Skeleton Key - do you think it's good for the game?

So, about the Skeleton Key. In my opinion it is a horrible gameplay mechanic, forcing you to farm rare crafting mats to access those three dungeons, which can be considered “end-game”. First of all, the drop rate doesn’t seem to be any better than elsewhere, you only get increased spawns and some nemesis spawn locations for your troubles. Meh. Also Twin Falls and Crucible (especially Crucible) offers the same, if not better legs/hours.

Do you think that the skeleton key should be removed from the game, opening up SoT, Valbury and BoC, or it is a good thing to have?

I don’t see why they exist in the first place. The area behind them isn’t special. The only thing within them “worth” the cost is the boss legendaries and the few MIs that only drop within them… And frankly that “chance of” is hardly worth it IMO.

I like it as is. The supposedly “rare” mats are hardly all that rare. All can be easily gotten.

Easy, but time consuming. If you are after legs/hour it’s really inefficient, especially corpse dust, I’m often out of it. Ectoplasm mass farming is easy, for blood you know who to kill, but corpse dust just sucks. Also, blood can be used to gamble armor at Etram (why is he hidden in the middle of nowhere btw?) and even gambling feels (no hard data) more efficient than getting the key, going to either dungeons and hoping for the best.

I think it is worth, but the place to use it is too far from the rift.

SoT, BoC and Valbury is fun and enjoy at the moment, but at last I get bored after few runs.

I don’t mind for the mats it use. I think it’s like buying a ticket to get inside the amusement park. (I’m full with items and legendaries, So the loot isn’t my target, but fun)

If you aim for gear --> crucible definitely where to go. :cry:

Seems to me like you want all Npcs/Endgame content/anything worthwhile to be located in town and/or very very easily accessible.
With no exploration= the world of Cairn will be a dead world.

That sound very familiar …and very…diabolical >.>

Eh… Not really. But wandering through the exact same terrain for no reason isn’t good either. There’s a balance to be had between forcing players to go somewhere, and just making it instant.

I asked myself why I’m happy to run and find some nemesis to slay for fun, but upset to go SoT, BoC and Valbury.

I’m boring that I must run too far(run across the same region again and again).
When arrived. I have to run through the end of the dungeon.

BoC and Valbury routes are acceptable(and still tired) and there’re some challenge on the way. But SoT is very bad, low density easy mobs and too far and have to go in dungeon before getting to the door.

It is not like finding a boss which like hide’n seek, when found I killed him then satisfy.

PS. After 20+ campaign(vetaran, elite, ultimate) for many max level chars. It may be ordinary to feel boring

Exploration is fine, and already part of the game. For Etram specifically, why can’t we move him to Ft Ikon or DC after we find him? He’s far from everything, early on you will be visiting him often, and it’s not like Kadala, you don’t have hundreds of blood, brains, w/e, to blow through at once, you gamble once or twice at a time usually. SoT is also annoying, the rift is way too far away and the problem is exacerbated by having to get a skele key too. It’s such a waste, as I love the dungeon itself, but usually can’t be arsed to farm the stuff needed and go there.

No one’s asking for that. A rift near the gates to these places is all anyone’s really looking for, and that’s not ridiculous at all. It boils down to “I want to play the game, not jump through hoops.” killing my way through SoT 1-3 to get to SoT 4-5? Sure, that’s cool. Needing to run through the small intestine of the world first? I’d rather not, it’s boring and not interesting after the first time. Needing a key made of some of the most important crafting mats in the game? Nope, sorry, you lost me.

Maybe if Shar’zul et al. dropped a skeleton key as part of their loot, I’d consider running these things. As it stands, the cost/benefit ratio is just not there for me.

than farm some other bosses, problem solved…

“Boring world in the way? Let’s add a means to skip it entirely!”

Seems to me that the more optimal approach is to improve the transition from Broken Hills -> SoT in some way such that it isn’t ‘boring and not interesting’. Every time someone simply suggests to skip some chunk of content to make farming easier, I feel like Grim Dawn may not be the game for them

Skeleton Keys were one of the first “why the fuck are they adding MMO elements to a single-player RPG” features implemented into the game. The keys are bad for two reasons:

  • The loot at the end of the roguelike dungeons suck, so even if you’re good enough to defeat the dungeon, the reward isn’t worth it. Woohoo! Steam Achievement for you. No reason to run it ever again.
  • The entry restriction incentivizes cheating; if the goal is to obtain more loot, why should I farm more keys when I can just copy my save file into a separate folder, run the dungeon and unload the spoils into my transfer stash, then paste the file back and run it again? There. Entry fee bypassed. Skeleton Keys are trivial.

Personally, I think that players should be allowed to enter these dungeons once per play session at no cost.

Now if only we could convince Crate to remove soulbinding…:rolleyes:

GD’s world shouldn’t be boring in the first place. Unfortunately there’s a slim chance of a world revamp…

Simple no.

It makes me farm areas so that I can farm other areas for worthwhile drops.

Does that REALLY sound fun to anyone? Make the areas harder if you must, dont make me farm trash to play the game.

They’re not such a pain in the ass to get that I have any real problem with them. The worst I can say is that they make balancing more difficult; you need to balance the potential rewards with what it took to craft to key on top of the dungeon itself and how hard it is to complete.

I dunno, if I had to take a side I’d say remove them, but it’s not really in my top thousand priorities.

I used GDSidekick to get a stack of 1000 Skeleton Keys and had done with it. Entering once would be nice, and fitting. Maybe one dungeon at least per session? And yeah, Soulbinding really should go.

What’s wrong with you people, don’t turn this magnificent game into Diablo 3, please.

Every roguelike dungeon has its perks (apart from obvious boss-unique legendaries), but they are all completely optional.

Steps of Torment:

  • relatively easy way for undergeared characters to farm some items (there is almost always a trove in it), experience, reputation and corpse dust (ectoplasm) for god sake. It’s still fun to farm in end gear because of how much havoc you wreck to poor skellies and how fast it goes.

Bastion of Chaos:

  • again, relatively easy dungeon for undergeared characters, you are guaranteed to drop 1-2 bloods + decent amount of chipped claws, also there are plenty of bosses/heroes that dropp decent loot. I made my first bank there by farming it on elite and getting Sharzul’s Worldeater drop. Good way to prepare your character to Ultimate

Ports of Valbury:

  • hated it at first, road to it is long af, however, it’s the best place in game to farm for mats. Plus it’s challenging for any character, end-gear or not, which is fun after you start facerolling everything in vanilla.

Again, dungeons are OPTIONAL content, you can never go there and be fine, keep murdering poor bums in Cronley’s hideout. Complaining about Skeleton Key is just ridiculous, I can’t even

The thing is, it’s not ABOUT becoming D3… It’s about the value. It isn’t THERE. The time it takes to gather these crafting mats and make the key is NOT, at all, worth the standard drop rate of these dungeons.

It’s not standard by any means. You can’t match PoV’s amount of mi’s/aether crystals/clusters/shards/other mats droped anywhere in the game. Plus there is a nice bonus in few epic/legendaries guarantee and a chance to drop game breaking weapon from a boss.

SoT is best for farming undead stuff: corpse dust/ectoplasms/undead-rovers reputation with added meaning of few transcended chests. Or are you seriously suggesting one should farm boring af Arkovian Undercity?

Bastion of Chaos is just a fun roguelike which is easily accessible. Fun is also value, right? Oh, you don’t think it’s fun? Don’t go there.

EDIT: there is ton of value in Crucible, it has everything people here complain about fixed. You literally are inside a small room with mobs coming to you, and there 50 chests waiting for you as a reward. Value that you can’t match in Vanilla game. Is it fun? Well, for one run, then it feels like a day job.

If you are just going to cheat in a thousand keys why not just cut out the dungeons entirely and just cheat in all the legendaries and items that you want? The time it takes to gather the mats? Are you not gathering mats while farming and playing the game?

As to complaining about having to kill trash mobs. Really? Roughly 90% of the game is killing trash mobs. Roughly 90% of most of these types of games is about killing trash mobs. If you can do it fast enough it isn’t an impediment. Yeah crucible is great but guess what crucible has? You guessed it, tons of trash mobs you have to slaughter. Also in crucible unless you are using top tier builds completing 150 waves can take a bloody long time with a higher likelihood of dying and having to restart from whatever point.

Is crucible not as boring as running through the beautiful world in the vanilla campaign? I mean you are locked in an arena that doesn’t change during the waves where you are forced to repeatedly murder trash mobs and the same bosses over and over.