Grim Dawn Build 28 Released

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Written by BuckGB on November 25th, 2015

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Just as we expected, Crate Entertainment has released Build 28 of Grim Dawn, granting us the ability to play through the action RPG's first half of Act 4 and check out the Devotion system firsthand. Of course, there are a lot of other fixes and updates to be aware of, so I'll quote the changelog in its entirety:

[Major New Features]

• The area beyond the Darkvale Gates has been unlocked, granting you access to the Black Legion stronghold of Fort Ikon and the wilderness around it.
• The Devotion System is now available. Venture out into the world and uncover shrines dedicated to the deities and celestial symbols of old. Restore them to their former glory in order to harness their power and unlock new bonuses and effects.
• The Devotion System is the final layer of character customization in Grim Dawn, offering you a staggering amount of choices to augment your builds and add your personal touch, helping make your builds even more unique. Spend up to 50 points in the Devotion UI across 434 stars and unlock 50 unique Celestial Powers!
• With the release of new areas to explore, the level cap has been increased to 60.

[Art]

• Caster weapon art updated to feel more appropriate for melee combat, with larger blades and heftier scepters
• Updated the mesh and texture on the Occultist's Familiar pet
• Updated art for various structures and environments in Devil's Crossing, Lower Crossing and Burrwitch. Added signs to more buildings, providing you more insight into the daily lives of people in Cairn.
• Added signs to the various mines in the Arkovian Foothills and Old Arkovia

[Animation][*]Updated animations and timing on the Flesh Hulk's two default attacks.

[Tech]

• Updated the method by which areas are loaded as you move around the world, resulting in reduced CPU load and significantly improved performance. The performance gains will depend on your hardware configuration.
• Various calculation processes have been optimized, resulting in up to a 10% gain in framerates. These changes may cause your equipment to reroll their stats, resulting in different values. This may cause you to lose, or gain, some attributes.
• The Always Show Loot Filter is now stored on a per-character basis. You can change the loot filter set for your character by pressing the new button on the left side of the HUD.
• Item stacking has been overhauled. You can now split item stacks without resorting to weird tricks. Item stacks also no longer count as individual items, resulting in smoother connections in Multiplayer. The stack size for crafting materials has been increased significantly.
• Fixed an issue resulting in a stuck cursor when using Windows scaling
• Fixed a bug where certain loot containers would not respect their minimum and maximum level range
• All damage calculations on the Character Sheet now include Conversion
• Added armor absorption to the Armor Rating tooltip on Character Sheet Tab I
• Removed the Complete Components button for the extra inventory bags. The main inventory's combine button will now complete Components throughout the entire inventory.
• Fixed certain skill damage calculations double dipping from active buffs
• Mind controlled monsters will now award the appropriate reputation when killed
• Fixed an instance where spamming certain skills could cause the player to attack itself
• Fixed an issue with beam spells (ex. Aether Ray) that would allow you to cast them while moving
• Fixed an issue with beams spells that would allow you to accelerate the casting speed of other skills

[Game]

• Nemesis spawns now have a 100% chance to spawn in a session, if you meet the Faction requirements
• Loot Chests and Orbs from Nemesis and Bounty targets will now generate loot at the level of the monster, and not the area they are opened in (ex. a level 40 Bounty target appearing in a level 15 area will now drop level 40 loot instead of level 15 loot)
• Fabius "the Unseen" Gonzar has received a tuning pass, with a reduction to his damage burst and an adjustment to his Blade Barrier. Blade Barrier has a longer cooldown and reflects far less damage, but now also deals Pierce retaliation.
• Increased the spawn rate of Kymon's Chosen and Order of Death's Vigil heroes, if you meet the Faction requirements
• Lore notes you've already read will no longer appear in the world
• Balancing adjustments to many different enemies / enemy skills.
• The difficulty jump from Normal to Veteran is more pronounced now, with the result that Veteran should be more challenging. We've done a lot of work though to reduce damage spikes, so it should be a little easier to handle the increase.

[Itemization]

• % Conversion on MI (Monster Infrequent) one-handed weapons and helms replaced to reduce excessive Conversion stacking, particularly while dual wielding
• Shield Block Recovery cooldown significantly reduced on all shields. Shield damage blocked has been adjusted in some cases, but the net result is a buff to the defense provided by shields.
• Updated Retaliation values on items of Rare and above quality, particularly chance of Retaliation values. This is a general buff primarily focused on Rare and Monster Infrequent items, but some Epics were affected as well.
• All Component Blueprints are now sold by Faction Quartermasters at Respected status. They no longer drop from monsters/chests.
• Epic - Guardsman's Raiment: replaced Block Recovery 2-piece bonus with 6% Defensive Ability
• Epic - Menhir's Touch set: renamed to The Apothecary
• Epic - Miasma set: updated set bonuses and stats on Torso and Helm
• Epic - Shieldmaiden's Guard: replaced Block Recovery with 5% Defensive Ability
• Relics: removed % Experience from the list of possible completion bonuses. Increased values on bonuses against specific monster types and increased % attribute combination bonuses.
• Relic - Desolation: increased the Electrocute damage to 24
• Relic - Haunt: Increased the radius of the activated skill to 5 and increased the damage. The skill now also reduces Aether Resistance. Resistance reduction increased to -30%.
• Relic - Juggernaut: reduced % Physical damage to 28%
• Relic - Mistborn Talisman: updated values on Troll Rage based on changed to Shaman's Savagery in the B27 Hotfix 1 and 2 to bring this skill in line
• Relic - Sacrifice: increased the cooldown on the activated skill, but slightly increased the flat Vitality damage
• Relic - Slaughter: increased % Pierce damage to 20%, added 5-8 Pierce damage. Increased the damage, energy cost and number of targets and reduced the cooldown on the activated skill.
• Relic - Torment: increased chance of activating the skill to 33%, added 5% Cast Speed, replaced Chance of % Current Life Retaliation with 8 Vitality damage
• Class prefixes: the % damage modifiers have been replaced with appropriate attribute modifiers that will scale better in the long-term, while also reducing tooltip bloat
• Rare prefixes: updated rare Shield prefixes with proc effects to trigger off of blocks rather than hits taken
• Rare prefix - Bloodletter's: added 3% Offensive Ability bonus in addition to a significant buff to its chance of Bleed Retaliation
• Rare prefix - Formidable: reduced % Physical damage bonus
• Rare prefix - Paladin's: increased % Pierce resistance and damage reduction from Undead
• Rare prefix - Plague Bearer's: added % Poison Duration
• Rare prefix - Renegade: removed % Physical Resist and updated the slow to scale with the level of the affix.
• Rare prefix - Stonehide: added % Poison resist
• Rare suffix - Incantations: replaced % Elemental damage with % Total damage, energy regen replaced with % Spirit
• Rare suffix - Redoubt: reduced Block Recovery bonus based on level of the affix, but increased the health bonus
• Component - Aether Soul: increased % Aether damage to 12% and Aether Resistance to 8%
• Component - Aethersteel Bolts: significantly increased the damage on Aether Tendril, slightly reduced its cooldown, but increased the energy cost
• Component - Arcane Lens: increased elemental Damage to 2-6, up from 2-4
• Component - Black Tallow: increased % Chaos damage to 12% and Chaos Resistance to 8%
• Component - Blessed Steel: added 10% Conversion to Elemental
• Component - Blessed Whetstone: increased Pierce Ratio modifier to 50%
• Component - Corpse Dust: this component can now also be used on Medals
• Component - Devil-Touched Ammo: added 10% Conversion to Fire, increased chance of % Total damage
• Component - Dread Skull: increased % Pierce damage to 12%. This component can now also be used on Medals.
• Component - Ectoplasm: this component can now also be used on Medals
• Component - Focusing Prism: added 8% Crit damage
• Component - Mark of Dreeg: added % Acid damage and Conversion to Acid. Increased damage on skill and slightly reduced cooldown.
• Component - Roiling Blood: this component can now also be used on Medals
• Component - Soul Shard: increased % Vitality damage to 12%. This component can now also be used on Rings.
• Component - Vengeful Wraith: increased % Cold damage to 12%, but reduced % Coldburn damage to 15%. This component can now also be used on Rings.
• Component - Wardstone: this component can now also be used on Medals
• Components: updated Poison Bomb and Noxious Poison Bomb to instead leave behind a pool of bubbling venom which will continue to poison enemies that step into it
• Components: adjusted damage on Greater Ice Spike, Greater Fireblast, Noxious Poison Bomb and Empowered Lightning Nova. Lightning Nova was performing a little too well, while the rest were lagging behind it, so the difference was equalized.
• Components: adjusted the aura skills (ex. Lightning Aura). Added % damage over time bonuses in addition to direct % damage bonuses. Adjusted secondary effects, such as making the slow on Chill Aura affect Total Speed and not just run speed.
• Components: reduced % Weapon damage on Component weapon attacks by 20% (ex. Slam). Oleron's Might was reduced by 40%, but the physical damage was increased and the cooldown reduced by 0.5s
• Faction - Weapons crafted from Faction blueprints that do not deal primarily Physical or Pierce damage have been udpated to offer more of their damage type baseline, instead of being purely Physical (ex. a Vitality-based Order of Death's Vigil gun will do less Physical damage, but have baseline Vitality damage).
• Faction - Binding Powder: replaced % Pet damage bonus with % Vitality resistance for Pets
• Faction - Keeper's Binding Dust: replaced % Pet damage bonus with % Vitality resistance for Pets

[Class & Skills]

Soldier

• Reworked Overguard
• Reworked Veterancy
• Added new shield passive that inherited some of the bonuses from Veterancy
• Reworked Menhir's Bulwark and Oleron's Rage. They are now toggled exclusive skills similar to those available to Shaman.

Demolitionist

• Mortar Trap: slightly reduced damage scaling with rank on the base mortar, but increased the damage scaling on The Big One

Occultist

• Vulnerability: now starts lower but scales faster to same resist reduction by level cap. Intention is to make investment beyond the first point more attractive.

Nightblade

• Shadow Strike: added Cold damage
• Nidalla's Justifiable Ends: increased % Poison modifier
• Nidalla's Hidden Hand: moved to tier 3 to make it easier to start melee poison builds. Skill has been rebalanced for earlier access.
• Nightfall: increased Cold and Frostburn damage

Arcanist

• Aether Ray: reduced Aether damage scaling with rank
• Disintegration: reduced % Critical Damage bonus

Shaman

• Briarthorn Ground Slam: Increased the radius

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