Crafting / Enchantment limit / Exalt too punishing

Wicked Experimental Branch
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Hello, I don’t know how much longer I can play today so for now here is my feedback, from what I have seen and heard as I unfortunately did not reach the exalting state just yet. Crafting materials can be quite rare and so are facets on the crafted item. If I get a facet I may not even want to enchant the item because of the limits with it and the chances are so slim to get it right.

Crafting: The materials are rare which is very much fine but so are facets, those compound to RNG hell when we combine them with enchants and exalts. Crafting would not need change in my opinion, if the other two get changed / rebalanced. But here is my suggestion for it anyway.

Suggestion: While crafting let us use several Embers + Plagued Ichor + gems to imbue the crafted item with a facet already. That way we can either gamble on them or invest much more to get what we want. Again giving us some Agency

Enchantment Limit
Pro:

  • It makes white items worth using as before they were a bit on the useless site I like this very much
  • It takes longer to gain your god builds.

Thats it. No more pros

Con:

  • It is too punishing, if you find a cursed item you are excited about. You sometimes can’t change the negative to something you can deal with
  • The pools are too big and we can’t see them at all. So planning is almost impossible
  • An anecdote from my live character: I needed 100 embers to get one specific affix

Suggestions:

  1. My first suggestion would be revert it to unlimited attempts but make Embers rarer it would feel better in my opinion.
  2. Keep the current system but let us somehow reset the limits of the rerolls, maybe through Limnus and the seeds so they would have an additional use as well.
  3. This is my personal favorite solution. Remove the ability to use Embers on items anywhere in the world and move it towards Elenaor instead and let her gain additional abilities with higher levels.
  • First Level: The current reroll, one Ember per attempt
  • Second Level: Ten Embers per attempt but you choose the category of the enchant health, element, stamina etc.
  • Third Level: Fifty Ember per reroll, but you choose the actual effect of the enchantment.

Nr. 3 would give us agency and for a perfected plagued item still needed 250 Embers worst case. It still fits the goal of not getting the gear as quickly as on live but also gives us control. Especially if the range of them stays random, which they should.

Exalting, once again we have the RNG problem, what if I have a low health build and hit exactly 50% with the values I currently got. Then the exalt hits 2 times the reduce max health. Now my build has been weakened instead of strengthened, it would not feel good at all. Same with other enchants you like but don’t want to be pushed. My suggestion would be similiar to Nr 3 for enchants.
Make a hybrid system between the current version, limit of 4 exalts, but let us choose which enchantment / gem we want to exalt, then increase the cost each time we do. A 4th exalt could cost 10 of each torn item and a Plagued Ichor for example. That with the RNG range of enchants would let us think as well.

PS: Please take some time off over the holidays and enjoy family time. You devs are awesome and deserve rest as well! Happy Holidays

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Agree, crafting now is taking away from the game and some interesting ideas

Here is one I was playing with….

Take a white item, load 3 of the 4 gemstones and enchant it. Since 3 sockets are taken, the chances of it being magical and not plagued is increased X percentage. Not guaranteed, just improved. Load all 4 sockets and better than not it will be plagued.

Now 1 of the 3 socketed items is locked, random. So perhaps you get the magical equivalent of something connected to stamina, or damage or focus. The other 2, are totally random as per current model. Same applies for plagued items

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In my opinion, choosing enchantments from a list is tedious and overwelming.

And the costs are definitely too high, 1,250 embers for a build with a two-handed weapon and no off-hand and no secondary weapons.

It’s absurd to make just one build, if you then want to change between different builds, it would be really unfair, in terms of time required/reward.

This: “The RNG Problem, Enchantment System Vs Gem System (Refined)” is the topic I wrote about the enchantments. You may have already seen it since I propose it every time someone talks about enchantments, if you haven’t seen it please check it out.

In the topic:

  • I demonstrate that it is possible to replace enchantments with gems.
  • I demonstrate that it is possible for gems to do everything that enchantments do and even more/better.
  • I propose to completely replace the enchantments with the advanced gem system that I have perfected.

But my current opinion is that this system could be introduced alongside the current enchantment system.

The enchantment system would maintain its RNG aspects, and with its immediacy it would be used especially in mid to late game (the roguelite aspect), while the ”perfected” gem system remains perfect for building in late game and making truly personalized items.

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Love all your suggestion especially with the 3rd. I hope they integrate Ichor too, cause we have too many in end game.

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Hi, i am also just started the experimental build and am fairly early in the game. I love the crafting change itself with the found and research notes.

To be honest, when i saw the limited use of embers to reroll stats i was shocked and nearly wanted to stop playing right there and then.

I understand making it hard to get the desired enchentments for your build should be hard. But current live, i think i spend 1000 embers to get it, which in my opionion is already hard enough for a casual experience. That is with my live char i spend 60-80h playing btw.

Please do not let us limit the use of rerols, i can only immegine how bad this system is if you want at least weapon with stats you want, now you have to farm the ridiculous amount of ember AND the crafting mats. I assume craft, enchant (hope for cursed) rerole 4 affix you need, try 5th and… reset start over, Nope, rather spend my time on another game.

I love every part of the design, combat, weapon feel and i believe the game will be great but for me a pure solo player i dont care much for multiplayer but i do care to spend some easy farm time to get my build to “max”. And as the posts previously said, later it will have more areas and weapons and maybe stats you can role and then making it more random and limited is just not fair for our time.

Sorry if it came off more negative. But the limited rerole just hit hard. Like your other ideas and direction for the game and cant wait for more updates :slight_smile:

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Your items are not supposed to be perfect.

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Thanks for your Feedback, i do understand what you say.

But consider me playing till after lategame, when “everything” is done. Just endgame loop left.

I do enjoy the game, but keep playing it, for me, is to be able to work towards something. Effectively relying on “random” drop to be better then what i have but not “perfect” is just waste of time, imho.

If i can play maybe 8 hours a week (mainly) and still make “progress” towards my build, i will play this game for multiple hundred of hours in the end, when i dont have this option i rather stop playing after main story. Even if i enjoy the game loop itself, but then i do not have a real goal to actual work towards.

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I’ve thought about this too, and I partly agree, especially since the game can be tackled and completed without any problems even with mediocre items.

The problem isn’t that they’re not perfect, but that they’re not Complete, and the satisfying moment of considering your build finished is missing.

Also, trying to make a sensible build with synergies and playstyle is part of the fun, and this is currently strongly discouraged by the game.

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“They don’t need to be perfect” : yes, I agree for most of the playthrough, it does not need to be. But they do need to make sense: If I have a fire built weapon, and I end up with plague enchantment bonus on my armor, it’s pointless. And the problem is that the game strongly works against you changing and trying things out.

If I have a plague enchantment on my armor and can go “oh well fine I’ll just switch to a plague weapon then” it might be ok, but even doing that is made tedious by the current system: I might have to change my attributes, I might have to loose that great fire rune I was hoping to built something on, I might have to find a new weapon, with new enchantments that takes you through yet another boring and frustrating RNG session. I might end up with a dodgy exalt due to yet another boring and frustrating RNG session. I might end up with useless item due to an unmanagable curse. And now there are also facets to deal with!

If I wanna find a new armor instead: it’s the same thing, only bigger: because now I have to deal with a multiple piece set… At this point the game should be considered an Action RNG, not an Action RPG.

As the others said: there is a point where making the perfect built become the only thing that make you hang around; trying new builts, experimenting, perfecting it etc, that’s what will make it what they call “a neverending game”. Preventing you to do so will only draw people out of it in my opinion. They will play the game for the main story yes, because despiste that the game is still quite cool to explore and still playable. But then all that will be left is a chore of grind, store management, and hopeless illusion that we might get to try a proper built.

In it’s current state, the game prevents you from trying things out, and doesn’t reward your time and effort. Most people could play hundreds of hours without ever getting what they want, while some lucky newbie could get a god breaking cheat built right from the start. And once you DO have a proper built, the game make it so tedious to switch to something new, that most people will probably just stick to that one built without ever trying anything else: what the point to have 200+ weapons then?

What will happen is that people will just quit, ending up with a feeling of frustration that will irreversibly stain all the really great time they actually did have playing it during the main campain, and switch to a game that respect their time and effort.

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