League's unique items economy, as always, broken as f*

After 1 month I decided to give a try ( once again ) to Blight.

Made my build, I heard that anointment of items its fun and its the best part of the league. Oh right, I'll be doing a new build looking for that special anointment getting a passive "for free" on my build.

Then I opened the trade website and noticed a golden oil worth 400c.

I need 2 golden oils to get one single passive. 800c.

Question: Why the best part of the league ( anoint items ) its so rare and expansive, worth 800c and almost nobody can have acess to it?

That's the problem with this game. New content its so rare and expansive that makes the whole gaming experience a shit.

If we are playing BLIGHT league, the oils should be a lot more common, drop a lot more. If this game was well balanced ( what is not ) the most expansive oils should worth like what? 20c?

If playing the blight league its already impossible to get certain oils, take a guess when the league its done.

Fix? = Increase A LOT oil drops.

GGG will do it? Of course not. Cause they always make things like this broken as f*.

Well, nvm then. Not playing anymore.

Blight should and could be a lot better if oils was more common drops. Making a lot of more builds viable. But guess what, it's not. lol

gj GGG. See u next league

lol u don't need oils. never had em and we were fine

I only paid about an exalt each for the golden oils I needed, looks like the price went up. Well if you can't afford them don't buy them

This is every new league. The new stuff can be expensive and the prices of uniques will be different than other leagues. Like Asenath's Gentle Touch is 1.2 exalts just to get the worst rolls when in other leagues, this item was 5c for a near perfect. Meta gaming sucks, but whatcha gonna do about except voting with your wallet and/or time and just not playing the game anymore...

You do realize you can still anoint quite good passives for under 30c though right?

Golden oil is a luxury item. Closest thing blight has to a chase item.

yep they are rare.

what even more annoying is is that even if you always run casia u dont get oils everytime.

yesterday i had about 30 maps and only 2 times oils dropped. that feels pretty unrewarding but on the other hand blight can drop good other stuff.

The issue is that it's a "League" and we're supposed to "experience it." There are builds out there that have dependencies based on the new mechanics that were proudly set up by GGG's favorites/streamers/etc who had access to the new League mechanics. They built accordingly and... Some things are much more rare and more expensive than they may have thought. But, players eager to experience the new League in the fullest gamely jumped in with both feet with these League builds.

It's a sort of tiered mechanic. Everyone can experience "Tower Defense" but a only few of those get to experience having the "icing on the cake" with some of the better Annointments. Well, depending on RNG and whether or not one can amass enough currency to buy them.

Not all Leagues were built like that in my limited experience. Abyss was one that was fairly accessible at all levels. Abyss loot dropped like crazy. Abyssal rifts opened up and everyone had a chance to go running around clicking on treasure piles. Most would have likely encountered a few of the Abyssal Liches. But, few would have gotten the most rare drops. Yet, there were enough Tombfists and double-socket belts running around for everyone to get a shot at them.

Delve. Saying sulphite was plentiful is an understatement. Great depths were easily reached. It was a loot-fest and Fossils flowed freely. Cities spawned all over the place and most players would experience at least one of the three Delve bosses if not more. But... not everyone liked Delving as it involved a bit of dedication and favored certain types of builds in order to reach more rewarding content.

Blight. I've purposefully avoided it for as long as I could, but now I kind of need to do every one I come across in order to flesh out my new character's build. And, Silver Oil is evading me. Sure, before the League is out I'll either have bought some or switched to a different build. But, the point is that these kind of top-tier'ish drops are a bit more elusive than many other "League Items" I've seen in other Leagues.

It's as if "Leagues" were originally intended to be a sort of pre-release version of content that players could play before the League was added to Standard. Everything gets flushed out, drop frequencies get fine-tuned, mechanics get polished, then it's supposed to be released to the "real game."

But... nobody plays Standard.

So, now, Leagues are "the game." Their end-game League content is no longer being as easily exposed to players so it can be fleshed out in preparation for migration over to Standard. Instead, it is the "End Game" for that particular League. After that? Nobody cares because nobody plays Standard. (Well, that's not where the hype is, anyway.)

It's about a slight shift in focus that's been growing in my experience since the beginning of last year. Just a tweak, mind you, pushing the timeline of progression for any particular League a bit further. Like many games, "content" is valuable. It's a measure of labor and investment by the developer. When that labor and investment is quickly trivialized in gameplay, it loses value quickly. So, developers push that content back, back in accessibility so it always remains a tantalizing lure.

It's a carrot on a stick with the stick being extended each time, as much as the developers dare. In that way, they minimize trivializing their labor and content and extend the interest and gameplay hours of their players chasing after that carrot.

It's not a wrong thing to do. It's just sometimes frustrating because of heavy RNG dependencies that sometimes make or break a League for a player. And, it's all compressed into a Quarterly cycle. The one relief being that a player that doesn't get to experience a new League fully in one League gets another chance in the next League. Sticks and carrots. :)

Given how rare blighted maps drops are, given how easy and irrelevant blights in normal maps are: most of the people play standard atm. It's just called Blight. Not speaking of the people that skipped blight or got sick of it. So: Standard is a thing ;) And with the recent QoL improvements it is quite fun. Not that there is much to do, but it never was easier to watch some sports while rushing through the trash.

You need to regularly play high tier content to be in "need" of certain anointments. If you've played high tier content casually since league start, you can afford the anointments you want.

We're only 1/3 into the league.

Umm they are rare because they anoint some pretty crazy passives like double curse no matter where you start on the tree.

You can get very good anointment for 20-50c.

I really don't see a problem having the premium passive nodes cost a lot. The rest outside of this small group are all very affordable if you play more than 5min a day.