Frontier later this year.

Although Grim Misadventures are ending, we will still be keeping the community informed with periodic information as we have things to share with you. And who knows, perhaps some day we will have need of Grim Misadventures again when the brewing conflict between the Aetherials and the Chthonians reaches its boiling point within the Erulan Empire!

Stay tuned for more exciting news from Crate Entertainment and for much more on the up and coming Farthest Frontier!

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first! :smiley: :smiley:

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delicious.

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Soā€¦ No more MOAR? :sob:

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So long, and thanks for all the fish loot!

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Sad to hear of the end of Grim Misadventures, but what a game. Iā€™ll be playing it for years even though Iā€™m over 8400 hours on the Steam version.

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Boy, what a journey! I canā€™t believe that so much time has passed since I backed the Kickstarter campain. You guys can absolutely be proud to have created the best and most well maintained hack & slay in this century! I salute you!

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End of an era.

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ā€œAs is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.ā€
ā€• Seneca

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@tqFan @medea_fleecestealer Normally I really like to say ā€˜ā€˜I told you soā€™ā€™ but this time, Iā€™m sorry to be right this time, reallyā€¦

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Finally game is gonna be completed! Records will hold, builds will last, no more worrying about build becomes ded. Content mods can now flourish and not have to step back and adjust to GD patches etc.

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Wait till the crying posts about the nerfs that will come with the latest patch. Those screams going to echo in eternityā€¦

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Iā€™m extremly looking forward to the said 300 item changes :eye:

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Was always going to happen @fordprefect, we knew that. It was just a question of when. Having been there for the first GM, I have to say a big thank you to Zantai for doing them. Reading what the team have been doing over the years as the gameā€™s developed has been both insightful and a pleasure to me. I still enjoy going back and reading them once more and every time I do Iā€™m amazed all over again at what the team have accomplished.

Well, then DONā€™T WAIT! GIVE! :rofl:

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I very much doubt about that.
Thing is, modding is a lot of work, especially if weā€™re talking about something bigger than just rolling back the nerfs. Big mods like Nydiamar and Lord of Terror are literally being made for years at this point. I can expect their further development, but itā€™s very unlikely for something new of that caliber to show up.

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The last misadventure, the end of an eraā€¦

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I might have exaggerated, what I meant is that now these mods can also become finalized and stabilized. Is Lord of Terror = Reign of Terror btw?

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Donā€™t remember the correct name, but I meant that one massive overhaul mod that converts GD into diablo 3.5 :smiley:.

I donā€™t think patches had been affecting content mods much tbh, only for rebalancing kind of mods.

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If it was anything like the ā€œsupposedā€ outcry of the new shattered realm sets, it ought to be epic.

@Zantai, donā€™t suppose there will be like one last push to ask the community what last few things they would like to see, at any point? Regardless, this is/continues to be the best ride ever. No matter which ARPG, be it PoE, D3, TL, all other indie arpgsā€¦this one continues to be the only one in which holds my true attention. :+1::clap:

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yeah Diablo 2 in GD format :slight_smile: I have been dying to playing that mod forever. When I am get burned out of Grim Dawn that mod is what I will play next hopefully