Heaven on High: That's it?

[HyoMinPark]

I have done PotD until 150 solo and seemingly it only get harder after that. And I have done HoH with complete randoms until 81 where we died to those nice chimeras..We were not optimal, like not using the best pomanders, got unlucky with drops, lots of exploding traps and one healer that liked to run to chests while we still fought. And yet it was only a challenge 70+. Yes the ones after 65+ hit harder too but we still had no tank and I was the only one with full aether set at the end, the rest was like 20 points under me. If we had good pomanders we would surely have reached even higher. And again that was with total strangers. (And we were quite disappointed with a lot of bosses. Honestly the PotD <100 ones felt harder than anything including 80 and now you can even get Odin which one shots them..)So in PotD only the last 40 floors are a challenge and in HoH the last 20. Not really that great and I still dont understand why it was necessary to cut the casual part down that much. They still could have made more floors for casuals and just implement it that you can start at 101 or the challenge floors as soon as everyone cleared the floors before that once..so anyone that gets a challenge dont need the casual floors more than once and the rest of us that dont have the big amount of time to run this with a static or a unlucky to find randoms that stay with them that long can still have a big playground too.

(I am looking it at this with the whole group there. Which is exactly the amount of people that they created the challenge with. Everything else, like only duoing it, is your own challenge and I am not sure if that should be counted in the talk about the level of it)

The “story mode” portion was likely trimmed down because people that did the story floors of PotD tended to do it once for completion/story, or for more opportunities for aetherpool/weapons (since PotD 51-60 was very “speedrun/experience only, no silvers just gogogo). The most popular floors were PotD Floor 51-60, because they gave the best return in terms of time spent and experience. HoH 21-30 is the equivalent of PotD 51-60. If the developers see data that insinuates players ignore 90 out of the 100 story floors of PotD, why should they implement another 100 story floors that will likely also be ignored in HoH? At most, they could have done a flat 50 story floors to maybe flesh out the story a bit more, but they probably would have still started the challenge floors at Floor 41, and 41-50 would have been the new “spam for experience” set; there isn’t a need for 100 more story floors.

Re: Odin Magicite—it’s my belief that these exist for solo runs, and that they are for use on bosses only. Floor magicite are Garuda, Titan, and Ifrit, and really they should be planned around/used in an emergency (i.e., everyone but 1 player is killed by a series of unfortunate events on a higher floor, and the last person standing turns to a Magicite as one of their emergency pomanders if things like petrification are unavailable). Those pomanders aren’t intended to be used on story floors, but in later ones to either make quick use of a floor (like the big room ones) or to save from a stick situation. So of course they seem OP in floors where they are only challenging for solo runners with low, low aetherpool.

Bosses are not hard, though, so for full light-parties, Odin doesn’t even need to be used for them (probably not even for duos either, though I haven’t done any of HoH as a two-man party, so I cannot say for certain). I have to disagree with your assessment that HoH Floors 71-80 aren’t challenging; perhaps you got lucky with your Floor spawns, but each time I’ve hit those floors, it has been full of combined floor debuffs (had 5 in a row that were auto-heal disable + another debuff), treasure rooms with 10+ mobs, and danger mobs like the Griffins or Mammoths crowding the floors, especially around the exit. They aren’t as hard as the floors above them, but I wouldn’t say they are a cake-walk either.

The trimming down was also probably due to feedback about how irritating it was to do PotD Floor 51 to 100 for Floor 200 runs, and from how Floors 101 to 150 were also mostly fluff save for a few tricky mobs that could screw you over if you were unprepared for them. 100 fluff floors were not well received, from what I gather; hence why they trimmed it down.

The barriers to complete HoH are 1) needing to do it with the same people from start to finish and 2) the total time it takes. If you have a constantly changing work schedule (can't have a regular HoH day) and you can't play more than 2 hours in one sitting (can't complete it in one go with strangers), you are in the same situation as with PotD. The inability to just pick up random people and continue where you left off makes this very inaccessible to casuals, which cannot even be said about savage anymore.

Even with those above-listed situations, is it really hard to find friends or FC mates to try and work something out with? I have a limited amount of in-game friends (and a very small number of them even like PotD and HoH), but I still managed to clear Floor 200 and Floor 100 with just friends. PotD 200 took longer because I was working full-time, as was another person in our group, so we would set aside time at night (around 10pm EST, when we knew we were off) to do a few floor sets, and then continue the next day; the run where I finally cleared was spread over 3 to 4 days back-to-back at a couple hours apiece. HoH Floor 100 only took 4-5 hours to clear, and that was with us breaking after every set to check our loot sacks (and complain about the crap prizes we got).

You also only have to start at Floor 21; you don’t have to start at Floor 1 unless you are going for solo achievements.