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.
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 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.