The state of Monolith (and the misconceptions around it)

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For those who don’t know me, this is coming from a player with 1.6k hours that has beat all content the game has to offer.

I’ve been thinking of making a forum post about Monolith since all the complains around it started. I didn’t want to make a post before I played enough to have a solid understanding of the system. This post will adress the major complaints I have seen on LE social media and Twitch.

Please listen to this interview. My opinions are influenced by my interpretation of what the Game Director states on it.

From minute 15:15 to 16:16

1: First bosses are too hard.

I understand that as a new or not experienced player a game can feel challenging.
I can proudly admit I died to PrimeEvil Dragon on my first time campaing, I have been a noob too. Everything is hard when you dont know what you are doing, for everyone.

I spent 4 hours yesterday on discord helping players who struggled on the first boss and where complaing on reddit. I messaged them offered to genuinly help them until they beat the first boss.
This are some of my experiences:

Player 1:
Dude claims hes good at the game, dosn’t get why he gets one shoted. I talk to him, his sorcerer build consists of Glacier, Volcanic Orb, Lightning Blast, Fire Shiled and Flame Ward. I explain to the guy that the build might not be the best, and suggest him to try a regular sorcerer build, that has a good balance and includes Focus and Teleport. I also explain to the guy what Glancing Blow is (cuz he dosn’t know) how to gamble and pretty much how the entire game works. The guy defeats the boss on his first attempt and feels great about his achievement.

Player 2:
Similar case, the guy has copied a build from youtube, has no idea he can gamble for uniques, reset the gambler or that he needs more than 100 necrotic protections before he faces an Endgame Boss. Same result, he is happy.

Both of this players admited later that the boss was easy and were happy with thier progress.
What I am trying to say with this is that the first bosses are not hard if you take 20 minutes to learn the game and open your mindset and accept that maybe, you are doing something wrong. I honeslty feel its just a matter of player attitude.
The Bosses are easy, maybe too easy.

2: Top players are beating the content in less than 24H becouse of their gear.

You dont need any gear to beat the first bosses in monolith.
In fact, they are so not hard, that you can beat the bosses wearing no gear other than boots and a weapon, and even without puting skill points into your damage skills. You can beat 80% of the bosses with a fresh character naked.

Proof on empowered level 100 bossses by Foe:
Naked Rahyeh
Abomination
Formosus The Undying
Emperor of Corpses (Final Boss)

You can do this with all characters. Notice that the Rayeth kill uses Volcanic orb with no skill points.

Gear is not major factor on this first bosses, skill is.
Skill takes time and investment, and not all players are equally skilled or improve at the same rate. Beeing aware of your skill as a player, is something everyone needs to do.

3: How can I learn a Boss if it takes me 1 hour to get to the fight:

There is only 1 thing you have to do, observe the mechanics, be patient and juke the big scary stuff on the floor. You can train this skills by playing the game.
The good players defeated the bosses blind becouse they use mechanics that are core in the rest of the games content.

I understand it can be frustrating, but there is a big factor people are missing.
Bosses are not a steam achievement, Bosses unlock power. A LOT OF POWER.
If you make it so you can get to the boss faster, people will be able to run a boss multiple times x hour, to get PERFECT blessings, and those are supossed to be chase items.

The 30 timelines to get to the boss also have the chance at droping at least T6 gear, keys and other rewards, so its not a waste of time like some people think. You can run monolith until you deserve to beat the boss.

4: Checkpoints

If I have learned anything from all this feedback, is that players are getting to the first monolith boss with no trouble, and they are wellcomed with a reality check that is too hard for them to handle.

The game has the tools to learn how to play, but maybe players are not finding them well enough so they can progress without actually learning anything.
The fact that you can defeat Wengari Fortress after dying 20 times due to the boss HP not reseting, is not the best training ground for new players.

Players want checkpoints becouse the rest of the game is a giant chekcpoint. I personally think that you should not be able to beat any campaing boss if you die to it.

EDIT
After hotfix 7.9d:
When you die in the Monolith of Fate or leave an Echo before completing the objective, your progress in that Timeline is no longer reset. Instead, you lose a number of Echoes Conquered and active modifiers, and can continue the run from there.

You are rewarded for dying, again…

6: Dynamic Boss protections

Good intention, not so great implementation.
While the long boss fights are GREAT, the dynamic protections system feels odd and forces a specific burst-pause-burst playstyle, hurting build diversity.
I dont have a solution for this, just keep the long fights!

My opinion:

All feedback is important, but its also important to give good feedback.

I will also add that from the top 1% point of view, it is too easy. Some of us already have all GG blessings and uniques after 24 hours. After 800 echos I have not died to regular echoes once.

Overall its a great update.

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It’s great that you take your time to help players with the beating the bosses.

The thing that you point out us exactly what my thoughts are, too. Gear is not important, you rely on your player skill during these bossfights. But contrary to your opinion, I think this is a huge issue and not a nice mechanic.

Why should I spend hours of playtime to progress in levels and gear when all this is not taken into account during a boss fight. I’m here for grinding my way to power. Because I lack mechanical gaming skills and reflexes, I am playing an ARPG. I want to farm gear, press a button and see my enemies die. When I get better gear, this should be going easier. I don’t see anything of this with the new monolith.

My characters are GB and CA capped with a decent protections rating. But I get oneshot because the boss doesn’t care about it.

Echoes are just for eating my time. The bosses now test my skills. Theres no smooth ramp up of difficulty. Its going from boring to frustrating in seconds when you enter the boss quest echo. Nothing before does give you a glimpse of what to expect at the bosses. Nothing prepares you for this. You go in with a character that facetank everything before to just get oneshot.

I am supposed to change my playstyle completely. I play a tank because of the save playstyle. I can go slower, don’t need to pay that much attention on the things that hit me. Now I go to the boss and need to run around like a chicken because it does not matter what class or playstyle I built before.

I said this on another topic: These boss mechanics don’t respect my effort in the character. They completely ignore my gear / build and force me into something I don’t have expected: skillful gameplay. This is not Dark Souls. I don’t like these kind of games.

While it is a welcome challenge for some people to test their skills, it’s absolutely against my understanding of an ARPG. I can not afford to play 10 hours a day. I’m here to slowly crawl my way to the top. I want to get mighty to beat the heavy stuff. As a casual player I am aware that this might take a lot longer. But I was expecting to get a chance to progress to that point.

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I feel you, but this is a different type of arpg.

Gear is important, as it will help you mitgate mistakes.
You can beat bosses without gear if u play flawless, if you got gear you wont need to play flawless.

You can see my first final boss fight:
Final Boss
My gear saves me of the first 2 mistakes, then I play flawless. This sentinel can facetank pretty much everything, and hes not even using block. But he is worth 800 hour grind xD

While skill is a huge factor, gear is also really important and meaningfull! they can hit you if they are dead!

I completly agree with you, the ramp is problematic, needs to be smother.

I’m here to slowly crawl my way to the top. I want to get mighty to beat the heavy stuff. As a casual player I am aware that this might take a lot longer. But I was expecting to get a chance to progress to that point."

I don’t think the devs intend that at all unfortuantelly. Judd, the game director stated a week ago in an interview that “not all players will clear all content”
Topic at minute 15.15

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Started mono around level 30, leveled up along the way, and beat it at level 44. Only had 50% glancing blow, 60% necrotic, and leech. It was a casual first try and needs a lot of improvement. But I was using a stash of some uniques.

I want to do a try hard, low level push where I put more thought and practice into it. Also want to do solo self found next time.

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I’m not really sure if this is intended. It is a different type of ARPG with 0.7.9. Before it was absolutely fine.

I think the biggest issue I have is that the brutal bossfights are so unexpected.

Until now everything was so easy. Bosses hat no mechanics at all. With chapter 8 they implemented the first real boss mechanics and it was a welcome change. Still easier that Wolcen on high difficulty, but more challenging.

The new bosses are really hard. It’s the most difficult content in a video game I have encountered recently.

I can stand that I have to learn mechanics. I’d gladly do this, if the game let’s me. But after a fail attempt I need hours to get the 2nd try. After this time I can’t even remember what killed me in the first place.

And why the hell doesn’t the game prepare me for this? Why is the content before so easy? The enemies before don’t scratch my armor but the boss nukes me out of the map. If my protections are so damn underpowered that I get oneshot instantly, why do I get to the boss so flawlessly?

I’d rather see the echoes increase in difficulty to prepare me for what is coming.

Don’t get me wrong. I really love the new monolith mechanics. I also want to have challenging content. But it’s far too unforgiving and punishing for me personally to not get frustrated.

I’m playing for fun. When I do 3 attempts on a boss it takes place over 3 days. Every evening I am able to do 1 attempt. More is not possible because of lack of time. This means there are 3 days I don’t have any meaningful progress in the game and ending every gaming session with a bad feeling.

After 3 attempts theres just no incentive left to try again.

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I agree with both @LizardIRL and @XLVI_carpo

Devs need to balance player skill and character power.

I would call my self a pretty decent player, especially in the aRPG genre(have thousand of hours in several other aRPG’s and a few hundred horus in LE)

I do like the boss appraoch EHG is taking, i REALLY genuienly like it.

BUT some of the boss mechanics do leave very little time to react, which feels really punishing when experiencing them for the first time.

After some tries you get used to it and you know what to look out for.

But with the current system after wiping at a boss you need to play another half an hour up to an hour to get to the boss again.

I like the general system of losing progress when dying, but maybe they should add 2-3 attempts for each Final Boss fight.

Also i do agree on the dynamic boss protection. This got ALOT better with 0.7.9c, and is way mroe subtle, but it is still present. I do hope the devs will find other ways to achieve the same goal. I am 100% behind the intent of this system, but as @LizardIRL said, the implementation is just not great.

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From what I get from the interview with Judd, it is.
It was like this before, people just never played the hard content.

High arena took 10x the mechanical skill, knowladge and gear than the current mono requiers. Most players didn’t really bother grinding that content so they never experienced it, but it surely existed!
Its not a surpirse the players who stomped mono are also the previous top arena players.

Hard agree, I cover that in the original post. The campaign does not teach you well what the game is about.

They are really not, If you need help il gladly help you beat them over discord or anything you need.

100% agree

That is completly fine! But you can have fun without beating all the end game.
If you know you play for fun and you want to chill, its ok, some content is not made for all the playerbase. Just becouse the content is there, it dosnt mean you will ever beat it, and thats ok. Most people never did solo ubers in D2 and they loved the game.

Keep in mind we got at least 3 more end game systems coming, the game will offer plenty of stuff to people who just wanna chill

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That’s also ok. I can accept that there’s high level content that is only beatable with heavy time investment. That’s ok.

But I don’t expect that content to be a lvl 68 monolith boss. If this is high level content, whymake it accessible at midgame?

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This is another missconception.

While area level makes mobs scale a bit to create a difficulty ramp, the area levels are a mechanisim to gate player power. The area level determines if T6 or T 7affix can drop. They also affect regular vs grand blessing rewards.

My gg geared level 100 sentinel who was Rank 1 last patch died to level 80 lagon times becouse I missplayed like a noob (the fight is really easy i just fuked up)
RIP
Your level does not mean the content is free (like in other arpgs)

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Thanks for that :smile:.

There’s a lot of frustration speaking out of me, currently.

I’m sure if I get 3-4 tries on every boss I’d be able to beat them. I have a slow learning curve with this kind of stuff :laughing:.

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Foe has videos on all the encouters, might save you alot of time and frustration!
All bosses on youtube

Its ok to get some outside help!

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I’m aware that this is a stupid statement I made. Of course I’m playing for fun, as do all others, too. I just wanted to point out that I’m out of fun currently. This may change again in the future.

I really appreciate this conversation! I let’s me reflect things better.

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I guarantee you when you beat the Bosses, and im sure you will, you will feel like a god that earned it!

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Ill partially agree with this, but youre saying all char can do this without any good gear, and to that I cant agree.

A mage has two vital skills to encounter the bosses wich is Teleport and Flame ward, with these 2 skills only you can avoid the “spikey hits” quite easily -which are the biggest problems with the encounters.

An Acolyte i cant comment much on because i havent tried the Monos with one yet, but from what ive heard its doable too.

Now (for me atleast) the problems come playing a Primalist or Sentinel melee build, that has no instant cast avoidance, and need to rely on chances to avoid things, thats where the problems come without really high end gear, and even then its hard.

If you can do it this easy with a melee char and semi decent gear, then i will stand corrected, and admit that its me that gotten to slow over the years :slight_smile:

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Yeah all can
ApprenticeCorner did it on primalist on ssf easily,
And sentinel can do it with any throwing build. I can do it on melee sentinel if people want to see it!

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I’ve not got to them yet (being on holiday in the arse end of beyond), but could they not introduce the mechanics individually in the quest echoes leading up to the boss? That way you get to practice the mechanics with less of a run back when you fuck up and die.

That and making the earlier chapters a bit harder to smooth out the difficulty as you progress.

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if you can beat a fire golem, you cna beat the first boss, nothing new in terms of mechanics, just cones and circles!

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Allright, Ill take your word for it (no need to show it :wink: ), guess i have gotten to slow then hehe.

Anyway new path notes and changes are up, so ill take another shot at it soon

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I think that is a great idea, even some slightly tuned down version with less area and less damage, but just to introduce player so at least some mechanics.

Maybe keep 1 or 2 mechanics to the boss, but at least bring some of the mechanics via the quest echoes.

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I think the bosses fight could beneficate from sound effect to help players react to big hits/AoE incoming, like there is for some PoE boss fights.

I took for instance the second boss fight, the Osprix one, on my first try of the boss I died insta at the beginning of the second phase. I evaded the six fire rays but in a way that made me go close to the boss. Less than a second before the rays disappeared he triggers his Aoe I can’t evade it, didn’t even know he would have an additional type of attack. It was impossible to escape this death.
To be honest it happened so fast I didn’t even know what killed me, I had to keep watching the boss on death screen to see its AoE triggers again.

And I’m playing a minion build so I “just had” to focus on my pathing and micro a bit the minions one, but I can easily figure out the difficulty (and frustration) some players will encounter if they have a subpar build damage wise.

To be honest I disagree with one thing in your post it’s the “some content is not made for all the playerbase”.

First reason I just can’t understand the concept that a dev team will spend time to make content that will only be accessible to a small portion of the playerbase unless you invest a huge amount of time. But I agree it’s a subjective reason.

Second because I do think it will lead to what we see in PoE, that the game is balanced around only the top 1% of the playerbase that shreds the endgame content, with all the problems that it caused. Which means in the future you will have to make the endgame content even harder for this top 1%. And therefore the players that are already struggling to complete current content will have even more difficulties and so on to the point that you will have an ever increasing split between this top 1% and the rest of the players.

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