No point in beating the dead horse. The current implementation of mutators is pretty bad. They are an old attempt at randomizing the game experience, except that this randomization does not add replayability to the game. In fact, it removes replayability.
However, mutators do have a useful purpose: they increase the difficulty of certain dungeons and challenges. So the goal of this mod is to make the mutators consistent, by averaging out their most important effects and making all mutators the same.
Read more about the motivation and the process used to create this mod below.
The Mod
All negative mutators have the following effects on enemies (max=6):
- Total Damage Modified by 1%
- Total Health Modified by 3%
- +6% Attack Speed
- +4% Casting Speed
- +1% Movement Speed
- Total Retaliation Damage Modified by 6%
- +3% Skill Cooldown Reduction
All positive mutators have the following effects on the players (max=2):
- +5% Crit Damage
- Total Damage Modified by 2%
- Total Health Modified by 2%
- Increases Armor by 10%
- +1% Maximum All Resistances
- Total Retaliation Damage Modified by 1%
- +2% Skill Cooldown Reduction
On average, areas with mutators will now feel slightly more difficult, but the difficulty will always be consistent across play sessions.
Install
Remember to always backup your save-game files!
This mod was tested with Grim Dawn v1.3.1.1, but it should be fully compatible with older versions of the game, since mutators have not been changed for a very long time.
Basemods install (easy):
If you do not have other mods installed, you can install this the easy way:
- Download: BetterMutators-v0.1-basemods.zip (10.1 KB)
- Extract the files to your Grim Dawn install directory, inside the mods/ directory. For Steam, this should be
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Grim Dawn\mods. For GOG, this should be:C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Grim Dawn\mods. - Launch Grim Dawn with the parameter:
/basemods - Start a game in the main campaign
This mod changes only the effects of mutators. Therefore, it has no influence on character save-game files. You can use this mod with any of your existing characters, or create a new one.
Standalone install (hard):
If you have other mods installed and/or are already using /basemods for something else, there’s a few more steps to get this mod working:
- Download: BetterMutators-v0.1-standalone.zip (55.3 KB)
- Extract the files to your Grim Dawn install directory, inside the mods/ directory. For Steam, this should be
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Grim Dawn\mods. For GOG, this should be:C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Grim Dawn\mods. - Go to
C:\Users\<username>\Documents\My Games\Grim Dawn\savein your File Explorer - Create a folder
BetterMutators - Copy the blueprints and shared stash files from the
savefolder toBetterMutators(formulas.bst, etc) - Create a folder
user - Copy your characters files from the
savefolder touser - Launch Grim Dawn
- In the Main Menu, click on “Main Campaign” on the bottom of the screen, and click on “Custom Game”
- Choose the mod “BetterMutators - world001.map” and click “Accept”
Unfortunately, the standalone install does not work for The Crucible. You need to be careful copying your character files from/to the user and the save folders.
Remember to always backup your save-game files!
Credits
Mod Implementation - by Coincident
English Text Resources - by Coincident
No gen AI was used in the making of this mod.
You do not have permission to train AI models on the contents of this mod, or this post.
You do have permission to manually copy, modify, or include this mod inside of other mods as you wish. But please provide credit.
TODO
- Find new graphics for these generic mutators
- Playtest campaign areas with mutators, The Crucible, and the SR
- Get feedback from players testing the mod (volunteers are welcome)
- Provide non-EN text translations (volunteers are welcome)
If you want to contribute to this mod and create translations or help out in any way, I would prefer if you do not use genAI. But if you do use genAI, please mention that you did. Let’s at least be truthful about the technologies we use here. Thank you.
The Motivation
No point in beating the dead horse. The current implementation of mutators is pretty bad. They are an old attempt at randomizing the game experience back from the days of The Crucible. Since then, the system was adapted to the campaign and to the Shattered Realm.
They may add randomness, but unfortunately mutators don’t add replayability to the game. As a counter-example, let’s take the Boons system of Hades. Depending on random options the player needs to choose from, each run is unique, and the player must adapt their strategies, and their build, to each run’s different circumstances. Boons are such an interesting mechanic, you could say the make the game.
But mutators? They break the game.
No Grim Dawn player has ever gone to change their build when certain mutators roll in an area. No Grim Dawn player has ever changed their strategies or piloting skills to adapt to mutators. So what do mutators really do to players? This:
“Extra damage? Hell yeah! Finally gonna get that sub 5 minute run!”
“Oh crap. Guess the run is dead. Might as well restart the game”
“Sweet! My deep SR run can finally survive going really deep now.”
Mutators influence the end result of a run; victory or death; and there’s nothing the player can do about it. And thus, mutator farming is born. One of the worst aspects of Grim Dawn’s gameplay loop, but unfortunately, still to this day, necessary at an end-game level. Mutators are so bad in fact, they remove replayability from the end-game. People who are (understandably) unwilling to mutator farm, will most likely give up on the end-game and just start another alt from level 1.
Why not remove mutators?
There have been multiple mods that completely remove mutators. But I don’t believe that’s the right move. The thing is: do mutators get everything wrong? No. There’s one thing mutators do right: extra difficulty. The player enters a dangerous domain and they know the monsters will be especially deadly. The player reaches The Crucible round 30, and Lokarr warns them that shit’s about to go down.
Mutators are supposed to be in the game; but they don’t need to be random. Consistent mutators would still increase the difficulty of areas / challenges that are supposed to feel extra dangerous, without creating a scenario where rolling certain mutators does nothing at best, and rolling others makes encounters unfair and imbalanced at worst. Consistent mutators is the aim for this mod.
The Process
I didn’t really want to create a mod. For me this should be how mutators behave in the base game. But considering everything else that is going on, I doubt Crate will have the time / dev priority to change mutators any time soon. So a mod it is.
I looked at the available mutators, and to remove their randomness I knew I had to average out their effects, taking into account the max is 8 mutators (6 negative, 2 positive). I knew I didn’t want to / couldn’t keep all their effects, so I had to pick which to keep and which to exclude.
Negative mutators
With a total of 6 mutators out of 17, roughly a third of all possibilities can roll in a run, without repeats. It is very common to roll combinations that maximize damage, or speed, together with survivability of the enemies.
| Mutator | Effects | Goal |
|---|---|---|
| Aetherwarped | Aether Damage | Averaged (all as global TDM) |
| Berserking | Bleed Damage, +6% Attack Speed | Averaged |
| Brawling | Physical Damage | Averaged |
| Brutal | Pierce Damage | Averaged |
| Corrupted | Chaos Damage | Averaged |
| Crippling | % slow target | Excluded* |
| Cruel | % reduced target’s damage | Excluded* |
| Ignited | Fire Damage | Averaged |
| Leeching | Attack Damage converted to Health | Excluded** |
| Poisonous | Poison Damage | Averaged |
| Reckless | +15% attack speed | Averaged |
| Regenerating | +6% THM + Health Regen | THM Averaged, Regen Excluded** |
| Swift | +12% attack, +12% cast, +5% move speed | Averaged |
| Time-Warped | +12% cast speed, -15% cooldowns | Averaged |
| Toughened | +12% THM | Averaged |
| Unstoppable | 500% Slow res | Excluded*** |
| Vengeful | +5% TDM, +40% TRDM | Averaged |
*I excluded player DPS penalty effects, especially if they happen on every single attack from every single enemy, which is absolutely mindless. DPS penalty effects are OK to happen on specific attacks that the player can learn and evade in order to avoid the DPS penalty, if they want.
**I excluded regen effects because they’re already controversial. Clear examples are Bobr and the Reaper of Rot. If the bosses already have their own leech or heavy healing, that’s fine, but mutators should not mess with those, otherwise they might create a problem with lower DPS builds that can literally no longer kill certain enemies. Not fun.
***Mostly irrelevant. Nobody builds around slow anyway.
The biggest damage buff combination includes +50% of certain types, together with +5% TDM and +40% TRDM. Averaged among 6 mutators, a 1% TDM effect on each will result in a total TDM of +6.2% (multiplicative stack), which should be about the same total damage overall, if slightly higher. A 6% TRDM effect will result in a total of +41.9% TRDM (multiplicative stack), which should be about the same total damage overall, if slightly higher.
The only caveat is that physical damage will be more buffed overall than before. Previously, with distinct damage mutators, Brawling gave only a +25% to physical damage, instead of the 50% of all other damage types. This will be compensated for with armor on the positive mutators. More on that later.
The 2 health buff mutators give enemies +18% THM. Averaged among 6 mutators, a 3% THM effect on each will result in a total THM of +19.4% (multiplicative stack), which is about the same total health overall, if slightly higher.
All the speed buffs together add up to +33% attack, +24% cast, +5% move speed, and 15% cooldown reduction. Averaged among 6 mutators, 6% attack, 4% cast, 1% move speed, and 3% CDR is about the same speed buffs overall, if slightly higher.
Positive mutators
The situation is different as only 2 of them can roll. Therefore averaging all the effects doesn’t make much sense. Instead, I excluded most effects, especially those that affected only certain damage or resistance types, and kept only the mutators that were globally good and non-situational.
With only 2 mutators out of 10, roughly a fifth of all possibilities can roll in a run, without repeats. It is very rare for both mutators to provide either damage, or survivability. Therefore the averages used for these will be significantly nerfed. You can never get both damage mutators AND both survivorship mutators in a single run anyway.
| Mutator | Effects | Goal |
|---|---|---|
| Accelerated | 8% CDR | Averaged |
| Aethermarked | Aether Res + max res | Excluded* |
| Armored | 20% Armor | Kept in full** |
| Ascended | 8% TDM, 4% TRDM | Averaged |
| Blessed | 2% max res | Kept in full* |
| Mighty | 20% Crit Damage | Averaged |
| Resilient | Bleed&Poison res + max res | Excluded* |
| Sprinting | 10% move speed, 5% max | Excluded*** |
| Vigorous | 12% THM | Averaged |
| Voidmarked | Chaos Res + max res | Excluded* |
*Only the 2% Max res was kept without 2% res to make up for it. This incentivises some resistance overcap which many builds already took into consideration given the possibility of the mutator rolling.
**Armor kept in full to make up for the extra boost in physical damage from negative mutators
***Not the most important thing when it comes to positive player mutators
Damage buffs give +8% TDM, +4% TRDM, and +20% crit. Averaged among 2 mutators, a 2% TDM effect on each will result in a total TDM of +4.04% (multiplicative stack), which should be significantly less damage overall. A 1% TRDM effect will result in a total of +2.01% TRDM (multiplicative stack), which should be significantly less damage overall. And a 5% crit damage over 2 mutators will result in 10% crit. Everything is about halved.
For survival buffs, old mutators could give 12% THM and +2% max all res. 1% max res will be kept on each mutator, because of the build expectation for a little extra overcap. As for THM, 3% results in +6.09% (multiplicative stack).
As for armor, and specifically to make up for the extra physical damage that these buffs give, on average, to enemies, a 10% armor boost per mutators means that on 2 mutators the player is up by 20% armor as with the original mutator.
Finally, 2% CDR for each of the 2 mutators will also result in half of the original 8%.
I’ve found the files and I’m doing some tests now.