Djinn Baryas and Inscribed Ultimatums for SSF

Leaving aside the structure of the Trials for a moment, I do have a different bone to pick regarding the implementation, specifically for non-trading or SSF players. The tokens required to access them appear to be unique drops, and are competing with other uniques for that spot. Grinding for e.g. Djinn Baryas in act 2 is a long, boring grind, adding a second layer of RNG to the RNG-heavy trial itself. I found a second barya early, but needed a third, which has only just dropped now.

If Trials are going to be single-attempt affairs that require a randomly dropped token for subsequent attempts, then some sort of mechanism needs to be in place so that players see enough of these things dropping to give them a few attempts to ascend at each "level". Either have each Barya or Ultimatum give three attempts, at least until you're ascended three times, or have the tokens be raee drops for players that haven't ascended yet rather than unique drops, or something.

It's entirely possible that easing this choke point in the process might make the entire ascension experience more tolerable, and maybe even fun. I'm getting a similar vibe to the drop rate of rares and regal orbs in Act 1, which was far too stingy at the start turning the early part of the game into a real slog until that restriction was loosened up a little bit. Mitigating the access choke point for the Trials just a bit could have a similar impact, making them feel more like a test of skill and/or patience, and less like some sort of prank at the players' expense.

This is my main issue with the campaign experience right now. Apart from this, I'm still having a great time. Keep up the great work, GGG! Looking forward to the next update.

err, the first two trials are quest items and that are reusable infinite number of times until you finish them?^^

and teh third trial is like in poe1 at the start of mapping/end of story not before

Ive seen plenty of these things in my SSF playthrough. Even got my third ascendancy in the campaign on level.


Kill stuff, dont skip and speed through things, you are playing SSF. Gotta go around and refarm zones anyways for gold/vendor stuff, while you prog through the campaign.

2 camps before 70 in act III for weapons/armour (think this is how their windows work before they only offer three items after you reach 70)**.

** I THINK this is how they work as I kept checking them after I got to mapping but at 70/71/72 they only have 3 items now.

And yea your first two are quest items.

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tsunamikun#0433 wrote:

err, the first two trials are quest items and that are reusable infinite number of times until you finish them?^^

Oops! Missed that. I actually used a second barya without realizing, which I think may have blocked me for the sekhema trial. It could be my PoE1 experience betraying me there, because the Sanctum doesn't work like that -- I might have been assuming that the verty Sanctun-like Sekhema trial just worked the same way. I don't recall the game telling me that any point that I could retry the trial using the quest item, though.

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NicknamesOfGod#1810 wrote:

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tsunamikun#0433 wrote:

err, the first two trials are quest items and that are reusable infinite number of times until you finish them?^^

Oops! Missed that. I actually used a second barya without realizing, which I think may have blocked me for the sekhema trial. It could be my PoE1 experience betraying me there, because the Sanctum doesn't work like that -- I might have been assuming that the verty Sanctun-like Sekhema trial just worked the same way. I don't recall the game telling me that any point that I could retry the trial using the quest item, though.

Yeah, it's not super intuitive or well explained. I also didn't realize that you can leave the trial midway through, go and do some maps or whatever, and then come back and continue where you left off. You can even package a half-finished trial as a token item, again. I was like, "Why do I have to close the door before opening it again?" This is why.

That being said, I have the opposite problem. I have heaps of trials, and I don't want to do them. I could just not pick them up, but that just feels bad. I could do them, but they feel very time consuming and unrewarding. I'd rather spend the time doing maps and ... that doesn't feel right?

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ac429#4687 wrote:

Yeah, it's not super intuitive or well explained. I also didn't realize that you can leave the trial midway through, go and do some maps or whatever, and then come back and continue where you left off. You can even package a half-finished trial as a token item, again. I was like, "Why do I have to close the door before opening it again?" This is why.

Thanks for this. I feel like less of an idiot now.

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ac429#4687 wrote:

That being said, I have the opposite problem. I have heaps of trials, and I don't want to do them. I could just not pick them up, but that just feels bad. I could do them, but they feel very time consuming and unrewarding. I'd rather spend the time doing maps and ... that doesn't feel right?

Much like PoE1's Sanctum, which I'm not all that fond of. I feel like Sanctum didn't go core right away for really good reasons. I was really surprised that they'd re-used it for an ascension trial.