I’ve been running the dungeons for a few months offline, but wanted to wait until I re-levled a character properly online in 0.9 to give feedback. I will only be discussing Temporal Sanctum and Lightless Arbor in Depth. I haven’t had much time to run the others extensively enough to form a current opinion on them. I will note that Soulfire Bastion felt to be the most balanced in both difficulty and reward, while T4 arena felt way too overturned at the 500%+ increased damage range. For each dungeon, I’d like to address a few different categories which include:
- Theme and level design
- Dungeon Mechanic
- Mobs
- Boss fight
- Reward
Temporal Sanctum
Theme and Level Design
I really like the theme and design of the dungeon. It feels maze-like and treacherous regardless of the timeline. The pacing and pack size also feels appropriate. One thing I feel that is off about the current design is what I’d like to call signaling.
Signaling is when the environment tells a story that guides a player through an area to give some familiarity within a random tileset. Path of Exile does an excellent job at this. No matter how many versions of the campaign you run or tilesets you encounter in a map there is key signaling throughout the environment that tells you roughly where you are. I believe the Devs attempted this with Julra’s notebook placement, but it still feels like the system could be built up a bit more. I don’t mind the current maze but would like to know if I am getting closer to a random exit. Currently, it never feels like I am getting closer or further away from my objective.
Dungeon Mechanic
The dungeon mechanic for Temporal Sanctum is of course time travel. I like the idea as a whole and enjoy its usage while traversing the dungeon. It has a “stay as long as you like” quality to it where you can double up on mob kills if you like the room’s bonuses, or just spam it to find the fastest route to the next room. That being said I don’t feel like there is enough being done with it. This is mainly because of the initial Julra encounter where it is fairly difficult to understand her slam attack.
For some reason, you are warping back and forth the whole time to reach her, but it never quite clicks that time warp can be used to evade danger. In an effort to ease new players into the slam mechanic and to make the overall dungeon feel more alive, I think there should be hazards put in place that require you to time warp before meeting Julra.
The sanctum could be filled with traps themed after Julra’s attacks such as the idols she summons. You could fill a hallway with idols that spam their beam attack forcing you to swap to the other timeline to break them if you want to continue. Sentinals could be stationed inside the large courtyards that do a much less lethal version of Julra’s slam forcing you to swap timelines to turn them off. I could go on and on, but the main idea is to provide the missing link that danger = time warp to not only liven up the dungeon itself, but make transitioning into the final encounter more natural.
Mobs
The only stand-out mob I’ve found to be an issue was the naga void husk in the ruined timeline version of the dungeon. Their attacks shotgun for a ton of damage and it feels like they could be toned down a bit. They don’t make encounters impossible, but if there was a problem spawn that just one shots people from time to time, I would bet my money on these. Outside of the void nagas the packs felt varied and balanced.
Boss Fight
Now for Julra herself. I feel this fight has gotten things almost right, but there are some fairly big design flaws in the way of making it perfect. The first issue is the void beam carousel. The mechanic does absurd damage at T4, is not interactive, and allows Julra to drastically reduce melee uptime. As for the damage, I think it just needs to be toned down if the mechanic is going to stay as it is. I’ve tried several setups now on Forge Guard and have yet to find a setup that stops the void beam from one-shotting me. Life stacking, endurance cap+threshold, health regen / leech stacking, 25% from anvil stance, 15% from Titan’s Heart, 30% - 45% DOT reduction, etc in all types of mixes and quantities.
Even when I do play the beams perfectly my minions are not so fortunate. At T4 my forged weapons were dying as fast as I could summon them. My manifest amour would last about 3 seconds. This is with 700% minion health and well-rolled t-18 to t-20 gear. The thing just hits too hard for a long-lasting mechanic, making it far too unforgiving.
To get a visual idea of the problems the void beams create view a video of the fight here:
You see around 0:44 onward I can not interact with the boss at all because she is nested inside the beams.
With regard to interactivity, I would like to see some way to end the void beams early. Maybe a console the player has to smash up much like the stone idols. She could resummon it just like the idols, but it would give melee something to do besides stand there and gape while she forces you into a 10% or under melee uptime window.
Lastly, melee uptime is atrocious because Julra often waddles into the middle of the spinning deathtrap. Now not only are you trying to dodge her powerful spells, but you are caught in this vicious cycle where attempting to attack her gets your phased by a beam, but not attacking her just means more puddles crowding the area to kill you.
The second issue is that every attack hits like a slam except for the small lightning puddle. I’ll start by saying I don’t mind slam attacks. I think that they have a place in many encounters when used sparingly. What I don’t like is when just about every move from an attack pattern hits like a slam. The cold slam is fine. It has a good delay time and is well-telegraphed. The shadow wave however hits too hard. It is almost impossible to avoid in point-blank melee that has to plant to land your attacks.
On T4 it hits my geared sentinel for around 70% of his health. A move that fast should not do full damage on start-up. I propose it does half that and ramps up to full as it travels down its line telegraph. The big lightning puddle is well telegraphed, but feels like it delivers too much damage, with too little time for point-blank melee to navigate out of it. I would propose the inverse of my shadow wave proposal for this. Have the lightning puddle damage taper off the further you are from the center of the blast.
Thirdly the Void Pools themselves need some type of lingering effect so you can detach from them early. It feels cheap when the boss nails you with guaranteed damage every time warp. The pools themselves are another skill that could use a damage tweak. Having capped defensives and 30-45% dot reduction still left me losing around 50% of my hp per tick on T4.
Lastly, could the idols that spawn in the divine era respawn at the beginning of your swap? I like the idol mechanic in itself, but Julra forcing you to fail it by spawning idols right before her slam after the first rotation feels bad.
Reward
I like the legendary system so the rewards really hit a sweet spot for me. Legendaries are fun to make and it makes the overall pool more relevant. Almost every unique feeling like it was designed to only be good after at least 2 LP is another story (one I won’t go on about here). That being said the last set of legendary item level unlocks doesn’t exactly feel Pinnacle.
In some ways I guess I should be thankful since T3, outside of the design issues with the boss fight, feels like the sweet spot damage wise so skipping T4 completely doesn’t feel bad. On the other hand, the jump from T3 to T4 content is so large gear wise I’m not sure there is anything you could reward the player that’s actually worth it. Once you are T4 ready do you actually care about a 2 LP Leviathan Carver etc? What are you going to use it on?
Lightless Arbor
Theme and Level Design
I enjoy the overall theme and atmosphere fighting in the dark provides. Rushing for the exit before your light fades out gives a very Darkest Dungeon vibe. Pack size and pacing is again well done. Signaling is also an issue here.
Dungeon Mechanic
The dungeon mechanic is also great here. Chasing down light elementals to fuel your light and the feedback you get as the light begins the fade makes overall traversal fun. Like Temporal Sanctum I don’t feel it does quite enough to tie Boss mechanics in with the dungeon mechanic itself though.
A simple fix for this could be to force the player to throw their light at the first bonfire they meet instead of being able to walk up to it to make it burn. In no instance of the dungeon are you actually asked to engage with the light toss mechanic. This one simple road block could make all the difference.
Mobs
To me, the most stand-out mob for this dungeon was the bats. Their damage is absolutely explosive. Much like the naga husks I think they could be tuned doward so they don’t just RNG blast players out of a dungeon run every now and then.
Boss Fight
I have very few complaints about the overall boss fight now that the slam has been made more manageable and the little rocks aren’t doing like 40% hp a pop. My only gripe would be that the big rock that spawns the Titan mob is a bit too fast. It hits for like 80% of my sentinel’s HP and comes out almost instantly.
If that could be tuned to drop just a bit slower I think the first phase would be perfect. Fighting in the dark also kind of sucks, but I wouldn’t die on that hill if we can’t get better fire effects to light up the boss arena as the fight progresses. The second phase feels perfect outside of the atrocious targeting issues detailed here:
Here is a video to help visualize big rock drop time:
As Seen around 0:05 onward throughout the first phase the titan rocks drops very fast.
Reward
The vault is great. Lots of loot tailored to how you want it. Not much else to say outside of the T4 bonus still suffering the lack of pinnacle feeling that I mentioned in the Temporal Sanctum feedback.
Conclusion
Well, that’s about it. The theme and level design is really great for both dungeons. The dungeon mechanics themselves could be tied to their respective boss fights more strongly. Lastly, Mobs and Boss fights could still use more tuning. I’ll try and find time later in the month to cover Soulfire Bastion and the Arena in more depth.