In my mod, which I always merge with Grim Dawn, I have not had any problems with the expanded caravan or any other aspect of my mod, for that matter. Yeah, it can be a minor pain in the ass having to update things every time Crate puts out a patch but, I’d rather have that “problem” as opposed to not.
That being said, here’s a screen shot I just took with the default database and only Grim UI installed. I did this to show you that if I forgot to merge the caravan mod with the game after an update, no big deal. Everything is still there. I’ll explain below.
This is my shared stash and oh yes, it looks like shit. The thing is, all of these items are stored in the transfer files located in the “save” directory, not the shared stash in game on the caravan. The caravan shared stash tab shows me the contents of the transfer file and the location of each item on the page. Everything outside of the grid isn’t accessible at this point, so I couldn’t even select an item and drop it. Once I merge my mod, everything is fine. All of my items still show up in my shared stash, fully accessible and ready.
The most important thing to do is, backup all of those transfer files. If you do that, you almost can’t lose anything. I do this after every play session personally.
If you decide to merge this with Grim Dawn, it’s no big deal. I do it many times a day when I’m testing things. If you have things setup, every time Crate puts out a patch, you could have it updated in no time at all, provided they didn’t change anything with the caravan.
When Crate does put out a patch like they recently did adding the search bar, I still merged my mod with the new database. The worst that happened was, I had a search bar sitting in a stupid location. No big deal. I got the files located, changed a few coordinates and fixed it.
I fully intend on keeping my mod(s) updated. Yes, there will a delay while I’m updating things, but that’s to be expected.
So as far as risk goes losing items, I’d say it’s almost non-existent, if you back your files up. I would say the same for merging with the game’s database. If something goes wrong and you didn’t make a back up first, just have Steam verify the files and it’ll download a new one.
Apologies for the long winded post. I’m just trying to assure everyone that if this wasn’t safe, I wouldn’t use it much less release it.