My Feedback as a First-Time POE Player, Monk, Level 93, Playtime: 17d13h

Progression in the Endgame:
Jonathan mentioned that the experience penalty in maps is intended to encourage players to stay within their level range. However, I feel that progression in the game involves three key aspects:

- Player Skill: Players should learn from their deaths and improve their gameplay.
- Character Level: This is the area GGG is controlling by penalizing experience on death.
- Item Progression: This is where the game feels unclear. Beyond farming divines to buy items or picking up loot to sell, there’s no straightforward way to improve your gear. For example, it’s not like I can clearly assess that my body armor needs more magic resistance and then work toward crafting one with better resistances. Instead, the reality is: I know I need a better body armor with more magic resistance, so I’ll just grind divines to buy one because crafting it myself feels nearly impossible due to how unlikely it is to roll exactly what I need.

Defenses:
Endgame defenses feel unbalanced. During the campaign, they work fine, but in maps, they fall short. For example, in a T15 map, despite having nearly 9k evasion and 4.4k energy shield, I was one-shot by a white mob that ran up, jumped, and bonked me with a hammer. This has happened multiple times, and it feels out of place. I initially tried evasion + energy shield, later transitioned to Chaos Inoculation, and now I’ll likely abandon evasion entirely in favor of full energy shield. My feeling is that area damage deals massive damage, and evasion doesn’t work as mitigation for area damage, so it’s better to have a huge health pool—but maybe I’m wrong.

Crafting:
I understand GGG’s “gambling approach” to crafting, and I’m okay with it, but it feels overly punishing at times.

For item levels 75+, it might be worth considering ways to improve the chances of rolling higher-tier modifiers. For example, item level 84 could have a better chance of rolling at least mid-tier affixes.

Alternatively, tiers on items could remain intact after being identified, making crafting a little more reliable. This isn’t mandatory but could help bridge the gap until more crafting options are introduced.

Essences also feel lackluster. Most of the time, they roll T1 modifiers, which are rarely useful. Essences and Great Essences could have a slightly higher chance to roll high-tier affixes. This small buff would go a long way, especially since Essences can only be used twice (once with normal Essences and once with Great Essences).

Omens for crafting are too rare, but I’ll address this further in the Endgame Content section.

Endgame Content
- Breach: I’ve progressed through T1 to T5 and found it enjoyable.

- Ritual: The invitations feel too rare. Omens are appearing more frequently now after the 0.1.1 update, but if I had the Ominous Portents Atlas skill, maybe I’d find more Omens overall. As it stands, none of the Omens I’ve found have been for crafting, which is a bit frustrating. My suggestion is to modify the probability of an invitation appearing based on the total number of souls an exile generates in Rituals. When an invitation appears, the count would reset to 0. This would reward consistent Ritual engagement while reducing the frustration of endless runs with no invitations.

- Expedition: Similar to Ritual, the drop rate for logbooks feels too low. I’ve had 3–4 maps with rune stones that give +100% logbook drop chance, yet no logbooks dropped from magic chests. I think the drop rate for logbooks from magic chests could be slightly increased, while rare chests already feel balanced. Out of 30 level 79+ Expeditions, I only encountered the boss once, and unfortunately, the server crashed before I could start the fight. The overall rewards also feel underwhelming, but I understand that GGG is already aware of this issue.

- Delirium: I’ve failed this fight more than 30 times. It feels like a mob clear check, and with Herald of Ice not working and some modifiers outright removing power charges, it’s frustrating. Reducing the chance to remove power charges to 25% (like in maps) would help. Accessing at least T1 Delirium should also be made easier. Currently, Delirium T1 feels harder than Breach T5 and Arbiter of Ash T1.

- Pinaculum: After the recent changes to show Citadels on the map and increase the chance to fight Arbiter of Ash, this content feels great.

General Thoughts:
Breach and Delirium feel more like progress bars you need to fill to access the boss.
Ritual and Expedition, on the other hand, feel highly RNG-dependent. This makes about 40% of the content inaccessible to me.

General Complaints
-Level 82 Maps: The drops feel underwhelming. Perhaps skill and spirit gems at level 20 could drop more frequently in level 82 maps. Additionally, it might make sense for these items to start dropping in level 81 maps but at the current drop rate of level 82 maps.
- Atlas Tree: It might be worth considering a skill that increases the chance of corrupting maps to higher tiers. Rolling T16 maps currently feels too difficult, and such an option could provide a smoother progression for players.
- Terminology: Instead of using “tier” for both items and maps, it could be more intuitive to call map levels something like “Challenge 1,” “Challenge 2,” and so on. Additionally, consider making T1 the best possible roll for an item. This would help players more easily identify when an item has rolled a high-tier modifier, making it clearer when an item has reached its potential.
- Atlas Tree: Consider adding a skill to increase the chance of corrupting maps to higher tiers. Rolling T16 maps feels too inconsistent.
Local Knowledge: Cities could have unique bonuses or advantages, making them consistent with other biomes.
- Skill Tree Mechanics: When I removed Unbound Avatar from the skill tree, the linked support gems for the skill disappeared. Additionally, it’s unclear how to apply quality to skills gained from the skill tree—this could use some clarification or improvement.
- Mines in Ezomyte City: The mines here seem to lack any kind of lifespan or durability. Is this intentional?
- Show league events when a map is finished or when there are fewer than 200 enemies left in the map.
- Add an option to close all portals in the map device.
- The Corruption Boss (The Demon) needs better loot to make the encounter feel worthwhile.
-Add a feature to make Meditate compatible with the existing auto-assign mechanic for secondary weapons.
- Balance the mana cost of skills; for example, Elemental Expression feels impossible to sustain.
- Rare monsters with modifiers like Aura of Invulnerability can affect gameplay off-screen; for example, monsters that buff their minions with Blood Rage can do so from off-screen, making it hard to respond effectively.

Final Thoughts
Congratulations to GGG on creating a great game. I’m excited to see what the future holds for POE and its continued development.

PS: Map tabs, please!