The work of a hero in the West surely saved all of Cairn from annihilation. But Erulan was not the only region assaulted by the Aetherials and Chthonics. To the East, and at the Zenith of Destruction, another apocalypse begins…
It is my pleasure to announce the development of Grim Dawn: Zenith, a content mod for Grim Dawn! GD:Zenith will feature a dark and dangerous campaign in a world well-past its end. The estimated length of this campaign should be around six hours across two and a half ‘Acts’, plus a good degree of side content. It will feature new skills, new items, and - of course - new enemies whose goals include wiping you off the face of Cairn.
Masteries: Six new masteries will enter the fray, with special traits and qualities not found in Grim Dawn’s original content. Investing in the mastery bars of these masteries will give you more than just stats…
Devotion: Devotion will be somewhat redone. I have not yet decided whether I want to include Celestial Powers as in original Devotion. If I do, the effects are obvious. If I don’t, I can do stuff like this AND give every skill in the game its own Celestial Power by default. The latter would somewhat hurt customization, but it would be a great boon to gameplay. I haven’t decided yet.
Items: With great power comes great responsibility…and a need to augment that power with special items! But things will come with a twist this time around: as the campaign is so short, progression will be gutted in favor of customization. This means that the armor values of items throughout the mod will be comparable, as will the values of the stats upon them. Think Dark Souls-style loot. However, Rare/Epic/Legendary items will almost all be having granted skills or procs to create a gameplay incentive to farm for them. I wonder if any skills from GD’s base masteries could show up here…
Questing: Hand holding will be GONE. You want to complete a quest? You’re doing it on your own. Lore text scattered throughout the world will help you somewhat on your journey, but only if you’re paying attention and, of course, only if you’re reading it.
And, of course, more. As this is an announcement thread, I won’t spoil everything about the mod. I will give you a couple teasers, though:
Yes, Elementalist has Chain Lightning
Remember what I said about investing in mastery bars?
Cheers!
-Ceno
Q & A:
Q: When is this releasing?
A: No idea.
Q: Will this delay the Cornucopia Mod?
A: Not any more than my procrastination already is. If I get tired of editing existing content for Cornucopia, I start working on Zenith. Cornucopia presently has higher priority than Zenith does.
Q: Are you working with adoomgod on this?
A: Not presently. If he was willing to help make my vision of the mod come to life, I’d be glad to have him on board…but frankly there are things still about the mod which I haven’t fully settled on and fear I’d not always have things for him to work on.
Q: Are you accepting volunteer testers?
A: Testing, once a decent chunk of content has been created, will be open to the public.
Q: How difficult is this going to be?
A: Very.
