I’ve been playing Siptah for a while, and I think I’ve reached as far as I am motivated to go. I have reached a point where the road ahead feels like a steep unforgiving grind, with little reward. Many aspects of the gameplay feel a bit too random. I like the look and layout of the island. I also enjoy the story presented in the vaults and various journals scattered around the island.
I would like to be able to save journal and vault story text so that I can go back and read it later’
I like the idea of delving, but it seems very random, and unforgiving.
- It would be nice to have a sense of how complete delving of an item is. E.g. If I select an item in the delving bench, it may have a message like, “there is much to be learned from this item”, or, “You have learned all you can”.
- I would like feedback about why a particular item cannot be delved (damaged, or nothing to learn).
- Delving could be progressive, and less random, e.g. if a delve fails, I earn a progress bubble on the item. Each progress bubble increases the chance of the next delve.
- It would be nice if there were a dedicated UI to items and delving were I could find out what items I’ve delved, and some breadcrumbs about items I haven’t yet discovered (similar to the journey breadcrumbs)
- The delving bench should have different tiers/variants, such as an advanced delving bench, or a faster, or fuel efficient bench
- There should be a thrall that can be added to the delving bench. Perhaps delving of some higher tier items is dependent on a particular tier thrall.
- Delving could be a task that is queued similar to the thrall wheel. It could use Eldarium as a fuel
- Some of the delivered items/recipes appear to be not very useful, such as the durable versions of light and medium armour.
The thrall/wayshrine/maelstrom grind feels a bit daunting. From what I can tell, I have to grind the storm mobs to get a large number of essences, then throw those essences in a wayshrine to open a larger portal, with a chance at getting some named mobs. It’s a lot of work, with a chance of getting nothing in return. In my other save in the exiled lands, I have a bunch of named mobs, so this doesn’t seem worthwhile.
- Perhaps a named thrall might be tied to a particular named world boss. Killing the world boss, and looting something from the boss would allow me to summon the named thrall at a wayshrine. This could be a multi-phase event, where I have to defeat multiple waves of mobs before the named thrall spawns.
- It would be good if the named bosses appeared on the map after I discover them, and perhaps there’s a sub-tab of the journey tab that tracks discovery of named thralls/world bosses.
I like the idea of building in the storm and defending it, but it seems like a lot of work for just me to do that. I would have to level up a few different thralls, and grind a bunch of materials. I feel that I should also equip my thralls with decent gear to survive. Even to experiment to determine if that might work is a daunting task. I can imagine spending a day or two grinding mats, only to find out that my base gets destroyed quickly, and I lose a bunch of thralls and gear.
Perhaps instead of (or in addition to) building a new base in the maelstrom, there’s an option for repairing, and reinforcing pre-existing ruins or buildings. The resource needs might vary between different ruins, with the larger ruins proving a higher reward, but require more resources. Ideally, I would be able to start out with a smaller ruin near the edge of the maelstrom, with a nominal amount of mobs that attack, then as I grind these mobs, they drop items that allow me to upgrade my base, and allow me to progress to higher level mobs, or more mobs.
Perhaps there’s an option where if I get overwhelmed, I can abandon the base, and call a retreat of my thralls back to a previous spot. There might be a chance that some thralls don’t make it, but it allows me to leave the maelstrom without losing everything. Once I leave, the mobs should no longer attack the building, giving me a chance to repair, and rebuild before the next storm.
Another aspect that is tricky is that if I don’t pick up the armour from my thralls quick enough, the body despawns. It would be nice if the thrall corpse stayed there until I looted it. Perhaps theres some penalty in the form of the armour being severely damaged. I would like to equip some of my thralls with epic gear, but it’s a long grind to just lose the armour in a battle.
I have found that the thralls bug out a lot too, so that might be tricky. Also, some of the combat feels a bit buggy. Hopefully some of that will be resolved with the upcoming patch. Being able to control several thralls in the form of a squad would make some aspects of this easier (perhaps there’s a limit that squads can’t go in a vault)
World bosses don’t seem very enticing, the loot appears to be entirely random. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of point grinding keys from some of the larger bosses, when I can grind it from easier one skull mini bosses. It would be nice if there were some bosses that dropped specific loot, and if there were some breadcrumbs in the game that lead to some of them (a journal that mentions a boss that took a legendary weapon for example).
Overall, the progression doesn’t feel smooth. And is focussed on grinding some areas, where there are a lot of areas of the island that are visited once and never again. I could see the ruins playing a better part of the progression. I also hope that the tower can be entered at some point (I’m assuming/hoping that’s going to go live at some point during early access).
I liked the non-instanced caves that I found in exiled lands, it would be nice to have those in Isle of Siptah.