Grim Misadventure #46: We Need Food

[Zantai]

Hello and welcome back! In this latest dev update for Grim Dawn, we are going to delve into an upcoming new mechanic: Constitution and Rations.

Grim Dawn currently features a powerful healing system that activates upon leaving combat for a few seconds. It is commonly referred to as Out-Of-Combat Regen and abbreviated to "ooc regen". The system was implemented in order to reduce overal reliance on health potions and eliminate the need to drink potions after battles to refill health before engaging the next group of enemies.

However, some perceived the unlimited healing as an exploit that made the game too easy. Since health potions were expensive and ooc regen free, it also "forced" players to constantly leave combat and regen as a means of conserving health potions. This slowed down the pace of combat and was also skewed in favor of ranged characters who, already fighting from the fringe of combat, could more easily access ooc regen and did so more frequently.

Previously, our only means of balancing ooc regen was to reduce or eliminate it. In B17 we significantly slowed the rate of regen. This alleviated the feeling of it being overpowered but slowed down gameplay, increasing the time it took to run around avoiding enemies and regenerate during battles. It also resulted in times where people wouldn't be fully healed by the time they reached the next group fo enemies and would have to stop and wait.

We realized that we needed an additional mechanic that would allow ooc regen remain fast but not feel cheap and unlimited. The solution was a new long-term resource we called "constitution".

Full Constitution Meter



Constitution is displayed as an overlay on your health bar, which denotes your ability to heal rapidly. Whenever you trigger Out-of-combat regen, you will begin consuming this resource. You start with 300 points of constitution and each point heals 1% of your maximum health. That means you can fully regenerate three times before running out. If you run out, you will no longer fast-regenerate outside of combat. (Note that this does not affect Health Regeneration from skills and items, which is a separate mechanic.)







But fear not, brave traveler, as there are ways to restore this precious resource. As you rummage through the dangerous ruins of Cairn, you will find consumable, instant-use objects that allow you to sustain your constitution. These last remains of what’s still edible and unspoiled out in the world can drop from enemies, chests and breakables in the form of "food rations". You will also occasionally stumble across an unfinished meal, left behind in makeshift camps by drifters who recently fled or met their demise.




Together, Constitution and Rations provide a new layer to the desperate story of Cairn, reminding you that even food is a precious resource that cannot be taken for granted. You will be able to experience this new twist yourself when Build 19 is released!

Enjoying our updates? The next one is coming on 06/09/2014.

[SimonSaysBaka]

Thats a nice idea good sir

[Mauricius]

Thanks for the update the new healing mechanic sound good. I do however hope that those's those food ration don't drop to often. Because healing potions drop very frequently.

[Leaders]

A very fine idea. Well played.

[Tonberry]

A rather interesting way of dealing with the OOC-regen issue, looking forward to trying it out in the upcoming builds. Not sure I'd be so quick to chow down on half-eaten rat just lying around but, eh, you gotta make do in post-apocalyptic wasteland I suppose.

Keep up the good work!

[jalex3]

I feel like bursting into song when I see new posts
I like the sound of this, cant wait to try it out.

[nothanks]

I hope the next update will be a new build =) Nice addition though.

[KondaImmortal]

I'm hungry for an update.

It looks neat. I will probably enjoy this mechanic.

[silvergoat]

Seems like it will unnecessarily complicate the game and add another variable to try to balance. I was fine with the lower regen....I actually preferred how rare the potions were when the game first released. Now I have the typical 99 tonics (but an elixir ain't one). Only improvement I really cared to see was a reduction in the potion cooldown.

[randomspawn]

*chomp chomp* *gulp*

Say, that's a wonderful solution!

Will food be readily available anywhere? I would like it if we were encouraged to revisit abandoned villages and settlements or encampments to scavenge food. The odd food ration on a rotting corpse would be fine with me, but a sense of packing up for a dungeon crawl, or actually rifting out of somewhere in order to find food so you can keep using oocr would be a nice touch, especially for first playthroughs.

Will Ulgrim have anything to do with this?

Is b19 oocr slower than that of b18?