There are various complaints from various posts and topics about the current iteration of the crucible.
Here are some examples:
It takes too long to get to the boss.
Getting to the boss is NOT engaging enough.
There should be a Cerim Whisper in front of the boss after reaching it.
The crucible run needs to feel more unique.
Crucible rooms are too easy once you get to level 20+.
At this stage of the game, we have enough healing items.
Most of my deaths are due to ledges or fall damage.
Being stuck at the boss fight and having to do all the rooms over and over.
People can’t reliably practice the boss.
Here is my redesign of the Crucible
Remember to upvote if you like this idea.
Moon has a very talented team; their art is extremely unique and the explorable maps feel fun and unique. Even after farming them several times, I don’t get bored. Let’s capitalize on this and turn the crucible from being 6 randoms rooms into something different.
Let’s make it an explorable dungeon but with a gauntlet twist.
Here is how I envision it:
The crucible is now its own instance.
It would be similar in size to the current sewers, with lots of exploration, levers and maybe some simple puzzles.
Mobs are not placed randomly, and every encounter is handcrafted like with CRPGs. Meaning every encounter is its own challenge. There are traps and multiple mob types to fight in line with the setting of the instance.
You would enter it with only your equipped gear. Food items and potions have to be crafted and can’t be found.
There is a special vendor to whom you can sell found items to purchase other items and recipes.
You get to keep what you end the run with.
Foods, Materials, Potions are rechargeable within the instance. This means if you used a consumable but died you get it back. Even if you kill the mini bosses, you get them back.
After a mini boss there is a chest and a key which is required to unlock the next area.
There are Cerim Whispers before every boss fight.
Exploration is rewarded with chests, items, puzzles and lore.
Farmable resources and chest don’t reset.
The instance resets daily, there are 5-6 more crucibles to come so you can farm 6-7 of them once a day. Your potions are consumables are stored to the run.
Activating a Cerim Whisper prevents the previous encounters from respawning. Bosses don’t respawn.
Crucible unique gear and Tier Sets.
Speedrun Records.
Every death, you need to sacrifice a new ember.
You can only reach the next encounter by clearing the previous one.
The Base Layout
I do think some sort of half broken castle with some verticality would be really cool. We could start by crossing a draw bridge and opening the gates and enter a courtyard. And as we progress we explore the castle. Similar to Mariner’s keep.
Start
Sacrifice Ember
Encounter 1
Encounter 2
Cerim Whisper A + Vendor
Explore & Farm
Massive door behind which the Echo Knight is.
We go Left and explore and farm as we go.
Encounter 3
Encounter 4
Encounter 5
Cerim Whisper B
Mini Boss 1
Besides dropping loot, they drop 1 of 2 keys required to unlock the door to the Echo Knight.
Back to Cerim Whisper A
We go Right and explore and farm as we go.
Encounter 6
Encounter 7
Encounter 8
Cerim Whisper C
Mini Boss 2
Besides dropping loot, they drop the second key required to unlock the door to the Echo Knight.
Back to Cerim Whisper A
We open the massive doors.
Encounter 9
Encounter 10
Cerim Whisper D
Final Boss, the Echo Knight
Loot! You get to keep what you have gotten during the gauntlet.
END
That’s it, thanks for taking the time to read it. If you like the idea, please upvote it
If things are unclear, please let me know in the comments below.
Would love to see intricate layouts with some light puzzles, platforming, possibility for stealth etc, with a bunch of different artistic templates, etc.
I don’t think they need to reinvent the wheel just rethink how the area leading up to the crucible should feel.
If you look at their maps, the verticality, the exploration and the design. And then you look at the crucible rooms and, it is just underwhelming compared to the rest of the game. Part of me believes it’s just placeholder.
The boss fight itself is amazing I can’t help but think that whoever designed the abilities of the Echo Knight raided Hellfire Citadel during Warlords of Draenor in World of Warcraft.
I feel like they can do so much more with their team.
For me, that sounds like another part of the story/campaign. With the fixed design, objectives, and so. If that’s what it would become, just make it into a mission? Sure, it can’t be replayed, but replayed the same puzzle again and again in a static map would lost its charm after few runs.
I think what they want to do with Crucibles is a roguelike. And judging from that idea, no checkpoints, no “trial run” againts bosses, etc are common theme in roguelikes. NRFTW is a lot more forgiving since you can bring your levels and items from outside of the realm. Traditionally, you start clean for every roguelike run except very few exceptions. I do think current iteration has something to improve.
My suggestion would be:
Make every run a clean slate. No items, no equipment only few unalocated attribute points.
Stagger the difficulty with mobs and minibosses. For example, a total run could consist of 20 levels/stages with minibosses at level 5, 10, and 15. This is to give some sense of achievement and reward based on their skill level. In current system, you can die at level 1 or 6, it doesnt matter except for the for loot you found. In my proposed idea, dying at level 6 would still give some kind of achievement since you still defeated a miniboss, a milestone.
Have a rest area where players can log out of the Crucables without erasing its progress. For example, there could be rest area at level 11. Players can leave to the overworld, leaving all of the acquired items behind in the Crucables, doing whatever they want to. And when they come back, they would start at level 11 with previously acquired items and continue there. If they die at level 12, they would of course start at level 1 again. This is a breathing point for player so that they can take a breath before continuing the gauntlet.
Enemies and items scales with levels/stages. Lower level would yield less valuable items and higher levels have more valuable items and harder enemies.
Everything else, I still can’t decide. Like the rewards, the cost of doing it, item spawn, etc.
My suggestion is adhering to devs’ wishes of doing a roguelike dungeon for their “endgame content”. I think the core concept of roguelike is you start as minimal as possible, the only one being tested is your skill. Not your items or consumables. This would make every Crucable run unique and rewarding. Learning by dying is too common in roguelike. With clean slate as your reward.
As a CRPG fan I always like it when it has a bit more story. I do think that maybe a middle ground is better if they are aiming for a roguelike. But I just hate the current system of those 6 rooms. They feel so disconnected from the boss. For me it’s my main concern.
I’d personally prefer to use my own items and such, for a sense of familiarity. However, I do like the idea of a clean slate run. You have to use what you are given. Runescape had that mode and I quite enjoyed it. Maybe with some randomized rooms and random chanes to find resource nodes and crafting tables.
I like this a lot if I interpret it correctly. If, we have like minibosses at 5, 10, 15 and then the final boss at 20; i’m in. I would like though that there are themes to the floors. Like 1-5 has a Orban Glades feel and 6-10 is with Echo Knights. Just some sense of identity. If it exists like this I wouldn’t mind retrying either. But I would like it not the 6 rooms but floors, which probably won’t happen though.
I would add one after each boss, and have it not reset for an entire week if you cleared 1-5. Then if I die at floor 7 I go back to floor 6. Once I have everything cleared it resets. This goes against the roguelike idea, but still adresses some frustrations from players.
Yeah 100% agreed on this, just make it so floors 1-5 have T1 gear, 6-10 T2 etc. With like blacksmithing anvils to upgrade gear and mining for resources. Myabe a vendor somewhere.
I do sincerely hope that the current iteration of the crucible is not their vision of a roguelike dungeon. Again, the boss is amazing, everything leading up to it isn’t. It can be so much more. My only issue is, is that it will be probably very resource intensive to make it more than smaller rooms. Which is why I am leaning towards a dungeon layout. Less strain on the developers over creating several floors.
Personally, I’m torn between liking the idea of a start with barely anything and testing my roleplay fantasy build in the crucible. Would be cool if both were options. I think we both agree that we want a unique experience out of the crucible with replay value. The current 6 rooms aint it.
We know from Thomas’ points on twitter that they intend to expand on crucible in a bunch of ways to almost make it like “Hades” within Wicked. So it’s just a matter of waiting to see what they have already built and intend to build I suppose.
I think the chalice dungeons in Bloodborne are a great place to look for inspiration. Random generated elements for sure, but rooms that are designed with deliberate careful play, some traps, winding paths, etc
A lot of this idea comes from one of my favorite game Vagante that I’ve been playing since 2016. But it has a boss fight for every dungeon in a 3 x 4 stages and rest area after every stage. It even has common theme for every 3 stages (3 caves, 3 forest, 3 catacombs, and 3 flying city(?)) with final boss at the end. Every run is a clean slate except for little unlockable perks.
A thing I didn’t mention is, after a while 12 stages in vagante become “too easy”. So it has a hidden difficulty level for people that likes to torture themself. Every bosses drops a key that could be used to open chest that grants consumables and equipment, but the key could also be used to access a hidden dungeon with different (harder) boss. So choosing it would basically sacrifice the loot for extra difficult stage. Completing those hidden stages unlock final boss’ 2nd form.
With that in mind it also has a hard mode. So in total it has 4 difficulty level with normal difficulty (which’s already hard enough for new player), normal + hidden, hard, and hard + hidden. That’s a tons of replayability.
For the power fantasy parts, I think it could be done in different Crucables. Orban Glades has Crucable, right? That one could have different mechanism of having items, but less valuable reward the more “overleveled” you are for the Crucable.
I have not played Hades myself so I don’t really know what to imagine. But thanks for letting me know! I’ll look into it to better understand how they envision it.
I lot of my inspiration came from both WoW raiding/dungeons and mixing it with the current systems.
I always like how every person has their own favorite games they draw inspiration from with making suggestions. Because you play a game because it has a lot of elements you like and want to see those elements in a potential new game.
For me I love CRPGs from Owlcat, all three are easily in my top 5 games. The roleplay fantasies. the tactical combat, the roleplaying fantasy, the story. Everything is just 10/10. When looking at CRPG combat you always analyze who are threats and how to handle them. For me it is one the reasons why I bought the game, the tactical combat and the story elements. Also they differentiate themselves with their visuals in a UE5 bland looking landscape.
Hades is one of the best roguelikes out there, arguably the very best for how it combines industry leading mechanics and polish with a super deep story that almost never ends.
On a mechanical level, I think the crucible could do well to have multiple different modes, one that allows you to test your current build, and one that is a Roguelike that has you start with nothing and build up your build according to RNg choices throughout each run, with some persistent upgrades between runs as well
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.
