Pilgrim's Traverse

Now that we know the first info on the deep dungeon 4, lets summarise a bit:
-We're getting 100 floors
-Aetherpool stays the same
-boss on floor 99 and a 'hard' version queueable outside
-Pixie / sin eater theme

Those thins arent likely to change, so lets focus on other stuff.

I would like to see some new creative things happening on the floors.
- new traps: for example a random teleportation trap would be interesting and would fit the theme (also please just revert transformation trap duration back, 30s is too long)

- interesting rare encounters: both positive and negative (dangerous). Dread beasts were good on paper, but ultimately were too difficult for the benefits they provide (3x witching or a storm is often more valuable than buffs, not to mention jobs like monk having trouble dealing with at all).

- new floor enchantments (replacement for no magicite / demiclone does not count)

- enviromental variables: acid puddles, dzamael darkhold crystals etc. Pixie ambushes or positive events.


Also i really hope we dont get all the crap with petrify and lethargy causing run ending bugs, they can really sour our Eureka Orthos experience.

There are two things that are so obosolete and should be changed/removed:

1.The token for weapon exchange should drop inside the dungeon, no more sacrifice progress to exchange.(For all DD)

2."oGCD Prohibited" should be remove on Eureka orthos & Pilgrim's Traverse, imagine lvl 100 but you just can press 1,2,3. Replace it with newer idea.

Another thing is the extra 'hard mode' floor 99 boss.
While im not opposed to the idea, i hope it does not take away from the challenge of the deep dungeon itself and will provide meaningful rewards.

I would love to have a way to get the weapons for glamour without having to reduce my aetherpool, so how about the hard mode giving aetherpool grip equivalent? Could give other stuff as well ofc, dont mean it has to only drop grips.

Visually it looks pretty neat.

Could also just exchange some accursed hoard to get weapon parts, or actually some tokens from finishing floor 100? I don't like the idea of removing a lot of the core rewards of deep dungeon and putting them behind a separate hard mode.

Either i'm cautiously intrigued by the "let's make it horizontal" instead of vertical. I thought they mentioned having no floors, but maybe it was a translation issue. If it's just making it horizontal instead of vertical then what's the point? What does it exactly mean? I was hoping this would shake up a little the formula and the bog standard layout...

Remove the restriction of floor levels you can do with random people. Why can i only go up to 30 on orthos with random people.

We should be getting more Fae lore, and I actually hope they don't over explain them. I think having some chaos, and mystery is good for xiv's world.

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Originally Posted by Arohk

Remove the restriction of floor levels you can do with random people. Why can i only go up to 30 on orthos with random people.

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From my experience, after the initial hype, the matchmaking is dead aside from maybe occasionally 21-30 for leveling.
I would like to see maybe being able to convert a matched save slot into a fixed if all party members have adequate save slots so that you could agree with friends for runs that arent several hours long.

Another thing, bit more EO complaining: The demiclones can be very annoying to use.

Doga trying to petrify bosses, despite bosses being immune. Petrify interacting with mob skills to the point of making them lethal without any recourse (for example the fixed 'cocaine bear' bug, or things that are still in game with gobbues or other mobs that 'store' their aoes after initial part of skill is done)

Unei 'parsing' instead of healing, to the point that score runners decided its better to trigger mob aggro by sight(proxy etc) instead of tagging mobs with attacks, because Unei does not attack if you dont attack.

Onion knight, while being mostly fine, also can get focused too much on using its tankbuster ability, so lets say you're kiting a mimic and need healing (Onion knight also has a heal), the onion knight will get 'stagger kited' by mimic getting out of range, resulting in no action, despite player needing the healing.

Also in general, demiclones have no aoe options and will not switch targets till current one is dead. They will not spread the dot either.

I'm not saying they're useless, nor wish for them to be overpowered. I wish for such mechanics to be more flexible

I didn't know it ran to that extent but when it comes to pets or AI I'm not even remotely surprised. Even if they thoroughly tested it before release and noticed this somehow, they probably shrugged it off because their pet system is just not up to the task.

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Originally Posted by Valence

i'm cautiously intrigued by the "let's make it horizontal" instead of vertical. I thought they mentioned having no floors, but maybe it was a translation issue. If it's just making it horizontal instead of vertical then what's the point? What does it exactly mean? I was hoping this would shake up a little the formula and the bog standard layout...

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I'm pretty sure it's literally just a lore thing; we'll still progress through 10 "floors" at a time, we'll just be told we're going N/S/E/W rather than up/down.

So it looks like the devs read the feedback since they acknowledged that there was too many oneshots in Orthos at low level (low aetherpool I guess), so that they address this is great, but they seem to have also confirmed that they will continue to happen at higher floors.
I'm disappointed that it's the best that they can do to challenge/threaten players. And where is even going to be the gameplay at low floors since the only thing Orthos had was "oneshots"?
Are we still in a binary "oneshot mechanics or nothing"?

Im cautiously optimistic after the live letter. There are some unclear thing however and other stuff i would like to talk about:

- The chandellier thingie (random effect for next floor) i think is a great new addition that will bring a lot of fun. A proper rougelike mechanic, how about that?

- Weekly challenge log included the 'luminous oil' and a notion that it can be exchanged for rewards. People in deep dungeon discords were quick to jump in joy with the notion that "Sustaining potion situation has been addressed, they actually listened to feedback!". However then we saw the screenshot with aetherpool glass fragments on the chest drop part, meaning that those are the new potsherds. So will the potions be again a problem? What is the oil used for?

- Juniper incense mechanic seems interesting at first glance, but on 2nd look it seems sorta meh. 1 magicite level floor wipe, 1 big max hp boost (which isnt very strong nor interesting, max hp will only be very useful with a lot of time between mobs for regen to do its thing), third one looked like instant open for the exit and clearing of debuffs? Idk it isnt the pixie chaos i hoped for.

- Being able to queue matched for whole thing is very good on paper, but in practise i believe it will spark a lot of controversy and animosity towards the content, because the queueus just wont pop. People will choose the most optimal checkpoint for matched, leaving other points empty. It does create a decent solution for bailers on party runs, means that you will be able to convert your save slot to matched and just fill up again, despite it taking a lot of time.

- Checkpoints are probably the best innovations of all the announced things, with tiny sacrifice on the prestigue of the solo achievement, since it will make practise more accessible. That matters little tbh, gain outweighs it.

- Phoenix Dawn change seems amazing, however i see some risks. I would hate it if they put either of my potions on cooldown for the mentioned 360s. Imagine you ress somebody with it and they die instantly and now you got your sustaining potion on cooldown for 360s. Basicly you're punished for ressing someone. I hope its otherwise.

I think the matched parties working all the way up only comes with benefits comparatively to the current system where there is also a floor series that gets spammed for leveling. Perhaps the problem is that there is no extra xp rewards and incentives to actually do a full run? Imagine if going for the full run was able to give like +50% of xp per hour spent comparatively to spamming a series (arbitrary number)? People could still choose, but you bet people would tend to go for the full run, thus making all floors pop in theory.