Smoothing League Repetition

I'd like to offer some suggestions about how to improve the issue of how much repetition is involved with each league restart. My major areas of concern are:

1) Alt Grind. This hasn't improved very much since I wrote a post about What I Love, Hate, and Loathe about Path of Exile in 2014. In fact, one could argue it's worse now, since the grindy part is basically the entire Act 1-10 story mode.

2) The Labyrinth. Still my least favorite part of the game and has been since it was added. Finding the Uber Lab trials in maps is terrible, as is the requirement to repeat each lab on every character.

3) Crafting unlocks. Gating the ability to craft high-level mods behind master missions (mainly Delve and Syndicate) is unnecessary. It already costs currency to do the crafting, so it's not like people will be using it right out of the gate.

To address these, here are my suggestions:

A) Make crafting unlocks permanent across leagues. If this makes it too easy to get certain high-level mods then increase the cost of those mods so it takes longer to obtain them.

B) Add a map enchantment that puts an Uber Lab trial in the map. For one Offering to the Goddess, enchant a map to have a random trial; for two, pick a specific trial. This makes it easy to find the trial you need, but not trivial, since you still need the Offering(s) to use it.

C) Add a map enchantment that has the map boss "capture an Exile". When you defeat the boss, you've rescued that exile and they show up back at your hideout. Talk to them to name them as a new character in your current league, at level 68, with access to the epilogue. They'd have 91 passive points (67 from levels and 24 from the skipped story quests) and ascendancy points based on the map tier: 2 for white maps, 4 for yellow, 6 for red. The class of the exile could depend on the map region. I'd suggest something like 10 regal orbs for the enchantment cost - enough that you need to work a bit for it, but nothing that will put a major dent in a high-level player's finances.

Those new map enchantments would fit perfectly as abilities for Officer Kirac. Fits his tracker theme, and ensures that a player has gotten one character through the story normally before using them.

The result of these additions: when a new league starts, you still have to run your first character through the story to get to the epilogue. You still have to find the Uber Lab trials, but you have a bit more help. And once you're doing maps, making a new alt is much easier: doesn't require doing the story again, and you get to skip 1-3 Labs. And you don't have to delve or chase Syndicate dudes to unlock crafting options in every league, though you do still have to get the currency to use them.