Wisp empowerment does not increase rewards or exp

It's very obvious this mechanic provides no benefit to the player. Given the significant increase in difficulty it represents, it should be very noticeably rewarding. Wisp empowerment has been bugged since it was reintroduced in Necropolis league, by the way. Can we at least get an acknowledgement of this issue?

Edit: Original post included Sentinel, which doesn't do much of anything in Ruthless mode, but it works fine in non-Ruthless. Wisp empowerment clearly does nothing though.

I run both of those mechanics every time they popup and get extra rewards (far more significant from wisps, but Sentinel is easier) from them every time. If it is bugged, it is probably exclusive to Ruthless and you'll likely get better feedback including actual details instead of "bugged, please fix".

I won't say no to more loot from wisps though. Last several good wisps I was getting anywhere from 2-6 divines in drops per map (Valdo's boxes, raw divines, lots of currency, bigger unique explosions, etc). But if I said it needed a buff, that would be a lie.

It could be bugged only for Ruthless, but you're the only player, including major streamers like Zizaran, who think either of these mechanics does literally anything but make the map harder for no benefit.

"you'll likely get better feedback including actual details"

What details should I include, other than there is no discernable effect on rewards or exp? Does this advice apply to your own anecdote about supposedly getting better loot, when no one else does?

Not sure about ruthless, but for normal it seems to work.

Wildwood was definitely detuned, compared to 3.23, but that is expected. I was skipping them completely this league while leveling due to added difficulty and little perceived benefit. However, last night i dropped a hinekora's lock in an ultra juiced T17. (Obviously still luck involved, and the juice was in my odds even without the wildwood, but I'm a fan now haha)

For reference, map was T17, decent quant/pack size. 280% currency bonus, 20% normal quality. 20% delirious (not currency orb). 4k wisp from scarabs. 4k+ wisp from wildwood (mostly purp tho). At least 1 EoW quant alter.

Also for reference, I'm not a mirror build. My gear has no business doing maps that juiced. I was on my last portal, playing super defensively, and I picked up the lock while running from a deli boss, right before i died. xD

As for sentinel, they seem fine too. They dont usually make things too much harder, and I often notice a good number of extra unique or a t17 map drop when they are doing their thing.

Been playing the new Necro Settlers league, so I finally got to try out the Wildwood in a non-Ruthless setting. And yeah, it's 100% bugged. It's particularly obvious when compared to non-Ruthless Sentinel, which works just like Sentinel league and gives a noticeable burst of loot.

My theory is that, in Necropolis league, when they introduced Embers of the Allflame, which allowed Wildwood monsters to be spawned outside the Wildwood, they imposed some restriction preventing the default empowerment on Wildwood monsters from giving additional loot/exp, but messed up and accidentally did it globally.

Wisps are a multiplier. If you're wisping mobs that don't have high loot like normal mobs on a normal map, then you're multiplying x by 0.00001 or some small number, and probably not going to see much returns on average. I was stacking many multipliers together (corrupted 8-mod, full quant tree, scarabs, unique mobs that have higher base loot, etc) to amplify the base loot and when the wisps landed, a noticeable jackpot every time one of the unique mobs were wisped compared to when they weren't. Even more if I did it on T17 maps, but I hated rolling those compared to a self farmed quad tab of 8-mod T16's.

To further prove I wasn't an isolated case, there have since been many videos released using the Scarab of Wisps that give mobs 2k empowerment, up to 4k if using 2 of them. The scarab was holding value around 10c each in Settlers base league, so if empowerment was truly doing nothing, then people would have noticed it and stopped using them. And some of my juiciest maps I was getting 4-6k blue wisps for the big currency explosions.

I'm not going to link someone else's YT content, but I recommend watching one to see for yourself the loot is noticeable when used with wisps. Sadly the scarabs and natural spawn only gives random empowerment.. no way to force the blue/yellow.