It’s not an expansion and it’s free, but it’s big enough that you might think otherwise had it been given a fancier name: Grim Dawn’s 1.1.40 update is live this week, and it’s mighty indeed. Fans of the optionally multiplayer OARPG will find tweaks for monster health bars, merging of partial components, auto-looting for multiple types of drops, improved game options, crafting and stash searching, rendering tweaks, and an absolute ton of item balancing, some of which are the result of player modding contributions.
Notably, there’s been a bit of a difficulty balancing pass too, though Crate Entertainment says not to expect an easier ride.
“With this patch, the base game has received a substantial balancing overhaul of Normal/Veteran and Elite difficulties, over 1800 database records in all! We felt that, over time, the base game’s difficulty has waned significantly relative to the power growth of player characters, and even compared to the Ashes of Malmouth and Forgotten Gods expansions. We’ve narrowed the gap between the expansion content and the base game content, meaning that the lower levels should feel more exhilarating to play and the jump between difficulties will be much smoother. Does this mean the endgame has gotten more difficult? Well, yes and no. No because we focused balancing on the early game (roughly levels 1-60), but yes because we’ve updated old monster and boss encounters to deal damage in line with expansion enemies. All in all, the challenge should feel more consistent!”
Our Not So Massively columnist took a recent dip into Grim Dawn and came away with mixed impressions, finding plenty of fun amongst some of the more hardcore genre irritants in the title. Then again, those hardcore elements are precisely why the game has maintained its fans all these years.
Grim Dawn's huge free feature update is now live, which marks a significant step forward in the game’s evolution. The v1.1.4.0 update includes major improvements to the game engine and quality of life features:https://t.co/il8720y5eJ pic.twitter.com/d7MAEUNd6j
— Grim Dawn (@GrimDawn) July 25, 2019
