28 Billion Coins later or what's wrong with some Prophecies

I am not sure whether a lot of people or GGG even will read this but I got my grip and will humbly share some of my thoughts. Well, I poured in a lot of Coins into Prophecies so far and here is some feedback on some of them. Oh and most importan thing - I love Prophecy League. <3 Let's get started.

Updated with Regal Death, The Corrupt and Erased from Memory.

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1. Interactions between Endgame gameplay and Prophecies. I finished Merciless few weeks ago, now level 79 and now do some maps. After last patch, I indeed noticed that there is much less worthless rare monster drop / unique upgrade related prophecies now and more monster related harmless ones that can be easily fullfilled.

But there is still a lot of unique related prophecies and usually you will get get something like Lifespring or Wanderlust. And this 2 items is actually among THE BEST of what you can get - most often then not it will be getting something worth 2 alterations or something on poe.trade after 2 HOURS of farming dat Frost Priest (I am not kidding - don't even try to track down rare skeleton - except Ancient Archer - they are pretty common).

And I have question - why 79 lvl character will ever need Wanderlust or Lifespring (which are among best items you can get from prophecies) ? It's totally useless and takes a lot of time at Endgame.

My solution : Disable low-tier unique / upgrades prophecies when player meets some condictions - like certain level or maybe kills Malacahai. Just leave prophecies for useful items items like Maligaro's, Drillneck, Bino's Kitchen Knife, Rat's Nest, Tabula Rasa, Belly of the Beast, etc.

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2. Gilded Within. Monster will drop one rare item. At least for the Cruel and beyond, I don't see any point in this prophecy, because monsters drop rare items all the time. On normal it maybe useful but on later difficulties it just occupies slot and gives nothing in reward.

My solution : We have Wealthy Exile (that is far superior to this one in terms of drop) for rare items - I think it's more than enough. So just get rid of this prophecy.

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3. Nemesis of Greed. People encounter monster carrying inner treasure once per their entire pre-endgame walkthrough of all 3 difficulties (same story for me) and I don't know ratio for end-game yet - maybe chance to meet him at higher tier maps is higher. But. This Prophecy can occupy slot for ethernity. Like weeks. And when you will finally fullfil this prophecy, you get something like Gorebreaker and Geofri's Baptism...

My solution : Messing up with monster appearing rate is kinda tedious, so maybe make him drop more than 2 items when this prophecy is active? Like at least 3. At the very least 3. 5 will be sweet.

Another solution (Not really sure about this one) : When this prophecy is active make this monster drop at least one high-tier item with guarantee. And by high-tier item, I mean ones that worth at least 15-20c - Rat's nest, Voltaxic, Voidbringer (not entirely sure about 2 latter at this point but you should get my point), etc. Not Drillneck, not Maligaros, not BoR, not Facebreaker and other items that worth like 1-3c in Prophecy League.

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4. Regal Death. Erased from Memory. The Corrupt. Also I kinda don't see a point to run for any King or Queen (Regal Death) just to get 1 Regal orb. 1 Regal is 1 chaos. I don't have any MF and travel to lower level locations (Further reducing chance to get currency dropped) and still get plenty of Chaos + Recipe. Same for Scoring orbs - it's just 1 scoring, 0.5 of Chaos. But Vaal orb is worst - it requires you to farm instances and you can waste quite some time, for just 1 Vaal. Nor Vaal, nor Scoring, nor Regals almoust don't drop for me usually but I still don't see a point wasting my time on this prophecies when I can just buy them for chaos or something.

My solution : Make this prophecies reward with more corresponding currency. 2 Regal orbs or Vaal orbs already seems great. 3 is even greater. Although Erased from Memory doesn't require going all the way to certain boss, getting more Orbs would still be great.

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5. Forceful Exorcism. We all know how much annoying ghosts can be - Yoji's video. They can not reach any rare monster for really long time running away from you and then disappearing. So this prophecy can occupy slot for long time as well (not weeks, but can last for hours) And likesome other prophecies, Forceful Exorcism doesn't bring anything new to the table.

My solution : Prophecy doesn't serve any purpose and doesn't bring anything new. Just get rid of it.

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6. Kalandra's Craft. Well, this is kinda useful, because it gives easy 1 Alch with vendor recipe. But maybe improve reward a bit and make it 6+ mirrored items or something?

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7. Map-related Prophecies. Why there us none (Except few prophecy chains) ? Like do X on Y map for Z reward. Just really rough example - kill 40 monsters in 3 seconds in Cemetery or something as easy as find the Shrine (which will spawn on this map with guarantee) on certain map or kill some unique monsters or anything like that. Maybe add some of this stuff, so there will be reason for players to get to different maps and not only farm dat Gorge 24/7 ?

I have a problem with some map-related prophecies, that take <unspecified RNG amount of maps> to spawn.

Yesterday I felt like doing some T12s, so I loaded Monstrous Treasure. Ofc spawning is random and I went a whole mapping session without seeing it. Now I either have to keep running T12+ or seal the prophecy again, if I want to play lower maps (eg. search for Uber Trials), because spawning that prophecy in a lower map is a waste.

I'd say that one RNG layer is enough. Such prophecies should either spawn in the first map you run, or have a RNG limit of say 5 maps.

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morbo wrote:

I have a problem with some map-related prophecies, that take <unspecified RNG amount of maps> to spawn.

Yesterday I felt like doing some T12s, so I loaded Monstrous Treasure. Ofc spawning is random and I went a whole mapping session without seeing it. Now I either have to keep running T12+ or seal the prophecy again, if I want to play lower maps (eg. search for Uber Trials), because spawning that prophecy in a lower map is a waste.

I'd say that one RNG layer is enough. Such prophecies should either spawn in the first map you run, or have a RNG limit of say 5 maps.

Were you running the same map again and again? They confirmed recently that the prophecies spawning chance is set for specific areas. So if a prophecy didnt trigger in a Gorge map, it will not trigger in the next 100 gorge maps etc. You have to run different maps till it triggers. They also confirmed map tier has no effect on chance. (looking for the quote, will update when i find it!)

~Myth

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Mythkiller wrote:

Were you running the same map again and again? They confirmed recently that the prophecies spawning chance is set for specific areas. So if a prophecy didnt trigger in a Gorge map, it will not trigger in the next 100 gorge maps etc.

I ran a few Arsenals & Shipyards + an Academy. The selection of maps becomes more limited, the further up you go, because there aren't many tilesets and because of stingy drops.

Where is all this confirmation happening, on Reddit? -_- Well, anyway thanks for the info.

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morbo wrote:

Where is all this confirmation happening, on Reddit? -_- Well, anyway thanks for the info.

Reddit, yes.

Mostly comments from Chris in this post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/4pd43f/psa_mapglobal_prophecies_proc_very_seldom_on/

~Myth

More on the topic, please. Do you have same issues as me, guys?

Some of the hunting ones are insta-seals now for me, mostly due to spawn frequencies like the Frost Priest. Also the Undying Incinerator one or Flame Sentinel one. Just not worth it anymore really to spam instances.

Prophecies with terrible EV should proc more often. But half baked league idea is half baked. /shrugs

I haven´t tried the current challenge league at all.

After reading your opening post, I was pretty glad I didn´t.

Lifesprig, Wanderlust as endgame reward, and "monster will drop one rare item"...facepalm

That´s really just a terrible joke, but strangely enough seems in line with everything else (like you get ONE YELLOW MAP in act 4 merciless for killing Kaom and Daresso). GGG have no sense for what´s rewarding, motivating and fun.

^ Au contraire. It's fun for them to see how much senseless punishment and penalty it takes to break their players' will to play this game.

I'm convinced it's a social engineering experiment and Chris is on the CIA payroll for doing research for them. (j/k... or am i?)

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Grumlum wrote:

That´s really just a terrible joke, but strangely enough seems in line with everything else (like you get ONE YELLOW MAP in act 4 merciless for killing Kaom and Daresso). GGG have no sense for what´s rewarding, motivating and fun.

Or perhaps players are expecting too much?