Grim Dawn v0.2.4.5 Build 18 and Hotfix Released

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Written by BuckGB on April 26th, 2014

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Crate Entertainment has cranked out a new build 18 (version 0.2.4.5) and a small hotfix for Grim Dawn, which adds the first 150 crafting recipes, a new "Veteran" mode, the ability to dual-wield pistols, and more to the game. They're also making good progress on multiplayer, as you'll find out below:

Major New Features:
Crafting is now available! A new quest that begins in Burrwitch Outskirts will have you choose between two rival blacksmiths vying for control of a sacred hammer. Each blacksmith has their own unique style that will be imprinted upon every item they craft for you.

Over 150 crafting recipes have been added to the game.

The character sheet has been overhauled to provide a much more detailed view of your stats from gear and skills. Offensive and Defensive Ability rollovers now display the chance to hit/crit based on your last target/attacker.

Normal difficulty now has "Veteran" mode, which boosts various enemy stats, notably damage and also increases the number of champions and heroes that can spawn. Veteran isn't meant to be brutally challenging but should be enough to make normal difficulty more interesting for skilled players, while allowing us to balance the default for the average player. Veteran can be turned on and off from the character selection screen. Characters who play through normal difficulty on veteran mode should end up a little better equipped to tackle epic difficulty once it becomes available.

Increased randomization of enemy spawns - a new method of placing spawn proxies allows us to provide much greater randomization in terms of how enemies are distributed. You'll now find that the location of enemies is more random and that they can sometimes appear in much larger and more diverse packs.

Dual wielding of pistols is now possible via skills granted by items. One such item can be crafted with the new blacksmith.

Art:

• Improved default lighting in outdoor environments.
• Increased the distinctiveness of some enviroments a little bit by adjusting textures, colors, fog, lighting and asset use.
• Updated Item art for Curse of Burrwitch, The Eye, Blood Carver, Bloodreaper's Claw, Outlaw's Retribution Blackwood Wand and Malformed Effigy.
• Resized 1-handed melee weapon bitmaps so maximum size is now 1X3 (some 1X4 bitmaps existed).

Animation:

• Dual-wield pistol animation set for player characters (12 animations).
• New item granted skill "Ground Stomp" animations for all weapon types.
• "Lethal Gambit" plays proper animation for all melee weapons.'
• "Blitz" plays proper animation for all melee weapons.
• "Shadow Strike" plays proper animation for all melee weapons.
• "Blade Arc" plays proper animation for all melee weapons.
• Player character ragdolls were redone, as the old solution was contributing to long respawn times.
• Boars now have a new "Ground Slam" skill and animation.
• Spiders now have a new "Spawn" animation.
• Zombiehounds have a new "Breath Attack" animation.

Tech:

• Quickbar keybinding text now reflects the actual keybinding.
• Newly acquired items now display a flashing highlight in the inventory window.
• Fixed a bug where conversation text would be incorrectly split in non-english localizations.
• Added Render Device option to Video Options.
• Added UI Scaling option to Video Options.
• Cunning and Spirit rollovers now display Bonus Damage.
• Quickbar skills now play skill cooldown and low mana voices.
• Potions now play an item cooldown message when on cooldown.
• DPS and Average Damage equations updated.
• Inventory highlights now properly clear when moving cursor off of the grid and when inventory is closed.
• Improved character saving performance.
• Stat increment buttons are no longer shown when no stat points are available for spending.
• Added quest reward window which summerizes quest rewards when a quest is completed.
• Reworked skill use logic to make skills feel more responsive.
• Fixed a bug where clicking on signposts would cause incorrect movement.
• Added debuff status effect icons to the player HUD.
• Adjusted pet AI to remove some strange movement situations and long range chasing behavior.
• Fixed a bug where pet completion bonuses did not appear in item tooltips of attached relics.
• Fixed a bug where mouse events outside the game window were processed by the game.
• Fixed a bug where tooltips would appear for the player HUD when covered by foreground windows.
• Fixed an issue where UI button text was not correctly centered.
• Fixed a bug in LocalizationManager where tag reordering would effect all subsequent tags.
• Added "gender of target" localization codes for conversation/quest text.
• Added challenge mode/hardcore indicator text to upper left corner of game screen.
• Always show loot option can now be limited based on item quality.
• Riftgate map labels can now be localized.
• Improved rendering or korean and chinese fonts.
• Added faction indicators to the conversation window. Shows the faction of the npc in the conversation.
• Pets now contribute to Monsters/Champions Killed and Greatest Monster Killed.

Game:

• Experience formula that determines how much experience is gained from killing enemies has been adjusted to slow down leveling. Based on the results, further adjustment may be required. This change shouldn't affect current character levels.
• Compass north indicator is now correctly aligned to world map north direction.
• Killing Direni for the Lost Journal quest now has additional rewards.
• The Warden's one-shot chest now also always drops a rare crafting material.
• Updated the stats on the Ground Stomp and Life Cascade item skills
• Chaos Bolt and Fireblast item skills now properly target Overseers.
• The Marauder Set's pistols now grant skills which allow you to dual wield them.
• Adjusted the base iron bit value of all items.
• Slightly increased the drop rate of double rare items
• Slightly increased the drop rate of scrap and components
• Updated stats on Headhunter's Trophy
• Updated stats on the Mark of Dreeg, Hell's Bane Ammo, Deathchill Bolts, Flintcore Bolts and Venom-Tipped Ammo components
• Reduced Attack Speed bonus values on weapons and gloves slightly
• Base energy regeneration on caster torsos now scales up with higher item tiers
• Focus items are now their own item type (off-hands) and no longer provide the benefits of a shield (ex. You cannot cast Forcewave with a Focus item)
• Focus item absolute damage stats now affect your main hand weapon.
• Reduced % damage bonuses on Focus items
• Fixed an issue with Pets summoned by items not benefiting from pet modifiers on items/skills (ex. Bonds of Bysmiel)
• Salazar's Harbinger summon now has a status display, just like the Rifthound and Familiar. This will also apply to many future item summons.
• Bleeding and Internal Trauma duration damage is now affected by Cunning.
• Base Physical and Pierce ratio damage is now calculated in the proper order to remove double dipping.
• Pierce ratio damage now benefits from Cunning.
• Bonus pierce damage now benefits from Cunning.
• Bonus Physical damage now benefits from the same equations and modifiers that other Physical damage does.
• All damage attack types except Retaliation can now crit (spells can now crit).
• Due to the effect of bonuses on physical, pierce, bleed and trauma damage, various skills have been or will be adjusted to bring them back into balance.
• Soldier: Overguard modified to offer much better damage mitigation but with a shorter duration and longer cool-down.
• Demolition: Firestrike fire damage improved at lower levels.
• Occultist: Witchfire damage bumped up slightly across all levels.
• Occultist: Dreeg dmg buffed slightly.
• Nightblade: Lethal Gambit buffed a bit and expanded to hit three targets. Modifier now has a chance to freeze enemies.
• Nightblade: Cold damage added to Execute in exchange for some of its %weapon dmg, which was scaling up too quickly.
• Hellhound should now tank better in defensive mode.

EDIT - Reduced time till ooc regen activates from 3 to 2 seconds but cut the regen rate from 20x to 5x. Should make it useful for healing up without potions between fights and still possible to use if you can break out of combat but with the cost of requiring more time away from combat.

Development News:
We've made significant progress with multiplayer after having to rewrite a lot of the existing code that was originally written for GameSpy (which is shutting down). The last tricky component is designing a system to resolve differences in player's quest progress and quest choices. Allowing people who have made divergent quest choices to play together is particularly difficult but we think we've arrived at a reasonable solution and have begun implementing it. We're currently estimating that multiplayer may be ready in late July but we'll have a better idea once we finish the quest syncing and do some testing to see how well it is functioning.

Two-handed melee weapon animations have been finished and the last of the common item art is almost done. You can expect to see them in the next build, which shouldn't be long.

The lower floors of Steps of Torment will also be included in the next build and introduce a new "Rogue-like" mechanic where a key must be used to enter and then, once inside, portals do not work and the only way out is by death or surviving to the end. New varieties of traps will make reaching the end especially challenging.

The first section of Act III, the Jagged Waste, which leads into Homestead, the Act III "town," is nearly finished but missing quests and points of interest. The basic layout of the survivor enclave in Homestead is done and build-out has begun on the farmland around it. We should be able to show off some early screenshots in the next month or two.

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