More info re: essence drop rates would be nice

I think it would be really great if GGG gave us a little bit (more) of an idea about the essence drop rates before league starts. If the essences are insanely rare/annoying to farm, then the league simply won't be worthwhile for casual/moderate level players to bother with it. This is even more true if the essences can't be used as pseudo-regals, because that would make them simply chaos +1s, which are really not that appealing to me since the likelihood of getting a good item, even with one guaranteed god-tier affix, is pretty much nil, limiting the value to those with insane currency/spending power to use them effectively.

I know they said "approximately 1-2 per zone", but this could be variable with map tier level; it could be dependent/independent of zone IIQ, etc. There are a lot of unknowns, and it would be better to know if those of us without unlimited time to play have any real reason to play this league. It would not be that fun to reach level 80 and discover that the essences are terribad and realistically you can't get anything out of the content without an absurd amount of time/patience.

I remember someone posted a pic here of a really nice bow ziggy made, supposedly with only 4 ex and like 20 essences or something. Do you guys think that's going to be representative of league crafting? Or is it going to be a painful RNG slugfest where only the very richest players get anything out of it?

People seem to be deem a crafted item not worth it if its not mirror-tier or close to it. I craft every league with alch, chaos, alt, regals and I consistently get fairly decent pieces of gear every league.

Trading takes the joy out of finding something or crafting it yourself. I enjoy engaging in the crafting system. Yeah it's random.. yeah you get garbage most of the time. Maybe it's just me but I feel better with that more then "Hey can I buy your item for 5c" "thanks".

It's a personal preference though. I enjoy it, but the essence system will be similar to how crafting is now. Some people are going to be lucky, others not so much. You may just find better value in trading essences away (assuming they can be traded... I'm not sure) or just skipping it trying out the Atlas. Or just wait for others to make these items and trade them for it.

As far as the drop rates, remember they still have almost a little less then 2 weeks before it launches. They are going to release more info as time gets closer. I'd assume they will explain this better in the coming week or so. Or in the patch notes themselves.

^^ Definitely in agreement that crafting/finding items yourself *feels* better than "Hi, I would like to buy your X listed for Y chaos in Prophecy" "t4t" "GL HF". Thing is, I'm an efficiency freak because I have very little time to play, so I have to use the most effective means of obtaining items...which inevitably means trade, since I can rely on everyone's RNG and not just my own crap luck. Every time I try and do any crafting, even minimal alch+c spam, it usually fails miserably...but that's besides the point :)

And yeah I'm sure they'll release more info, just hoping to get the conversation started and maybe see if there's some other stuff out there that I missed, as I haven't really scrutinized every piece of leaked info about Atlas/essence league.

Each player defines "good" in their own way. Up to you. Some will find essences rewarding, and others will consider them a waste of time.

And it will have absolutely nothing to do with drop rates.

It's gonna be an insane grind similar to Talisman or worse, be ready for it.

If you have played any league before. You already know.

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yungwhiz wrote:

If you have played any league before. You already know.

I haven't played any other leagues before, hence my question.

I agree with the people that say that it will be "good" or "bad" based on my own goals/ideals, so maybe I will be more explicit. "Good" to me means that I 1) enjoy the league, and 2) produce at least a few items of high value/use, high value meaning let's say 2-5 exalts in standard. This is with reasonable play time (~4 hours/day). (1) is subjective and based entirely on me, but the likelihood of (2) happening is up in the air.

Edit; and "waste of time" would mean making nothing of any value or simply resorting to selling all my essences.

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MeWhenum wrote:

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yungwhiz wrote:

If you have played any league before. You already know.

I haven't played any other leagues before, hence my question.

I agree with the people that say that it will be "good" or "bad" based on my own goals/ideals, so maybe I will be more explicit. "Good" to me means that I 1) enjoy the league, and 2) produce at least a few items of high value/use, high value meaning let's say 2-5 exalts in standard. This is with reasonable play time (~4 hours/day). (1) is subjective and based entirely on me, but the likelihood of (2) happening is up in the air.

Edit; and "waste of time" would mean making nothing of any value or simply resorting to selling all my essences.

The chances of getting good ones will be shit. But you have gotten 37/40 in prophecy which means one of two things:

A. You know how to play the trading game and make alot of wealth
B. You have enough patience to play the game long enough to overcome the shit

So if A is the case you will be able to bring back exalts from the temp leagues that are worth more in standard regardless if you get good essence crafted items or not and if B is the case you will get a good one eventually. Especially if you have to do 1000 dried lake runs or level zana to 8 again.

i played to lvl 91 ? in talisman

these are all the talismans i have.... ... its all trash
but yeah i got sick of the grind pretty quick.. think i only did rigwald like 3 times?

Ok, thanks for the opinions. Unfortunately, Chris apparently said that meta mods won't work with the essences, which honestly makes them pretty damn near worthless. He actually said that he thought the essences would be too good (when it would already cost a good number of exalts to even take a shot at good rolls). Seeing as I want to try a blast rain build I guess I'll play the new league and just sell the essences to people who are braver/dumber than me when it comes to crafting. Pretty disappointing. Seems like GGG is determined to keep regular players from having nice things.