Perandus as master / Lab reward rework

Perandus is my favourite league mod and was all player's second favourite in legacy league after breach. I think it's bad not to have Perandus included in standard and further leagues, at least to a certain extent like most other league contents except harbinger were.

On the other hand there seems to be a widespread compromise amongst lab haters and lovers that it was agreeable to keep the labyrinth gameplay the way it is now, as long as it was completely optional like any map, just for fun and loot, and ascendancy points and enchantments getting earned somewhere else. But where and how?

My suggestion to solve both questions is to convert Cadiro Perandus into a forsaken master, and his master crafting abilities being the lab enchantments.

There are currently four levels of enchantments for the four labyrinth difficulties, and this could correspond to crafting limits at master level 3, 5, 7 and 8. Like Vorici crafting I would make his crafting options just fixed prices for something that could be achieved by random too. I would introduce a new currency item, the orb of enchantment, coming in the four quality levels of the current rewards and being upgradeable in a vendor recipe like sextants. Every act 6 to 10 and map boss has a guaranteed drop of one orb, act bosses of normal lab category, bosses of white maps dropping the cruel category, yellow map bosses the merciless category and red map bosses the Über-orbs. With using one orb you can randomly reroll the enchantments like you do now in the labyrinth; with Cadiro at the required level you can simply choose and buy your desired enchantment for a high price (like Vorici 6-linking).

The ascendancy points I would just connect to gameplay progression. You get your ascendancy choice and your first two points from Sin after killing Kitava in act 5, your cruel points for killing Kitava at act 10, your merciless points from Zana for completing all white maps and your Über points for completing all yellow maps.

My new Perandus lore suggestions is: Cadiro is escaping and hiding, because the Blackguards are hunting him. They have occupied his storage facilities and secured a large part of his treasures. You know those special Perandus monsters that have individual names and behave about like rogue exiles? I'll call them Perandus rogue exiles (PRE) for a lack of an official name. The PRE used to be Cadiro's best servants, bodyguards, alchemists, treasure guardians and debt enforcers, but the same evil power that made normal exiles turn into rogue exiles corrupted them and they betrayed Cadiro, cooperate with the Blackguards to hunt him down or simply stole his treasures.

My gameplay suggestion is to separate the Perandus chests from the monsters around them.
You encounter PREs on a random base roaming the wilderness just like normal rogue exiles, independent from finding Cadiro, and they drop normal loot and Perandus coins. The PRE might have normal Perandus mobs as guardians around him, like the rogue exiles in Vorici missions.

You also encounter Cadiro and he gives you missions like other masters. The mission types are:
- Kill the PRE (Vorici mechanics).
- Defend the treasure (Elreon mechanics). Cadiro portals away, and Blackguards charge in from all sides to destroy the treasure chest.
- Collect treasures (Zana mechanics). Cadiro opens a portal to a side area with a warehouse or marketplace tileset and you have to touch a number of treasure chest graphics, like touching the lodestones.
- Rescue Cadiro's secretary (Vorici hostage missions mechanics). Cadiro opens a portal to a side area with a roman-style palace tileset like in the labyrinth or several maps. You have to fight your way to the office, killing Blackguards on the way and finally the PRE that has made it his home before he kills the secretary.
- Train the bodyguard (Vagan mechanics). Since Cadiro was left by his servants (now PREs), he asks you to help in the training of a new bodyguard by fighting him.
- Train the bodyguard (Catarina mechanics). The new bodyguard follows you like the minion in Catarina's feed souls to the minion missions. The bodyguard doesn't fight himself, he just "learns" from watching your kills and it is your job to keep him alive during it.

In return for completing the mission, Cadiro gets experience and offers you an item the way it used to be. The coins don't come from chests, they come from PRE killing only.

This suggestion is overall a cheap change for GGG, since they could largely use existing mechanics and graphics and don't have to delete anything. It brings back a very popular mechanic in a more accessible way, solves the lab reward problems and also helps to take the pressure out of the breach / abyss 10 % spawn rate and Zana map mod mechanics discussion. Besides, we would finally see how many players still would voluntarily choose to run the labyrinth if they didn't have to for ascendancy and enchantments.