Campaign feels amazing thanks to the side content!

Hi there,

It’s a copy / paste of something I’ve posted on reddit and while I know the staff reads it, it feels like something to be shared here as well. So, I played during beta and 1.0 mostly, I didn’t know how I would feel about doing the campaign again and… I love it. We’re still far from the variety of cool content we encounter in path of exile 1 BUT I’m glad Last Epoch follow this trail.

I’m not in monos yet and still, the way side content breaks the pace and routine feels great :

  • Loot lizards, love em and apparently we see less of them ? I saw a lot already and they do their job perfectly : whenever I’m on auto pilot toward the end of a zone, I get side tracked to pursue it AND I do that because I know I’ll get a ton of shards, some good idols and so on.
  • Nemesis, what a great way to give us good upgrades, I got two early exalted and two legendaries already and I’m only in Majelka. Not only does my starter feels more powerful thanks to a lucky drop BUT I also bought a stash tab for future characters, I got a great 2 handed weapon for a future sentinel and a great quiver if I want to try marksman. It’s my favourite content because not only does it give me power spikes but also will make me stick longer with the game. Great design.
  • Champions are great mini bosses, didn’t get a good items from them yet but they certainly are something and could benefit from being more scary ? It must be hard to balance them but I didn’t feel threatened, just happy to see a cool looking mini boss
  • Exiled mages, due to all the other content they lack behind in term of joy they bring, experimental items are okay but not game changer enough and I’m not really bothered to go out of my way to kill and exiled mage.
  • Dungeons ! I got a lucky Lightless Key early enough to skip part of the campaign and what a thrill that was ! Didn’t have the required level (20 ?) but was confident enough to try and it’s fun.

On reddit, I wrote this as an answer to someone asking for more significant power spikes or opportunities to feel a big progress gap and that’s it. I’m really enclined to suggest you add a tough mini boss BEFORE each dungeon for people who want to skip them on the first character of a season. Something scary enough to make newcomers go back to the critical path but would be a good challenge for veterans who wants to skip the campaign. In the end that would add a few minutes at most but would guarantee dungeon’s skip if you’re tough enough.

To conclude, I saw a lot of people complaining about PoE 2 campaign recently and one of the thing it lacks is all that content, in poe 1 we encounter a ton of great content that has its own progression : expeditions, delve, essences, abyss, delirium and so on. Having stuff to break the pace of the campaign is great game design and I’m glad EHG is leaning this way for the campaign as well.

Thanks for reading this wall of text.

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i came back from a long hiatus and rerolled Solo AF. which is something i NEVER do in other diablo likes.

besides the side content you mentioned i didnt get to experience dungeons, nor champions (wasnt in the last patch).

but everything else made the game WAY more enjoyable. exiled mages and nemesis were “risk vs reward” content that made me want to hunt them down. it also gave me an “alternate gearing path” which i highly appreciate (do not require using materials) as well as giving new life to LP 0 uniques which could become bonkers good that i find it hard to replace.

POE 1 and 2’s campaign is actually fun IF you have gear. the problem is the devs are really stubborn and refuse to let players actually gear up.

for poe2 specifically, i like deliberate combat. soulslike as they would say. but unlike soulslikes, actual soulslike are generous with giving players actual upgrades along the way. while in poe2 its all based on luck. which makes the formula turn so damn sour.

as for the lizards. i’ve only once or twice missed killing them, just because i was busy engaging something else. the time before running is VERY LENIENT. and i love it. unless you’re actively playing bad, you almost always manage to get their loot. its a happy time. compared to diablo’s loot goblins that sometimes just run away and you’ll feel slightly bad for it.

This is actually a great idea. I would suggest simply placing a mini boss there permanently. One that is in line with the dungeon difficulty. That way, if you can defeat the boss you know you have a chance of beating the dungeon. If you don’t beat the boss, at least you don’t spend a key uselessly.