How are you liking Pilgrims Traverse?

[Valence]

To me it feels like the dull same ol same ol. It has none of the innovation I felt was promised and it relys really heavily on cheap, fast one shot mechanics. 3/10 at best. Not fun in the least, esp past floor 50. Not even going to bother with the trial.

The devs reliance on the aforementioned cheap one shot mechanics to create artificial difficulty is not good design. It's actually embarrassing for devs that used to be at the caliber of the SE devs of the past.

I haven't done it yet. You'd say it's more like Orthos then, mechanically/gameplay?
And if so (I hope not), nice to hear that they obviously don't listen to any feedback then...

[AvoSturmfaust]

I haven't done it yet. You'd say it's more like Orthos then, mechanically/gameplay?
And if so (I hope not), nice to hear that they obviously don't listen to any feedback then...

To be honest, im not sure about that, im not so far yet (Stage 40) and didnt encounter one single "one shot attack" so from the feel and the monster on your way, it feels more then PotD

[MicahZerrshia]

To be honest, im not sure about that, im not so far yet (Stage 40) and didnt encounter one single "one shot attack" so from the feel and the monster on your way, it feels more then PotD

After 50 is when it gets just really annoying, before 50 its not so bad, more like regular DD. I already have an aetherpool in the 90s and there have been plenty of 1 shot attacks from regular mobs and most of the one shots allow for very little reaction time so if you are not already in place before the attack goes out, its a 1 shot. Which, like I said, is a cheap way to create artificial difficulty. Made the whole things more annoying than anything.

[Valence]

It's more like the old deep dungeons instead of EO.
I have only cleared the story part but the enemies are not damage sponges and have no real one hit kill moves. Even without upgraded gear they are all easy to defeat.
The bosses till then are also forgiving in the damage they do.
It seems mostly comparable to HoH in that aspect.


So far I kinda like it.
It's nice to have a good looking deep dungeon for a change given how much time we spend there.
It gives some interesting background story for the first as well and includes the more "scary" part of the fae as well.
Pomanders are... well basically the same as always sadly, though the candle-thingies are kinda fun in what they do.
Though I haven't found out where you get the currency for the hairstyle till now (I guess the big boss at the end?).
Music over all also seems to have more unique tracks / remixes then the DD before imo.

All in all:
If you like deep dungeons then you will like this one and if not your opinion won't change, though in my opinion it seems to be one of the better ones and is by far better than EO already.
They could have done more new things quite frankly, for example not pomanders again but so far I would tell people to give it a go for the lore alone.
Personally I look forward to doing the deeper floors now that I don't need a fixed party for that anymore, though I don't know how feasible that is with pomanders resetting.

I see, thanks. I guess I'll have to make my own opinion on it, but I think I'll probably share yours. They seemingly tried at first to address the difficulty access and audience criteria from the mode itself (more checkpoints of access, more difficulty levels for the last trial, etc) than truly shake up the content with brand new ideas, which is a bit sad but oh well.

After 50 is when it gets just really annoying, before 50 its not so bad, more like regular DD. I already have an aetherpool in the 90s and there have been plenty of 1 shot attacks from regular mobs and most of the one shots allow for very little reaction time so if you are not already in place before the attack goes out, its a 1 shot. Which, like I said, is a cheap way to create artificial difficulty. Made the whole things more annoying than anything.

That's very sad to hear then. So before 50 we have something close to PotD and HoH, but after 50 it's more like EO? That's disheartening to read.

[MicahZerrshia]

That's very sad to hear then. So before 50 we have something close to PotD and HoH, but after 50 it's more like EO? That's disheartening to read.

Yeah, overall it wouldn't be that bad if not for the sudden one shot moves they added to so many mobs on high floors. I mean its still leaning toward the more boring side, its a better alternative than running the same dungeons again and again in roulettes, but that doesn't say much since it is already just as repetitive but more frustrating due to the choices they made. Really wish we could have just leveled up in OC instead so we could kill 2 birds with 1 stone. This game overall just needs more ways to level and while I understand it's not an easy thing to make leveling something that isn't tedious, they really need to experiment more. Copy/pasted PotD/EO merger with a couple new things thrown in does not feel it.

[SkankyRoe]

ISo before 50 we have something close to PotD and HoH, but after 50 it's more like EO?

I didn't bother with EO after the 30 story floors so can't really give great input on "being like EO", but from my own experience I'd place things as such:

Floors 1-50 on par with PotD floors 1-50
Floors 51-70 on par with PotD floors 51-100, HoH floors 1-30
Floors 71-79 are an obscene difficulty spike with a lot of overly large OHKO aoes and luring traps all over the place, by far the most difficult part of the entirety of Pilgrim's Traverse
Floors 81-98 gets a bit easier, on par with PotD floors 101+

All the bosses(including the floor 99/TFV boss) feel reminiscent of Bozja and Second Walk bosses, a step up from "normal" but still a decent bit easier than "extreme".

Unfortunately I've heard from a friend who recently did the minimum 15 offering version of Quantum that it starts out already on par with savage floor 3/4, so it seems like there won't be much actual difficulty variance after all.

[Valence]

Not to be negative nancy, I'll list the points that I find very positive with it:

- More checkpoints of access. This is good because the classic challenge of the mode is on solo runs anyway, and they can't use checkpoints. For anything else (especially casual play) the progression feels a lot better as a result.
- The visuals and immersion, it's a lot less claustrophobic and repetitive than previous ones, even though the underlying pattern is still the exact same series of square rooms.
- Candelabras are fun, but more importantly the incenses are a net upgrade over the EO demiclones that were absolute garbage, and the HoH magicites that were just absolutely overpowered. I do appreciate that each incense clearly does something very different, and their bonus are strong.

I didn't bother with EO after the 30 story floors so can't really give great input on "being like EO", but from my own experience I'd place things as such:

Floors 1-50 on par with PotD floors 1-50
Floors 51-70 on par with PotD floors 51-100, HoH floors 1-30
Floors 71-79 are an obscene difficulty spike with a lot of overly large OHKO aoes and luring traps all over the place, by far the most difficult part of the entirety of Pilgrim's Traverse
Floors 81-98 gets a bit easier, on par with PotD floors 101+

All the bosses(including the floor 99/TFV boss) feel reminiscent of Bozja and Second Walk bosses, a step up from "normal" but still a decent bit easier than "extreme".

Unfortunately I've heard from a friend who recently did the minimum 15 offering version of Quantum that it starts out already on par with savage floor 3/4, so it seems like there won't be much actual difficulty variance after all.

So far I have only done up to floor 41.

- Stones 1-10 behave exactly like extremely squishy dungeon mobs. They are NOT like potd mobs because potd at that level is within the range of lvl1-15, and it still has bees with final sting. There is nothing like this in Pilgrim's.
- Stones 11-30 behave more or less like dungeons, with extra traps around. You can facepull everything and you'll be fine, but enemies have lost the extreme squishiness of the first series above.
- Stones 31-40 aren't much different but some mobs are starting to see some harder mechanics like mobs that charge you, or start casting buffs on themselves. So far I like it. Looks like from what people are saying that it stays similar up to stones 70+.

If you haven't played Orthos, then Orthos can be summarized in 3 stages:

- Floors 1-30: standard dungeon mobs but with cranked up HP pools, especially since the aetherpool sync is low and doesn't allow to overcome this.
- Floors 31-70: everything that has a ground AoE of some sort is untelegraphed, and one shots no matter the aetherpool level or defensives. As you start at 31-40, very little mobs are like this and the rest is non threatening beyond perhaps auto-ing solo players to death because again, HP sponges. But the more you climb in floor series the more OHKO mobs there is.
- Floors 71-99: same principle but cranked up so that a lot more of those AoEs can be extremely threatening (room wide, half cleaves, donuts, or specific mob mechanics), and luring traps appear everywhere and will often spell the end of a run (enjoy having 3 mobs spawning at once and all instantly casting one of those OHKO AoEs overlapping everywhere).

Bosses are also no joke especially at higher floors, but I feel like Pilgrim is following the same pattern so far. Imo they probably just fixed the HP level of mobs and toned down the threat at lower floors but that's essentially the same design.

[Voidmage]

I haven't done it yet. You'd say it's more like Orthos then, mechanically/gameplay?
And if so (I hope not), nice to hear that they obviously don't listen to any feedback then...

It's more like the old deep dungeons instead of EO.
I have only cleared the story part but the enemies are not damage sponges and have no real one hit kill moves. Even without upgraded gear they are all easy to defeat.
The bosses till then are also forgiving in the damage they do.
It seems mostly comparable to HoH in that aspect.


So far I kinda like it.
It's nice to have a good looking deep dungeon for a change given how much time we spend there.
It gives some interesting background story for the first as well and includes the more "scary" part of the fae as well.
Pomanders are... well basically the same as always sadly, though the candle-thingies are kinda fun in what they do.
Though I haven't found out where you get the currency for the hairstyle till now (I guess the big boss at the end?).
Music over all also seems to have more unique tracks / remixes then the DD before imo.

All in all:
If you like deep dungeons then you will like this one and if not your opinion won't change, though in my opinion it seems to be one of the better ones and is by far better than EO already.
They could have done more new things quite frankly, for example not pomanders again but so far I would tell people to give it a go for the lore alone.
Personally I look forward to doing the deeper floors now that I don't need a fixed party for that anymore, though I don't know how feasible that is with pomanders resetting.


Edit:
So, now I was in the deeper floors as well and I...have to take away a point from this content.
I don't mind deeper floors being tougher and all that BUT, if you have to include 1 hit kill moves then at least don't turn them into gocha moments.
Some enemies have such ridiculously fast and huge aoe's that, if you haven't done them before it is really annoying.
Bosses with those gocha mechanics are fine in other content where you simply go again but not in a deep dungeon where the run is simply over.


So my final opinion:
A solid deep dungeon with weaknesses.
It has great (really great) rewards and a good story, other than that it is simply more of the same again, with annoying one-shot mechanics in deeper floors.
The optic is nice and far better than the past deep dungeons.
It's by far better than Eureka Orthos, which quite frankly was simply trash but I honestly don't know if we really needed the same content again without any noteworthy innovations.
What exactly distinguishes it from the others?

I would give it a 8/10.
Points reduced for the one hit kill abundance and for being not innovative enough like many things in the game right now.
Give it a try for the story and rewards alone but don't expect to fall in love if you didn't like DD before.

Edit2:
Now that i have done it a few times, I can say that PT is probably the best content we have gotten in a while.
The rewards are great, the difficulty is just right for doing it with randoms and the challenge log is something I think we need in more content in this form.
I would push it up to 9/10 with my only gripe being left that it doesn't innovate enough to really feel "new".