ah tyvm.It looks good.With this lockdown i actually have time for some gaming 
Patch 1
Changes
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Added the Loot-Sphere (Divine) â A Loot-Sphere that has a chance to drop other Loot-Spheres
- You can drop them the same way as others
- You get one as a reward for finding all Devotion Spheres
- You get one as a reward for restoring each shrine of the first three Devotion Dungeons
- You get one as a reward for restoring each shrine of the last three Devotion Dungeons
- You get two as a reward for restoring each shrine of all Devotion Dungeons
- Chance of 15% to have A Rare Offer at the Lectern of Wisdom â This Special Exchange has cheaper offers than the normal Exchange, as well as a few new ones (including an exchange for Loot-Spheres (Divine))
- Reworked dialog of the Devotion Statue â Each Devotion Sphere now has a cryptic message about its location; Receive a note which has all of their locations written down, so you can still look them up while traveling
- A Notification gets triggered if you are close to a Devotion Sphere
- A Young Girl and Her Heirloom Quest: Added Quest Markers to the Hidden Lever and the Hidden Entrance, which only appear if the player is close enough
- Shard of Nebulbeth Quest: The hint you receive in the beginning is now more detailed about the locations of most Fragmented Stones; Now rewards a Skill Point upon completion
- Nightmare: Improved script of the Catacombs instance; Added Notifications
- Entrance to the Catacombs: Made most walls and pillars transparent so the player doesnât need to rotate the camera
- Tomb: Removed the Torch Lever that unlocks the Hidden Pathway; Added a new side room to the final room where there is now a normal Lever that unlocks the Hidden Pathway instead
- Scorched Grounds: You now have less time for each wave up to the 5th wave and a bit more time for the 6th and 7th wave (Overall, time to reach the last wave is reduced from 960 seconds to 720 seconds); Added more spawns to most waves â the Devotion Dungeon is now a bit harder than before, but it takes less time to reach the difficult parts again after dying
- Further improved text coloring
Enjoy.
â Patch can be played with characters created in Update 8 â
Currently playing through Nydiamar.
You can pet a dog. 10/10 Mod, would play again
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Just reached the Catacombs after having started off as lvl 1. The mod is great overall, I love the maps, soundtrack, difficulty and the faction system is very cool. Bear in mind my feedback is from a player who prefers gameplay over exploration/lore (can you guess how I died? 
) .
Some things which detracted from my experience:
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Devotions: Personally I find how these are handled to be one of the least fun aspects of the mod. Missing a devotion orb feels bad. Some of the devotion areas are not interesting (e.g the third one). Early devotion starvation + greater difficulty + expansive areas arenât a good combination. This makes movement speed even more coveted but lacking, and also because of melee builds who may rely on devotions for AoE and adcth. It isnât fun taking bat or playing with levelling skills for longer periods of time than vanilla. First 10 points, at the very least, should come quicker imo.
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High shrine requirements in areas where you cannot rift back to town to craft (and some require blueprints you wonât have upon start). I wished they were all battle shrines.
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Faction tickets are too scarce. Hopefully this improves later on in the mod, as it is an expensive entry fee to do part 2 and 3. It would also be nice to use the mod for this system then transfer back to vanilla, but tickets donât allow it. Levelling Bounty rewarding a ticket would be great.
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Ground damage in certain parts is a bit extreme, especially since monster totems can be completely covered. It can be difficult to see normal ground, and playing blind on hc was scary.
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I play quite zoomed in, camera turning is needed, but what I donât enjoy is the lack of mini-map/map + darkness + lack of monsters. The combination of all these things makes dungeons like the Tomb to be confusing and frustrating rather than enjoyable. What is supposed to be a survival horror feeling is more like tedium for me (the small part with mean hero/boss was great though).
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I think some things are a bit too obscure. If you want people to read lore notes to get past things then say so near the beginning of the OP. Obstructions not being target-able made me mistakenly assume a dead end etc.
You played Hardcore? Thatâs insane! Iâm sorry if you died by some stupid shit.
This is something I was afraid of! It takes a while to get a few Devotion Points, a lot longer than the actual main campaign. And it is really difficult to get them too! What I could do is reward some, maybe 5 to 10, by just leveling up.
And I might increase/double the amount you get from each non-battle shrine, to match roughly the main campaign (Currently you get up to 22 on Normal, whereas the campaign gets you up to 34?). This would mean that you would get 6 instead of 3 from the first dungeon alone, 5 instead of 4 from the second, and so on.
I will look into the shrine requirements. I mostly balanced them around their rarity, not if they are actually easy to come by.
If you donât have a way to craft a material, you can also buy it directly from the merchant, which I did during my testing. Of course not a great but boring and expensive solution.
As for the Faction Tickets, I will make them craftable. Unfortunately adding them to bounties (even only one type) would take by far the longest.
I donât know what exactly you mean by that? You could put them into your shared stash (which is only for Nydiamar) to save them and switch back and forth as you want (as long as it is only for leveling factions, as other parts of the mod might break, e.g. quests). If there are any requests, I could also port the system over to the main campaign (the whole arena).
Currently 4 ticks of ground damage will kill, could change it to 6 or 7 ticks.
Criticism about the Tomb always comes up, maybe I should give in and add a minimap to it? Also, increasing the Light Radius gained from the torch drastically could help with the darkness. And roaming weak skeletons could really add to the atmosphere, and make it less boring.
I have already reworked the Lorshade Mine to not require camera rotation, will come with the next update. Other than these two, I canât think of an area that might be frustrating. Maybe the Strange Well and Transition Part I (which you did not reach yet)?
Iâm improving this with each patch by rewriting and coloring dialog, adding quest and entrance markers, and so on. So more improvements might come, if I can think of any.
Overall, I guess most of your criticism comes down to the mod being too grind-y. After all, the mod is supposed to be fun, and not frustrating. So thanks for the feedback, I will look into all!
Only once. I think overall it is quite well balanced so far.
That fulfils my desire. The faction system makes for nice variety to do sometimes when I start a new character for vanilla play.
Yeah, torch is a no go for melee though, which is what I was.
And on that note. Do you mind sending a PM or something to explain how I can proceed in the mod. I completed sanctuary (couldnât find heirloom though) but I have no clue how to get to Snowy Landscapes (Lore note says transition but no clue where that is either).
Just another minor criticism: I think enemy variety could be improved a little. There were too many skeletons I think. They appear quite frequently, adding AoM wraiths or FG undead to the desert would be welcome. Leafmanes to that sanctuary area.
You need to go to the Nehada Desert, then find and enter the Ancient Ruins (the inner part), and there at the end (outside, find the really long bridge) is a portal leading to the âTransitionâ. Since you are asking, I might add more details to the Lore Note.
If you got to the actual Sanctuary, where you get your rewards, it is down the roots used to get up (4th room, so 4 keys are required).
Yeah, they are used way too often. I will try to add a bit more variety.
It seems extremely difficult to gather cthonic seals of binding, unless we buy them from the special materials shop. Am I forgetting an area, because I donât remember seeing a single cthon cultist anywhere to drop these 
it makes crafting a little tough haha
Canât think of any area that guarantees cultists. I somehow always ended up with some seals in my playthroughs, probably through loot from chests or the random encounters.
I will add the seals as drops to the Chthonic Crystals in the upcoming update, which might come very soon (as in a week or so). Enemy variety will also increase, so one might encounter them more frequently in the open then.
Oh adding them to the crystals would be a great idea! The lorshade mine seems to sometimes have a cultist hero, but thatâs about all i can think of. Iâm glad to hear there will be more enemy variety, I remember I was looking everywhere for a certain monster infrequent (fleshwarped defender) to eventually get it from a totem that spawned the monster I needed. Itâs probably just about impossible to have every single monster type somewhere in the mod, but a little more diversity will definitely help!
I just installed this mod by unzipping the file into the mods folder for Grim Dawn. When I run the game and go to Custom game it comes up with Nydiamar - maptest and I am in an area called Prison and there seems to be no enemies or any way of getting off the prison.
Have I installed it incorrectly or is there something I am missing? Would love to try this mod out.
Sorry for replying late.
You installed it just fine! You are supposed to leave the room you start in (door is open). Walk around a bit until you get to the lectern.
Donât get confused with the name âmaptestâ, I donât think I can change it easily.
Iâm an idiot! I thought it was a dead end but didnât see I could carry on doh! Thanks.
Update 10
New Location â Depraved Ruins
Existing Depraved Ruins got expanded by two new areas!
Pits
Donât trip!
Path Riddle
Find the correct path! Stepping on a wrong tile punishes you with a difficult encounter and resets the puzzle.
There is also a secret tile. Finding it rewards you two Skill Points. It is the only tile that has a 0 percent chance to be the next correct tile.
Reworked Existing Locations
Lorshade Mine
Expanded the area. Certain walls are now transparent, so you no longer need to rotate the camera to get a better view.
The Tomb
Added the Mini-Map to the area. Certain walls are now transparent. Increased Light Radius of the player character (4 meters to 9). Reduced the fog density of the âFoggy Roomâ, so the floor can now be seen. Added roaming enemies.
Changes to other locations:
- Prelude: Reworked visuals
- Siegmarâs Landing: Added Point of Interest about the area
- Yamuna Forest: Removed trees to make it look less âcrowdedâ; Changed lighting to be more âdreamyâ
- Hawton Path: Added planks to act as a bridge
- Flooded Mountain Woods: Lowered cliffside blocking the view
- Old Graveyard: Renamed to Weerhoalt Cementry; Renamed A Road to Weerhoalt Road; Added Point of Interest about the City of Weerhoalt
- Catacombs: Renamed to Catacombs of Khueel; Lowered cliffside blocking the view
- Transition: Renamed to Passage; Fixed ground texture
Updated World Map
Added several location names and repositioned the Riftgates.
Added Grim UI, an alternative user interface for Grim Dawn, created by JMD
Check out the mod page here. I have asked for permission to include it, since the UI is really well done and fits the mod!
Preview
The mod is optional and must be installed separately. Files (including the alternative UIs) are included in the download.
Changes to Existing Content
- Added 8+ new Soundtracks! Examples:
- Added 5 Cosmetic Pets, so you wonât feel so lonely â You get one for free, the others can be bought from the Special Merchant
- Added a short prologue dialog for some exposition, as well as some dialog commenting your progress
- Changed the tone of dialog and lore to a more serious one; Fixed some typos
- Enabled the Dismantle option
- Enabled the Transmute option
- Added a Shovel, a Rake, and a Farmer Hat as new Leveling Items
- Shovel and Rake grant an Experience Bonus of +75% each
- Chance of 2% to trigger Farmers Might, which deals 5000% Main-Hand Damage
- Wearing all three pieces grants a Set Bonus of +30% Movement Speed, -100% Reduction of Attribute Requirements, -100(%) Reduction of the Level Requirement
- Can be acquired by a new short quest â Talk to the Filthy Peasant and get him some new pants
- You now get 2 Devotion Points instead of 1 from Non-Battle Shrines
- You now get 5 Devotion Points as a reward for reaching Level 10, and again for reaching Level 45 â You can now acquire up to 40 points from only Normal
- Completing a Devotion Dungeon now rewards you 1 Attribute Point
- You can now use your Personal Riftgate near the shrines in Illusionary Dungeon
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Added Loot-Sphere (Blueprints Components)
- Blueprint can be bought from the Special Merchant
- Drops blueprints for components, including ones that can only be bought from Faction Merchants
- Very high chance to drop blueprints required for early shrines
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Faction Tickets can now be crafted
- Blueprint can be bought from the Special Merchant
- Requires a Skeleton Key, as well as other cheap components
- Faction Tickets can now drop from certain Loot-Spheres
- Changed the entry fee of Siegmarâs Challenge
- The later parts are now drastically more expensive on lower difficulties, but cheaper on higher ones
- The early parts are cheaper on lower difficulties, but get more expensive on higher ones
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Reasoning
Part II and III are supposed to be difficult, to be something the player has to grind or prepare for a bit to beat them, but playing on Normal trivializes them. I could have locked them to higher difficulties, but I donât think anyone would bother to play up to Ultimate for only one dungeon, so you can still do them on Normal, but it will cost you a bit
- Reduced the time you have to complete the Time Challenge in Siegmarâs Challenge
- Reduced cooldown of Flying Kiss (from the Iâm Attractive armor) from 360 seconds to 120
- Ammunition for the Bomber can now be crafted
- Blueprint can be acquired from Beauregard
- Cost reduced from 250 000 Iron Bits to 100 000
- Requires now additional components
- Reduced the damage you receive from ground effects from 30% (4 ticks to kill) to 20% (5+ ticks to kill)
- Increased amount of Dynamite required for Treasure Troves from 1 to 5
- âHeroâ-Bounties were a bit too easy, therefore I changed the script to only have a chance of 60% to drop a token when killing a hero-type creature
- Some enemy encounters are now more varied
- Chthonic Cultists can now be found in Ashes
- Fleshwarped Trolls can now be found in Sanctuary (Fields)
- Mummies can now be found in the Nehada Desert
- Ghouls can now be found in the Ancient Ruins
- Skeleton Golems can now be found rarely in the Ancient Ruins
- Reduced crafting cost of the Merit Token from 1 000 000 Iron Bits to 750 000
- Chthonic Crystals now have a chance to drop Chthonic Seal of Binding or Blood of Châthon (the chance drastically increases with enemy rarity)
- Updated a few portal effects
- Renamed the world file to Nydiamar (previously named âMapTestâ) â This was a last minute change, I hope it did not break something
I took my time with this update to address every issue I could think of. Surely there are some rough edges left, especially the writing part, but overall the mod now feels as polished as I could get it with my limited time and knowledge â Yeah, I said that already a few times before, but now Iâm serious.
The current content is now in a final state, but even if it sounds like it, this is not supposed to be the last update. Enjoy!
IMPORTANT
Progress of an existing character will be lost (except Riftgates) if you won't do the following:
- Locate this directory: Documents\My Games\Grim Dawn\save\user
- Go into the folder named after your character
- Rename the folder Maps_maptest.map to Maps_nydiamar.map
You will start anew at the prison, so quickly play through the beginning again (or (only) use the Edge of Eternity-Riftgate).
You could also let the game reset your progress and play through the mod again. BUT: If you use any Riftgate before you actually discovered it, you might break the Main Quest! THEREFORE: Only use a
Riftgate after you have encountered it normally!
This must be done due to me renaming the world file. People creating a new character wonât need to do this.
â Update can be played with characters created in Update 8, although I recommend you to start over (certain things only make sense with a fresh character) â
1 Like
Stay tuned (whoever is left)!
Canât wait! This campaign is amazing! Wish GD Vanilla would take some of your dungeon designs and world ideas!
As always, fantastic work.
Terrific works! Iâve play this mod for the first time and I was blown away! Itâs like Iâm playing a new game. I never like the soulless world of the original game. Youâve filled up the soul that I found was missing in the original grim dawn. I love your music choice and wish you will replace all the music of the original game which is still used in some places.
keep up the good work, i am loving this mod as well after coming back from the disastrous Torchlight 3.
Edit: Moved post info to Update 11 post.
1 Like