Crate Entertainment Opens Up on Grim Dawn: Fangs of Asterkarn’s Massive Scope, Long Development, and What Comes Next

Last week, independent developer Crate Entertainment finally set a concrete launch date for Grim Dawn: Fangs of Asterkarn (the third and final expansion for the hack-and-slash action RPG): July 23 for PC via Steam, GOG, and Humble Store.

The previous expansion, Forgotten Gods, was released in March 2019. In the meantime, the small studio released a fairly successful city builder, Farthest Frontier, and began working on new projects. Even so, they went back to Grim Dawn, a game that sold over 10 million units between the base game and the expansions.

In an email interview with Crate Entertainment Production Director Kamil Marczewski, we inquired about the vast scope of the expansion, its long development phase and extensive feature set, the status of the Xbox One port, and what's in store for the future of the studio (hint: there's more Grim Dawn on the way, too).

The Fangs of Asterkarn expansion was supposed to launch in 2024. Why did it take so long? Did the scope increase over time, or was it just a matter of polishing it?

Kamil Marczewski: We projected our initial estimate based on past expansions, but the mood was, I would say, different this time around. We knew we were making the final DLC for Grim Dawn, and rather than cutting back on big, bold ideas, we just went ahead and started working on them. That did blow out the scope dramatically. However, as we are not beholden to publisher deadlines, and thanks to the strong support Grim Dawn has seen over 10 years from our community, we were able to absorb the additional development time/costs to get this expansion exactly the way we wanted.

Fangs of Asterkarn is the third and final expansion of the game. What made this the right moment to close out Grim Dawn's expansion arc, and how did you decide on Asterkarn as the setting for that farewell?

The decision to do one more expansion actually started during the development of our not-so- secret RTS, which is set in the Grim Dawn universe. We were fleshing out the lore and history of the world. Things we mentioned in passing inside of Grim Dawn now had names, people, and historic events. We got that itch to come back to Grim Dawn for one more big adventure.

The new region spans over 6 square kilometers, 190% the size of Ashes of Malmouth and 250% the size of Forgotten Gods. What drove the decision to go that large, and what kind of content fills that space beyond the main story path?

This might be where things got a little out of control during development! We had various major points of interest we knew we wanted to get in, and the level designers got to work. As things often go, some parts got reworked, but then we would find ourselves looking at the original levels and go, well, this is still very cool, what if we just put this here… Despite being a massive new region, none of the levels are there just for the sake of padding out a number. We filled the world with bosses, side quests, and unique drops, and secrets that should be a delight for the explorers out there to discover.

The Berserker is the 10th and presumably last Mastery, and it brings dual-class combinations to 45. Can you walk us through the design philosophy behind a shapeshifting Mastery, and how it fits thematically into the world?

The introduction of the Berserker is exciting for us, and partly why we ultimately made the call to make one more expansion. One of our programmers was able to prototype the shapeshifting system, something the engine never had before and was deemed impossible back in Titan Quest, and that was the final inspiration for committing to Fangs of Asterkarn.

Thematically, the Berserker combines the ferocity and attunement to nature that the Kurn people, a major faction in the expansion, embody. They are ardent worshippers of Mogdrogen, the beast god, and through him come the gifts of shapeshifting. You can definitely expect to see Berserkers make an appearance in our upcoming RTS!

The Ascendant mode turns the entire campaign into an endgame proving ground. How does that work mechanically? Is it a separate mode players opt into, and does it affect the narrative experience at all?

Ascendant Mode is an optional difficulty on top of Ultimate difficulty, similar to how players can opt into Veteran Mode when starting out on Normal difficulty. It allows veterans of the genre to turn the entire campaign into an endgame playground full of challenges and rewards, rather than limiting everyone to farming only specific mechanics such as the Shattered Realm from Forgotten Gods.

Thanks to the Ascension Altar, players can cater the challenges and rewards to suit their playstyle. Those playing outside of Ascendant Mode can still dabble in its mechanics by using the altar, but with a lower entry bar. Nobody is going to feel left out of the new content, whether you are playing casually or a cutting-edge builder.

The new Affix Transmutation lets players reroll rare and magic items, and Epic items can now be "Awakened" into Legendary-tier implements. How do these two systems interact, and how did you think about making them feel impactful without trivializing the loot hunt?

Affix rerolling is something the player base has been wanting for a long time. There is a fine line between letting players perfect their equipment and trivializing the loot hunt, and we believe we struck a good balance there. Affix Transmutation allows for rerolling as many times as you want (no bricking your items!), but the cost goes up dramatically with each reroll. Depending on your personal tolerance, there may be a point where it makes more sense to farm another item than keep rerolling the same one.

Awakening Epic items is something we have come up with to take all of the itemization, and beautiful item art, that has fallen into obsolescence over the years. It allows us to take items that are ok while leveling/gearing but are unviable in the endgame and bring them up to par with our Legendary items. Thanks to this system, we will be able to regularly introduce new Legendary-tier equipment with our balance patches as we now have a pool of hundreds of items with unrealized potential to tap into.

Awakening Epic items costs crafting materials, so it will not trivialize the value of existing loot. As with any other item in the game, Awakened Epics can have their seed, which determines the attribute values on an item, rerolled using Affix Transmutation.

Two new rogue-like dungeons are coming as free post-launch updates for Fangs of Asterkarn owners. Can you say anything about the timing or scope of those, and is there a broader live content plan for the expansion beyond those two dungeons?

Our roguelike dungeons have been some of the most popular content in Grim Dawn over the years, offering players a mix of unique challenges and powerful loot, with the added pressure of a run ending immediately if their character dies (hardcore-lite). We have some fun ideas for two more such epic-scale dungeons, but we want to take our time with them post-release. I expect that the first dungeon will be out within 6 months of Fangs of Asterkarn releasing, and the second sometime in 2027. Beyond the roguelike dungeons, we have some other surprises in store, including new item sets and our 4 th Loyalist Pack!

The free v1.3 update arrives alongside the expansion and includes a Stash overhaul, UI redesign, WASD controls, and HDR lighting. How much of that was driven by community feedback over the years, and does it change how you'd recommend new players approach the game today?

V1.3 is 100% a love letter to many of the big requests we had gotten over the years. With the stash UI overhaul, we said screw it, let’s modernize everything! The main menu was completely rewritten (previously, it had no UI scaling, a big problem for 4K screens). WASD is a fairly recent development driven by Path of Exile 2. We knew we would not overhaul the game to feature run and gun gameplay, so we asked the community for their thoughts. The outpouring of opinions convinced us that controller-based WASD is going to be a huge accessibility boon for many players, and so we made it happen.

The only thing I would say to new players is to try both the classic and the new, orb-based, HUD
layouts. We made it possible to seamlessly switch between the two, and everyone has their
own preference!

Previously, you said the Xbox One version would get the Fangs of Asterkarn expansion. Is that still happening later?

Publishing a DLC on Xbox is quite a bit more complicated than launching Fangs of Asterkarn on Steam. That is still the plan, though. We are working through the process and hope to have an official announcement soon, but we don’t have the date locked in yet. Xbox players will receive the massive v1.3 update at the same time as PC, regardless of the timing of the expansion.

As this is the final expansion for Grim Dawn, can you tease what's next for Crate Entertainment? A sequel or something else entirely?

We are staying incredibly busy here, with multiple projects in various stages of development. Most imminently, we have a major expansion coming up for our town-builder, Farthest Frontier, in 2027. We also have two unannounced, but not so secret, projects: an RTS and a survival game. I expect you will be hearing more about both of those in the next year. Finally, with Grim Dawn wrapping up, we are excited to start laying the foundation for Grim Dawn 2!

Finally, what is your stance on AI tools and game development? Do you plan to leverage those technologies at all?

AI is still relatively new, and I would say that Crate has not been an eager adopter of this technology and we are still kind of waiting to see how it pans out and to what degree the rest of the industry ends up utilizing it. We don’t see it as a replacement for humans or human creativity. Ultimately, our creative judgment, shaped by our own life and gaming experience, is part of what gives our games a unique character, that we think has value to our audience and it would be a mistake to just farm that out to AI.

At the same time, AI does have utility for streamlining more mundane coding tasks and other intermediary work. We all pull inspiration and ideas from external media and, unfortunately, in an era where traditional image searches and code repositories are flooded with AI slop, it is almost impossible not to use it indirectly. However, all of the creative final products, like the artwork that you see in our games, are the work of humans.

Thank you for your time.

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