TL;DR: I built a standalone utility for Grim Dawn called Grim Gleaner. The core idea is to help you identify what is relevant to your character, not necessarily what is optimal. It helps with filtering loot in-game and identifying key build-defining items and add-ons out-of-game. I’d love for you to check it out.
NOTE: An earlier download was triggering false positives with some virus protection programs due to an issue with how it was packaged. The packaging issue has been resolved and the current release shouldn’t cause any issues. (Though you’ll likely have to do the More Info → Run Anyway thing on first launch.)
Github: Grim Gleaner
Latest Release: Grim Gleaner v0.9.2-beta
(Currently only for English language and Windows x64 machines.)
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Here’s the full pitch. Tell me if you relate to any of these scenarios:
Scenario 1: You’ve just wiped out a totem and half-dozen elites, the ground is covered with loot in the form of so many words. Actually trying to analyze them all kills the flow so you clog up your inventory with junk and move on. But eventually it’s time for the homework part.
Scenario 2: You like to craft your own builds, but even with GrimTools, there are hundreds of affixes and almost 1,000 unique items to sift through. How do you even know what you’re hunting for?
Scenario 3: It’s time to optimize your gear for the next difficulty spike. Do you remember which components and augments you need to cap resistances and squeeze out more damage? Do you remember who sells them!?
Grim Gleaner can help.
How It Works:
- You rank which stats your build cares about, giving each one a weight from 0 (totally irrelevant) to 4 (core).
- Grim Gleaner will give you graded lists, item slot by item slot, of which affixes, items, components and augments best match your priorities, as well as which monsters you need to kill or rep vendors you need to visit to find them.
- You can export those grades so they appear in-game, giving you a quick way to identify which drops have stats you want and which you can ignore, without having to try and remember which damage type the “Devastating” prefix supports.
Profile Setup and Weights:
There’s a bit of of setup required, as you need to provide weights for the various stats that can roll on gear. And as we all know, Grim Dawn has a lot of stats. It’s also important to select and weight your primary skills. I’ve included a few example profiles if you want to get a sense of how it works, and I hope people who use the tool will share theirs as well.
Gear Advisor:
Once the weights are set, you can click over to the “Gear Grades” section. There you’ll find sorted and graded lists of the most relevant gear and affixes, graded from D to S++. Each grade also includes a number*, which tells you the exact number of relevant stats. (* S+ and S++ omit numbers to keep character length down.)
The Affixes tab here will give you a breakdown, by slot, of the best affixes, based on the weights you provided.
The Uniques tab has similar breakdown for Monster Infrequents, Epics and Legendaries. Both items with +skill ranks bonuses and items with Skill Modifiers for your chosen skills are highlighted here. In the screenshots, you can see a breakdown for my Primal Strike Vindicator.
Use this to help you target which items to chase for your build or just theorycraft a new build, and see how much itemization support it has.
Finally, the Add-ons tab gives slot-by-slot rankings for components and augments. It also has a “Resistance Cap Mode” that gives extra weight to Resistances so you can quickly ID the augments that’ll help you cap out.
Grade Export:
Using the same localization tagging system that Rainbow Filter does, Grim Gleaner can add the grade it generates to the item’s in-game drop text and detail tooltip. (It’s also compatible with Rainbow Filter and similar mods).
Feedback:
If you like what this tool is trying to do, I’m happy to hear feedback and feature ideas. I’m by no means an expert at the game, so I welcome your thoughts on how stat weights should be calculated, etc., or any in-game mechanics that aren’t reflected in the tool, etc.
Limitations:
TL;DR: The grading system is far from an exact science. It tries to measure stat relevance, not power.
Beyond the natural fuzziness of buildcrafting, there are also a few cases where the way the game exposes information makes what this tool is trying to do somewhat inconsistent, and working around them is quite difficult, though I have some ideas to help improve things.
- Many affixes gain new stats as the affix level gets higher, but they all share the same name so they all get the same grade tag. Currently, the tool assumes the max level possible. I plan to add the ability to set a level and adjust the grading based on that.
- Localization files are loaded on game launch, so you’ll need to exit the game, and rerun the Export process (it takes less than a second) when you switch characters.
- The tool can’t see an item’s actual rolls. It doesn’t know the difference between +12% Lightning Damage and +95% Lightning Damage, it only sees “Lightning Damage.” A good grade is “the right kinds of stats” not well-rolled ones.
(Disclaimer: I did use AI to help me build this. I did not use it to help me write this post, despite the bullet points and bolding. FWIW, I do have a CS degree, so I know enough to promise it won’t delete your hard drive or anything. Grim Gleaner only writes to Grim Dawn’s localization files, and it backs them up before making changes.)
Here’s the repo/download links again for posterity:
Github: Grim Gleaner
Latest Release: Grim Gleaner v0.9.2-beta
