So what do folks thing about Port Valbury?

[Norzan]

Finished with my new Rifle Commando on Veteran. It’s actually my favourite rouge dungeon so far, i find the other two somewhat boring (specially Bastion of Chaos).

I was expecting the aetherfire to be annoying, but it’s nowhere as bad as the Conflagration and specially The Immolation (this last one is the worst). You can avoid most if not all of the aetherfire.

I really like the overall look of the dungeon and those Lucius clones ahem i mean Watchers patrolling the areas is really cool.

My only complaint is that is a little too confusing to navigate through. Too many dead ends and just an overall confusing design. I guess that’s the point since it’s a destroyed city.

I also swear it’s the longest rouge dungeon. Took me probably an hour to fully explore everything, while the other two takes me 30 minutes tops. I was having no issues dispatching enemies, it literally feels that it’s longer than the other two.

Jarren is tall as hell. I think he’s taller than Benn’Jhar. Suprised the hell out of me.

[Safarel]

Instead the preface - to pass this place I have been unpleasantly surprised when I met two flesh hulks. After this place, I’m surprised when they receive a minimum of three)

But in fact, I feel great satisfaction from this place, it is interesting to do, it’s hard (sometimes artificially inflated hard, but on this later) and there is a delightful sense of novelty.

I should also mention the design of the location in general and the junkyard, in particular. Junkyard is beautiful. All these wood footbridge, pipes, all this rotten, decaying and poisoned with the boss - a huge decaying hulk give this place a unique charm.

Speaking of bosses. The idea of ​​patrolling watchers are very good, but sometimes it becomes a problem. Let me explain - if you are fighting together with two flesh hulk and with a single cadaver (very common situation) - that is normal. When you fight with three hulk, two cadavers and even a whole bunch of manticores bargain - it becomes complicated. But when to all this wonderful company connects the watcher, which that his flamethrower cuts all of your resists twice - there is already beginning to feel that this is too much.

This same situation applies to the moment when you come into the house with a locked chest, and the passage closes behind you, and in a very limited space there are 3-4 flesh hulks with hostile heroes. For most builds (except the best) is the imminent death.

The last boss is not bad, but it is strong enough in quantity, when Aldrich left alone, without sovih advisers - he is absolutely not dangerous. Perhaps this is something to do.

In summary - a great addition came, but (for me) is still not outdid Bastion of Chaos.

P.S. Of course, this impression of passing this place on ultimate difficulty.

[Tempada]

I like the area, but not as a dungeon and not even as a rouge dungeon. This area should be added to questing storyline with portal or ability to use personal portal.

This is exactly how I feel. It just takes way too long to get through in one go on Ultimate.

On my first attempt, with 1.0.0.7 release, my tanky Witchblade was somehow oneshoted down. I tried it again after two hotfixes and everything was smooth and fine.

Yeah, I was oneshot in the fort by an Aetherial Abomination (and this was after hotfix 2)! WTF? I don’t think that ever happened to me before this instance.

Anyway, it feels like a wasted opportunity. Cool to crawl through once as a challenge if you have a powerful character and can set aside a few hours hopefully without dying, terrible to return to for farming.

[mp84]

I enjoy the dungeon, though as others have stated perhaps I wish it wasn’t a rogue dungeon, mainly because of all the silly green stuff on the ground… Than again I’m turn cause if it wasn’t a rogue dungeon perhaps the loot in there wouldn’t be as good, since rogue dungeons tend to have good stuff usually I find when I do em.

Like it’s one thing to have to pay attention to the bosses and stuff they spew on the ground, but that static green stuff can be super annoying, especially if the boss or something doesn’t move off the green ground so I can attack it as Melee and since it’s a rogue dungeon gotta be extra careful with that stuff which is annoying.

I haven’t fully completed it yet (died on a little part that was pretty insane, looked like a arena of some sorts and tons of monsters came at me and eventually wore me down and defeated me, lol…)

But it’s still nice free content to have, and more importantly extra chances at legenadaries and such with the bosses.

[Norzan]

^ Probably the Flames of Valbury section. It’s like the Chamber of Souls from Steps of Torment but with Aetherials enemies instead.

I do have another complaint with this dungeon: there are way too many Hulks in it. Even on Veteran i was constantly fighting at least one and at one point i was fighting 4 at once. Is Port Valbury the Aetherial Hulk factory?

[arnge]

Already stated my thoughts in another thread but, i’ll quickly say it again, i love it.

Honestly my favorite of the 3 rouge likes and one of my favorite areas of the game tbh.

I feel that the first time going through it did feel too long but, that was because i was exploring everything. After the first time its just as long or quick as the others imo.

[alteisen612]

I love it honestly. It’s fun for me to have a complicated dungeon where you must know where are you stepping, rather than in SoT or BoC where you can simply hide behind walls until the traps die :p.

Unlike SoT or BoC, it’s very hard to do fast boss through as there’s many blockades and aether floor which can make your escape route limited. While many hate this, I love it. So I need to clear an area slowly, then I’ll know where to run when I get overwhelmed.

[system]

Love it aside from how many hulks/aboms/terraformers there are. Their huge hp pools combined with being potentially rushed and cornered in the environment by them leads to a lot of obnoxious deaths and tedium.

[system]

I didnt like it due to being all 1 type of damage. Aether resistance isnt exactly easy to come by at any level and more so sacrificing for it. Also didnt help the day is was launched also giving monsters massive oa. Killed my shielded cadie first time at lvl 70. and kinda pissed me off. Before patch i took little to no damage for my build then new patch im loosing hp like an aids victim.

[Desk_pop]

If dungeon is any indication of how the expansion is going to be, I won’t be buying it. If they add another like this, I’ll stop playing, stop buying this game for friends, stop recommending it to friends, and update all my positive reviews accordingly

1. Takes too long to get to
2. Ground effects damage is worst part of this game, and this dungeon makes use of it liberally.
3. Aether tornadoes take the terrible ground effects and give them legs. They apparently do Percentage based damage and pets are too stupid to move out of it. 
4. The map layout is way too convoluted and cramped. They took a big map and put a ton of winding crappy paths / houses in it so trying to dodge all the stupid #$%^ previously mentioned, you get stuck on stuff
5. Tons of random mob spawns behind you
6. AI completely ignore pets many times. Huge tough flesh hulks and abominations that ignore your pets and charge you repeatedly. Huge bosses that repeatedly spawn these guys. They will also spawn behind you.

All these factors combined with the “rogue like” garbage means so far “The Port of Valbury” has been the equivalent of me creeping through un-fun cheese BS only to be killed when random spawning mobs / aether tornados spawn behind me and sandwich me into something. I’ve not even made it to what sounds like frustrating final boss.

This is on normal mode as a level 60 conjurer with max resists and 6.2k HP. Right now I’m torn between trying to re-gear this guy into a different kind of caster, level up a different physical fighter, or just uninstall. It seems like the more Crate “improves” things the more convoluted and un-fun the game gets.

The whole dungeon feels extremely untested to me. I don’t see how anybody could go through it, and say “wow this is fun let’s add it”.

edit: It should be clear this dungeon is so frustrating that it motivated a previously happy customer who has put in 100 hours and bought it six times for friends to sign up on their forums and rant about it.

So either it’s REALLY terrible design or the direction Crate is taking the game is just not for me.

Either the above issues should be fixed or the rogue-like aspect of it removed, so it doesn’t feel like I’m wasting an hour every time I die to BS.

It’s supposed to be hard. If it is challenging to you, then ask yourself if your build/gear is as good as you think it is. I run it solo and multiplayer across half a dozen toons with varied specs and gear without problem and so do plenty of others. Instead of complaining, try adapting.

If what you are doing isn’t working…it isn’t the game’s fault, it is yours.
(ps. one of the builds i use to farm this is pet conjurer, so just stop)

[blawsonhull]

Lol i can roll it with my heavy 1h warder, but i ran into Valdaran this run and on ultimate he’s an absolute god. 83% resist is nowhere near enough.

[Dolpiff]

found it really vanilla and 0 effort…
its basically all assets i had already seen in act 1, with re-used Boss Models ad nauseum…

Even the endboss didnt feel like anything, and the mid boss giant ether giant i saw felt just like a palette recolor…

GD just doesnt have enough ennemy models to afford re-using them… just makes the game boring.

I was wondering wether to delete my shared stash and start anew but i just uninstalled the game after 1 run of the new dungeon… now its all about gearing a char for crucible, farm leg and get bored to death because nothing in the main campaign even gives half the legendary per hr ratio…

[rectifier]

Hard roguelikes are good, but not when they last 3+ hours.

um… 3+ Hours?? really??

when I play PB with my sorcerer and witchblade, it took about 30 and 20 minutes each. (time-count started after enter the gate)
so if calculate as whole-time, it won’t be more than 1 hour for my case,
it could be differ for build, or itemization and something else, but 1 hour vs 3 hour this gap is too big, so I can’t understand why.

[dekaron]

With good movespeed + dashes its fun but if you are playing something like a summoner it takes too long and you have to kill nearly everything on the path to move forward

The end chest is lackluster but there are enough bosses and heroes to get a few purples

[system]

Pros:

• Best place ever to farm my Ascendant and Haunted gear.
• The new MI axe from the hulk boss is, imo, currently the best melee weapon in game if you get proper afixes.
• The new MI belts are sweet.
• Challenge is welcome. Thanks.

Cons:

• Very very heavy on RAM usage. Heavier than any other area.
• The floating green clouds should be something you can kill. It’s absurd that you have killed everything on screen and you still have that green nuisance floating around for a minute.
• Prone to game freezes/crashes.

[dekaron]

I never noticed till now that one of the new MI belts I got has a level 85 requirement

[system]

I like the dungeon, but I hate aether ground damage, primarily because it is hard to tell which patch of ground is going to do damage and which isn’t. If it was much clearer I wouldn’t have a problem with it.

[Glimpse]

um… 3+ Hours?? really??

when I play PB with my sorcerer and witchblade, it took about 30 and 20 minutes each.

For 30min i can complete Wave 100-150 in Gladiator Crucible and get between 5 and 12 legendaries.

Then i re-run wave 130-150 3 times for around 45min total and get 40+ legendaries.

Valbury as well as all rogue-like dungeons are horribly unrewarding if we look at time spent : reward ratio…

[maximan105]

For 30min i can complete Wave 100-150 in Gladiator Crucible and get between 5 and 12 legendaries.

Then i re-run wave 130-150 3 times for around 45min total and get 40+ legendaries.

Valbury as well as all rogue-like dungeons are horribly unrewarding if we look at time spent : reward ratio…

It’s not all about time/reward ratio, it’s about enjoying the game. Some people (like me) might find crucible a non-fun way of farming, and others might not.

Personally I enjoy the rogue-likes a lot, having to actually pay attention when your gear is sub-optimal makes it very rewarding in a non-loot way.

[KoalaeiO]

So what do folks thing about Port Valbury?

I think that Aether Crystals should have aether retaliation instead of %damage reflected.