Ascendancy Trial Suggestions

Just some thoughts from a game designer (alas not working for GGG!). :)

- Let players choose which variant to do for third and fourth ascendance.
--- I.e. Third ascendance should be to complete either Sanctum or Ultimatum to the second stage (2 levels or 7 trials) at level 65+
--- Fourth ascendance should be to complete either 3 levels or 10 trials at L75+.
-- This way, players can choose which variant they prefer that suits their build or playstyle.

- Either make the token drops a lot more common, or perhaps let players try these an unlimited number of times to get the ascendancy points with reduced loot, and tokens are only needed for loot runs.


Trial of Sekhemas (Sanctum)

- Remove honour loss for being hit by monsters and bosses. Retain it for being hit by traps and environmental effects. (actually having to actively dodge traps rather than just suck it up and run through them is pretty cool). Rebalance it so that the threat of losing all honour to traps is a real one.
--- Just surviving the bosses is challenge enough, as is surviving the trials/completing them in the time limit/not getting hit by traps.

- Rethink the difficulty of some of the afflictions.
---How is losing ALL defence a *minor* affliction? Losing 20% should be minor. Losing 50% would be major!
---Minor afflictions should be either small deductions like 20% loss to damage/defence, or minor annoyances (not seeing ahead on the map, extra damage from traps).


Trial of Chaos (Ultimatum)

- Introduce something like the pledge from sanctum where after a boss, you can change or exchange a mod for some kind of cost.
- There seems to be some kind of freeze when you enter the arena or take an action like placing a soul core. These is the cause of most of my deaths - I get jumped by a rare mob before I can even move! Seems unnecessarily harsh.


I think that would help?

Some good stuff in here, but just wanted to point out a couple things.

-- You can choose which you do for 3rd/4th ascendancies, but 3rd is 3 floors and 10 trials, 4th is 4 floors and trialmaster currently.

-- Sekhemas was built to be a rogue-lite. If enemies don't do damage to more than your instantly-refillable health, it's a bad rogue-lite. Some afflictions could use some tuning or edge cases added though for sure (like, 0 defenses only cuts CI characters' ES by half or something). I do wish that honour resistance was explained as being more important as well...I got very frustrated at first when I wasn't focusing on using honour resist relics.

-- Chaos trials need some bugs fixed for sure and I like the idea of a single mod change, so one bad for your build early would be an extra challenge you could swap later, and not a run-ender (or source of stress through 10 areas).