Grim Dawn Grim Misadventure #175 - A Look Back at 2020

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Written by ValH on January 12th, 2021

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Crate Entertainment’s action-RPG Grim Dawn is one of the earliest examples of successful crowdfunding, predating even the big Kickstarter gold rush of 2012 by a couple of years. And according to this Grim Misadventure development update, the game’s journey may finally be coming to an end, for the foreseeable future at least.

Grim Dawn's final Grim Misadventure looks back at the game's big 2020 updates, lets us know that the 1.1.9.0 patch will be dropping soon, and sends us on our way with a link to Farthest Frontier, Crate’s upcoming town builder.

Here are the text parts:

A Happy New Year and a Grim Misadventure for you! Grim Dawn is going to be five years old this year, how surreal is that?

To say that 2020 was a weird year would be an understatement. For many, it was a devastating period filled with hardships as the human race endures a once a century pandemic. We hope that Grim Dawn could bring you some solace in trying times, a small bright spot in a dark year.

Let us take a moment to reflect upon how Grim Dawn grew over the last year. In 2020, Grim Dawn had a total of 8 patches, three of which were major content and feature updates. New options to farm loot were introduced alongside dozens of new items. Hundreds of balance changes gave rise to new viable playstyles and gave old ones a chance to shine again.

From the Past…

• Monstrous Totems – V1.1.6.0 spiced up the leveling experience and endgame loot hunt with the introduction of Monster Totems. Built off of Corrupted Devotion Shrines, the totems spawned waves of tough enemies and rained loot in return. With a high chance of dropping otherwise extremely rare Legendary items added in the same update, there was something for everyone.
  
  The totems turned out to be one of the best new additions to Grim Dawn and proved really fun to tackle while leveling.
• Shattering Performance – A few mad lads went ahead and beat the Shattered Realm. Yup, that wasn’t supposed to be possible, but they did it. With excellent coordination and some of the toughest characters ever assembled, this crew preserved all the way through to the Deathly Waystone’s cap of Shard 160.
  
  With v1.1.6.0, we acknowledged their triumphs by…raising the bar! The Deathly Waystones now enable access all the way to Shard 210, for anyone brave enough to try and beat their record.
• Impartial Components – An arguably small change but with a big impact. V1.1.6.0 saw the end of Partial Components in Grim Dawn. Inventories everywhere sighed in relief!
• Raining Infrequently – V1.1.7.0, along with being the largest changelog to the game ever, brought with it a staggering 35 new Monster Infrequents. Along with this update, we also made the decision to introduce item skill modifiers to the base game. While skill modifiers started out as a mechanic exclusive to the expansions, we felt that new players joining our adventures in Cairn should get a taste of this great feature.
• All Crucibled Out – With v1.1.7.0, Crucible lovers got some more variety in their rotation with the introduction of four new maps themed after expansion areas. The Crucibles of the Bog, Woods, Stars and Crags brought new layouts and challenges for Grim Dawn’s arena mode.
  
  Alongside these additions, we were finally able to crush a notorious bug plaguing the Crucible. Monsters no longer randomly decide to camp out in the spawn zones. We thank our players for providing enough information for us to finally track the source of this one down.
• Rarely Applicable – Another subtle change with big ramifications, we scoured our loot tables with v1.1.7.0 and made all gear favor affixes with appropriate damage types. This meant that a fire scepter now almost always rolls with some combination of prefix and suffix that favor fire damage. Some hard to get Monster Infrequents became within reach by mortals that day.
• Sidelined Areas – V1.1.8.0 expanded the vast world of Cairn by opening up previously inaccessible areas. We went through all of the game’s content and found all the nooks and crannies that were not explorable and filled them with content. The update breathed new life into old areas and introduced new challenges to boot.
  
  Celestial Monster Totems, a higher tier challenge for the feature from v1.1.6.0, were added exclusively to the new areas and new mini-bosses meant new Monster Infrequents!

What’s Next?

As you may have hoped, we are nearly finished with v1.1.9.0, our latest major addition to the game. As shown in our previews, fans of the Shattered Realm are about to get some awesome new content.

Alongside the newness we are also doing away with a well-known exploit. However, as the gameplay it enabled in the Shattered Realm Guardian Domains has become popularized by the current meta, we are going to simply make it possible to pull bosses without resorting to gimmicky abuse of game mechanics. Should be a refreshing change for those that have been playing with camera zoomed in, rotated, flipped inside out and inverted for the sake of pushing higher shards!

All this comes packed with nearly 300 changes to items, so there is something for everyone to look forward to.

Of course, this isn’t all that’s been happening at Crate Entertainment lately. Keen eyes have spotted a little tease of our town builder recently. We are immensely proud of the work that’s gone into Farthest Frontier. And after years in development, we are ready to unveil it to you in earnest!

Stop by the site to feast your eyes upon the gorgeous in-game images from Farthest Frontier. You can also stop by the Steam page to wishlist the game if you’re looking forward to Crate Entertainment’s next project!

This announcement also marks an end to our grim misadventures together.

Even as we focus our energy on Farthest Frontier and projects we can’t wait to share, the end of Grim Misadventures is by no means an end to our support for Grim Dawn though. We are excited to have Grim Dawn’s v1.1.9.0 in your hands later this month, and Farthest Frontier later this year.

Although Grim Misadventures are ending, we will still be keeping the community informed with periodic information as we have things to share with you. And who knows, perhaps some day we will have need of Grim Misadventures again when the brewing conflict between the Aetherials and the Chthonians reaches its boiling point within the Erulan Empire!

Stay tuned for more exciting news from Crate Entertainment and for much more on the up and coming Farthest Frontier!

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