Hello.
I’ve spent the last few weeks testing and writing this detailed feedback report about my experience with the Ascension Altar, and I’d like to share it with Crate.
Overall, I really like the Altar; one of my favorite features from the DLC. I understand that it promotes longer farming sessions because the benefits end once you exit. I know several people are against this, but that’s not the topic here. I didn’t fight this design. In my tests, I went for longer farming sessions, and tried farming stuff according to what would be the best benefit from the bonuses of each test (ex: Aspects of Beronath → clear all rogue-likes, Bloobound Totems → went totem hunting, etc).
Feedback regarding difficulty
The % numbers feel big on paper but the added challenge from max altar never feels overwhelming, no matter the difficulty setting. Veteran, Elite, Ultimate, and Ascendant all get spiced up nicely with a maxed altar, without ever feeling unfair or impossible.
That being said, on Ascendant sometimes things still feel easy with a finished build. I wish there was a “Death Waystone” feature for the Altar that I could choose to try at my own peril.
Feedback regarding farming
BIGGEST problems first:
- 5 Celestial Lotuses: +200% double rares
The worst value you can get from the Altar. Very high cost, almost zero reward.
Double rares already have a minimal chance of dropping. It’s gotta be what… 0.5%? Tripling a tiny number results in a tiny number. In tests, the amount of double-rare drops feels the same, and not enough to give me “the double rare I need”.
In fact, Celestial Lotuses are 100% superseded by rerolling. Players are incentivised to drop a single-rare of the item type they need, and then reroll the other affix at the inventor. For that purpose, with low drop-rate MIs, spending Soul Fragments (which have other problems, explained next) to increase drop chance is way better, and probably results in more natural double-rare drops anyway. With high drop-rate MIs, such as Nemesis gear, spending Soul Echos is the best way to go instead. So there’s no reason to try and farm a double-rare with Lotuses on the Altar. I don’t see how this could work.
- 5 Soul Fragments: +400% monster gear drops
High cost, low reward. Not worth the investment in the majority of cases.
The problem is that this only benefits monsters with medium chance drop rates.
Examples:
A) Monsters with 100% MI drop rate (Nemesis) will still only drop 1 item. No benefit here.
B) Monsters with ~20% MI drop rate will now have near 100% drop rate. Works great.
C) Monsters with ~4% MI drop rate will receive a buff that is so small it’s not noticeable. Most monsters still drop nothing. And this is where players need the MOST help! On top of all that, monsters become extremely tanky with all the extra health, and farming takes longer. Maybe with a higher bonus Soul Fragments could be worthwhile.
- 5 Celestial Essences: +500% Dread spawn
EXTREMELY HIGH cost, medium reward. The Dread spawns noticeably more regularly, so with a good DPS this is a nice way to farm echos, fragments, and dread-specific gear. But even then, is it worth the price? This would only be sustainable if the Dread itself dropped a Celestial Essence. At least you’d get a ROI after 5 kills.
- 5 Aspects of Beronath: +250% Rogue-like loot
High cost, medium reward. The extra loot is noticeable but nothing too crazy. I would probably buff these a little bit considering their high cost, and the fact they only affect 5 dungeons.
- 5 Frozen Asters: +250% Voidmarked chests
Frozen Asters are GREAT. Maybe too great? Low/mid cost, high reward. It’s no surprise that the most fun feature from GDCLS7 is also the most fun in FoA. Feels rewarding to hit many small chests along a route and getting a bunch of ambushes that allow you to farm Ashes and Souls while keeping combat chaotic, unexpected, and somewhat challenging. I wouldn’t nerf these, as it still takes planning and routing to get a good farming path and know where are all the small chests along the way.
However… it’s a pity that void-touched ambushes are only composed of Chthonians. This will get tedious in the end-game (just like ghost-only ambushes got tedious in GDCLS7). Would be fantastic if we could have ambushes of different factions.
- Skeleton Keys and Dynamites felt ok-ish
Even though they’re effectively low cost, low reward materials. With only 5 slots to occupy on the Altar, players will likely prefer Asters / Ashes / etc instead, and these 2 materials might see little to no use in the end game.
- Aether Crystals, Shards, Ashes, Soul Echos, and Bloodbound Totems felt well balanced.
That’s it. The materials spent in the center of the Altar all felt kinda the same.
- or does it “overwrite” it
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