The MI’s? Those belts aren’t all that great unless they roll with double rares. Run through a stack of 1000 keys and you might get ONE good belt. Crystals/Clusters/Shards? You can get those without a key, PV isn’t special there. Guaranteed? Can’t say as that’s happened for me, I’ve had multiple runs with nothing worth picking up but components. The boss weapons? Decree is strong, but not game breaking, and it’s basically the only reason to target farm that dungeon currently. Once you get a couple with fifty plus on the conversion roll, you never have a reason to go back.
SOT is indeed good for that, yes… But then, that’s not related to SOT being good, just their being very few good places to farm undead.
BOC is fun, yes… But fun alone? Is that ALL the value? Oh, wait, a few boss specific items. Woooo… Oh wait, they aren’t that great anyways.
I cheat the keys to ignore the mechanic. I don’t value the mechanic, therefore I circumvent it. I value gathering items, therefore I don’t cheat it. Simple as that.
I think there’s a huge huge difference between “cheating in a thousand keys” and just skipping content and “spawning in the loot” that you want.
Cheating in keys just allows you to be able to access content that shouldn’t have been behind some mmo wall that exists just to try and slow down gameplay to stretch out some kind of endgame. It allows you to actually access the content you want to play.
Cheating in legendary loot is different as it actually doesn’t give you access to content to be able to play it but rather let you skip content entirely and what the point of skipping said content to get the phat loot…why do you need the loot if your not going to be playing the content?
Seems like there’s a fundamental difference between the two…one unblocks you from content and the other lets you skip it.
I think the idea behind Skeleton Keys is fine. My understanding is that it is supposed to be something of an investment that will only payoff if you complete the dungeon. If you do so you will be ahead (of your investment and loot time), if you fail you lose your investment and don’t get the big prize at the end. I’m not arguing either way about balance of the prize but I do like the concept.
I like the rogue-like dungeons as they are. These types of ARPG are pretty meaningless anyway but I enjoy playing them to relax. Maybe this is why I don’t think about the game from the standpoint of efficiency in terms of farming.
I don’t think requiring a skeleton key to access them is asking too much since it is not difficult to farm for the mats needed to craft the keys. Maybe the MI & boss legendaries drop-rates should be increased though to balance the need to travel long distances just to enter these dungeons? This could improve the overall playing experience for all players I feel.
That part is ok, its more that you have to farm ectoplasm for it.
If there was some non-farm penalty this would be a different question, but the reality is you have to farm trivial areas for a crafting component to run an area that probably wont drop anything anyway… is that fun?
If the right of entry was either 1 tainted brain or 1 ancient heart or something this would be different, it still costs you something you can’t just do without thinking, but it doesnt involve running trivial content over and over and over for something.
Honestly, does that even sound fun to you? If you can step out of your argument for a moment, does running trivial content to get a crafting piece to run meaningful content sound like a fun game mechanic? I challenge you to say yes to that.
Maybe the dungeons could drop the harder to get mats in the final chest so it’s not so laborious to craft another key and that way you only get these mats if you complete the dungeon :undecided::undecided:
I don’t really have a problem with such mechanics in mmos…hell they’re the norm in many of them. Get item x to be able to run raid/dungeon x then hope you get a good enough pug group to complete the end boss and get awesome loot etc.
That said I really really don’t want such mechanics in my single players games…I mean if that the kind of thing I want I will go play riders of icarus or wow or some other mmo.
My family and I are in our first run through of the game and we are taking our time and enjoying it very much but when we got to the end of SoT I was like DOH a key fudge that…first thing I did when back in town was open CE and give myself 999 of em…lol
I think the labor you suffer for collecting mats do not justify the shitty rewards. I think it is not worth it. Because i don’t remember getting very specific good item from dungeons. Either rewards must be increased or mat requirement must decrease
Death is not permanent.
Ressource management is next to none. You can forget to bring potions. But not likely.
Exploration and discovery is quite inexistant after the first visit.
Only “hns” and “non modal” are ticked by the dungeons. So, not rogue-like.
You are permanently removed from the dungeon on death and can never return to that instance…you have to enter a new instance of that dungeon and you cannot even do that without exiting the game… Also for any HC players it’s very perma-death
Management of inventory as you cannot carry everything back out you have to choose what to take and what to drop
Not only that but as the link you gave states at the bottom, there’s a lot of dispute regards this one page as the definitive guide to what’s a rogue like as it also included ASCII and other such extremely outdated concepts.
Not to mention…Who has dictated that this is the ONLY definition of a roguelike that’s allowed ??
Eeeesh, so much crying about spending trivial components like Ectoplasm and Blood of Ch’thon. Like wow it is such a pain for you guys to get ectoplasm to the point you complain about it. Who the hell is farming that? Don’t know how you don’t have a continuously growing pile of it by now that you can never use. With over 200 units of it and many other basic components with the same or higher numbers. You deserve to be laughed at if you are complaining about that. LAUGHED AT!
Like if the key was made with Vengeful Wraiths I could get your troubles, but it’s not. As for the Bloods - do you run the dungeons back to back to back until you spend all of your components? Really stupid decision making there. If you are not doing that you should have enough of the Blood. And if you are going to the dungeons on difficulties different from Ultimate… you are wasting your time most probably and resources most definitely.
Here are a few tips if you want to lower your components expenditure:
Sell your precious little purple trinkets not for other trinkets, but for materials you use or know you’ll use.
Make some friends online that play GD and make multiplayer Dungeon clears. So much mats will be gathered that you’re dreams will be filled with them. What a revelation, right? And your precious keys will be spared the bigger the party is.
Crafting rando legendaries at the legendary blacksmith is for emergency use. If you are spending all of your resources for that you are an idiot and deserved to be laughed at. LAUGHED AT That is the only component sink I can fathom that can be gulping your components to the point of lacking them for keys. I’ve seen people doing exactly that with the hopes of finding their dream gear for X build while expending every precious resource they had on that char.
But somehow I have the feeling you are not doing something particularly wrong. You just like to complain. One Ectoplasm too much :rolleyes:
The issue isn’t that keys are hard to craft, it’s that the investment:reward ratio is skewed (as at least a couple of people outright stated). Unlike other methods of farming in the game, this one requires a material investment, but the payoff doesn’t justify this expenditure (even when we assume the player never dies). You’re straw-manning really hard in your response by the way, and being condescending won’t help convince anyone that you’re making a sound argument.
No need to be so rude. I spend almost all unique mats to craft random legendary. For me its additional way to receive it. Hopefully, unique mats are not hard to get and I don’t see much point in stacking them in inventory
What about this; if you don’t have a skeleton key, you can still do the dungeon, but with a stat penalty.
“Force open the ancient seal by sacrificing some of your life force”
Then you will get a debuff while you are inside -20% total hp/dmg, or whatever. It could be increasing in intensity as the time passes (starts at 0%, increases by 2% every minute), bringing some new challenges, builds. Speedrun BOC build ultimate before bleeding out, or something
I think this is a interesting dicussion, personally I prefer the Diablo 2 “gated” system where übers are locked behind some bosses and the items you get in such harder events are specific (unique in a sense) too. It makes doing these kind of places worthwhile and entertaining
