My 0.4 first character experience and feedback

Hello!

Adding some feedback from my pov for this league.


I've played for 2 days 9 hours total on my character. Got to level 96.5 as a Remnant Spark Blood Mage. Played mostly with around 80% rarity, my total currency drops are 1061 ex, 193c, 27 div, 11 perfect jews. Also got Hyrri's, maligaro's and 2 poison gloves, which is around 40 div just in these items. In total I estimate I earned about 200-300 divs in total over my playtime.

I enjoy the league so far, with temple being very underwhelming.


Now for the feedback:

Firstly, application issues. A lot of crashes, like 5+ daily and also 5+ daily the thing where your game just stops and start loading for 2-3 mins with black screen. Didn't have this in previous leagues, but my friend did so maybe need to tinker with options, I put everything to the lowest even though I'm on RTX 4080 Super, 32GB ram, i7-14700KF and SSD and still have a lot of issues.

Strongbox "silence" bug also appears, had it happen like 5 strongbox in a row, had it happen much less today though, but still happens. The bug makes you unable to loot, use any abilities or roll.

Some campaign zones are still to large, especially in act 3.

Trial of Sekhema as 2 man group is just straight our weird. I took 200 dmg to my ES with 8k honour still left and my friend at around 3-4k honour and he just died. He didn't lose all the honour, but somehow his entire life pool went to 0? Honor is inconsistent throughout the entire party play in Sekhema.

Ritual tablet drop rate seem too low. I was running ritual and abyss the entire time, have over 50 abyss tablets and have around 5 ritual tablets left, but I even bought 5 ritual tablets so I would have 0 if I didn't.

Last league I found last citadel on 95, this league I got to 96.5 and didn't get to a single citadel, I do see one beam in the fog though, but they are still too rare in my experience, thankfully you can just buy fragments.

Loot feels good, and juicing is not as complex - make 6 mod t15 map with 40+ rarity+rare monsters, slap 3 rare tablets with either effectiveness, rarity, or rare monsters and you are good. Try to focus cleansed zones for bonus loot.

Loot distribution on the other hand sucks, only mobs worth killing are rares.
Should redistribute loot from rares to blues and whites, but keep total loot the same.

Map bosses are unrewarding, got 1 div from a boss the entire playthrough and that might have been very lucky. They usually just drop 1-2 maps and nothing else. Bosses should be something you look forward to.

Unique maps are unrewarding as well. Did the monolith map, 5 minutes for 1 exalt. Other's weren't much better. Make them rarer if you want, but also make them something people look forward to doing instead of skipping them.

Rogue exiles also feel unrewarding, rare and weak.

Abyss and ritual were my main mechanics and they are amazing. Both very lucrative and abyss very difficult as well. I started skipping abyssal depths and bosses later on, again probably should be something to look forward to instead.

Essences are amazing for crafting, they are in a good state now, they were horrible before.

Strongboxes and shrines also feel improved they are okayish now, not a main mechanics, but here and there as a bonus.

I ran around 30 maps with breach and got nothing, maybe some catalysts and decent amount of splinters. It feels very unrewarding, but other people like it maybe I just got unlucky or did it wrong. Probably good for XP though.

Delirium is barely even a mechanic, just some extra mobs and few emotions, didn't feel rewarding compared to other mechanics.

Expeditions I didn't do much either, but they seem rewarding enough with recomb mats and logbooks, maybe other people can shine some light on it.

Azmeri spirits got big buffs and are still useless. Chased it for a minute to kill the rare that drops nothing multiple times, started ignoring them later on. Again, it needs rework or removal.

Temple was really good in campaign. Dropped a lot of currency and let you use "free" currency crafts on your levelling gear. Added a lot of power if you cleared the temple. On the maps on the other hand it was horrible. Firstly, it drops no loot. Getting a useful room to rank 3 is almost impossible. Rooms blocking roads feel horrible, rooms should be counted as roads, connecting any other rooms to them too. Monsters inside also underwhelming, you get to the room to see 5 white mobs and 1 rare. Many chests around, but white and no loot. This was supposed to be Atziri's temple. I expected rare chest all around with 3x more loot then normal chests. Swarming with monsters, and not a single white monster. Any room with rank 3 should have a boss and couple of rares and plenty of blue mobs. It should have been very rewarding in both loot and XP. If it would be too rewarding you could have made it every 10-15 maps, but make people greatly look forward to it. Special rooms are fine, but they are the only thing worth doing besides Atziri, and considering you have to use a lot of road blocks to get to them, it's probably just better used to path to Atziri. So in short it's disappointing to me, expected a grand golden temple with a lot of monsters, challenge and rewards, got none of it.


Atlas is bland at the moment. It needs more stuff and I know more is coming in 0.5. Right now the only thing that is good to find are corrupted zones and they are just like X more currency on a few maps. Needs way more biome variety and whacky events, mechanics etc. The deadly map bosses that drop lineage supports are okay.

Local knowledge passive, if it reduces drop chance for currency on other biomes, is just a bad design. It should never be the optimal way to keep respecing the point between maps.

Map progression slowed down, and to me it felt better. Last leagues you got to t15 maps in a few maps which felt weird. Now you need to go up 1 by 1, at least I had to. Map drop rates are good, doing 6 mods waystones I usually got 2-3 maps per map so I had plenty even when vendoring any map that didnt have 40+ rarity+rare monsters.

Arbiter in group was also weird. You body block each other, boss body blocks you and can even push you out of the circle with attacks. Safe zones spawning off screen, sprint needing a roll before it and takes 3-4 more steps when stopping really doesn't work well when trying to get into a specific safe spot.

Monkey boss one shot ability shouldn't lock in on players if they roll after the monkey glows red, or at least that's my opinion, he preps for attack, I roll, he turns around and one shots me.

DoTs in general still seem to do a lot of dmg, including the degen grounds.

Movement speed should be a general stat, not ranger only stat. MS is quantity, defense and fun in one pack, as long as it's mostly on ranger's side you will have people playing mostly rangers. Every class should have access to it, if you're too worries about people stacking it too much add diminishing returns after a certain point.

Sprint feels terrible when hit, stun+fall animation is way too long, reduce the entire thing from getting hit to getting up by 50%. You are pretty much required to sprint half your map since there are many spots with no monsters for 1-2 screens, just to get 1 projectile and now you're praying your life flask can keep you alive.

I really like socketables and lineage gems. They let you fix your build in small or big ways. Hopefully we keep getting more of them each league.

Skill gems should allow you to pick and lower level than the gem level.

Belts need more/better prefixes, kinda feel like a lot of build have no good prefixes on a belt.

Exceptional items are fine, with bonus quality or sockets, but items dropping with ranks or tiers just feel weird to me, no reason for it, just make it a regular item and buff the base tiers.

I never liked rarity on gear and never will, gear is for power, map juicing is for drops :)

Also don't add divination cards they are a nightmare to move around and deal with.

New ascendancies seem to be really good and fun, they are a hit. Ascendancies in general are. Every node feels good. Passive skill tree is mostly just marginal upgrades, not sure if you can make it more exciting. There are time lost jewels and unique jewels and oracle/disciple if you want to tinker with the tree more, but might need a look into.

Last league I've played ES lich with 14k ES with 1.5s recharge delay and it felt good, but needed a lot of investment too. Now I had 4k life as a blood mage and had a lot of blood remnants and it also felt good. Friend plays 2.2k life, 1k ES, high evasion with dances and he also feels tanky, he is mostly running around with dot bow build so it adds to survivability. Also saw bears with life and armor being tanky. Seems like ES-life balance is in the best state so far, but it seems ES is still better. Not giving ES option to leech was a good decision.

I've seen some people complain about respec being too expensive? Didn't get that feeling myself, respeced a lot of points constantly and still got to 11M gold without any good way to spend it. Spend 2M on chest roll to get nothing at least. Maybe the game needs some gold sinks? Tried gambling a few M gold and didn't get a single unique belt, can you even get uniques from gambling?

Also exalt sinks, don't let exalt price drop so harshly in late league, not sure if tablet exalting will make the exalt price stable this league, we will see.



Overall I'm enjoying the league and now am finished with one build. I'm going to try djinn sorc next, it seems fun.

If you disagree with some of my opinions or had a different experience feel free to share or add to it.


Thanks for reading, have fun!