I’m not a campaign-hater: in fact I don’t mind running through it on new characters even within a cycle. But once I beat Majasa and head to the normal monolith (or sometimes when I head to it mid-campaign), the need to do 7 full timelines of stability plus the quest echoes just feels like an utter slog. I groan every time I come to this moment, as I know there’s a few boring hours ahead that are there just… because? For experienced players, you know that this is just a largely useless segment where it’s not worth juicing anything, paying attention to literally any rewards, or now using woven echoes. And your mind is on what you’re going to do in empowered, while you’re sitting there just zoning out. I find myself caring about nothing at all during normal monolith… not great for something that makes you spend a few hours.
One potential fix:
Make it a true campaign extension like it seems meant to be, and remove stability and the echo web entirely from normal timelines. In this case, each normal timeline would just be three short steps: the two quest echoes, then the boss (with the normal blessing reward). Make players do all 10 instead of just 7, and emphasize the story links. Then just wait until empowered to introduce the whole concept of the echo web - this would also help differentiate empowered monolith from normal monolith.
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I actually agree with the current scope of power creep. Dont get it twisted, the power creep is actually good, as it means more people are hitting empowered without getting too badly messed up, and are able to experience the real game with all the juicing and farming options.
But normal monos just drag on for far too long. I think the answer isnt to just remove stability, they still need to “Teach” new players how the mono system works imo without dropping them into level 100 60% more damage areas.
Instead there just needs to be more stability requirement drops, the later monos take way to long(90 monos looking at you) and story monos just need to be deleted. They are thematic to the overarching theme of last epoch, and the monos story itself, but I feel like they can be additional side content that can reward good leveling stuff like the personal items in chests. you could get personal items themed around the timeline. they would only be useful to new players, but vets could skip past the side quests right to the meat.
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Absolutely.
I see where you’re coming from, but to me this is the only part of the normal mono that even matters. I kinda just click the echo web randomly when I’m doing normal monos (unless I see an XP reward). The echo web is the part that is uninteresting and useless in normals.
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I will admit unempowered monos do feel a bit long. Increasing stability gains would be a welcome change. However, part of the game is learning to be faster at this… because it’s very speedrunnable.
Are you using all the tools available? Because you mention Majasa, I suspect not. I don’t even do her. She’s just +1 to all attributes, which is not worth the time. Sometimes I’ll take some CoF rewards for her and then do her after i’m already doing monos.
I start monos at level 30 in about 2 hours (SSF, CoF), and make it mostly through one timeline before I even hit 50 to go back and do temporal sanctum skip for the rest of my idol slots and points.
Glyph-of-Envy can instantly boost your stability, and you probably have at least a couple of these to use during the normal mono grind to speed it up. If you take glyph echos (and/or glyph rewards at CoF) you may get more.
The new Weaver tree has points that increase stability gains (I think you can get 15% on just the normal weaver points if you want… though I didn’t)
At some point, when the build is tuned up, and I have a little power under my belt, I start doing multi-pack pulls and speeding things up substantially.
The one critique I’ll make is that with the power creep over time, empowered monos do feel a bit soft… i’m playing self made beastmaster/bear/swipe based on the build I used last season and once I get some endurance/endurance threshold it’s very very strong, even morso now that I can get the 2-pc endurance threshold set bonus enchanted on any gear.
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I made 2 characters that both hit empowered monoliths even though the most played one (Warpath VK) reached empowered on level ~83. Before even finishing normal monos i got tired due to zero rewarding on sets etc.
The whole introduction to monoliths which is the normal difficulty is too long imo and i agree on adding stability on the empowered ones since it’s closer to the endgame. After harbingers completion I wouldn’t mind at all with the stability mechanic since it’s abby farm what you want for the rare build items until you reach certain corruption levels (e.g. Ubby) since GoE doesn’t drop in normal monos it’s tiresome to complete every single monolith just to unlock the exact same ones on higher difficulty. Of course it’s just my humble opinion.
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