Variant & Criterion Dungeons

[Reinha]

Only tried one run of variant and didn't kill the first boss of criterion but so far I've enjoyed both dungeons a lot. Can't wait to finish all 12 routes! Figuring out mechanics with strangers whom I will never meet again is not my cup of tea so I'm looking forward to the guides coming out. I really enjoy having a difficult dungeon at last.

I would love it if we got a criterion dungeon every patch and got more tomes from it. Two 40 minute runs of this every week would be preferrable to 4 expert roulettes.

[CidHeiral]

Variant dungeon was neat but blind progging the Criterion dungeon was the most fun I've had in the game in a long time. Looking forward to trying the Savage mode and future dungeons like this.

[CKNovel]

The first two bosses of variant are a delight.
Fast paced mechanics, interesting mechanics and thematic.
But the last boss is pain. It might not be later on with the strategies.

Clearing the trash isn't interesting at all. As Yoshida said, multi pull is too dangerous.

The rewards are really disappointing, the extreme feels a bit... Not extreme but far closer to savage, it's harder than P5S, P6S and P7S combined.

[hydralus]

Do the criterion dungeons drop potsherds as well?

[Iscah]

Third run, took the left path. Very ICO/Shadow of the Colossus vibes from the later area. I may need to get my Wander cosplay glamour out again.

[LianaThorne]

The first two bosses of variant are a delight.
Fast paced mechanics, interesting mechanics and thematic.
But the last boss is pain. It might not be later on with the strategies.

Clearing the trash isn't interesting at all. As Yoshida said, multi pull is too dangerous.

The rewards are really disappointing, the extreme feels a bit... Not extreme but far closer to savage, it's harder than P5S, P6S and P7S combined.

Difficulty is subjective imo. Personally I found what I've seen so far in Criterion to be really deadbrain though I know for people just dipping their toe into harder content it probably is a bit jarring. Was really cute watching new people on fresh progs be like o.o this is way harder than I expected.

Variant was something I could just autopilot because most of the mechanics are things seen before in other trials/dungeons. Already have all 12 notes and the mount, will say the secret boss was the biggest pain of them all.

[Ransu]

Since when was Bozja/Eureka in any way comparable to Deep Dungeons? One was always significantly larger in scope and had more lore to uncover, the other was barebones as all hells and had practically no story at all. Face it, and admit it. We got a downgrade..

Downgrade to who? Personally I hated Bozja and Eureka and find deep dungeons much more fun so I'm not going to "face" or "admit" anything. People like different content. Sucks for people that liked bozja style content, but you can't make everyone happy.

And who said anything about them being comparable? The dev team is just mixing content styles. Bozja/Eureka took the place of deep dungeons when they were new to switch things up. They are now going back to deep dungeons. Next expansion we'll get something else. This is how they have been handling that type of content in their post expansion schedules for years now.

[SillyCrow]

Getting hit by a penalty for leaving variant dungeons is weird when they can be completed with any number of players and compositions.

[Payadopa]

I absolutely love it. Can't wait for it to be a fixed part in every expac.

[Voidedge_Ragna]

Finished All secrets on Variant mode now, took about 6h in total if you use your head, there was one i had to get a hint for however. After these 6 hours there's nothing left to be done except farm the currency and trade it for items that will cost peanuts in a week or 2. So this will once again be dead content in about 2-3 weeks.

SE has still not learned how to make content that lasts, the idea is good and some of the bosses are fun specially left path. But when you've seen the 15th barrel boss you just groan.
Excellent design and i loved using my head on the puzzles and clearing one path to get a hint for another but now i have 0 reason to go back ... ill wait 3 weeks and buy the glam items for 100k each.

The extreme version looks real fun and since I'm into savage and extreme its good for me, but for the casual player replacing Bozja or eureka with this ... is a massive L in content.

Also if you want the mount it will require a prebuild or solo since you need to do everything once and the chance for that to happen in df is going to be slim, you will redo the same things you already had over and over before a group will actually do a rarer one.

This will defiantly steer conflict in groups. So its both really great and really shite at the same time.