It is done. The Blacksmith is here.
A development update from Crate Entertainment’s CEO Arthur Bruno informs us that crafting has now been added to their ARPG Grim Dawn.
This latest update adds more than 150 crafting recipes to the game and a new quest on the Burrwitch Outskirts lets players decide which of the two rival Blacksmiths to use for crafting. Each Blacksmith has their own crafting style of crafting. The NPC is not too hard to find and once you complete the quest you can check out the crafting interface when the NPC returns to Devil’s Crossing.
Time to craft!
The character sheet overhaul has now also been added to the game giving more detailed view of stats for both gear and skills. This is great to see your chance to hit/crit and generally see what’s going on with your build.
A Veteran mode has also been added to Normal Difficulty boosting enemy stats such as damage and the number of mobs that will spawn. This mode can be turned on or off through the character selection screen. Start playing this if you intend to move on to Epic mode when it’s added to the game after more balancing.
In this build expect to see “increased randomised spawns” thanks to a new method of placing “spawn proxies” which determines how enemies appear. It will give a more random effect when out adventuring.
According to Arthur they are making “significant progress” with the multiplayer but they are having to rewrite code that was originally designed to run with Gamespy which is no longer available. They have begun adding a system for quests in multiplayer and the multilayer is now expected in July.
In Act news, the first section of Act III called the Jagged Waste is nearly finished but there’s still content to be added before the Act III town of Homestead.
There’s been a whole lot going on at Crate and as well as the above the update adds the following:
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.
You can support further development by snagging an Early Access copy of the game now from Steam.
