They die to quickly so i don’t see the issue. Also aether crystals aren’t exclusive to valbury 
can’t agree more, the crucible is very good to get gear, iron bits, crafting material etc.
I played/tried it, not really my thing but everybody has his own liking in playing the game.
I like to the main campaign a lot more and get the gear that way, if I need to speed it up I do the crucible.
Yes, but port Valbury is the thing that make me wish they did not have reflect.
I agree they die quickly, but with a chaos/energy burn build you have no other way than bringing a camelbak full of mana potions.
Honestly, i made 2 runs on Port Valbury and they were not satisfying as i had hoped. Some thoughts:
-Combat is too fast paced. Too many hulks and other big monsters rush at you at incredible speed, and instantly you’re surrounded by a lot of enemies, especially considering the vast majority of tight spaces. And, in general, monster concentration is way too high. It’s boring killing the same huge amounts of mobs over and over again without room for maneuvering.
-Bosses were really good! I really liked battling against them. Archivist Thelon was annoying as hell since he was constantly drying my energy, as well as the 3 final bosses healing themselves, but they offered a positive challenge!
-Performance was quite bad. The engine is old, i don’t think is a smart idea continually pushing it by creating such high performance intensive areas with a high concentration of enemy. i really hope the expansion will not make the same mistake…
-Rewards were quite underwhelming, i get more materials/legs by running others nonrogue like areas of the game, and with more fun. And without wasting skeleton keys and without the risk of being killed and loose the progress.
hmm, I’m not saying the port valbury’s reward is good or not
I just couldnt understand 3+ hour for one time Port Valbury run.
and, if you wanna talk about its reward,
yeah even it has awful rate of legendaries,
there’s far more precious items that called “MI Gregendary”
which could be farmed from port valbury only.
In my opinion, I was bit dissapointed of Palette Swap mobs, gears patch.
and still, there’s many things left have to be re-balanced.
but Grim Dawn is still good ARPG and it will keep developed.
I just hope Grim Dawn would go to right derection, for users and developers.
btw, I really want to see new method, which could counter balance of only-reducing resitance meta or make another synergy.
just nerfing resistance debuffs is not enough.
proper nerf would be good, but we need more than that.
we need something another system at the same time take balancing resistance debuffs. I mean, new synergy source, something like that.