Exactly, once you are used to the rooms, they no longer pose a challenge, and because it take so long to reach the boss you are just trying to rush them to get to the echo knight that lead to stupid mistakes and even more time lost trying to reach the echo knight.
Hades is well worth a playthrough if you enjoy that style of game, Supergiant really know how to put a lot of heart and soul into their games (character writing and art) and combine it with amazing feeling gameplay. Your suggestion for how a run could look is very reminiscent of the layout of a Hades run, with differences of course but working through themed zones and a series of boss fights with things to seek out in each zone is a big part of the Hades loop.
Awesome summary of the issues around the Crucible as it is and I like the idea of an exploration/survival/dungeon crawl. Especially when we have multiplayer, more depth and engaging mechanics will be necessary to make Crucible fun and worth doing/something to strive for.
If they’ve said they want it to be “roguelike” flavoured, it would be interesting to see how they might implement the power gains you get within a run in most roguelikes. Some kind of mechanism within the crucible that make each run unique by buffing or altering skill interactions for your character.
Each floor maybe you get a choice of buffs or curse/buff style attributes, like “deal more damage/reduced move speed” or “increased stamina/reduced focus gain”. It would add a bit more strategy to the run without being too impacting on your chosen playstyle. It would be a difficult thing to implement well within some of the already existing design/gameplay systems.
It’s cool to see from Thomas’ words that he really seems to get why roguelikes work, and how addicting they are.
It’ll definitely be quite different from hades, but I’m hopeful they’ll be able to build out the “boons” you receive and the meta progression in a unique way.
Perhaps one form of the crucible dives into that disempowerment fantasy, while another form allows you to test out the strength of your complete build.
Yes, I have this problem, too. I do not want to go all rooms to get one attempt and he kills me after 30 sekonds. It is not fun
This makes alot of sense. Would love to see more themed crusible dungeons and also a way to actually interact with boss mechanics before the end to warm up to end bosses.
Yes, please add some kind of shortcut to the Echo Knight or reduce the amount of floors you have to go through once you’ve reached him. I want to spend my time learning the boss, not spending 10-15 minutes each run clearing rooms that are trivially easy (at the point I’m at).
Sadly I think I’ve gone from loving this game (I’ve dumped 54 hours into essentially a chapter) into being extremely frustrated with the game. Don’t get me wrong, the game is still amazing and I’m excited for its future, but the crucible is killing me.
I’m running an INT build and I’ve run the crucible 50+ times and I’ve yet to beat it. Of course part of it is me getting good, but at the same time, the crucible needs to be tweaked.
The worst part of the crucible is the grind through all the levels. There should be some kind of system that if I dump more embers into the altar it will take me directly to the boss or at the very least it cuts down the ridiculous amount of rooms to go through.
There are also many bugs in the crucible, half of my deaths have come from glitching to the floor, getting caught on terrain, etc.
Another piece of advice for the boss room is to get rid of all the pillars on the sides, again it is something that I constantly find myself getting stuck and it’s annoying.
At this point, I can breeze through the rooms, but it is still too time-consuming, and then I get to the boss and I die to some BS issue. I’ve made it to the second half of the boss fight three times and I’ve yet to do any damage to him because his first drop-down immediately kills me which to me is not fun, or his initial lunge attack.
It just seems like there is too high of a toughness jump from the rooms to the boss. I’m going to step away from the game for a while because I don’t want to spoil my experience with something like this.
I agree with you. but, I’ve found most people like the difficulty and grind up to the boss and the bosses difficulty. May be hard pressed for the grind to the boss to change.
If you come back and wanna beat the boss, you’re gonna need points into carry weight, as, having high armor is the only way to survive its wide hits. I was also an INT build. had a lot of trouble with damage and dodging attacks that happened off screen. I had to get the Sky (something) weapon that uses frost, so I could utalize the freeze mechanic to get decent damage in while it couldnt move. Still only beaten it once and the annoying grind up to the boss has stopped me from trying further.
They’ve said they plan to tweak the crucible, character stats and skills. So, you could just wait for that to release, but, that may be a long while off.
Here’s a few posts about a similar topic:
Some good discussion in both threads about the length of the Crucible and why the enjoyability can decline when you’re struggling to kill the Echo Knight.
Important to keep in mind that the Crucible in it’s current form is the foundation for what could become a much more comprehensive feature, and is bound to change as time goes on.
Hard to say what they will or won’t do with it, but this particular feedback has cropped up many times so they’ll be paying attention and thinking about it no doubt.
The game has very dramatic character power progression to the point where fully minmaxed characters at the current level cap roll over EK for free without requiring any skill from the player whatsoever. Naturally it’s possible to get to him using a character which is much much weaker than the upper limit and in this case the boss will be extremely hard with a horrific corpse run.
It might be worth considering how the massive gap in difficulty between EK and the Crucible trash acts to bait people with weaker characters into trying EK because they’re able to reach him. If the Crucible were much harder (and perhaps shorter) then it would do a better job of communicating the intended power level. On the otherhand I suspect the developers intended the Crucible trash run itself to be a kind of ‘farming ground’ where people can collect higher level gear so maybe dying to this repeatedly is just the intended progression route and the whole thing is a cheap endgame grind.
if you get 900k armor and 250 hp with weapon that have life leach affix on it you are almost immortal, can take all hits from boss and heal all back fast. also if you are lucky to get high enough focus you can spam massive damage with rune skill. no need high roll, i was at 98% weight limit
It seems like the two common threads are:
- It shouldn’t take as long to get to the Echo Knight once you have reached him
- Difficulty leading up to the Echo Knight should be more reflective of the Echo Knight’s difficulty
I think the solution could be a single, much more difficult, room:
- When the play enters the crucible there will be a 2nd corridor going the opposite direction of the 1st with a slight red (or similar) outline to distinguish it
- If the player chooses the alternate corridor then they will be able to skip the 6 rooms en lieu of 1
- The player will have to encounter the Echo Knight through the 6 rooms first before the alternate passage becomes available
- Room could be a current random crucible room with 2x-3x enemy spawns (as a placeholder)
I’m sure there are more ideas long-term, but this should provide a short-term solution for most.
I hope that they will remove Crucible from the full version. It’s so annoying/boring to get through all mini arenas over and over again.
now this is a horrible take dissing on an entire genre of gaming lol. It’s an endgame OPTIONAL dungeon for farming rare weapons specifically how about you try to approach it on its terms instead of just thinking negatively?
This is literally the experience of any rogue-like game, such as Hades.
It’s another genre that they’ve fit into their hybrid game.
I’m not going to comment on whether I personally like this mechanism, but I believe it’s the intended game design of the Crucible.
I doubt they will change this aspect of the Crucible.
On the other hand, when they add more content, I do see the possibility of some of that content being endgame related. You might never be able to fight the Echo Knight directly, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re able to fight something else directly.
Don’t get me wrong, i like the game. Yes, now i know that it’s a optional content. 
Chill out, dude! I’m not thinking negatively.
Everybody has the right to an opinion.
Have a great day!
You gave your opinion, they gave theirs, then you tell them to chill out and everyone is entitled to their opinion, which clearly you then had a problem with.
What even is that logic.
Sounds like you just wanted people to agree with you, not how opinions work.
Just put a whisper outside the boss room for the love of you know what! I’m tired of running the same rooms over and over just to get to the boss. It’s mind numbing. Once I beat him then make me do it again!
i honestly like this roque like dungeon. but i also agree, that it can be frustrating.
since we are in the early early stages of the game, i assume a lot will change with the endgame content. we can already see more blood altars up the stairs in the masonry. so it is save to assume, there will be more maps and bosses following.
maybe they will find a compromise, keep rouge like mechanic, but increase variety of maps and adjust the number of “rooms” one has to go to while doing a run.
For example, echo night being the first altar, so make him have 4 rooms, then boss. Then make the next altar more difficult, with 6 room until the boss etc. (random numbers btw, i am no balancing expert after all 
)