Beta 0.8.2h Patch Notes

Patch Notes
23

Yes, if you’re running the top 3 monoliths they’ll require 900 stability to do the final quest echo which would take 19 monoliths at an average of 50 stability per mono. But that’s still quite a bit less than 30 monoliths. It does entirely depend on how well your character can cop with the empowere monoliths.

The last few monoliths don’t have harder modifiers than you’d find in the “lower”/earlier monoliths, but because they have higher stability requirements you’ll likely end up with more, higher value modifiers which will make the fight harder. But as I said, farming empowered monoliths for the “best” blessings is an end game activity that does require a decent amount of character power.

Alternatively, you can reset your web & run the easier monoliths, that will take longer but it’s easier. So it’s good to have the choice.

24

I am going for higher stability node and it was reasonable hard and faster when stability was at 750 and now it is as bad as it was pre 8.2 imo. Try empowered Spirits of Fire and see if you can get away with easy and fast run.

1 Like
25

Still, making certain empowered MoF that were hard to begin with even harder and farming for 10% chance unique items much longer will not make me want to play more but quite the opposite. I wont even bother. Not fun.

26

Well you chose to make it thard then…the fact is you can (as i showed earlier) make it through at 32 echoes with easy modifiers.
Also to mention i did this with a newly made SSF Shaman (often considered to be one of the weaker characters) with an average gearscore of T 13.7

Sprits of fire is in the same category as Age of winter (both require 900 stability), so i dont really think there will be much of a difference.

27

@Cujo Spirits of Fire and Age of Winter are not same. Try it and you’ll see why and while you are at it why don’t you try getting Logi’s Hunger amulet and see how many runs and how much time it will take you to get it and same thing for Blessing Grand Spirit of Command After you are done with that and still having fun all power to you. I suggest EHG to roll back stability to 1500 as in first patch to make it more fun for you guys. I’ll just look for something else to have fun with.

28

In what way do you think those two monoliths are different? The types of modifiers that can crop up (I doubt but I have no proof)? The difficulty (they should be roughly as difficult as each other depending on your build)?

Now I’m confused. Spirits of Fire, Age of Winter & Last Ruin all require 900 stability to be able to do the boss fight (which at an average of 50 stability per mono on your second run would be 18 monos). So I’m confused why you want them to change it to 1500 (I’m sure the first patch had them at 1,000 stability).

From Tunk’s site, you’ve got a 2 in 8 chance of getting a Grand Spirit of Command blessing while the Logi’s Hunger has a 1 in 10 chance of dropping.

You’ve got about a 58% chance to get a Grand Spirit of Commane blessing in 3 runs, how many monoliths that takes will depend on your build & how far out you can push as well as whether you get “blocked” by a Shade and have to double back or not. If you’re lucky, that would be 30 monos for the first run (average of 30 stability), 18 for the second (average 50 stability) & 10-15 for the third (average stability of 60-70).

Each of those subsequent runs will be much faster than in the old system when the boss fight couldn’t spawn before the mid-20s & it was entirely possible to get stuck with 2 bad choices of modifiers. Whereas now, you have a massive amount of choice to not make your boss rung harder.

Personally, I don’t enjoy running monoliths (empowered or otherwise) looking for specific blessings, though I would for a specific unique & getting Wings of Argentus wasn’t fun.

1 Like
29

@Llama8 pretty much covered this, and i cant see either why they would be different (in terms of modifiers).

I did grind those prior to 0.8.2 (where imo it was harder, due to not being able to choose from as many modifiers as now), and i got them both in approximately 10 runs (cant say for sure as i didnt count the runs, but it was close to that).
I cant say it was “fun” running it again and again, but end game items in a rng based game often takes alot of determination, and to me thats what makes the feeling of finally getting the things im looking for much more enjoyable.
However im an older gamer and might have a different view on this than other people, so i do understand if other dont feel the same way, as games have gotten alot faster these days.

This is not what we want (atleast not me), i was just trying to say that the emp monos imo have gotten easier in the way that you can end up with the same echo count as prior to 0.8.2, but with alot fewer and easier modifiers.

30

Now I’m confused. Spirits of Fire, Age of Winter & Last Ruin all require 900 stability to be able to do the boss fight (which at an average of 50 stability per mono on your second run would be 18 monos). So I’m confused why you want them to change it to 1500 (I’m sure the first patch had them at 1,000 stability).

That post was directed at Cujo but somehow I clicked the wrong ‘reply’ button and it should’ve said: “After you are done with that and are still having fun… all power to you. I would even suggest to EHG to roll back stability to 1500 as in first patch to make it more fun for you guys.”

Spirits of Fire always had hardest modifiers plus significantly more echos in SoF are populated with high number of high health big mobs. If you play it you’ll know. Getting blessing you want might be 58% on paper but while playing I seem to see certain ones more than others and that across different characters and never once I got Grand Spirit of Command blessing. Getting 1 in 10 item is basically designed for bot farming. Not worth it and not fun. That 250 stability would save some time and made it a little more easier to get but alas. Running MoF while using using echos that give 50+ stability sounds good but modifiers get much harder and last longer as well.

Just finished another run at SoF at 32 echos and still no amulet and no blessing i’m looking for.

2 Likes
31

I don’t mind grinding to certain extent if risk/reward and time spent is worth it but when it turns into bot like farming and reward is not even that good and worth time spent in first place it just kills it for me. Let me farm boss without going through hours of content I don’t want to play.

32

If you could do that, then you would probably have the blessings and uniques you want in a day or two. And if you find the monos to be “hours of content you dont want to play” what would you actually do then? play ladder for the rest of the time?
Imo getting the good items too fast just isnt the recipe for making a game last very long.

I just made a run in emp SoF, and it took me a little over 1 hour with the same lvl 91 shaman in T14 gear (no CA gear). Cleared most mobs on my way through the echoes, and i found it pretty much the same level of difficulty as the AoW mono. Didnt have to choose any hard modifiers, and ended up at 31 echos with 2 low mods when facing the Boss :
https://imgur.com/FNE2Iu1

So even if they raised it back to 900 stability from 750, its still easier than it was before 0.8.2

33

Each Monolith Timeline has a fixed pool if avaialble Modifiers and Areas/Enemy Types.

I would not consider any of the timelines harder or easier though, because this is heavily build dependent.

The most noteably difference is that Spirits Of Fire has dodge and mark for death and deadly if not damaged recently as available modifers, which are not present in Age Of Winter, but Age Of Winter has Endurance as moidifer.

Deadly if not damaged recently however is a very easy modifer for alot of builds that have very good and fast damage projection.

Spirits of Fire does have Siege Golems and Ospirix Lightmages, which are considered to be some of the harder mob types, but that’s build dependant again.

Now on a more general note: I honestly don’t understand people complaining about empowered farming being to grindy.

This is an endgame activiy, this needs to have some long term goals. None of the blessings is actually build enabling, so there is not reason that you have to get those blessings.

They even reduced the normal timeliens even more with this patch, but roleld back a bit on the empowered ones, that’s perfect IMO.

The first one or two runs are roughly as long as the old 081 MoF in the empowered timelines, but after that the new system is faster.

We actually don’t have a major difference between 081 and current 082H in terms of echoe count.

And with the new system the player has so much control over the difficulty and there are so many strategies and nouances available.

All i can say to anybody that complains: Get used to the new system more, learn it, master it and you will discover that the new system is better, easier and faster if you utilize all tools available, while still offering the possibilty for extremely difficult high end content if you build can handle it.

The new system is so much more than brainless grinding that we had in 081.

You have so much control over the echo web and there is so much different thigns you can do.

34

I’ll start by saying: I think Sidad is being a complete jerk about this situation. However, I will say after just completing the Spirits of Fire monolith and then starting the Last Hope there actually is a noticeable problem with the progression speed in Spirits of Fire as far as I can tell. It really is much slower than it should be. Sorry I don’t have specific numbers yet but will add them soon.
Adding just now from looking at both of them - the first quest echo will probably take 5 or so islands to reach in Last hope, however it took at least 10 to reach in Spirts of Fire.

I am fully convinced there is some sort of bug slowing down the progression in Spirits of Fire specifically.

1 Like
35

I’m just curious, what is it specifically that makes me “a complete jerk”? :slight_smile:

1 Like
36

Hm, I will check later if that is actually true. I have not done SoF timeline for quest echoes yet, so it can’t confirm or deny this.

But if this is actually true and it’s something related to only that one timeline, it shows me that people complaining have not experienced the new system entriley.
Judging the whole system on one timeline is not very good.

And judgment based on an already established char that is half way progressed through the MoF already when the patch dropped is heavily skewed.

I will come back here later and report my findings.

If I can find anything I will open a report for that.

37

Repeating it again it wasn’t the case sadly. At least in the first few zones (i tried 2). So I could just be crazy as sad I as am to admit it:P But it really felt very very slow the first time I was going through that zone.
I will try to test it properly soon when I have the time.

38

So after playing with this patch for a while here is my feedback to the topic:

  • Empowered farming seems okay, takes me around 20-30min for a full boss cycle once everything is set up
  • Going through normal monos on a pre-geared character is a huge motivation drain though, might be perfect for first round or non experienced players but i dont see people doing that more than once in a timed environment such as seasons.
  • Unique/Set monos are kinda meh, there is so many of them and they all drop the same item… just had the isadora set 4 times in a row. Making them alot rarer but dropping multiple items at the same time might feel better.
  • The arena combat monolith are very unrewarding compared to the time they take
  • Exp tomes might be overtuned a bit on high levels? Not sure what the expected time to reach max level is but getting to 100 got alot easier now
39

I’m not entirely sure that’s true.
https://imgur.com/CC8VVCW

I’ve also had Siege Golems in an Age of Winter.

Yeah, I agree with you on the whole it being an end-game activity thing.

But this I think is just you being a curmudgeonly old young-ish man. Just because it doesn’t feel like crawling over broken glass with your fly unzipped doesn’t mean it’s brainless. If you want it to be “more challenging”, why haven’t you pushed your corruption to the high hundreds & get back to us on how braindead it is?

40

Hm, that comes from doing posts in the middle of the night lol :smiley:

I haven’t really done Süirits Of Fire extensively.

But i am pretty sure the other 3 modifers don’t exist in it though.

I might be mistaken but maybe they only can spawn as patrouling mobs in Age Of Winter, or at least their chance of spawning is more rare.

I am not sure what you mean.

I was just refering to people here in this thread being negative about the new system, that it feels to grindy.

The new system offers so much more from and echo to echo experience, because you have so much control over it.

In 081 you had no control and the echo to echo experience felt like a brainless grind.

41

So i tested this in pratice (without only doing the theoretical math) on a fresh untouched Empowered Spirits Of Fire Timeline.

If you travel straight away from the starting point to push the echo stability granted per complete echo you need:

  • 5 Echoes for the 1st Quest Echo
  • 13 Echoes for the 2nd Quest Echo

The 3rd Quest Echo is not possible by traveling straight outwards, because in a depths of ~ 15-17 echoes most ways are blocked by shade (which is the intended mechanic).

  • If you continue running echoes in the ~15 depth range you need +/- 9 additional echoes after you reached a depth of 15.

This result in a total of ~ 24 echoes to unlock the 3rd Quest Echo.

So i think Spirits Of Fire is just working fine, like all other Empowered Timelines.

If your character can’t handle going straight out and don’t care for modifiers this process will take a little bit longer, but i don’t think you will need 30+ echeos completed.
Even if you stay in very close proximity to the starting point you only need like 32 echoes completed, which still is the average of the old 081 MoF.

I am not sure what experience @Sidad has, but it seems that he might not understand the system properly,…

42

Did you not notice the stated requirements are different between the 3 monoliths?

Spirits of Fire says it requires 50/350/650 or 150/450/900 empowered. Last Ruin says it requires 50/300/650 or 150/550/900 & Age of Winter says it requires 50/350/650 or 150/550/900.