rss-bridge 2026-02-26T17:15:52+00:00

Action RPG Grim Dawn is getting a 5.5 km² expansion, a free update and shapeshifting to mark its 10th birthday

A decade on from its 1.0 launch, action-RPG Grim Dawn is getting some new Fangs of Asterkarn DLC that adds 5.5 square kilometres of in-game terrain. Picture the extra geography barrelling out of the atmosphere like a boisterous asteroid, teeming with bosses and minibosses and unique items. Look out below!
The DLC will increase the size of the base game by 76%, and will be prefaced by a free update with a new scaleable UI and revised stash feature, offering dedicated crafting and components pages. My, my, Grim Dawn, you’re certainly looking sprightly and well-padded, for a Diabbler of your seniority.
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Dour Sunset, morelike

[Image: A man with a horned hat and two big axes yelling skyward against the backdrop of a winged and beaked figure in what is possibly art for a new shapeshifting mechanic in Grim Dawn.]

Image credit: Crate Entertainment

[Image: Edwin Evans-Thirlwell avatar]

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by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
News Editor

Published on Feb. 26, 2026

17 comments

The DLC will increase the size of the base game by 76%, and will be prefaced by a free update with a new scaleable UI and revised stash feature, offering dedicated crafting and components pages. My, my, Grim Dawn, you’re certainly looking sprightly and well-padded, for a Diabbler of your seniority.

“Fantasy/horror action RPG Grim Dawn is a huge and slick affair which clings tight to a doomy tone, eschews online funny business and is careful to keep lore overload at arm's length,” Alec Meer (RPS in peace) wrote back in 2016. “A lack of overblown cutscenes aside, you'd never guess that it was made comparatively under the radar and on surely a fraction of Diablo III's budget.”

Grim Dawn certainly found an audience both during and after early access, as developers Crate Entertainment recall in an anniversary Steam post this week. “Grim Dawn's success enabled Crate Entertainment to grow from a studio of just 8 people to a team of 29 today, with 4 projects currently in development,” they write. “Your early support has allowed us to not only stay independent from publishers, but to pour our passion into each of our creations.

“Likewise, when we started, we never could have imagined that 10 years later Grim Dawn would not only still be receiving major updates but it would have another expansion on the way. Our engineers bent the old engine to their will. Even as recently as last year, we addressed bugs that have been there since Titan Quest.

“Across 82 updates both big and small, we refined and polished, revamping everything from melee animations to how Nemesis bosses spawn on the map. We overhauled loot tables and added loot filters, revamped UIs and smoothed out the difficulty unlocks. Now with v1.3.0 on the way, truly nothing feels off the table to make the game better for you.”

You can read a playtest changelog for v.1.3.0 here. This being an ARPG, it includes a lot of sentences like “Hamster of Ventriloquism Deafening Modifier Increased to 300/s”. I leave it to you veteran Grim Dawners - now presumably well into the Dismal Afternoon of middle age – to make sense of things.

The developers had planned to wind things up with Grim Dawn's second expansion, Forgotten Gods, in 2019. They figured that “sales would naturally decline” thereafter, but were caught out by growing player counts in 2023. “Despite having 3 games already in development, we knew we had to reassemble the team for one more loop around the sun,” the Steam post enthuses. “As it turned out... that may have been a bit of an understatement as we enter 2026!”

Fangs of Asterkarn development is now “in its final stretch”, and they’re absolutely sure this time that it’ll be “Grim Dawn's final hurrah”. You can expect over 60 new bosses or minibosses, 370 unique items, eight new nemesis monsters, and 116 monster infrequents. The DLC will also add a new alchemy system, “awakened Epic items and Affix Rerolling”, a 10th mastery, and a new class combo maximum of 45.

Not having played Grim Dawn, I can only gaze in terror upon the bulk of this jargon. But I can get my head around the concept of shapeshifting - “a system we once thought was untenable in this old engine”. Sounds like there’s a juicy story there. In general, I’m automatically pleased and interested by efforts to keep older games in the pink. All we need now is a release date for Fangs of Asterkarn, but alas, there is none.

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[Original source](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/action-rpg-grim-dawn-is-getting-a-55km-expansion-a-free-update-and-shapeshifting-to-mark-its-10th-birthday)