So I really think there’s some untapped potential for the monolith/endgame system. Currently, there’s little reason to do non-empowered monoliths and very little reason to actually clear the monoliths; rushing the objective as quickly as possible is the best way to do them.
I think the monolith “quests” we see should be more of the standard monolith experience; a randomized short quest, that incentivizes players clearing the map and completing a variety objectives.
Due to the storyline of having shattered timelines and different eras, I think a cool way to go about this would be to make the monoliths a randomize and short quest and/or story; which could be really anything - doing mundane activities helping ordinary farmers/workers, helping cultists, helping defend a siege, whatever. There’s alternate timelines and dimensions, it could be literally anything!
Here’s a couple examples:
The player appears in a forest environment, where some workers need the nearby forest cleared of wolves/bears/whatever so they can build a farm. The player’s objective is to kill all the monsters, then kill the boss that appears after.
The player appears in a cultist dungeon and tasked with stopping the ritual, killing waves of shadow monsters that spawn in as they search for ritual totems they must destroy to stop the ritual.
The player spawns in during a castle siege and must defend against waves of under attackers.
The player appears in an ancient nesting ground where they must destroy dinosaur eggs while being pursued by a giant dinosaur, or the resulting offspring will overrun a tribe’s camp.
A few formats or styles of map could be created, then monsters/tile sets could easily be substituted in, giving it additional replay ability. The “dinosaur eggs” could easily be substituted out for spiders, rat nests, etc.