Reflections on Breach League and its Challenges / AMA

First, I'd like to thank everyone that helped me or encouraged me to pursue 36. This includes my guild (shoutouts to Charge_D and Kawansi for all their help, encouragement, and splinter donations, and the guild as a whole with the map sharing for atlas), my friends (shoutout to rhok90 for being a bro), and global 820.

Here's a quick look at the challenges I didn't complete, and my progression (if any) on them:


Reflections on the challenges I didn't complete:
Unique Strongbox and Splinters from Chayula: These two are pure RNG and I never chanced upon them, simple as that. I also wasn't playing constantly so that had some impact on this (see below).
Map tiers and endgame grinds: As you can tell from the second screenshot I was nowhere close to either of these. I'm close to 4k map tiers and have a fair number of prophecies and breachlords done.
The biggest reason for this is that I took a long break in the middle of the league.

Break Explanation:
I got a little burnt out initially after getting to around 27 challenges done when my first character was around level 88. I would still play a little but not much more than my dailies every day. I had sold a tukohama's fortress and gotten some pretty good gear to play another character, and I wanted to do Assassin Blade Flurry with The Perfect Form. Then one day as I was just messing around I hit a 6L on the second TPF I had bought (first one was a 5L). This got me excited about making a second character, so I set a goal of getting level 90 on my first character before I could reroll. My second character proved to be a ton of fun to play, and very powerful. I made it to level 93 with him and finished out enough challenges to get the Wings.

The challenges that were the hardest to complete (the ones I completed last):
Make 10 Corrupted Jewels: Another bigtime currency/RNG sink. Best thing that helped me was to keep track of the bases items that they all were and which ones I had done, and corrupt whichever base jewel was least likely to produce a duplicate result.
Divination Card Sets: Again, a pretty big currency sink/RNG fest. This one was farmable to some extent. I got 1-8 all from natural play. I had to grind/buy sets 9-10. I was able to farm up the 9 card set (Humilty) in about 8 min of aqueduct runs (I had 5 from channels/waterways from general mapping). The 10 card set (Prosperity) I had enough kindly donated to me by guildies to make a set from what I had from normal play. Next I did the 12 card set (Lich); this one was a combination of donations from people who already had 40 and buying a few cards. To get the 11 card set (Chains that Bind) was the most difficult; I had 2 from play, farmed 3 in merc crema, then bought the last 6 after I completed the jewels challenge to get to 36.
Kill Chayula: I had farmed a total of 80 chayula splinters all league. Again, one of the 40 challenge guys in my guild donated me 20 so I could make a stone. I went in pseudo blind and successfully cleared the zone, landing a blessing and a skin of the loyal for my efforts. I sold the ID on the chest, which helped to partially fund buying Vaal orbs for the jewel challenge.
Complete these encounters (Coffers): I managed to self find all 10 of the coffers, though it took a while and almost depleted my chaos supply in the process. The two Carcass Jacks I found and 5Led that sold helped a fair bit to keep my reserves up. This one was again a pretty big currency sink and RNG fest.
Upgrade Breach Uniques: I had to buy a lot of the base items to upgrade, and because I waited till the end, they were kind of expensive. I had to buy quite a few items cause the drops from the bosses were just so uncommon. I killed a total of 22 or so breachlords over the course of the league, and I don't think I got anything besides the most common unique drop and/or a blessing from each run, if anything.

Builds I played:



If anyone wants to know more about the builds I did, or how I completed any of the other achievements, or anything else, feel free to ask. Overall it's been a fun league and I look forwards to the next one.

-Savage

So we can all agree, we dislike pure RNG based challenges, they are not enjoyable. It is only matter of when will RNG bless you and you will be able to stop wasting currency, like in perandus coffers cases.

Would you like challenges to be more skill based than rng? For example, more challenges like perandus coins and endgame grinds?

I mean, it is really horrible that you haven't found one chayula in breaches, while some find her often.

I too, stopped playing this league for some 40 days in middle of it, had some obligations. So I can somewhat understand the perspective.

I think, challenges should really be challenges, there is no challenge in buying a challenge. But it seems GGG makes them as currency sinks so that league doesn't spiral out of control.

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Necromael wrote:

So we can all agree, we dislike pure RNG based challenges, they are not enjoyable. It is only matter of when will RNG bless you and you will be able to stop wasting currency, like in perandus coffers cases.

1. Would you like challenges to be more skill based than rng? For example, more challenges like perandus coins and endgame grinds?

I mean, it is really horrible that you haven't found one chayula in breaches, while some find her often.

I too, stopped playing this league for some 40 days in middle of it, had some obligations. So I can somewhat understand the perspective.

2. I think, challenges should really be challenges, there is no challenge in buying a challenge. But it seems GGG makes them as currency sinks so that league doesn't spiral out of control.

1. I think we would all like challenges to be more skill based than RNG. That said, it's good if there are challenges of a variety of 'difficulties' so that a lot can be accomplished early on (like the ones you get basically for completing the story), some take a little longer but are still doable (like enter a breachlord's domain), and then those that are hard and take a long time, which often tend to be ones like 'find and complete this extremely rare encounter' or 'do this unlikely event x times' or 'grind a whole bunch of content'.

2. I agree that there is no 'challenge' in buying a challenge. The larger issue I have here is this: one should be able to complete the challenges with a focused effort by oneself without help. If the challenge structure doesn't change, it's going to be very difficult for the SSF players next league to get all the challenges, for example.
I think a better way would be to give players more options to complete the same challenge. For example, with the divination card challenge from this league, increase the number of possible cards sets (like add 13, 14, 15, or w/e) and keep the same number of them you have to complete. I think the unided map challenge is in the right place: complete 10 tiers of unided maps, but you have 15 tiers to choose from.