Vaal side areas are too common/not worth your time

Currently when I play with my friend we'll find a vaal area's entrance in 95% of zones we visit as we progress from Normal through to Merciless (Haven't reached Merciless with my current character yet).

While it is awesome to have new content often available to play, often the Vaal Area you play through is one you've recently played through multiple times because it seems like there's only 2 or 3 different Vaal areas available for each Act and each Act features 10 or more zones.

Another issue is that they very often feature ONE mod which usually isn't enough to provide a significant deviation from regular gameplay, so it plays out pretty much just like the area you came from except with everything tinged red and you're making no progress towards reaching/beating Merciless Difficulty/Quests. The Quantity bonus is always often quite low (Below 20%) which also discourages spending time in the Vaal area as well.

Because these areas most often only feature a single mod and you often play through the same Vaal areas numerous times per Act, it ends up really dull, boring and not at all exciting (The same Vaal boss 8 or 10 times per Act? [sarcastic] Yaaay!). It would be nice to see the spawn rate of Vaal areas reduced slightly to retain the surprise of finding one (Still have it above 50% chance to appear if you want) with a boost to the chance of Vaal areas featuring 2 mods.

So reducing the frequency of Vaal Areas spawning coupled with Vaal Areas more often featuring multiple mods and a higher Quantity bonus would:

1) boost the gameplay diversity and uniqueness of most Vaal areas that you find (Better chance of finding a combination of mods you've never played before which will provide a more significant deviation from the regular gameplay).

2) Boost the time invested/reward ratio to be more in favour of doing the content. Currently 20% or less quantity boost just does not feel worth your time. You've got more important things to do such as Quests with guaranteed beneficial rewards and unlocking the Eternal Laboratory.

3) Retain a sense of surprise when discovering a Vaal Area Entrance in an area you're exploring, because currently there is one in virtually every zone so it's no longer a "special" occurrence or surprise.

I don't feel that they are too common but that might run in concussion with my sporadic playtime and my tendency to not clear areas fully so I might miss some instances. At SotV release they were clearly way to rare for my taste, I felt urged to full clear every area just to find some now and then.

I agree that they are often not that rewarding. I can see skipping them if you are not interested in Vaal Gems nor Fragments. I wish sometimes that even in normal they would be hard as fuck but rewarding bonus stages.

I can't speak of higher difficulties from experience.

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Nightmare90 a écrit :

I don't feel that they are too common but that might run in concussion with my sporadic playtime and my tendency to not clear areas fully so I might miss some instances. At SotV release they were clearly way to rare for my taste, I felt urged to full clear every area just to find some now and then.

I agree that they are often not that rewarding. I can see skipping them if you are not interested in Vaal Gems nor Fragments. I wish sometimes that even in normal they would be hard as fuck but rewarding bonus stages.

I can't speak of higher difficulties from experience.

Indeed I found that when SotV launched they were too rare of an occurrence. I also agree that Vaal Areas should feature a higher Monster Level then the area that it is attached to to create voluntary spikes in difficulty, especially during Normal/Cruel (Not so much Merciless).

I kinda miss the Large Chests even though they were pretty rare to find unless you farmed a specific area repeatedly with the intention of finding them. Currently they don't seem to exist anymore? I don't know if they were outright removed at some point or if their spawn rate was lowered, but they were fun to find during your progress from Normal to Merciless. It's nice to sometimes find an immediate reward.

They could've kept them (Keep them as a rare occurrence) and added support for featuring up to 2 mods on them which you can re-roll. The list of available mods would not be restricted to the type of Chest, instead, when re-rolling the mods on the Chest, it would first roll the type of chest and then the mods available for that type of chest. This would make it hard to get the mods/type of chest you desire while offering a big reward (Lots of loot).

vaal areas are VERY common when leveling new chars (And i like that very very much as these provide necessary +loot and +vaal gems). after like lvl 50-55 areas seem to vanish and then you start to miss them (vaal fragments)

i do not think that any change is warranted (btw my farming experience tells me that ggg silently 'adjusted' spawn rates already..)

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Nicholas_Steel a écrit :

[...]

I kinda miss the Large Chests even though they were pretty rare to find unless you farmed a specific area repeatedly with the intention of finding them. Currently they don't seem to exist anymore? I don't know if they were outright removed at some point or if their spawn rate was lowered, but they were fun to find during your progress from Normal to Merciless. It's nice to sometimes find an immediate reward.

Large Chest were replaced by Corrupted Areas.
They only spawn in the Unique Map Vaults of Atziri now, afaik.

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Nightmare90 a écrit :

Large Chest were replaced by Corrupted Areas.
They only spawn in the Unique Map Vaults of Atziri now, afaik.

Edited my last post with a bit more thought on Large Chests and how they could've been utilized during the introduction of Strongbox's.

Just fyi, I'm totally in love with how frequently Strong Boxes spawn.

The frequency of vaal areas are being reduced when ambush/invasion ends.

I have yet to see a vaal area in a map, or an Atziri fragment drop in a map. And I have ran many many maps. Not sure how much this comment adds to the conversation.

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Zindax a écrit :

I have yet to see a vaal area in a map, or an Atziri fragment drop in a map. And I have ran many many maps. Not sure how much this comment adds to the conversation.

Vaal areas can't spawn in maps so not much to worry at your end. :P

I'm very fond of the current corrupted areas -- with the rebalanced difficulty and the increased drop rates from bosses they feel like an instant Piety/Dom run, and provide a nice change of pace.