Monolith progression speed could use a tune-up

Feedback and Suggestions
1

I’ve heard that this was already increased once, but I’ve only played on the current settings. Monolith progression is, in my opinion, way too slow. I know that arpg games are built on a certain dedication to grind, but the combination of early game ease, and then forced time to slowly grind up monolith levels results in a weird progression experience. When I first unlocked empowered monoliths, that was the first time that I felt that the game was at a remotely reasonable difficulty level, and that doesn’t come up until you’ve done hundreds of monoliths already.

I could see a few different ways to approach this. I think my favorite would be to just unlock the whole board of all levels (perhaps upon completion of the main storyline?) so that I could just zone into the last 3 monoliths immediately and unlock the empowered monoliths. Given the current game difficulty, this is completely achievable (though maybe that’s not intentional given the level disparity).

Alternatively, after clearing the first monolith, it let’s you choose between going to level 62 or 66. I’m not sure why this is a thing. Instead you could have clearing a monolith grant access to the next 2 or 3. That would let you more rapidly move through the map, but still require you to grind up some of the monoliths to get to the end.

After that, the corruption grind is still painfully slow. Ultimately, I feel like there’s too much weight put on the number of maps, rather than the difficulty of the content. I don’t know if this last one would create other progression issues though with having insufficient end-game content to support people that were now able to reach higher corruption tiers. Perhaps you could include a couple places where you can choose to skip forward 100 corruption, instead of just the one time when empowered monoliths are unlocked? I could see something like reclearing the last 3 on empowered, then going to the center again would allow you to re-empower them to 200. That would save a few hundred maps it would otherwise take to play on a harder difficulty.

2 Likes
2

yeah, treating “being able to play content that is hard enough to challenge your build” as a privilege that has to be unlocked with a significant grind is a really odd choice.

3

Eh I think there is a bit of exaggeration when it comes to how long normal monos are.

But I think they should simply do away with normal/empowered as a concept.

Corruption already raises the level of the normal monos if you choose to do it, its capped at 50, iirc the higher level monos at 50, are already at 100, so corruption could just be the sole core scaler. You already get a penalty to experience so that you cant just do really high level content in group or something and get insane exp yields. So just figure out a way to make corruption a linear scaler. like lets say all the monos start at level 70. if you do all idols/passives as early as possible in campaign you can hit monos at around 45~ the first few monos will be harder then they are now but not by much, but you are free to then push them. lets say monster level improves for every 2 corruption, so by 60 corruption its level 100. This means as soon as you hit monos you can start to grind up a mono to monster level 100. once monos are monster level 100, you start to get empowered blessings as they are now.

Have all the monos unlocked from the get go, no needing to farm the connections etc. so you can start at whatever blessing is your biggest power boost. And with the catch up mechanic, once you farm one to a decent corruption say 120, boosting the others to monster level 100 is a short hop to a shade.

There is still progression involved in setting your difficulty, but its more streamlined and not confusing as heck. Lots of new players ask the question “how do I unlock empowered?” because they didnt know to do all the 3 90s. or they are delaying empowered because they think they need to do them all, or did an unoptimal order etc.

like imo, since im a poe player, to me start of empowered is like white maps almost, if your build isnt terrible 100 corruption is a push over, and then 200 would be like yellow maps, almost all builds can do this, but it can catch you if you put bad mods etc. and 300 is like red maps, this is the actual real end game, now stuff is real and you need to be minmaxing some gear and defenses and playing well.

So normal monos are just this confusing second tutorial that while only taking a few hours if you do it optimally are still just kinda… not that important.

Edit: Also I think you also exaggerate how long it takes to farm corruption. Hundreds of monos? I think my 350 mono has like… 200 monos done? At 2-3 minute each, thats literally nothing in terms of game time. I think corruption increments are in the perfect place. Especially that now you can wipe them if you fuck up and get to high and start over. Catch up mechanic is also really good!

4

I think they cap out in the high 90s, though there’s not much difference.

I’m not sure this would be faster to get every mono to whatever the threshold for lvl 100 would be compared to running through the 7 monos.

This would be the time saver. If this were a thing you could just do the final 3.

5

This would be a very nice change but I’m certain this will not happen in the forseeable future ^^.

7

Came to the forums to suggest something similar, but slightly different.

I’m an admitted alt-aholic. The need to grind through normal monos for every alt is feeling pretty abusive right now. We already have a multiversal theory of the game, with echoes and monos and the timeywimey campaign.

So my version of this suggestion:
Alts should have access to empowered immediately if it has been unlocked once account-wide. These new wefts in the weave that we create can benefit from their alternate universe forebears.

It will still make sense for some builds to start with lower levels of mono, but for efficient builds or highly twinked ones, they can dive straight into the real end game.

8

Mike has confirmed that 1.0 will come with a change to monos where corruption is the main difficulty scaler, rather than echo mods as it is now.

9

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