Eldritch Altars FAQ

what no visuals?! Was it that hard to slam a scarab, or currency icon on the rewards? I´m not interested if in the boss is going to drop vall or regal, just currency yes or no? If i see an interesting Icon i read the rest... Please reconcider that. I dont play expedition couse its too much to read. I was made to BLAST not to READ.

Thank you for Blasting...

Still super sus about all this. After all these i dont feel like I know what to expect. Maybe its becouse trust is hard to regain after its lost even if im willing to give it. I will play. But this time i wont pay till i like. Last time I gave you money to fix it even tough I knew it was a shit... this time no more candy till I get candy lol.

#makepoegreatagain

This FAQ is extremely disappointing as it completely omits the Eldritch Ichor/Ember issues that the changes to Wrath of the Cosmos will create. I have no hard numbers, but based on my own play over the last 2 leagues with the keystone, I would guess that at least 80% of the Grand Eldritch Ichors and Embers come from WotC farming. With a currency that is so important for gear, and after all the nerfs to loot already, this is extreme to say the least. Let's also remember that this is the 4th highest tier of this currency. It is very far from the best. Rolling Eldritch implicits was expensive in a lot of cases even with the availability of these drops. Now? Now it will be so prohibitive that many people will just sell them. Why does GGG continue to force players to not interact with systems because they have made it so rare that it just no longer makes sense to do anything but sell it (obviously speaking form a trade perspective here)?

As it stands now, I think without a 3:1 vendor upgrade for eldritch currencies, anything above the lowest tier is basically dead for most of the player base. Is this what is desired? In my opinion, the endgame changes introduced with 3.17 and 3.18 were the most fun I have ever had playing PoE. 3.18 was slightly marred by Archnemesis for me, but I was able to get past it with how much fun the game state was in. Making players grind hours upon hours or days upon days more for the exact same power level they had the previous league is not fun for the vast majority of players. It just isn't. The ones who do find that fun most likely already play other leagues to get that added challenge anyway (SSF,HC, now Ruthless). From an uninformed outsider perspective, many of these decisions seem to be designed from an engagement metrics view. I don't see another reason for them. I certainly can't see how this could be to increase player fun, which ostensibly should be the highest priority, especially coming off such a widely disliked league with massively disliked changes in loot.

I implore GGG to do something about Eldritch currency, specifically the accessibility of Grand level Ichors and Embers. Up until now they were farmable if you needed them, they were appropriately expensive without being prohibitively so. They had a healthy place in the market, and players could choose to farm them to sell, use, or a combination of both. Now, I expect the vast majority of Ichor/Ember drops will be the Lesser version, and there will still be many less of those than before. Please address these concerns.

I understand the idea behind these changes, and GGG is on the right track here. With some tweaks, it will be great!

To give you an idea of what to expect, we're planning to cover these topics:

Jewels and Ailment Mitigation (Nerf detected).
Courses (we'll see).
Eldritch Altar Revamp (approved).
Archnemesis (we love Bex!).

Thanks. But u should really do a post about loot before and state of loot in 3.20 it's the main topic that leaves questions behind.

but what about the REAL meat & potatoes: exile voice lines past act 4, and NPC story tweaks (Nessa, Silk, tasuni/irasha feather, etc)

I want the power fantasy of the game back in story form. Your voice work/script has always had quality but nowadays its lacking

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Most Currency rewards from Influenced Monsters already dropped in stacks of one, but there were a few outliers (most notably Map Currency rewards). The outliers are generally the only thing that is changing here in terms of stack size.

This is disappointing, as one of the main reasons I enjoyed running altars was because it was the most reliable way to farm awakened sextants and not have to rely on trading. I'll have to toy around with the altars come league start and see if that makes or breaks sextant farming. I would suggest making awakened sextants drop from Maven-witnessed bosses, as that would be very appropriate given that Maven is the source of elevated sextants and would alleviate the potential pains this altar change may cause.

This manifesto and FAQ is a mixed bag of pros and cons to varying degrees for me.

1. I sort of agree with the logic behind the Wrath of the Cosmos change, while I also suspect that Ichor/Embers may reach unreasonable prices as a result.

2. I like altar spawns being more frequent, but I don't see how you're expecting us to actually eyeball how many packs are spawning(good luck with that).

3. I understand your stance on boss rushing, but in all likelihood I'm probably still going to either boss rush or farm Jungle Valley-type maps that don't have an immediate boss spawn. I don't think you convincingly made it worth my while to change that strategy.

The only changes I have zero reservations about are the scarab changes - nothing but good news there.

EDIT: I still think you should be adding a 3:1 vendor/tab upgrade recipe for eldritch currencies.

With scarab being balanced can we talk about div card balance? There is a div card called More is never enough to redeem a scarab but it's so rare that noone ever completes a trade in. Hello?

You mentioned a tension with Maven witnesses map bosses around wanting low drop rates for awakened gems to keep their value, but higher rates to make these bosses worth fighting. The easiest way to resolve this would be to move other reward types to these bosses, also at a low rate. This way awakened gems are still rare, while overall rewards in total could be more in line with altars.

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krackhed999 wrote:

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EDIT: I still think you should be adding a 3:1 vendor/tab upgrade recipe for eldritch currencies.

Cannot agree more. We do need it, although with it this change is still a huge damage to ichor&ember crafting.

Q: "Can you make Altars more readable in the heat of combat?"
A: "There were plenty of things we could've done, but we didn't feel like it. Have fun reading tiny letters while everything is trying to one-shot you"