The Atlas system is still hot garbage and a way to fix it

I don't understand the issue.

I have to be the luckiest man in the game, then: I never had a problem with finding new maps to unlock till tier 9-10 and never did anything besides the recipe of three maps for a higher tier one or Zana's dailies, neither bought or traded a single one or farmed maps, just played them as they dropped.

But more importantly, Jennik, while i understand that you want a mechanic that you think is frustrating solved i cannot see you more than being a masochist with this: if mapping is so annoying to do, don't do it!, there are many other things you can do in the game besides completing the Atlas, and stopping trying to complete the Atlas won't stop you from continue to write about it. Is it worth all the anger and the frustration you have accumulated? No. Then stop or it will be clear you love being dealt physical and mental pain.

"

kompaniet wrote:

i hope the new atlas is gonna be randomized each league. that'd be pretty sweet. t1 abyss and t15 jungle valley!

If given the chance, i would vote for that. It would improve replayability by a lot, but will never happen because there is no way to deal with the fact that it will mess with Standard's Atlas and map's trade a lot and that it will annoy the people that plays the game the most.

There is no real reason to unlock every single map. I usually just play the Atlas, and while this often leaves a few maps unexplored it isn't really a big deal, map drops are so generous, exspecially in leagues that offer additional drops by some mechanic (Breach before they removed map drops from white breach mobs was insane), that you usually dont have to do much to get up to Red maps.

The start is a bit more annoying, since you lose +2 drops, which means the first thing you want to do is dive deep into the Tiers, so every map has a map 2 levels higher it can actually drop. Just make sure that the first map of a Tier is not some terrible layout you dont really want to run, because you will find a ton of those maps.

Holy shit this is awful. After a ridiculous amount of maps chiseled, sextanted, Zana'd, and run, I finally unlocked all maps T7 or lower. The only T8 I was missing was Courtyard. Coincidentally, that's the map that locks off all the cool new Elder content (for me, at least. I have no idea if all Atlases start the same).

Luckily Courtyard's not drop only. Should be easy to unlock since Residence trades for it and I have two Residences, right? I've run maybe 150 maps since then. Of fucking course I can't get Residence or Fields to trade up for Residence to drop. I finally broke down and ran the Residences with a sextant (only one that fucking reaches!) and the rest of the + quantity things. No fucking map drops. Of fucking course.

I've run maybe another 20 maps since then. Still no Residence. Got a fucking Fields, though. Fucking awesome. Few hundred more maps to go and I'll be ON MOTHERFUCKING TIER 8. I'm level 89, and that's only because I'm constantly dying to fucking crashes. The 10% XP penalty is especially fucking grating when I'm GRINDING OUTLEVELED MOTHERFUCKING MAPS BECAUSE I CAN'T PROGRESS THROUGH THIS BULLSHIT ATLAS RNG SYSTEM. Oh, nice crash. There go three fucking maps of XP.

Mother fuck.

This is goddamn awful, GGG. You should be better than this. Instead of fixing the problem with shitty Atlas RNG gating, you took the already shitty Atlas unlocking and made it massively worse by expanding the number of maps. You know how shitty it is to have a 15% chance of the map drop that you're trying to grind/use in the vendor recipe? Well, that goddamn cancer's WAY THE FUCK BETTER than a 10% chance. Even players who aren't getting unlucky have one hell of a shitty grind ahead of them.

Fix your fucking bullshit, GGG. Goddamn.

Oh, and I did my Zana daily a little while ago, which was the bullshit fucking band-aid you threw on this fuckheap of misery last time you "fixed" it. She's selling a bullshit Thicket and the rest are even lower tier garbage. Thanks for the fucking help, GGG. Nice fucking "fix."

Edit: Oops, forgot I'm also missing Dunes in T7 and Laboratory in T8. Don't actually have all the T7s because I couldn't get Dunes or Phantasmagoria to trade up for it to drop. I ran one Phantasmagoria to unlock and have one (ONE!!!) in my stash now. Laboratory is the exact same story with one Bazaar in my stash instead. Layers upon layers of bullshit RNG are no good, GGG. Stop locking map availability behind this garbage. It's the fucking worst.

GGG, here's another reminder that this is garbage. The extreme RNG of Atlas grinding was made far more extreme when you added a new batch of maps. This sucks. You need to fix it.

Its hilarious that you and you alone have had what must be the absolute worst luck in the history of RNG in gaming every league since the Atlas was introduced... It seems interesting how so many of us are perfectly capable of unlocking all of the Atlas every league, and yet you find it to be the hardest goddamned thing in the game... GIVE ME EVERYTHING NAOOO

"

Jennik wrote:

GGG, here's another reminder that this is garbage. The extreme RNG of Atlas grinding was made far more extreme when you added a new batch of maps. This sucks. You need to fix it.

just buy the maps you need like the rest of us do when we have bad luck

Switched over to HC SSF Abyss and unlocked all the white maps. Still terrible.

I think I finally figured out how best to unlock the Atlas, though. Note that none of this excuses the awfulness of Atlas RNG. The system should still be changed. For others who need to unlock the Atlas, though:

1) Always know the drop only maps. Here's Karv's incredibly useful guide on that. Never move up to a tier before you've acquired all the drop only bases from that tier.

2) Save every hammer that drops for the chisel recipe and start doing the chaos recipe as soon as you can (either id'd or unid'd is fine).

3) As soon as you reach maps, start chiseling, alching, and Zana modding Exiles onto every single map you run that leads to a needed drop only map. Yes, this means every one, even T1s. Don't be afraid to reroll bad alchs once you've stocked up some combination of alchs/scours and chaos. Also do this for the first map of every base that you run if you only have one or two of it and need a map it leads to. This improves your odds of getting the next tier up and not needing to farm three of that base for the vendor recipe.

4) Unlock maps that lead to a drop only map first. Don't unlock any more maps of that tier (unless they also lead to a drop only map) until you have the drop only map you need. This way every map of that tier that drops has a high chance of being the one you need to farm (typically 50/50, since most maps only have one adjacent +1 map).

5) Use any sextants you find to help farm drop only maps. Extra Atziri fragments also work well for this.

That's it. Anarchy gives you three exiles worth of jewelry, so the Zana mod is free as long as you're doing the chaos recipe. The recipes take time, but so does farming 50 maps hoping for a specific tier 3 to drop so you can hopefully get the tier 4 you need to finally move up to the next tier.

It's annoying, but it works. You'll fully unlock tiers far faster this way than if you don't invest heavily in the process. A side benefit is getting a ton of extra drops from all the extra quantity and exiles, including plenty of good uniques.

"

k1rage wrote:

"

Jennik wrote:

GGG, here's another reminder that this is garbage. The extreme RNG of Atlas grinding was made far more extreme when you added a new batch of maps. This sucks. You need to fix it.

just buy the maps you need like the rest of us do when we have bad luck

At long last, the elusive secret to sustaining high-level maps revealed!

Actually, as Jennik points out above, Rogue Exile jewelry drops are what greases the map grinding gears. If GGG would let us level Zana up to 12, we could buy T12-15 maps in her store. That would solve everything.

I've leveled characters up to maps in the non-SSF Abyss leagues to do various tests (loot filter, leveling with builds, early master progression at start of a league, etc.). That means I've been able to experience the shittiness of the Atlas system four times. It never gets less shitty no matter how many times I do it! Amazing!

I'm currently in Abyss HC trying to farm a Port. I've run around a dozen chiseled and Zana modded (mostly Exiles, some Bloodlines) Alleyways. 7 Cages, 3 Arcades, 0 Ports. Fucking awesome. Zana's level 4. She's as useless as usual. Your bandaid sucked, GGG.

You need to fix this. It's absolute cancer. I keep saying this, but it was pure shit when you first implemented it and has only gotten worse as you expanded the number of maps. Not only do we have the pure garbage of drop only maps, but we have multiple maps with drop only maps that lead to three different maps of the next tier. Unlucky people, and with the number of different places to get unlucky that's damn near all of us over the course of a league, will get their progression absolutely fucked by this.

You have to do better.

Edit: I'm not sure if I deleted this while editing it or if a mod stealth deleted it. If a mod doesn't like this post, please rewrite the parts that offend you instead of deleting my entire post or various chunks of it. That'll show me what you personally consider acceptable so I'll know what not to say in the future. When you delete entire posts or massive chunks of them, all you're saying is "fuck you." Not useful feedback.

tl;dr: "I am playing SSF and I hate how my progress is slowed, pls fix the game!!!"

Nugi plays SSF, no? The guy managed to farm his own Kaoms Heart, meaning he somehow managed to have enough Volcano Maps to do that.

Don't play SSF if you don't like the consequences that come with it. As you can see they go far beyond not being able to buy xy-unique item.
The Atlas is in good condition, a large portion of the playbase really likes it and enjoys it's addition to the endgame.