The Gods Are Watching You
Also called Another Final Update
There are now two different versions of Nydiamar:
CLASSIC Version — Offers a play-through similar to the actual Grim Dawn Campaign (where you play through three difficulties), with identical balancing. For people who want a slower and more balanced progression.
ULTIMATE Version — Offers a play-through on only Ultimate, with all new mechanics introduced in this update. For people who want a fast but challenging progression, and who do not want to do multiple play-throughs to see everything.
New Play-Through
In this play-through of Nydiamar, you can only play on Ultimate. You are now able to play through the whole mod from Level 1 to 100 on only this difficulty. When you reach Level 100 and reached the end once you receive a key that unlocks Nydiamar Dungeons, which could be considered the actual endgame challenge of Nydiamar. It is your choice to continue playing there instead of the normal campaign.
Enemies now scale with +PlayerLevel/25. The enemy density is slightly increased.
Due to only being able to play through one difficulty, some Devotion Dungeons now grant more Devotion Points than before:
- Sacred Halls: Added one Corrupted Shrine (Full dungeon: 5 > 6)
- Cold Ruins: Both shrines now grant one additional point (Full dungeon: 4 > 6)
- Overrun Fields: Corrupted Shrine now grants three additional points (Full dungeon: 3 > 6)
In addition to this, the Level 10 Reward now awards 15 Devotion Points instead of 5. You now need to restore all shrines to reach the cap, but only once.
You can not use existing characters, but you can use their shared stash — you are supposed to have a rough start, so you feel the need to use a corrupting buff to survive. Use the token LET_ME_PLAY_DAMMIT to have your way.
About Nydiamar Dungeons
Nydiamar Dungeons is a restructured endgame version of Nydiamar. Almost all areas are turned into Rogue-Like Dungeons, which got connected through a large complex, called Nydiamar Arx. Your goal is it to reach the end of it.
There are a few very important changes in Nydiamar Dungeons compared to Nydiamar. The Maximum Level is increased to Level 200. Pahr Gon Levels replace the Skill Points one normally gains from Level 100 to 200. The Devotion Cap is raised to 100 — You can find 16 Devotion Points in each part of the Nydiamar Arx. Enemies now scale with +PlayerLevel/7. The enemy density is greatly increased. Boss encounters are changed to be more challenging.
The mod is completely optional in case you don’t like the changes, it is only intended as a continuation of Nydiamar. You really should have a very competent character before attempting it.
Nydiamar Dungeons is already included in the download (both, CLASSIC Version and ULTIMATE Version) and has its own mod page, which you can check out if you want to learn more about it — although this version is still slightly different.
New Mechanic — Favor of the Gods
The gods are always watching you. Every now and then, they will act upon you. It does not matter where you are, or what you do, they won’t hold back.
High Favor with the gods increases the chances that something good will happen to you (having Beutekugeln pop around you). On the contrary, Low Favor increases the chances that something bad will happen (enemies suddenly appearing around you).
An act upon you either increases or reduces Favor, depending on what has happened to you.
Gain their Favor by doing good deeds, such as:
- Completing Quests
- Completing (World) Events
- Completing Rogue-Like Dungeons and challenging areas (e.g. Ancient Ruins)
- The amount of Favor you gain depends on the difficulty and length of the dungeon or area
- Bribing Offering them a certain amount of Iron Bits
- Making a Sacrifice — You lose 75% Health or 25% Max Resistances until death (or end of game session) for the chance to gain their Favor over time
Lose their Favor through Corruption and dying.
More detailed
When an act happens upon you, Favor represents the chance that something good happens. When you gain Favor, you gain it in 10% increments, up to 100%.
For example, when you create a new character, you start with 100% Favor. When you complete the Hawton Mine you gain 30% Favor due to the difficulty. Completing a Quest gives you 20% Favor.
A good act upon you reduces Favor by 0% to 40% (that’s random), while a bad one increases it. Losing Favor is easier than gaining it, which ensures that one has plenty of reason to also use other methods, such as Sacrifices.
An act can happen every 10 to 25 minutes.
An act can happen everywhere, even during a boss fight. When doing absolutely nothing, they will leave you alone. An act can also not happen in town (e.g. Edge of Eternity).
The Minimum Level to have them act is Level 15.
New Mechanic — Blessings & Corruption
The world is gruesome, and one being declared the savior won’t save the world without a helping hand. A Squirrel is offering you its service, which are five different Blessings, granting you each powerful bonuses. But power comes with a cost, as such they corrupt their recipient over time.
As you get more and more corrupted as you take advantage of these Blessings, the acts from the gods get more and more extreme and frequent, both good and bad.
More detailed
Starting anew on Ultimate is quite challenging. Enemies get bonuses and come in greater masses, while you have lowered resistances and subpar clearing capabilities. You need to compensate these shortcomings by using Blessings, which grant powerful bonuses, such as increased Damage, Health, Speed, Resistances, or Ability.
Every 35 Levels, all Blessings lose some of their power.
You can have several Blessings active at once (four from Level 1 to 49, three from Level 50 to 84, two from Level 85 and onwards), but each one increases the Corruption you gain and the Favor you lose (except the fourth one).
There are Corruption Levels, which get split into several tiers. At first, you gain a Corruption Level about every 14 minutes (or 8 with three Blessings), but the higher it goes, the slower you gain them — and the faster you lose Favor.
Corruption Tiers can go from 1 to 6. They multiply the acts from the gods and increase their frequency, and they also improve the individual acts (e.g. increase the chance for a rarer Beutekugel, but also the chance for a nemesis to appear).
You can lower Corruption by donating Beutekugeln or Iron Bits — this option only appears from Corruption Tier 4 and onwards.
You can keep track of both, Favor and Corruption, through the Faction Screen or a dialog option.
These two new mechanics also exist in Nydiamar Dungeons. The key differences are that you can now only gain Favor through completing dungeons, Corruption is now something you gain passively, and you can only have two Blessings active at a time.
Changes to Existing Content
- (+) Added 12 new Soundtracks!
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(+) Fixed Beutekugeln not working when the player rifts away next to a stash
- This was due to the trigger not calling the function set onLeave when rifting away
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(+) Added all Relic Blueprints for sale to the Special Merchant
- Some Ruined Shrines have Relics as a requirement, so it is logical to add an option to buy them directly instead of hoping for a drop
- (+) Reduced the Cost Adjustment of prices from the Special Merchant from 1500% to 750%
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(+) Improved An Ice Cave (Rogue-Like Dungeon) by adding a new twist to it
- This might have been to most boring dungeon, hopefully this change makes it more interesting
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(+) Made the following encounters longer and more challenging
- Strange Well — Final fight
- Ancient Ruins — Final fight
- Depraved Ruins — First fight to unlock the door
- Above the Waste — Final fight
- Ashes — Final fight
- (–) Removed the boss from the Lorshade Mine
- (+) Removed the notifications one receives when killing a Hero or Boss creature — Required to make room for the new notifications, or else they would be too easy to miss
- (+) Removed the notifications one receives after gaining a new Reputation Status — Required due to the new factions, which are not supposed to have any notifications
- (ULTIMATE) Removed the Level 100 play-through
- (ULTIMATE) Added the Head-Start option to start with Level 10; Removed the other two options
- (ULTIMATE) Changed Quest Rewards to reward flat levels instead of Experience Points
- (+) Added a dialog option that lets you enable a way to keep monsters that were summoned by the Binding Stone
- (–) Added three new One-Shot Chests to the beginning
- (+) Replaced the Tomes (Skill & Attribute Points) with Potions
- (+) Reduced the amount of Mutators most areas and dungeons can have active at once
- (–) Reduced the Experience Bonus granted by the dog from 50% to 25%
- (–) Escalation and Duunart Swamp now unlock with Level 75 instead of 50
- (ULTIMATE) Nightmare now has a 80% chance to happen
- (+) Fixed that one bed in Nightmare not always unlocking (hopefully)
- (–) Fixed the Lorshade Mine Key going missing
- (DUNGEONS) Fixed the Defense or Banner not appearing when using Defense Materials
- (ULTIMATE) Enabled Personal Riftgate in A Dream
- (+) Improvements to some dialog, such as Adventurous Cavern
- (–) Improvements to some environments, such as Nehada Desert or Passage II
- (+) The previously selected difficulty in the main menu should no longer reset on every game start
- (CLASSIC) Reverted any changes made to Enemy Scaling
- (CLASSIC) Normal now has a Level Limit of 65 to 70; Elite now has a Minimum Level of 45 and a Level Limit of 85; Ultimate now has a Minimum Level of 70
- (DUNGEONS) Added a new secret where you need to bully the Training Dummy
Changes marked with (+) were applied to all versions. (–) only to Nydiamar. Overall, lots of changes, so a few mistakes might have slipped through, especially since I can’t test that many versions properly — please report anything unusual.
Constantly reusing Nydiamar to create new versions … What is this, Skyrim?
Enjoy. ~