The contents
🐻 The Berserker
A tenth mastery that shapeshifts into beastlike forms — the first new class since Oathkeeper in 2019, and it pairs with all nine of the others.
🗺️ A 6 km² zone
New territory rather than a remix of old maps, with over sixty bosses across it.
🔺 Ascendant mode
A game mode built to push every dungeon and boss encounter harder than Ultimate does.
🌀 Crucible and Shattered Realm
Thirty more Crucible waves — which need the Crucible DLC — plus new Shattered Realm regions and boss arenas.
Why your old guide is wrong now
- Devotion routes written before July 2026 do not account for anything the expansion moved.
- Shrine checklists made for Forgotten Gods stop where its content stopped.
- Every class tier list predates the Berserker, so a tenth of the combinations is missing from all of them.
- Build guides that assume Ultimate is the ceiling do not consider Ascendant at all.
The Berserker, and why a tenth mastery is a big deal
🐻 It pairs with all nine others
A new mastery does not add one class, it adds nine combinations. Every existing dual-class list from before July 2026 is missing a tenth of the possibilities.
🌗 Shapeshifting
The Berserker transforms into beastlike forms — the first mastery in Grim Dawn built around changing what your character is rather than what it carries.
🕰️ Seven years since the last one
Oathkeeper arrived with Forgotten Gods in 2019. Anyone who learned Grim Dawn between then and now learned a game with nine masteries.
What it does not change
- The devotion cap is still 55. The new act's shrines are more places to reach it, not a higher ceiling.
- The level cap is still 100, set by Ashes of Malmouth.
- The two mutually exclusive factions are unchanged: Kymon's Chosen and the Order of Death's Vigil still lock each other out.
- Its region is Act 7 in GrimTools' checklist, which moves the Korvan Basin to Act 8, and Act 8 on the official Grim Dawn wiki on Fandom, which leaves the Korvan Basin at Act 7. The map is the same either way; only the number differs.
Patch v1.3.1.0, and what comes next
- Live on 8 October 2026 as v1.3.1.0 with hotfix v1.3.1.1, after a public playtest from 18 September. Crate calls it the expansion's first free content update and balance patch.
- The Obsidian Swordsman: a questline through a new cave in Frostveil Highlands, with the Kurn skalds pointing the way, that unlocks his legendary weapon and armour set. It comes with more points of interest across Frostveil, Crate's answer to the complaint that the early expansion zones felt sparse.
- A new legendary set that drops only from Resplendent Treasure Troves, on any difficulty (the dev update named it Igirron's Arsenal, a chaos dual-pistol set), and awakenings for 29 more epic items, the Bloodreaper's Butcher and Desecrator Covenant sets among them.
- Pets now have base non-Physical resistances, from 1% at level 1 to 80% by level 80; most pet resistance bonuses on gear and devotions are gone, and bosses lost their damage bonus against pets.
- Less monster damage and Offensive Ability in Ascendant mode and in Crucible waves 171 to 200, and less monster health on Veteran. In Ascendant mode, items of any quality can now drop with a random Ascension modifier.
- Loyalist Pack 4: four dark outfit sets, 26 pieces, cosmetic only, sold separately.
- Teased for v1.3.2.0 and nothing more: Drang'Gal Fortress, a roguelike dungeon fought alongside dranghoul allies against the Bloodbound. Details are promised for the next dev update.
Still to verify
Cross-checked on 10 September 2026 against the Official Grim Dawn Wiki's Fangs of Asterkarn page, Crate's own expansion page, and RPG Site's and RPGamer's launch coverage, which agree on the Berserker mastery and its shapeshifting, on the 6 km² zone with sixty-plus bosses, on Ascendant mode, and on the thirty extra Crucible waves needing the Crucible DLC. Sources give the release as 23 or 24 July 2026 depending on where you read it, so this page says July 2026 and no day. The v1.3.1.0 plans were added on 16 September 2026 from Crate's Grim Misadventure #203 dev update of 14 September, and re-checked on 9 October 2026 against Crate's v1.3.1.0 changelog on the Steam forums and its Steam announcement of v1.3.1.1; the Obsidian Swordsman and Igirron's Arsenal are the dev update's names, which the changelog does not use. On 3 October 2026 the act numbering was checked again against GrimTools' checklist and the official Grim Dawn wiki on Fandom, which number the last two acts differently, and the devotion cap against the Steam community's Grim Dawn discussions, where players confirm Fangs of Asterkarn keeps it at 55. What is still unverified is the only thing reading cannot settle — nobody here has played it.