Quality-of-life settings you can use without mods

The first four to change

All of these cut down on repeated actions, and it saves time to go through them in one pass.

• ▸Gameplay > Enable Quick Sell: right-click an item at a vendor to buy or sell it. The Japanese wiki calls it 'extremely convenient' and recommends turning it on; it saves the most clicks when you are offloading a full bag for iron.
• ▸Interface > Detailed Item Tooltips (added in v1.2.1.0): shows the attached component, augment and item-granted skill details inside the tooltip. **With it off, that information appears only while you hold Ctrl.** Given how often you compare gear, permanent display is simply faster.
• ▸Interface > Cooldown Counter (added in v1.2.0.0): puts a countdown to recharge on each skill icon in the HUD. The longer the cooldowns your build cycles, the more often you will read it.
• ▸Interface > Don't Confirm Auto-Sort: stops the confirmation prompt every time you press the auto-sort button in the shared stash or your bags - an action you repeat constantly while farming.
• ▸If you have room for one more, look at Gameplay > Destroy Objects with Move, which lets a plain move command break doors, urns and other destructibles.

The loot filter - the one place worth understanding properly

The checkboxes all look alike but behave differently by group - and not knowing that is how people conclude that loot has stopped dropping.

• ▸Open it with the button to the left of the health bar. Entries under Quality and Type work as a whitelist - **only what you tick is shown**, and unticking hides it.
• ▸**Damage and Character behave differently.** Ticking any of them shows **only items carrying that property**. Turn on 'Aether' alone, for instance, and every item without aether-related stats disappears. Leaving one on by accident is exactly how you end up unable to see what you need, so **keep them off unless you are running a deliberately narrow hunt**.
• ▸Rare: untick Common and Magic and tick this to show only rare-affix (green) items. **Monster Infrequents are included regardless of their affix tier.**
• ▸MI: untick Common, Magic and Rare and tick this to show only Monster Infrequents.
• ▸Set: untick Epic and Legendary and tick this to show only set pieces among epics and legendaries.
• ▸Always Show Uniques / Always Show Double Rares: with these on, epics and legendaries - and items carrying a rare affix on both prefix and suffix - always display regardless of your other filter settings. A useful safety net when filtering aggressively.
• ▸**Components can only be shown or hidden** - the quality filters do not apply to them. There is essentially never a reason to hide them, so leave them on.
• ▸**The loot filter does not affect blueprint drops.**
• ▸The K key toggles ground-item display. One press hides everything; a second press restores whatever matches your filter. While hidden, an X appears on the loot filter button - check there first if items seem to have stopped dropping.
• ▸Holding Alt temporarily displays every ground item, ignoring the filter. Handy for double-checking what a tight filter is hiding.

Revisiting your keybinds

The more active skills you run, the harder the default 1-0 number row is to reach in a fight.

• ▸Change them from Options on the character selection screen, or in game via G / Esc > Options > Key Bindings. **Each action accepts up to two keys, and mouse wheel directions can be bound too.**
• ▸The Japanese wiki's worked example clusters everything around WASD like an FPS: skills 1-5 on A, W, D, F, G; 6-8 on Shift, Space and middle-click; camera rotation on Q and E; weapon swap on S; potions on wheel up and down. If you keep confusing W and S, move weapon swap to R and bind the same skill to both W and S.
• ▸**Shift carries the 'attack without moving' function**, so decide whether you need that before binding a skill over it.
• ▸Assign skills to left/right click and the skill slots by right-clicking that part of the HUD and picking from the list. **Consumables can be placed in skill slots too.**
• ▸Defaults worth memorising: C or I for character/inventory, S for skills, Q for the quest log, M for the map, J for factions, V for achievements, L for a personal riftgate, W for weapon swap, Y to switch skill slots, U to interact with the nearest NPC, P to pause.
• ▸Since v1.2.0.0, Evade occupies Space by default, which **moved pause to P**. Characters carried over from v1.1.9.8 or earlier may have Evade left unbound - worth checking.
• ▸Health and energy potions became baseline player skills rather than consumables in v1.2.0.0, with dedicated HUD buttons. Since v1.2.0.3 both Evade and the potions can also sit on the quick slot bar.
• ▸**v1.3.0.0 added whole control schemes**: Keyboard Movement and Keyboard Only appear under Key Bindings, enabling WASD movement with and without the mouse. They bind independently of the default controls and you can switch at any time. Note the official patch notes state that **these mimic controller behaviour and do not enable run-and-gun play.**

What changed in v1.3.0.0

The free update shipped alongside FoA overhauled the UI and the stash - check here if you are returning from an older build.

• ▸**The UI received a complete visual overhaul, and an orb-style health display is the new default.** If you prefer the classic health bar, you can switch back under Interface in the options (stated explicitly in the official patch notes).
• ▸**Detailed tooltips now show stat roll ranges** - '12 Fire damage [8-14]' tells you that roll could have landed anywhere from 8 to 14. Turning on Interface > Detailed Item Tooltips above lets you read this without holding a key.
• ▸The Video tab gained HDR Lighting, an alternate visual style. Purely optional.
• ▸Key Bindings gained whole control schemes (see the previous section).
• ▸The same v1.3.0.0 update also overhauled the shared stash and added deposit-from-anywhere, but those are stash features rather than options-screen settings, so they are out of scope here - see the stash expansion article. The change to Monster Infrequent drop levels is likewise not a setting and is left to the MI article.

Display settings that cost performance

A few conveniences cost frames. If the game gets choppy, look here first.

• ▸**Consider turning off Automatic Item Tooltips.** Showing an item's description just by hovering over it on the ground is convenient, but the Japanese wiki notes it is processing-heavy and **can cause crashes, especially alongside external tools**.
• ▸On the Health Bars tab, **the monster-side options (health bars, health values, always-show) can degrade performance** in some scenes. If dense farming runs feel heavy, trim these first.
• ▸Show Monster Icons on the same tab marks high-threat enemies. Worth keeping if you value the warning over the frames.
• ▸Show Debuffs on Target (added in v1.2) puts debuff icons under the target's health bar at the top of the screen. Unlike your own debuff icons, **you cannot pause and hover them for a tooltip**, so you have to learn or infer what each icon means.
• ▸Video > Deferred Rendering trades extra graphics memory for rendering performance. The developers say the gain is largest at high image settings with complex terrain, but **on underpowered hardware it increases load and backfires**.
• ▸**Changing Video > UI Size can produce garbled text in Japanese.** If you play in Japanese and see mojibake, suspect this first.
• ▸Fullscreen Gamma adjusts brightness in fullscreen only - useful for making dark dungeons readable when you cannot adjust the monitor itself.
• ▸Audio > Error Voice Message toggles the voice line when you press a skill still on cooldown. Builds that mash buttons get noticeably quieter with it off.

1. Grim Dawn Japanese Wiki: Beginner's Guide — Confirms each options-tab entry and its behaviour (Quick Sell, Detailed Item Tooltips, Cooldown Counter, Don't Confirm Auto-Sort, Destroy Objects with Move, the load and crash concern around Automatic Item Tooltips, the Health Bars tab entries, the limitation on Show Debuffs on Target, Deferred Rendering, UI Size causing Japanese mojibake, Fullscreen Gamma, Error Voice Message); the full loot-filter specification (Quality/Type as a whitelist, Damage/Character as a narrowing filter, Rare/MI/Set/Always Show Uniques/Always Show Double Rares, components being show-hide only, blueprints being unaffected, the K toggle and the Alt reveal); the default shortcut list; the worked keybind example; Shift's stand-still attack; two keys per action; consumables in skill slots; the v1.2.0.0 Evade/pause change and potions becoming baseline skills; and v1.2.0.3 quick-slot support. Page last modified 2026-07-25.
2. Official Crate Forum: Grim Dawn Version V1.3.0.0 + Hotfixes — Confirms the v1.3.0.0 options-related changes this article covers: the complete UI overhaul with the orb health display as the new default and the classic health bar restorable under Interface; Keyboard Movement and Keyboard Only being added under Key Bindings, mimicking the controller and not enabling run-and-gun; stat roll ranges in detailed tooltips; and the HDR Lighting option under Video. The same patch also changed the stash and Monster Infrequent drop levels, but neither is an options-screen setting, so this article defers both to their dedicated articles. Also the basis for the verified version - the latest as of 2026-08-01 is V1.3.0.2 Hotfix 2.