Feedback: New Crucible Update

I did several Crucible runs today and here are my current thoughts, I’ll add more later.

Cyvion

The Echo Knight finally has a name, I really like that. His fight feels more fun with the added boons, since you can theory craft a little bit. I use a great sword and had the most success with the following boons:

  • Damage reduction
  • Lifesteal
  • Stamina Regen
  • Poise Defense

Basically the face tank build.

The Seneschal

He looks like a cursed E.T., I love it. The unique art style for those characters is truly gorgeous, whilst also being cursed. Please stay true to this style. Also his reveal animation was amazing, I really had a what the :duck: moment when his fingers crawled out of that pit.

The Gloam

I love their visuals, like a hybrid between cursed myconids and the infested from Waframe. Love how one of them uses his head as an artillery piece. Their attacks patterns are also well readable. I do like how each faction has their own archetypes of enemies, I especially like the big boys.

Now if the Gloam spawn in the aqueduct looking map there are 3 enemies right in front of you. And, the first time I saw that I just figured I’d out aoe them down. But, they each dashed backwards away from me and created distance. I love that strategic placement and that behavior from the enemies.

New Rooms

I love the visuals, and the rooms feel more coherent now. Before it felt like a mix of maps from different areas. I especially like the visuals for the Gloam looking maps and the ones with the excessive amount of skulls – skulls for the skull throne!

Traps

I like the changes to the ones that shoot fire projectiles. You can more clearly see where they are shooting and they shoot a lot faster.

As for the biting traps, they feel a bit wonky with how enemies move around them. Like they get stuck a bit.

Boons

I haven’t unlocked the additional boons yet, the ones from the seneschal, so I will update this later.

I love the additional effects we can unlock like the plague explosion, ice burst, static lightning field, lightning strikes, fire burst and more. It increases the cool factor of combat.

Now, will we be able to unlock those or something similar as enchantments or maybe talents?

Exalted Gear

YES! This is such a needed mechanic. The whole need for refarming gear due to low rolls is now eliminated as you simply exalt your gear and get max rolls. This is an insanely welcome change in my book.

Dropped Gear/Food

With the removal of this it feels more like endgame content rather than a way to just farm items to play enchanting lottery with. I quite like this change and I imagine when the actual farming update comes out we will get a more steady supply of that. I would still look to add more armor recipes and such so the gear we like the visuals of is more readily available. Especially since a way to farm gear for enchanting has now been removed.

Enemy Deaths

The enemies die in more gruesome ways, love it.

Mob Density

I feel with the new rooms there could potentially be more mobs. Or different archetypes of enemies so there is more pressure on the player.

Falling to your death

Hasn’t happened yet as it did with the old Crucible so that’s good :joy:

Closing Words

That’s all I can think of for now, I’ll add more later. Keep up the great work Moon!

Edit 1:

Banish option

Please add a banish option to eliminate unwanted boons, maybe we can unlock them from the Seneschal.

Edit 2:

Undesirable Boons

These are boons I always end up rerolling:

  • Skip room.
  • Random boon.
  • Elemental damage on weapon, I already have a Heat enchant on it. I don’t want that to be overridden.
  • Increased damage when in a new room.
  • Any food boon.

Desirable Boons

These are boons I always choose:

  • Plagued lifesteal/spellvamp → 15% is broken. I do think this is the strongest boon. And, I would lifesteal/spellvamp to exist. But, it needs to exist in a way where it is not broken for builds with a lot of on hit effects whilst being underwhelming for slower builds.
  • Stamina regen.
  • Any heat based enchant to synergize with my great sword.
  • Damage reduction.
  • Attack speed and movespeed.
  • Rune damage.
  • Focus gain.
  • Any unique effect since they look cool, preferring any non damage proc based as greatswords attack slower.

Replayability

I would like more incentive to clear the crucible after getting exalted gear. Maybe the ability to unlock new enchantments like those unique effects. Or maybe some unique gear, there is a lot strewn about in his lair.

2 Likes

I like some of the changes and I’m not as far as you to have as much feedback, but I just unlocked the shop after 4 runs and pretty bummed he just sells resources like the vendors used to. Was expecting unique gear.

I am actually not a fan of this. It’s unheard of getting perfect gear that easily in ARPGs.

Is it perfect gear? Just seems to be a slight boost depending on the item. Like my spear gets +2 damage and +1% focus gain.

Not that shooting for perfect gear even matters atm. I just beat the crucible naked with a lvl 12 character and no boons. So until they make the game more challenging then you can get by just fine with imperfect gear.

I’ve apparently misunderstood when Exalting then, my mistake.

Fairly sure they are max rolls as both the item stats and enchant get enhanced a great amount.

Examples:

For now Crucible is very frustrating content for those who previously farmed it for some gear.
As mention before - game need more source for grinding existing gear or pre-equip because now you have a little bit of reasons to go there.

And btw - hide respec statue behind upgrades was a bad idea.
Especially when previously we just got it already.

1 Like

I do agree that base gear needs to be more readily available. I don’t want to farm for hours to find the weapon I want to then ruin it by the random enchants.

Therefore, I think we need armor and weapon recipes to be more readily available so it lessens the grind of random items. And, instead we grind for materials to craft the equipment we want.

Then add this on top of that so we don’t have to grind materials as much: Suggestion: Deconstruct, Dismantle & Disenchant Gear

crafting with recipes it’s a nice alternative but then we need more stable sources for res farm.
What I mean

  • we need correct description where we can find this one and this one res (For example: this leather from wolves, that leather from deer)
  • add some rare elite mobs (at least until new way of farm not be decided) that will have specific loot or gear and can be spawned anywhere.

It’s just a minds that came so can be easily continued after some more deep analyze

1 Like

I took a break from playing Shadow of the erdtree to play the new crucible. There’s some nice added features like turning echos into random upgrades as you go through rooms. They’ve added some new rooms and new enemies types but many rooms have simply gotten a makeover.

In the end, this crucible is basically what it was before, the same rooms appearing in random order all to get to the same boss who gives the same random rewards at the end.

Going through the crucible used to be a great way to farm for gear but that’s all gone now. In the end it’s an improvement and a step forward in the right direction but there’s just not enough in this update to get me to keep playing for now.

Same thoughts as the comment above. For an update that took so long to release, it didn’t really add much gameplay wise. It’s also bugged as I’ve pointed out in other threads, where you can complete it naked with a new character so the new boon system doesn’t even matter in the current state.

If there was a couple more crucibles added I could see this being a bit better but atm it’s just a little polish for a system we already had.