Grim Dawn Guide

Grim Dawn is an action hack-n-slash created by the makers of Titan Quest. Slaughter minions and bosses in a dark fantasy world of exploration, loot, hacking, slashing and a lot of skills! Do not miss this game! You will love the AAA experience from a small indie team who are very talented and passionate about Action RPG's!

Follow my step-by-step guide on installing, configuring and optimizing Grim Dawn in Linux with PlayOnLinux.

Note: This guide applies to the Steam version of Grim Dawn. Other versions may require additional steps.

Tips & Specs:

To learn more about PlayOnLinux and Wine configuration, see the online manual: PlayOnLinux Explained

Mint 17 64-bit
PlayOnLinux: 4.2.6
Wine: 1.7.39staging

Wine Installation

Note: Versions of Wine older than 2.0.2 and Wine 2.12-staging no longer work with Steam

Click Tools
Select "Manage Wine Versions"

Select it
Click the arrow pointing to the right

Click Next

Downloading Wine

Extracting

Downloading Gecko

Installed

Wine 1.7.39staging is installed and you can close this window

Downloading Steam

Go To: http://www.steampowered.com
Click Install Steam

Do not click "Install Steam Now"
It will automatically install Linux Steam. Since Grim Dawn isn't made for Linux, we will download the Windows Steam instead.
click "Windows" under the green button

Navigate to your desktop
Click Save

Setup PlayOnLinux

Launch PlayOnLinux
Click Install

Click "install a non-listed program"

Click Next

Select "Install a program in a new virtual drive"
Click Next

Name you virtual drive: grimdawn
Click Next

Select all three options:

• Use another version of Wine
• Configure Wine
• Install some libraries

Click Next

Select Wine 1.7.39staging
Click Next

Select "32 bits windows installation"
Click Next

Configure Wine

Applications Tab
Windows Version: Windows 7
Click Apply

Graphics Tab
Check: Automatically capture the mouse in full-screen windows
Check: Emulate a virtual desktop
Desktop size: 1024x768
Click Ok

Install Libraries

Check the following libraries:

• POL_Install_corefonts
• POL_Install_d3dx9
• POL_Install_tahoma
• POL_Install_vcrun2010
  
• POL_Install_vcrun2012

Click Next

Note: vcrun2015 will be installed later in PlayOnLinux configure

Installing Steam

Click Browse

Navigate to your desktop
Select: SteamSetup.exe
Click Open

Click Next

Click Next

Check: I accept the license...
Click Next

Click Next

Click Next

Click Install

Click Finish

More downloading, updating, extracting and installing

When Steam is done installing the login screen will pop up. You probably won't see any text because there is a font bug.
Click the "X" to close Steam login

PlayOnLinux Shortcut

Select Steam.exe
Click Next

Name your shortcut: Grim Dawn
Click Next

Click Next

PlayOnLinux Configure

Back to PlayOnLinux
Click Configure

General Tab
Wine version: 1.7.39staging
Arguments: -no-dwrite -no-cef-sandbox
This fixes the missing font and store problem

Display Tab
Video Memory Size: Select the size of Memory your video card/chip uses

Installing vcrun2015

Note: vcrun2015 has to be installed before first launch of Grim Dawn. Otherwise the game installs vcrun2015 for you and breaks Wine. If you accidentally launch Grim Dawn one time, you will have to delete the virtual drive and start over from the beginning.

Miscellaneous Tab
Click "Open a Shell"
Copy/Paste:

wget  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Winetricks/winetricks/master/src/winetricks

Press Enter

Copy/Paste

chmod +x winetricks

Press Enter

Copy/Paste

WINEPREFIX=/home/username/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/grimdawn ./winetricks -q vcrun2015

Press Enter

Note: Replace "username" with your login

Close Shell

Close Configure

Launching Steam

Select Grim Dawn
Click Run

Click "Login to existing account"

Login

Steam Overlay

Steam overlay has been known to cause problems launching games.
Click Steam menu
Click Settings

Select "In-game"
Uncheck "Enable Steam Community In-Game"
Click OK

Installing Grim Dawn

Click Library
Select Grim Dawn
Click Install

Click Next

Click Next

Click Finish

Wait while Grim Dawn downloads

Click Play

Optimization

Click Options

Click Video
Change Window Mode to Fullscreen
Select Resolution to match your Linux Desktop

Adjust:
Anti-aliasing
Anisotropic Filtering
Texture
Shadows
Detail Level
Reflections
fX
Lighting
Weather

Enable/Disable:
Vertical Sync
Triple Buffering
Detail Objects
Post Processing
Depth of Field
Soft Particles

Click OK to apply settings

Rule of Thumb:
High settings = More detail, lower frame rates
Low settings = Less detail, higher frame rates

Conclusion:
Grim Dawn didn't have too many problems with my GeForce 550 Ti. Tested with Wine 1.7.39 staging and now everything runs beautifully with hardly any lag. There were a few times when the game slowed down because of all the minions in the screen. Lowering the anti-Alias and Anisotropic filtering helped. I also tried adjusting fX and Lighting to produce better performance while it didn't affect the visuals. There were a few occurrences where my character had invisible texture upon loading. Quitting the game and launching again would fix this problem.

Texture/Font Bugs:
There is some texture reload issues in Grim Dawn that can be resolved by adding launch option in Steam:

/d3d9

To fix any missing textures:

1. Configure
2. Wine Tab
3. Registry
4. Navigate to
   

   [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Direct3D]

5. right-click Direct3D
6. Select New
7. String Value
8. Name:

   CheckFloatConstants

9. Value: enable

Gameplay Video:

Screenshots:

 

I install with playonlinux and now everything is OK. Have some graphics glitches but add /d3d9 to launching options solved issues.

 

GREAT!
What were the graphical glitches? I notice problems with the ground textures loading. Sometimes they load properly and other times they don't.

 

As You said, ground textures, shadows, blood blows and button texts on first game menu.

 

Yes me too! How did you fix it?
Which d3d package did you install?

 

I add "/d3d9" to game launch options in steam.

 

No way! I've been playing co-op with my wife for many hours and had no idea of this command.
Thank You!!!

 

I was wrong, sometimes I have graphics issues like today it looks like that:

 

Yup! Those are the problems I've been experiencing for a long time. They come and go.

I have fixed it before with a registry edit:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Direct3D]
CheckFloatConstants="enabled"

 

Thanks I will try it, but I don't have any issueas until last update.

 

No problem. I wish they would just port it to Linux for us!

 

I have got Grim Dawn 1.0.2.1 from GOG couple days ago, but can not make it run :/
It installs fine, but each time when I run it all I get is a black screen with grim dawn cursor + I can hear menu music.
I tried clean wine and playonlinux ( with few different wine versions ) and its always the same. I have downloaded Grim Dawn 1.0.0.9 from some torrent and this installs and plays just fine. Only problem is sometimes missing textures, but CheckFloatConstants="enabled" solved in 100%
But I would like to play version 1.0.2.1 and I guess this vcrun2015 is somehow the problem. But before installing the game I install vcrun2015 through winetricks. Any clues are welcome

 

So you can hear the game running but can't see anything?

Try disabling the Virtual Desktop in Wine Configuration.

 

Yes, exactly, I can hear the game running, but the screen is completely black and all I can see is the mouse cursor ( the Grim Dawn one )
And if it goes for Virtual Desktop it is disabled

 

I'm on Mint 17.3 but tested Grim Dawn version 1.0.2.1 on Mint 18.1 which I have through VirtualBox. And it works fine ( except huge slowdown ) graphics are just OK. Now I have to find out what's different between 17.3 and 18.1 and try to upgrade it on 17.3 as I will not upgrade my 17.3 probably for a long time. Any advices of course are welcome

 

Hmm, that is interesting. Even when I had Mint 17.3 I still experienced the invisible game problem. What video card/chip are you using? Do you have open source or proprietary drivers installed?

 

I have nVidia GTX750 TI and use proprietary drivers. But tomorrow I will install it again and check under open source drivers, just for curiosity.
What version of Grim Dawn do you use? 1.0.2.1?

 

Great! Try installing Nvidia 384 or newer.

I don't know exactly what version of Grim Dawn, but I did update the game and tested. Works fine so far.

 

This guide helped me play this game (currently the only game i'm playing) for about 1 month or so.

Game was running OK until 2 days ago (not counting the almost invisible portals) but, since then, i've been plagued with graphical glitches and it's impossible to play. I'm a noob when it comes to Linux (ditched windows about 2 months ago and am currently using Ubuntu 16.04), so please keep that in mind when suggesting possible solution(s).

Here's a pic of the problem but it much MUCH worse then the picture indicates because the screen alternates between what's in the pic and total black screen, quite rapidly: i66.tinypic.com/zxodjs.png

Tried many things, including upgrading to Ubuntu 17.10 and even a fresh 17.10 install, but the problem persists: have no idea what is wrong

Help?

 

Forgot to mention (can't seem to edit the reply i gave earlier): i'm using a sapphire nitro+ 4GB RX480 with a Ryzen 1600, both @ stock speeds.

Was using Oibaf before but that was before re-installing Ubuntu 16.04, again: currently with Padoka. Wanted to see if Oibaf was part of the problem but apparently not, since i get the same prob with Padoka.

 

Hi HTC, welcome to our humble forum.
I've had glitches in the past, but have been fixed by forcing Grim Dawn to run in direct X 9 mode and the FloatConstants enabled in the registry.

Your screenshot though looks like a driver-related problem. I don't have any AMD video cards, but in the past their drivers have been problematic.

Do you have any graphical artifacts in your other games?
Have you tried updating/downgrading your video drivers?

Note: you can't edit your posts until you reach 15 posts.