The "Benjamin Button" method of Ascending: Fight Izaro back when he was alive

The time travel league and mechanic opens up an interesting possibility for an alternative for Ascendancy. You can travel back in time to fight Izaro and his goddess helper back when they were physically separated, making for a more dynamic and challenging fight. And, instead of being his skeletal self as players now know him, he's not only alive and stronger than when dead, but also a bit of a "biohacker" who juices up when fighting with random magical essences and/or tormented spirits.

Working with these ideas ...

Ascendancy points 1 & 2: You go back to when Izaro was quite old. He cannot maintain more than one random essence inside his slowly failing frame anymore. He has few helpers because Chitus is now the emporer. Izaro has not yet been thrown into his labyrinth and he is still a formidable foe. He has clearly gone mad by this point in his life.

Ascendancy points 3 & 4: Your ability to go back in time has improved and you go back to when Izaro was a middle-aged emporer. He can keep within himself up to two random magical essences. He has a touch of madness that you can see within him when you fight him. He has quite a few followers.

Ascendancy points 5 & 6: Your ability to go back in time has improved further and you go back to shortly after Izaro was crowned emporer. He is near the peak of his martial powers and he has a large horde of followers to help him, along with up to three magical essences or tormented spirits within him.

Ascendancy points 7 & 8: Your ability to go back in time has improved further and you go back to before Izaro was an emporer, shortly after the Goddess fell in love with Izaro and decided to help him seek power. Izaro is at the peak of his martial prowess, a warrior who hones his craft every day. He can keep up to four essences / tormented spirits within himself when he fights. Plus, the goddess can summon another god or goddess to help Izaro, drawing on her still-strong relationship with a number of the divine beings at this point in history.

Spoiler alert: The Goddess intervenes when Izaro is felled by a mortal blow and she keeps him alive. Also, the final time a character (nearly) kills Izaro (equivalent of eternal labyrinth), when Izaro is at his youngest and in his prime, he is injured in a way that prevents him from ever having children; this means that a character defeating Izaro for the final time set the events in motion that ultimately lead to Izaro being unable to bear an heir, going mad, creating the labyrinth, and crowning Chitus.

Doing a fun boss fight instead of the loathsome Labyrinth would definitely allow us to better Enjoy The Journey through Wraeclast.

Here is another idea:

You can go back in time, after interacting with that new female character they are introducing in the new league, to that point in time when they were constructing the labyrinth. Then there are no traps but special trap engineer/ contractors bosses that you can kill and thus disabling all traps in the future. Then you go back to the future and can complete the lab with all traps not functioning, like in the last izaro encounter after you defeat him.

Bonus points if the special trap engineer bosses have names that are anagrams of the people that came with the idea and created/ worked on the lab. I will really enjoy murdrering those.

I love the idea of going back to lab when it was being constructed and doing an ARPG run through, sans trap gauntlets, instead of the "platform" exercise of running through with trap gauntlets. There is surely room for something this creative in any time-travel-related way of ascending.

And, let's face it, once you know Izaro's moves he is dead, dead easy. It's surprising how easy he is, given how much power is gated behind those fights. Hopefully they can also use the time travel mechanic to make the Izaro battle(s) more dynamic and interesting, making the difficulty more intrinsic to the fight itself instead of making a key part of the difficulty about being careful where your character stands. Separating the goddess from Izaro and having them fight together would be a step in the right direction, in that regard.

On another note, I can empathize with wanting a measure of revenge for the presence of lab in the game. But, there are real people behind lab who were just doing their job and I think they probably wouldn't feel good about players conversing about murdering their digital proxies over and over.

Rhys does. https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Rhys_of_Abram

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Pyrokar wrote:

Rhys does. https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Rhys_of_Abram

I get what you're saying.

I suppose it's fine when somebody (probably, most likely) says they're OK with having a digital avatar put into the game to get repeatedly killed. Niers Automata has a broadly similar idea to what Rhys did, with senior executives of the firm making the game being the opponents in a particularly difficult battle.

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

Spoiler alert: The Goddess intervenes when Izaro is felled by a mortal blow and she keeps him alive. Also, the final time a character (nearly) kills Izaro (equivalent of eternal labyrinth), when Izaro is at his youngest and in his prime, he is injured in a way that prevents him from ever having children; this means that a character defeating Izaro for the final time set the events in motion that ultimately lead to Izaro being unable to bear an heir, going mad, creating the labyrinth, and crowning Chitus.