I hate essence embers

Wicked Feedback
1

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I absolutely hate essence embers and think they’re unhealthy for the game as they are currently.

The issue for me is that you can basically cut and paste lines and make any gear viable using them. It’s no longer about finding something exciting and working on it, which I thought was why something repeatable like the crucible existed. In its current state, it feels like it’s about waiting for essence ember.

Also, they basically eliminate any sort of gear identity. When you can craft almost anything into perfect gear, it’s easy to end up with the same “best” setup. Some of the most fun moments come from finding a decent piece of gear and figuring out how to make it work. That kind of limitation pushes you to explore different synergies and playstyles, which I believe is way more interesting.

Another thing I don’t really buy is the idea that you need BIS gear just to try different builds. You can experiment with playstyles, skills, and synergies long before everything is perfectly optimized.

Because of that, rushing everyone to perfect gear doesn’t actually enable experimentation, it just skips past it. Once everything is already solved and optimized, there’s less incentive to explore builds organically, because you’re no longer adapting to what you have.

I’m not against deterministic crafting at all. I understand why people like it. It respects your time and guarantees progress. But right now, with essence embers, it feels like we’re on the other end of the extreme. I realize that people probably didn’t like the grindiness of the previous system and that’s why this change was implemented, but I also think a lot of people mistake easier and less friction for more fun. In loot driven games especially, removing too much friction can actually make things feel less exciting.

For me, the ideal solution is hopefully some middle ground. Not going back to painfully slow rerolling, but also not letting any random drop become perfect as long as you have essence embers. Limiting essence embers to 1-2 uses per item would be an ideal middle ground for me honestly. (To be honest though, if it was up to me I would remove them completely but I know they have a casual playerbase to cater to as well)

Not to mention, IF the devs want this game to have long-term character progression and the kind of staying power other ARPGs are known for, the current direction doesn’t really support that.

This really just stems from me loving the game, I feel like I pretty much went from wet noodle to one shotting the crucible boss in one day because I went through the story and held on to enough essence embers. It would’ve been nice to stay in that progression phase a little longer before I became OP.

3 Likes
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I kind of have to agree… but I can’t come up with a way to balance it, in a way that would make it fun for everyone.
I think the issue atm, is that it’s way too easy to get perfect gear and the current content gets absolutely steamrolled, as soon as your gear is at 50% of perfect. On top of that, I don’t think this deliberate combat system can handle modifiers like increased Attack Speed.

I also don’t think it helps that you don’t have to upgrade your gear EVER, as soon as you find the correct piece with the correct facet. It gets balanced in other arpgs through Item Level limitations or not being able to find the best bases before endgame. It makes you not overinvest in early items. I don’t think this is a perfect way of doing it either, but at least it makes it interesting to find new loot.
In a way I like that you can work on your gear as you progress, but it outscales content way too easily.

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I agree wholeheartedly. Once I learned how essences worked, the entire loot system became unexciting.

I understand grinding for loot like in Diablo is not everyone’s cup of tea, especially since this game seems to combine genres of ARPG and souls-like which often have very different approaches to gear. However, I think this goes too far in the opposite direction. The fact I can take any piece of gear (even if it has no stats I want) and cobble together the perfect piece for my build removes all excitement from finding equipment. Instead it shifts the emphasis to crafting the right facet, and then mindlessly finding the right lines to paste onto that gear. To me, it almost entirely defeats the purpose of having such a loot system.

I’ve seen some people say that the “excitement” of gearing comes from getting lucky with the exalting system. Again, I don’t think this adds any fun to the process of finding and making the gear to exalt. It just means that the process of gearing becomes tedious, since if you don’t get the exalts you want, you just have the repeat the already uninteresting process of finding the right facet and cutting and pasting to try again.

TLDR: I want a system where good loot is actually fun and exciting to find, not just parts to slap on a different piece of gear.

3 Likes
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Yeah, you make a really good point. I also found that as soon as I had about 3 pieces of perfect gear I was steam rolling content. So, I don’t really get the push for everyone to be able to deterministically craft fully perfect gear. The game isn’t balanced around that level of power, and it’s not even necessary for progression or build experimentation.

Especially in a game that’s clearly leaning toward a soulslike direction, being able to reliably one-shot bosses feels counterintuitive. Shouldn’t good gear supplement the gameplay and not trivialize it? One-shotting should come from extreme optimization, and that’s where the niche of truly perfect gear should sit.

I’d honestly be more than happy to grind for perfect gear as a long-term, optional goal. But for most casual players who complain about grind or min-maxing, perfect gear isn’t even required in the first place. You can already clear content and try builds long before anything is fully optimized, so designing systems around guaranteeing perfection just makes the game so unexciting imo.

1 Like
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I agree but not because you can steamroll perfect gear. I hate them because they are inconsistent. I know this is an ARPG and loot RNG is baked into the DNA of the game, but I really wish there was more consistent ways of farming specific gear with specific trait’s; like archer’s gear for and archer’s build. In the same way you never know what kind of embers you’ll get, and I find myself hording them for a rainy day and never use them anyway because scarcity creates a hording situation. The only embers that are useful as they stand are essence embers and the absorbing embers that allow me to transfer one trait to another armor piece and that pretty much gets to the heart of what you’re all dealing with. Just cut and paste.

The sad thing is that because I play exclusively hardcore I find myself simply using whatever I find for the sake of the fact that it has the stats I need right now and I might just die later. This exposes how useless the embers are even further.

What I advise is at least to give RNG some predictable nature so that we can find the gear we want instead of just dumpster diving with all of Sacra being one big dumpster. Because as it stands my only incentive to play the game again is to beat it on Hardcore on hardest difficulty and then invite other insane players to do the same with me.

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I disagree. Farming essence embers is also time-consuming, and reaching BiS on every item is far from trivial. For casual players, it is still largely unreachable. I would prefer a system that helps me work toward my goal instead of relying solely on pure RNG.

If it feels too easy with them, you can just ignore them. It’s mostly a solo game, so rushing isn’t necessary.

I’ve been playing D2 since it launched. I know the grind, and I’m honestly tired of it.

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I don’t really agree that limiting a piece of gear to 1-2 essence embers isn’t a system that helps you work toward your goal. It still does, it just doesn’t trivialize the process.

And yeah, the “just don’t use it” argument is probably what I’ll end up doing, but that misses the point. I could also blindfold myself and play that way, but artificial self-imposed difficulty isn’t the same as the difficulty the game is actually designed around. If the system exists, it inevitably shapes balance and expectations, whether you opt into it or not.

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Yeah, it makes me sad to think about the future direction and how gear will be completely trivialized if it stays. I was thinking it’d be really fun to share cool gear finds with the community and/or friends, but that won’t be an aspect of the game with this system because anything cool anyone has found can be pretty much replicated.

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Then why not adopt a style like Elden Ring where every Item has a drop location or specific enemies to loot from? That way grinding would at least be productive towards your goal. This RNG with embers as an additive is frustrating.

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If the difficulty exists, I’m gonna play it as if it were the intended experience. I find that my interest in the game has wavered greatly after they introduced realm tiers. Very frustrating and annoying. One of the reason soul’s games are good is because they are what they are. Now if I want to play a game with someone I gotta vet em for difficulty, I gotta ask em if they play hardcore. And then I can play. But not before. How truly barbaric.

11

totally agree here.

imo the new ember system is just not rly thought out.

now you constantly just look through your whole inventory and either compare with the list - or after a bit you obv know what ur looking for - but it def takes the fun out of getting excited for a drop. im clearing an area and then spend 10min in sacrament to see if anything of the stuff i got has the right facet, the right enchants and so on.

also said it before, the facets are also a rly bad decision in my opinion.

first make it more deterministic for the ppl who wanted it and then slap another RNG on top of it with the result being its the same as before, just now instead of spamming embers, you spam crafts plus you have an insanely bloated ember system, which at the start of the game totally fills up your inventory with up to 7 different slots for embers only in your inv.

feels def worse than before for me.

on top of that i liked the way i had to farm forever to get my char looking like i want it to look long after i had the “perfect gear” just it wasnt the skin i liked.

now you can just craft the skin, slap all the enchants on you want and there you go.

no excitement for loot anymore.

i still love the game and its super fun playstyle wise, but ye, the scouring through your loot is the real grind now, its a little sad imo.

1 Like
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THANK YOU! I’m genuinely glad there are people out there who enjoy the grind and actually feel rewarded by difficulty. It just feels like the prevailing sentiment lately is that getting perfect gear should be as easy and frictionless as possible, even if that ends up trivializing the harder content.

At the same time, it also feels like a lot of people want this to play out more like a one-and-done story game, which I honestly didn’t think was the intended direction at all. For me, a big part of the appeal was wanting to feel good about what I found, to share cool drops with friends, and to feel like my character reflected time and effort invested.

Right now, that feeling is mostly gone. It’s more like, cool, I finished the story, sifted through some decent lines, crafted gear that was basically guaranteed, and then one-shot a boss. Maybe I spent extra time burning materials to roll facets, but there’s nothing particularly exciting or memorable about that process.

I still enjoy the game moment to moment, but it feels like the pride and excitement around loot has been replaced by inventory management and checklist completion, which is kind of a bummer.

1 Like
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There are also posts where people have the opposite problem. That’s a sign that the system is balanced somewhere in the middle. We can't play endgame anymore with this drop of embers - #26 by Raul_Jurado

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Actually, no. You’re wrong.
It’s one thing for people not to like the possibility of changing lanes using embers, and another for there to be 5 types with serious drop problems.

I don’t know if you played No Rest of the Wicked’s Early Access from the beginning, but before, when there was only one type of ember, building was faster than now, and the drop rate was higher.

This genre wants to retain players and needs endgame content. Currently, there’s no content (EA), and creating other builds takes a lot of time due to the lack of drops. In other words, the endgame is in worse shape now than in all previous patches.

They need to find a working ember farming system to create other builds and refine your own without requiring you to create 10 different worlds to visit shops and complete daily quests. If you only farm your own world, you shouldn’t need another 40 hours to create another maxed-out build.

And if someone doesn’t like using “Essence Ember” to refine their build, then they shouldn’t use them. xD

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Yes, I’ve been playing since the EA launch.

Yes, embers are controversial for sure. Their amount, usability, drop rate, etc.

What could help is some kind of tranformation. 3 fallen embers → essence ember, etc.

But I disagree with your statement about 40 hours to create a new character. You can prepare for it by storing items with a potential. To enjoy new build you dont need max level and BiS gear. Viability of the build can be proven much earlier. If you enjoy the build, you can spend hours by optimizing it. But that is basically the same for most of the ARPG.

I’m unsure about that too. How can it be worse if nothing was changed?

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The ratios are terrible. Time spent vs. Rewards

Example: If completing the game takes 25 hours and during that time you complete a build and almost get it BIS, how can it be that you need more time farming endgame content to switch to another build?

And yes, you need to have the build maxed out to enjoy it; otherwise, equipping the weapon and four bad items is enough. And then you don’t want to play that build anymore.

Now it’s worse than in previous patches because with the same game content, you require twice the time to get your BIS build. With the change to item exaltation (you need orbs) and the new four orbs…

I have over 2000 hours on the Poe 1 client, 870 on the Poe 2 Early Access client, being a rank 1 SSF Witch in two seasons, and I’m a former Diablo II player. I know about endgame content and character building. Finished almost every Souls-like game you can think of…

I love the game Moon Studios is creating of course, they still have a lot of work ahead of them, and I’m sure they’ll perfect their product and make it truly memorable. I follow Thomas on Twitter, watch his interviews, and keep up with all the great ideas that are coming.

But now the time you dedicate isn’t rewarded in the endgame, and that makes you eventually stop playing. Look on YouTube to see how many people are duplicating embers to try out other builds, or check the Steam forums or here for complaints about the low drop rate…

You shouldn’t be satisfied with everything. Time should be valued, and I’m the first to admit I love grinding for hours, but only if it’s for results. If you can’t change your build and make it BIS build, why play anymore? There’s no more content, my friend.

1 Like
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I agree. The whole system feels really flat. It’s nice that they’re trying to respect a player’s time, but it should not be at the cost of the fun of the journey.

Once I figured out that any gear you pick up can be frankensteined into end game gear, I went from an adventurer into an accountant. Every weapon became a soul-less vessel, and I’m just scanning lines that I can copy and paste into my weapon of choice. The ‘rarity’ system also doesn’t feel very distinct. They feel very horizontal with very unsubstantial limits between them.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I hope that this system is only experimental. There should be a little more friction or some sort of phase shift where you’re looking forward to progressing. It’s currently too shallow for me to see a long play time.

18

And before the update you had to find 20-50 fallen embers, nothing has changed, before with 20-50 embers you managed to get the exact effect you wanted, now you do it by stealing it from another item, the previous one is more frustrating but in the end the fundamental problems of this system remain the same.

Agree, but it must also be considered that the movesets of this game leave much to be desired I’ll talk about it here if you’re interested: Critique of Weapon Movesets.

Correct, totally agree.

True, but I think rerolling 50 times is a worse experience than transferring the effect.

Agree.

They tried but they didn’t succeed.

This is because it’s exactly like that. This is exactly the intention of the developers. They explained it themselves.
Blue items aren’t rare, they’re magical. Purple items aren’t epic, they’re pestilent. And yellow items aren’t legendary, they’re unique.

BDW These problems have been there since the beginning of the game, The new guys try to improve the situation but they rely on a system that is rotten to the core.

I’ve tried to solve them here: The RNG Problem, Enchantment System & Gem System “TOGETHER” (Update)

I already know that @peeweeleaf doesn’t like my idea, I already answered him in detail why I don’t share his opinions, (maybe I was a little too toxic, sorry if that’s the case).