Early in the cycle I rerolled from a Warpath Paladin to a Harvest Lich, expecting to be able to use the Harbinger Crest to disable the harbinger fight and farm up gear in empowered monoliths before I fought my first harbinger, as my Paladin had never made it to monoliths. That seemingly was not the case, as my Lich is forced to fight a harbinger to unlock empowered monoliths, likely because the game sees that my Lich is the second character in the cycle and has decided to treat it as an alt, as far as this harbinger-unlocking-empowered-monoliths interaction is concerned. I suggest that the interaction should be changed to instead check if any character has already unlocked empowered monoliths, as I’m currently soft locked out of empowered monoliths as my Lich isn’t strong enough to fight the harbinger, even though I could kill the timeline boss pretty easily.