and it needs some tweaks to make it not a waste of money DLC. The sad thing, it’s basically the same problems that every arena for every game like this that has ever been released has. Is there some kind of guide book devs follow that makes them scared of ruining the main game so they make the arena modes meh? Dead Island arena - sucked. Borderlands arena - sucked. Every time I’ve spent money on one of these modes it’s been a long term waste and GD is sadly continuing that tradition thus far.
My character, Softcore lvl 80 Conjurer running 4 pets when Crucible came out, just starting out on ultimate. Cruising along just fine, barely breaking a sweat in acts 1/2 ultimate. Can do crucible to about 110 aspirant reliably, 120 if I want a 50/50 chance of not making it. My gear is mostly all the blues i’d want and none of purples, so crucible should offer me great opportunity to at least round me out.
The rewards are significantly less for me than just playing the campaign in every way. Less loot - especially blues/purples. Ridiculously less xp. Maybe a few more recipes/rare crafting mats… maybe not hard to say. I’ve spent hours in it and gotten, I think, 1 purple.
There are so many mobs what the heck are non-melee supposed to do? Literally trapped in narrow tiny area with things flooding you from all sides. Then some of the bigger hitbox obsidian nemesis types double down on it. Overall the action feels good with the damage/health ratios… but when 2 skeletons are enough to block some walkways… this game mode needs a phasing potion like POE.
No faction xp - might be nice to let us champion a faction in here. It could be fun to play this even with the junk xp with non-max level characters if we could champion a faction… I guess this might replace bounties though rather than supplement, but bounties could change to be slanted more towards xp/gear/rare mats instead of grinding for rep rewards I could have maybe used 20 levels ago.
Towers are way too costly, didn’t do much, and I felt ripped off using/upgrading them as they didn’t help me advance in tiers. I realize you wanted an iron bits sink. But ffs, I made maybe 2 million iron bits going from 1-80. A single tower fully upgraded is what, 80-100k or something? And there’s 4 tower spots? So for every single iron bit I made in my leveling career I can attempt a fully decked out crucible 6x, or less than one good Friday night of attempts. And then what? Maybe it’s better the towers suck at these prices. Hint: Currency sinks that players learn to skip don’t function that well as currency sinks.
Specifically, I fully upgraded a
a. A lightning tower which did paltry damage, like so bad I was like “Hey is this thing even working?” and tried to lead mobs into it to see if the damn thing was even on. Tesla would ashamed.
b. One of the aoe buff towers with upgraded aoe. Which might not have sucked, if I hadn’t had to fight within it’s tiny postage stamp aoe that no fighting ever actually took place in.
Maybe there’s a sweet spot in the harder difficulties, but it doesn’t feel right so far.
I think a lot of people miss the point of Crucible entirely. IT IS AN OPTIONAL CHALLENGE. No more, no less.
If there were exclusive drops in Crucible or better odds of finding legendaries and/or blueprints, the Crucible would be a boost to any campaign character, onlt inaccessible to those that do not have Crucible. That is what Crate tried to do and that’s what they did.
Of course, with everything being random you will occasionally stumble upon a wave that rips your particular build to pieces, but for me, that could be just part of the challenge. If it’s too hard, try to come up with a better idea. Or just play the campaign.
I think it’s a missed opportunity at the moment tho, it COULD be a bit more rewarding to be similar to the campaign in terms of LOOT and XP
I was excited at the idea of being able to actually level up a character strictly by playing crucible (not sure where i read that), but it’s not good at all for that. It could be a solution for the people who are burned out of doing the campaign over and over each time you want a new character, similar to just doing rifts in D3.
The loot in the last 20 waves of challenger is 2-3 100% purples and lots of MI greens and blueprints ( if you dont have them all) and in the last 20 waves of Gladiator is 5-7 100% purples , lots of MI greens and blueprints as well.
So for a 5-15min farming , im sure is the best way to farm and have fun is you are max lvl.
On the other hand… in regards of Experience points, yes … they already said that they will increase the experience with a hotfix soon.
No the minimum is just 1 legendary. I just finished a challenger farming session and this is the result:
1 - 150 1 legendary
130 - 150 2 legendary
130 - 150 5 legendary (the best result I have seen so far)
130 - 150 1 legendary
130 - 149 nothing (one shot by what I think was a fabius with a crazy weapon on second to last wave)
You just need some good CC to not get swarmed/cornered, and as a conjurer you can grab Grasping Vines or CoF, or even both. Grasping Vines is so amazing if maxed imo, almost spammable and everything in a large radius is slowed or even completely immobilized (except some bosses ofc, but all my toons using it have a much easier time in crucible than the ones that don’t).
And furthermore, GV is also an amazing proc machine for devotion skills and item procs, I even have some casters who don’t use any attack skills at all(maybe a nuke with CD, but not all of them), only GV with a ton of procs(and some pseudo pets like Blade Spirit, Wind Devil or Nemesis), and they are by far the best and most viable casters I made so far.
Heh. My opinion is they should of charged 10 bucks but I can understand why they didn’t. But just like that’s my opinion, so is the OP’s opinion, an opinion.
It’s easily worth 5 bucks and plus Crate is hardly done tweaking it yet. Methinks they are reading everyone’s opinions and suggestions yet with the intent to improve it to satisfy as many people as possible.
You haven’t experienced the real crucible without playing on gladiator. The highest I got solo was Gladiator wave 108. After hearing about what spawns on the later waves, I don’t expect to ever finish 150 gladiator without a tier 1 build with BiS gear. The only beef I got with the crucible, is I don’t think the bar should be set that high to be able to complete it. They need tone down some of the waves, so builds that aren’t tier 1 and BiS have a chance to beat it. Multiple nemesis mobs on the screen at the same time including whatever else is in the waves is a bit too much IMO. I can take fabius, but fabius + adds + a bunch of heroes and/or boss mods. No chance. Like its not even worth trying.
Is your level 80 Conjurer your first and only character? In your first point you talk about getting less Epic and Legendary items in the Crucible than playing the game. I have leveled three characters to 85 and completed Ultimate with them. None of them got their first Legendary item until defeating Log on normal. Elite wasnt much better, and I really did not start getting Legendary items until I leveled deep into Ultimate with any of them. My RNG luck may suck, but I have a feeling most people have had about the same amount of luck I had in the beginning, especially with their first character(if that indeed is your first character, and I am assuming it is now that I look at your forum start date).
Plus, your gripe about drops makes no sense if you look at it in terms of level of completion. You completed the first 2/3’s of the first difficulty in the Crucible and you are expecting to get a ton of Legendary gear that takes of good bit of farming in the campaign to obtain? Speaking of campaign, that is where faction experience belongs, and Crate was smart for leaving it there. IMO, there still has to be a reason to go through the campaign.
The towers and cost can be argued either way. Some may feel they are week and cost too much, and some may not need them at all, especially in the first level of difficulty. The devs will tweak the towers regardless. I really like the feeling of being overwhelmed and running for my life. It makes the Crucible feel like a real survival mode.
I feel like I ripped Crate off for only giving 4 bucks and change for the DLC. There are still a shit ton of builds I want to try, and now this awesome add on for the game comes along to give me even more to do. I am a very satisfied customer. Maybe we can just agree to disagree OP.
I got 3 legendaries, plenty of epics and 2 epic blueprints after DYING on the last aspirant wave. Definitely more loot than I get running a boss or 2. Being able to fight multiple nemesis at once is fun too, while also being frightening and frustrating. I hate iron maiden and fabius. Maiden being the one that killed me. I much prefer running this to stomping around on ultimate. But that’s just my preference.
My 80 is my first character in ultimate, I also have a 75. I’ve gotten probably 30-40 legendaries so far (lots of doubles), but not really any for my build. I don’t think it’s fair to look at my post and think I want a “ton” of purps. I just want the crucible to be a solid alternative to the campaign for at least one facet of the game. Numerous runs for me have ended with 1 blue item (more than haven’t). Well, that’s great and all, but just playing the campaign is far more rewarding much less a dedicated farm. And frankly, even at 80 I’m not really at the point where I need blues, so really it’s been 0 reward… it’s actually been worse, because of opportunity cost I could have been playing campaign and leveling and getting more drops.
If the answer is that the crucible is only for people with already near perfect gear at max level playing FOTM builds, well, I don’t think they really designed for that considering you can go in at all levels, earn devotions, etc…
So I pretty much stand by the op, it has, for me, not been worthwhile time spent (other than it’s kinda fun, but the no reward saps the fun pretty quickly).
I absolutely agree on that.
I finished Crucible on Aspirant with my gunslinger Pyro (that has 11k HP, all res capped, 50K DPS, easily finished campain and shits upon most of Ultimate content), with “extra spawns”. Damn, i barely made it through 149 wave (had to face 3 Nemezis and several “normal” bosses at once), though managed to keep X10 multiplier all the time. And what i’ve got from that? a bunch of useless rares, uniques, some iron bits and 1 relic recipe (and 0 legendaries). Lol, i could get ~6 legendaries and several recipes, if spent that time on farming Cronley+Fabius.
Should i mention, that on Challenger, i just get oneshotted, and my DPS isnt enough to keep X10? Didnt even tried Gladiator…
WTF? Crate, should i make a link to this tread? http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3174
Have you forgotten “Profit & Loss”? It’s time to remember it. Also, take a look at Endgame Labyrinth in PoE - and how it actually rewards player for difficulty.
P.S. I like hard content, IF it’s rewarding, appropriate to the difficulty. Crucible isnt the one. It’s very hard, but at the same time, extremely unrewarding.
