The way Merchant’s Guild and Circle of Fortune work feels very uneven, especially depending on whether you play online or offline.
Online, Merchant’s Guild is a powerhouse because of the Bazaar. If you have gear, you can sell it to make gold; if you have gold, you can buy gear. This creates a self-sustaining feedback loop—gear generates gold, and gold buys gear—making it relatively easy to hit the gold cap. Once MG players have farmed enough, they can switch to CoF and enjoy both advantages at once: a bank full of gold and CoF’s improved item drops.
Circle of Fortune doesn’t have that kind of loop. While CoF increases loot quantity and quality, it doesn’t convert into gold, so CoF players often struggle financially. This is most obvious with Arbor dungeon access, which requires gold. MG players can run Arbor repeatedly because their wealth comes naturally through trading, while CoF players are limited by slow gold acquisition.
Offline, the problem worsens. The Bazaar doesn’t exist, so MG is essentially a dead option. CoF still has the same weakness—it doesn’t generate gold. Offline, Arbor runs feel like tedious grind rather than meaningful progression, and players who avoid the Bazaar experience the same limitations even online.
The imbalance isn’t limited to Arbor. MG players also benefit from convenience advantages like stash tabs. Early lucky drops can be sold to afford multiple tabs quickly, giving MG players better storage and quality-of-life options. CoF players, by contrast, must grind gold to unlock each tab individually, compounding the disadvantage.
The problem with CoF isn’t loot quantity—it’s how the limiting factors stack. CoF players get 1.5x to 2x more drops and better quality overall, but that advantage runs into two walls: dungeon keys and gold. Keys are shared between both factions, but CoF players hit the gold wall much harder, often ending up with more keys than they can realistically spend because they lack the gold to run Arbor as often as MG players.
MG players don’t face the same problem. They can gear themselves naturally, and once they’ve replaced MG-locked items, they’re free to switch to CoF later. At that point, their only real bottleneck is keys, since they already banked plenty of gold through MG. MG players deal with one limitation at a time, while CoF players face both simultaneously.
I understand that simply adding affixes like “% increased gold” or increasing item sell values would break the Bazaar and frustrate MG players, so I’m not asking for that kind of blanket fix. The Woven Echo tree is a decent design because it gives both factions slightly more gold if points are invested. However, for CoF players, these nodes often feel mandatory just to keep Arbor affordable, while MG players treat them as a minor bonus. MG sees convenience, CoF sees necessity—punishing CoF twice: first with the gold bottleneck itself, and again by forcing tree point allocation.
Prophecies offer a partial workaround, allowing players to target items like runes, glyphs, armor, staves, or idols. However, these drops are still random and don’t fully replace Arbor, which remains the main dungeon for pursuing specific rewards. CoF’s dual limitations of gold and keys make consistent engagement more difficult. One idea to address this could be a “ticket” system: whenever an Arbor key drops, a corresponding ticket could also drop, creating a 1:1 ratio. This would ensure that CoF and MG players face the same limitations, making access to Arbor fairer while keeping gold as a separate resource for other progression needs.
I would personally prefer this system over using gold as a “sink,” since only MG players benefit from the current model. The tickets could be spent to select modifiers instead of paying gold, and CoF could earn more tickets per run than MG, reflecting their stronger drop bonuses. This way, both factions have a more balanced approach to Arbor without creating a gold bottleneck for CoF players.
My question for the developers: is this double—or even triple—limitation on CoF intentional design, or could it be adjusted? Could there be alternative ways for CoF players to access Arbor—such as a separate currency earned through prophecies, favor, or other activities—so they aren’t simultaneously gated by both gold and keys, and don’t have to grind for each stash tab individually?