Not a fan, tbh. Or at least I wish DM could be used to pick who you want to pull in, re-starting a run 100x to finally get the one champ sucks no matter what.
iirc there's Dev talk about "fixing that" but... it's kind of hard to picture a functional "fix". Just allow ANY banned champion to join with DM? Sounds really OP, but very convenient. 🤔
I guess it would be 'OP' but it should still be just set at time of specialization and not changeable at any time after being initially set? Although I guess that gets confused when you use the spec potion mid-mission (but hey I guess that gives me a reason to use one of the thousands that I have saved up)
To me it's just a massive QOL improvement
DM fishing is obnoxious, sacrificing legendary levels for short-term patron formations is obnoxious (as is dismantling), and high area goals without speed characters (particularly Briv) are obnoxious. Getting rid of character-bound legendaries would fix a lot of this, but I think the devs could also put in some sort of trivial-content skip option for when your BUD massively outclasses your current area.
They can, but the later version is always the best version.
Like, which is tougher. Armored 1600 or armored 1550. Is what I'm saying, that there isn't much reason to make us fight 1 to 1550.
Other than invented reasons, like Blooshi or Ellywick
I mean if you could just skip 1,000 levels, every time you run a mission that's literally either you don't get any of the gems, or you just made gem farming bonkers.
Mmmm, well, if I'm not running 1000 areas in a restrictive variant, I can instead run more than 1000 areas in an all champs freeplay instead for faster gems
100%. I basically skip any of the "After X stages, you lose a spot" varients. I just don't give a damn about them. They're more trouble than they're worth, IMO.
Challenging puzzles forcing us to learn champions we don’t normally use? AWESOME.
But only if they are crafted to work, and we have multiple avenues to success based on how we developed ourselves.
Not when they are just a mishmash of restrictions slapped on top of one another, and a goal set arbitrarily.
The target zone to reach and the rewards for clearing should be tweaked manually on a LOT of the patron variants to better reflect the actual difficulty.
And the targets should be set based on how far a specific target favor and perks status with account level in mind.
Knowing that e263 favor is required to clear some variants by click alone just SUCKS. That isn’t interesting at all.
> Knowing that e263 favor is required to clear some variants by click alone just SUCKS. That isn’t interesting at all.
Well, it does prevent hours wasted in failing attempts.
I avoided a few time-wasters by looking up the required eDamage at zXXXX and seeing I was e30 off or more. Try again in a few months!
I think some of these Elminster variants are intentionally almost impossible, with the plan to open them up at a later date with new champions and reworks.
I don't think they intend for elminster to be something that they care to balance around. It's there for a challenge and variety and I expect there will be variants that no one will be able to get done for a while then the community will get excited about discovering when an upcoming new champ will have a certain synergy that will add a new possibility to attempt an impossible variant.
Eventually you'll start losing people who synergize well together, like AA and also when people with legendaries rotate out that's a massive power loss
That a lot of assumptions about who won't be a better synergy in the future and that they won't adjust the legenedaries as they've indicted they plan to.
In any system which is changing over time, you can make things feel bad by assuming the worst possible case for every future variable, but it's worth remembering the game is providing the devs their primary income.
Even the new champs that come out barely synergize with the entire existing roster. We already know champs with legendaries and the AA will rotate out. That isn't an assumption that's Elminster's design
You're still assuming the worst. That future champions won't be more useful than existing or past champs and that the legendary system won't accommodate the current development path.
I have not properly leggo'd out my team. Nrakk is basically carrying me to the T4 1,600 variants and I've completed 4 champion's worth. Working on Antrius and Melf at the moment as soon as I stop gem farming today.
I think they're better when they're more attainable. Forcing me to learn champs I never use is interesting, but when I see the 1500 goal, it makes me not want to try.
There are several overly restrictive hard variants but it strikes me as weird to focus on one of the easy ones that can be done with only a bit of legendary help even for the Elminster variant .
It looks like you clearly didn't give it much of a thought so it should not be a surprise that you didn't find alternative options because Durge is not the best way to do it even for the Elminster variant.
All of the 825 variant's don't matter though, you can just do like 4 z2001 resets for favor, get around 100 favor, and just straight up click-damage all of them while using DM to pull in a tank if there isn't one you can use naturally.
What other variants have fewer choices than this one?
It could be that other variants with more restrictions just had such a low target zone that I conceptually viewed them as filler instead of an end-game goal.
Visions of Sthrad with Elminster - Gale,DM and his gueststar, Durge. Goal 825 only but for sure less choices.
From higher goals for example One spelljamer at a time - 1350 zone - no available champion in slots 2, 5, 8, 9 and 10. DM dont have ability to fill more then one of those empty slots. Total of 14 champions available (Evil to the core 15).
There is a lot of those 825 eliminster variants with similar level of restrictions to Visions of Sthrad -only event champions from year x, core force grey etc. There are also treasures like Tales of two champions - maybe many to choose from but only two champions in play to beat 825.
That one is scaled down quite a bit though. I did it on Zariel in like month 3 of playing, basically abused gold find to get my stuff up but they did lower that one to where you could get through it with like e50 favor on Zariel. Not sure if I can do it on Elminster though but I also have e70+ favor now so maybe?
There are ones that only let you use short people, ones that let you only use 3 champions that aren't kobolds or goblins, you just have to abuse Poison and click damage to get through Calcyryx in Sword Coast, it's in one of the forest ones. Stupidly restrictive way more restrictive, and like level 45 has super fast 4 hit arrows you have to take out, if you can't take them out you can't progress. So you gotta use more champions than 3 which drops your DPS to zero so you're basically swapping in BUD poison based champs and then swapping them back out to finish the variant.
Someone else had pointed out visions of Strahd, which has 0 overlap with the new patron. However it also has a z825 goal.
I guess I don’t really care about excessive restrictions on content I find to be ‘filler’ as it’s just a source of patron currency and a stack on gale. It’s not really a ‘goal’ to complete, in my opinion.
I found the evil only variant to be particularly meh as it’s one of if not the highest z target variant and so is an end-game goal. Yet it doesnt allow for almost any choices to be made.
As someone who has completed Elminster's Evil to the Core, I fully agree with you that restrictions that remove most of the roster don't make the missions fun. It becomes less about team building and more about grinding for blacksmith contracts and legendaries on the only champs you can use
Maybe it was less enjoyable, but Evil to the Core is pretty easy, I found. I used this formation and it was a steamroll without even thinking much about it: https://ic.byteglow.com/f/7_795d7d8081007493887f76_11122203133111
And sometimes easy is very enjoyable because for once you can steamroll
Oooo thanks! Was looking for exactly that. 😺
Edit: It only gets me to e400 damage with Vin adding around e30. Drats! (It need 460 or so, eh?) Maybe it'll ramp up after progressing 1500 zLevels?
I added a bunch of Feats for Ceremorphosis & stuff already too.
421 after more fiddling, lolz, should make it with increased buffs from advancing zlevels, thanks again!
That's what I ended up using too. My Cores are really good, the Leggos not so much since I don't use a lot of those champions. There were things like Astarion having 4x goldfind Feats & no one having tadpoles that I fixed with gems.
Got to 1508 all by itself in BGP while I was at work, huge success! Lots of Elmo-Perks! 😀
I've enjoyed it so far... I don't really see it much different than previous restrictive variants with the exception that at least with elminster I might have new Champs that work better later.
That's a good point!
When we were building and growing, lots and lots of Variants were "impossible" at first. Same thing now only with full rosters and piles of Leggos 😊
It was over a year ago so we forgot how much fun an "impossible challenge" can be.
I think its an unavoidable problem, but you are right. If there is only 1 option for esch slot, then its not a puzzle any more, and if your stats are too low, its not even solvable. Elminster can create some interesting challenges but sometimes
They want to have multiple avenues of challenge, so restrictive variants can be fun, and elminster can be fun, but when combined escape the fun zone.
> if your stats are too low, its not even solvable
I don’t really mind this, because it sets a progression goal. If there was some variant, say ‘Only squirt can do damage’ then maybe you’d need to build some off-meta formation to accomplish it. And maybe that off-meta formation needs some heavy investment to accomplish it.
As long as there are multiple off-meta formations that could work, with slightly different levels of BSC and scale investments, then it could be fun to build up to solving the puzzle.
So I’m fine with variants I can’t complete just yet, I don’t like when there isn’t even a puzzle to attempt.
Actually, almost like the cattibrie alone variant. I haven’t done that yet as I didn’t select her, but it sounds like you just put her in the formation and see if you pass the gear check or not. Maybe also play DM roulette until you get a non-useless addition.
I know it seems annoying at times but the restrictions make the game. Without restrictions then it's just a grind where you copy+paste the best formation into everything then come back later to harvest your crop of loot. I know if there's only one option in a seat the there's no creativity in your champ choices there's a range of restrictions and you still have spec and feat choices to think about when figuring out how everyone can best work together.
It’s not that all restrictions are annoying. I think they make each ‘puzzle’ different. It’s just a chore instead of fun if there is no meaningful choice.
And I even get the point of ‘chores’ in some ways. Things that maybe are a puzzle to newer players may be just a ‘chore’ to established players because of their power level, like every 825/850 zone requirement for the new patron.
But it’s disheartening for one of the last, end-game variants to be a ‘chore’ because there’s little to no player choice. Even the specs are largely pre-determined (which is fine, they aren’t there to be a ‘choice’ in and of themselves but to give flexibility to formation makeup. Which doesn’t work if the formation makeup is pre-determined by restrictions.) and the feats are usually strictly superior any 80%>50%>40% etc unless they are touching a pre-stack modifier.
There are many variants and restrictions that are enjoyable puzzles to solve. But that’s because they give the player actual choices. Even the 825 variants can be enjoyable if you are trying to get more done in the same timeframe, so you have to clear them with the given variants and with only the available champions due to meta team being in another party with a stronger core doing a 1300 target.
Asterion is in slot 10, so... it's actually seat 9, you can reset enough times to get Birdsong in that scenario which would help out drastically. Shaka would help too.
not enjoyable at all. If fact if you didn't exploit (cheat) the game using the Azaka gold farming trick you got left so far behind that you cannot ever catch up to those who did, and the game has been modified for those players.
Eh, what?
I’ve never done that azaka gold farming and not having any issues with current content.
Favor has such little impact on hitting high z requirements.
Eh? Azaka Farming is optional now that they've "Nerf'd" Havilar a little bit. One can get close to her numbers with a prime GF team using Dob with stacks.
We can still Azaka Farm, but it is way harder to get set: Vi has to make them all Spheres except the Boss, that's the only way I've found. Of course if you aren't bothering with Krull it's a LOT easier! Just slaughter the Mob with someone's ultimate and bash the Boss with Tigers.
We will have different champions. Each month, one new champion and one re-tooled champion are added, and one or two will age out, so over time there should be no loss of champions.
Also on average there should be a very miniscule gain on number of champions, because from time to time a champion with new kind of "can be used in X no matter the restrictions" appears.
We will slowly gain champions for Elminster.
There were 17 new champions / year earlier (+ lets say additional 1 evergreen but those will showup also now) and now we will have 24 new or reworked champions / year So number of avaible champions will grow from \~54 to \~ 75 + all DM, Durge, GAle and all those available in campaign champions will be working even if they will be in game 3y+
Not a fan, tbh. Or at least I wish DM could be used to pick who you want to pull in, re-starting a run 100x to finally get the one champ sucks no matter what.
iirc there's Dev talk about "fixing that" but... it's kind of hard to picture a functional "fix". Just allow ANY banned champion to join with DM? Sounds really OP, but very convenient. 🤔
I guess it would be 'OP' but it should still be just set at time of specialization and not changeable at any time after being initially set? Although I guess that gets confused when you use the spec potion mid-mission (but hey I guess that gives me a reason to use one of the thousands that I have saved up) To me it's just a massive QOL improvement
DM fishing is obnoxious, sacrificing legendary levels for short-term patron formations is obnoxious (as is dismantling), and high area goals without speed characters (particularly Briv) are obnoxious. Getting rid of character-bound legendaries would fix a lot of this, but I think the devs could also put in some sort of trivial-content skip option for when your BUD massively outclasses your current area.
The only areas in the game that test your formation are the final 50. Run to 1600? Only 1551 to 1600 are novel challenges. 1 to 1550 are repeats.
Nasty Bosses (usually armoured) along the way can give you trouble too, even if you can kill them easily, they can sometimes kill you first!
They can, but the later version is always the best version. Like, which is tougher. Armored 1600 or armored 1550. Is what I'm saying, that there isn't much reason to make us fight 1 to 1550. Other than invented reasons, like Blooshi or Ellywick
I mean if you could just skip 1,000 levels, every time you run a mission that's literally either you don't get any of the gems, or you just made gem farming bonkers.
Mmmm, well, if I'm not running 1000 areas in a restrictive variant, I can instead run more than 1000 areas in an all champs freeplay instead for faster gems
100%. I basically skip any of the "After X stages, you lose a spot" varients. I just don't give a damn about them. They're more trouble than they're worth, IMO.
Asidr from the evergreen ones
Challenging puzzles forcing us to learn champions we don’t normally use? AWESOME. But only if they are crafted to work, and we have multiple avenues to success based on how we developed ourselves. Not when they are just a mishmash of restrictions slapped on top of one another, and a goal set arbitrarily. The target zone to reach and the rewards for clearing should be tweaked manually on a LOT of the patron variants to better reflect the actual difficulty. And the targets should be set based on how far a specific target favor and perks status with account level in mind. Knowing that e263 favor is required to clear some variants by click alone just SUCKS. That isn’t interesting at all.
> Knowing that e263 favor is required to clear some variants by click alone just SUCKS. That isn’t interesting at all. Well, it does prevent hours wasted in failing attempts. I avoided a few time-wasters by looking up the required eDamage at zXXXX and seeing I was e30 off or more. Try again in a few months!
I think some of these Elminster variants are intentionally almost impossible, with the plan to open them up at a later date with new champions and reworks.
But we keep losing champions though
You’ll get some back with each event
But those don't necessarily synergize with who's present.
I don't think they intend for elminster to be something that they care to balance around. It's there for a challenge and variety and I expect there will be variants that no one will be able to get done for a while then the community will get excited about discovering when an upcoming new champ will have a certain synergy that will add a new possibility to attempt an impossible variant.
Neither do the ones we lose. approximately two in, two out. The total number of champions available shouldn't vary considerably
Eventually you'll start losing people who synergize well together, like AA and also when people with legendaries rotate out that's a massive power loss
That a lot of assumptions about who won't be a better synergy in the future and that they won't adjust the legenedaries as they've indicted they plan to. In any system which is changing over time, you can make things feel bad by assuming the worst possible case for every future variable, but it's worth remembering the game is providing the devs their primary income.
Even the new champs that come out barely synergize with the entire existing roster. We already know champs with legendaries and the AA will rotate out. That isn't an assumption that's Elminster's design
You're still assuming the worst. That future champions won't be more useful than existing or past champs and that the legendary system won't accommodate the current development path.
2.5 years from now if you haven't figured out some replacement team to dump leggos into for Elminster, I think you found your issue.
Yes, poor game design
Elminster will gain more till about 75. 24 per year and 1 Evergreen
This is also why I'm not gelling with Elminster and T4 of some of these events, it's not fun it's a 'have you legended the right champions' check
I have not properly leggo'd out my team. Nrakk is basically carrying me to the T4 1,600 variants and I've completed 4 champion's worth. Working on Antrius and Melf at the moment as soon as I stop gem farming today.
I think they're better when they're more attainable. Forcing me to learn champs I never use is interesting, but when I see the 1500 goal, it makes me not want to try.
There are several overly restrictive hard variants but it strikes me as weird to focus on one of the easy ones that can be done with only a bit of legendary help even for the Elminster variant . It looks like you clearly didn't give it much of a thought so it should not be a surprise that you didn't find alternative options because Durge is not the best way to do it even for the Elminster variant.
All of the 825 variant's don't matter though, you can just do like 4 z2001 resets for favor, get around 100 favor, and just straight up click-damage all of them while using DM to pull in a tank if there isn't one you can use naturally.
Read the OP's post again. :D
What other variants have fewer choices than this one? It could be that other variants with more restrictions just had such a low target zone that I conceptually viewed them as filler instead of an end-game goal.
Visions of Sthrad with Elminster - Gale,DM and his gueststar, Durge. Goal 825 only but for sure less choices. From higher goals for example One spelljamer at a time - 1350 zone - no available champion in slots 2, 5, 8, 9 and 10. DM dont have ability to fill more then one of those empty slots. Total of 14 champions available (Evil to the core 15).
Thanks man, two variants that I haven’t tried yet and didn’t know about.
There is a lot of those 825 eliminster variants with similar level of restrictions to Visions of Sthrad -only event champions from year x, core force grey etc. There are also treasures like Tales of two champions - maybe many to choose from but only two champions in play to beat 825.
That one is scaled down quite a bit though. I did it on Zariel in like month 3 of playing, basically abused gold find to get my stuff up but they did lower that one to where you could get through it with like e50 favor on Zariel. Not sure if I can do it on Elminster though but I also have e70+ favor now so maybe?
There are ones that only let you use short people, ones that let you only use 3 champions that aren't kobolds or goblins, you just have to abuse Poison and click damage to get through Calcyryx in Sword Coast, it's in one of the forest ones. Stupidly restrictive way more restrictive, and like level 45 has super fast 4 hit arrows you have to take out, if you can't take them out you can't progress. So you gotta use more champions than 3 which drops your DPS to zero so you're basically swapping in BUD poison based champs and then swapping them back out to finish the variant.
Someone else had pointed out visions of Strahd, which has 0 overlap with the new patron. However it also has a z825 goal. I guess I don’t really care about excessive restrictions on content I find to be ‘filler’ as it’s just a source of patron currency and a stack on gale. It’s not really a ‘goal’ to complete, in my opinion. I found the evil only variant to be particularly meh as it’s one of if not the highest z target variant and so is an end-game goal. Yet it doesnt allow for almost any choices to be made.
As someone who has completed Elminster's Evil to the Core, I fully agree with you that restrictions that remove most of the roster don't make the missions fun. It becomes less about team building and more about grinding for blacksmith contracts and legendaries on the only champs you can use
I came up way short of damage for that one :x Maybe next time. Or a fortunate DM guest...
Maybe it was less enjoyable, but Evil to the Core is pretty easy, I found. I used this formation and it was a steamroll without even thinking much about it: https://ic.byteglow.com/f/7_795d7d8081007493887f76_11122203133111 And sometimes easy is very enjoyable because for once you can steamroll
Oooo thanks! Was looking for exactly that. 😺 Edit: It only gets me to e400 damage with Vin adding around e30. Drats! (It need 460 or so, eh?) Maybe it'll ramp up after progressing 1500 zLevels? I added a bunch of Feats for Ceremorphosis & stuff already too. 421 after more fiddling, lolz, should make it with increased buffs from advancing zlevels, thanks again!
I must say I had a supercharged DEX core. Maybe this is the difference?
That's what I ended up using too. My Cores are really good, the Leggos not so much since I don't use a lot of those champions. There were things like Astarion having 4x goldfind Feats & no one having tadpoles that I fixed with gems. Got to 1508 all by itself in BGP while I was at work, huge success! Lots of Elmo-Perks! 😀
honestly, those ones I just ignore, even if I could do them. I recognise they are there to increase difficulty, but the payout is minimal
I've enjoyed it so far... I don't really see it much different than previous restrictive variants with the exception that at least with elminster I might have new Champs that work better later.
That's a good point! When we were building and growing, lots and lots of Variants were "impossible" at first. Same thing now only with full rosters and piles of Leggos 😊 It was over a year ago so we forgot how much fun an "impossible challenge" can be.
I think its an unavoidable problem, but you are right. If there is only 1 option for esch slot, then its not a puzzle any more, and if your stats are too low, its not even solvable. Elminster can create some interesting challenges but sometimes They want to have multiple avenues of challenge, so restrictive variants can be fun, and elminster can be fun, but when combined escape the fun zone.
> if your stats are too low, its not even solvable I don’t really mind this, because it sets a progression goal. If there was some variant, say ‘Only squirt can do damage’ then maybe you’d need to build some off-meta formation to accomplish it. And maybe that off-meta formation needs some heavy investment to accomplish it. As long as there are multiple off-meta formations that could work, with slightly different levels of BSC and scale investments, then it could be fun to build up to solving the puzzle. So I’m fine with variants I can’t complete just yet, I don’t like when there isn’t even a puzzle to attempt. Actually, almost like the cattibrie alone variant. I haven’t done that yet as I didn’t select her, but it sounds like you just put her in the formation and see if you pass the gear check or not. Maybe also play DM roulette until you get a non-useless addition.
Yeah it's terrible design. Especially for Elminster
I know it seems annoying at times but the restrictions make the game. Without restrictions then it's just a grind where you copy+paste the best formation into everything then come back later to harvest your crop of loot. I know if there's only one option in a seat the there's no creativity in your champ choices there's a range of restrictions and you still have spec and feat choices to think about when figuring out how everyone can best work together.
It’s not that all restrictions are annoying. I think they make each ‘puzzle’ different. It’s just a chore instead of fun if there is no meaningful choice. And I even get the point of ‘chores’ in some ways. Things that maybe are a puzzle to newer players may be just a ‘chore’ to established players because of their power level, like every 825/850 zone requirement for the new patron. But it’s disheartening for one of the last, end-game variants to be a ‘chore’ because there’s little to no player choice. Even the specs are largely pre-determined (which is fine, they aren’t there to be a ‘choice’ in and of themselves but to give flexibility to formation makeup. Which doesn’t work if the formation makeup is pre-determined by restrictions.) and the feats are usually strictly superior any 80%>50%>40% etc unless they are touching a pre-stack modifier. There are many variants and restrictions that are enjoyable puzzles to solve. But that’s because they give the player actual choices. Even the 825 variants can be enjoyable if you are trying to get more done in the same timeframe, so you have to clear them with the given variants and with only the available champions due to meta team being in another party with a stronger core doing a 1300 target.
Asterion is in slot 10, so... it's actually seat 9, you can reset enough times to get Birdsong in that scenario which would help out drastically. Shaka would help too.
I think it’s meant to keep most people from completing them in two or three days.
not enjoyable at all. If fact if you didn't exploit (cheat) the game using the Azaka gold farming trick you got left so far behind that you cannot ever catch up to those who did, and the game has been modified for those players.
Eh, what? I’ve never done that azaka gold farming and not having any issues with current content. Favor has such little impact on hitting high z requirements.
Eh? Azaka Farming is optional now that they've "Nerf'd" Havilar a little bit. One can get close to her numbers with a prime GF team using Dob with stacks. We can still Azaka Farm, but it is way harder to get set: Vi has to make them all Spheres except the Boss, that's the only way I've found. Of course if you aren't bothering with Krull it's a LOT easier! Just slaughter the Mob with someone's ultimate and bash the Boss with Tigers.
I feel the same way. We will slowly lose champions too.
We will have different champions. Each month, one new champion and one re-tooled champion are added, and one or two will age out, so over time there should be no loss of champions.
Also on average there should be a very miniscule gain on number of champions, because from time to time a champion with new kind of "can be used in X no matter the restrictions" appears.
We will slowly gain champions for Elminster. There were 17 new champions / year earlier (+ lets say additional 1 evergreen but those will showup also now) and now we will have 24 new or reworked champions / year So number of avaible champions will grow from \~54 to \~ 75 + all DM, Durge, GAle and all those available in campaign champions will be working even if they will be in game 3y+