Shrine of Torment: Artifact(Modifier) Idea Collection

[Mara]

Hello Community!

I've teased already a few times, we are interested in creating an endgame where you as players can add modifiers to a run to make it harder. For those modifiers I'm currently collecting ideas and I'd like to get your input for that. Those modifiers will be unlocked through events/quests, but will themselves not get any quests as this is truly meant to be after finish content mainly.

A short summary of the current plan for the shrine:
- Shrine will unlock through a quest in the Chamber's of Dissonance
- Using the shrine to enter will always activate Agony
- Artifacts can be found and placed into the shrine to give the game an additional challenge
- Each Artifact will do two things: Increase Torment by 1 and activate a special modifier
- You can activate as many artifacts as you want and push the Torment Level up
- Each Torment Level will increase the monster strength
- The modifiers can be anything and that is what we are looking into right now

Some ideas from our team:
- Modifier to reduce a run to 20 minutes
- Modifier to have super tanky enemies spawn, very similar to the ghost wall, but that take normal damage
- Modifier to invert movement speed, making controls inverse
- Modifiers to only get random traits, abilities or items

These things can be very creative, biggest limitation is the work it takes to implement these artifacts.

!! Please Note !!
This thread is not about rewards or anything else than the Artifacts/Modifiers.
Any off-topic post will be removed.

[Ulyaoth]

- no Chest Drops
- no Scroll Drops (only those avaible from start)
- Horde Waves
--- if the engine can handle it, at intervalls like 24:00, 18:00, 12:00, 6:00 heavy increased
--- spawn rate for 2 minutes
- Agony Elite Spawns x2, 3, etc.
- Enemy/Elite Spawns during Lord fight
- Lord gets increased HP (x2, 3, etc.)
- no Lvl Up Character Boni
- Enemy/Elite Spawn randomizer
--- e.g. if possible, Enemies from Forgotten Viaduct can Spawn in Haunted Caverns
- decreased XP Boni or XP Drops
- New Enemy - Tormented Soul
--- can not be killed, will spawn randomly at any time for 1 minute up to 5? times per run
--- will chase the player and has to be kited

[Kaivo]

I could come up with so many of these

- No Depth Perception: You cannot crit.
- Slow and Steady: You don't benefit from +X% increased attack speed or multistrike. (inspired by Spectral Fists!)
- The Best Offense: You don't benefit from +X% damage. Instead, some percentage of your combined Defense and Block is added as a percentage damage increase. (encourage highly defensive builds!)
- Master of None: You can only get hero traits up to rank II, and ability traits up to rank V. Or whatever ranks make sense.
- All Explosives: barrels, crates, lamps, everything breakable explodes when broken dealing significant damage to you, maybe enemies too.
- Pacifist Mode: You start with a very high score and every enemy you kill reduces it (encourage you to become nigh invulnerable ASAP. This might be too masochistic/boring but hey lets get weird)
- The Lieutenant: You can only have one summon active, and it will be the first you summon - all others are disabled. +X% Spawns acts as a multiplier to all of its stats. (Maybe Warlock's weapon is exempt?)
- Whatever You Could Find: You start the run with a different hero's main weapon at random (no idea how this would work but throwing it out there)
- Chaos Plague: Whenever you apply an elemental or debuff effect, it chooses one at random, even one from the other category (like applying slow instead of burn)
- Council of Torment: instead of facing the hall's final boss, you face every hall's final boss sequentially. They spawn in order on a timer or on the previous boss's death whichever is earliest, so you need to kill them quickly.
- or maybe Council of Torment I, II, III... where each one spawns an additional final boss from another hall instantly, without a timer
- Big Head Mode: your character's head grows larger as you gain Area and Range bonuses whether global, to weapon only, or to ability only. Your hitbox grows to accommodate. (Ok, ok, if we wanna be less goofy it could be the whole character)
- Encroaching Darkness: you have a light radius that decreases as agony rank increases. You can't see anything outside of it, not even damage numbers.

[Moldredd]

-Enemy general speed
-Insta-death on any hit.
-Hero general speed
-Inverted controls
-Fog of War (Blacking/Blurring out everything outside your pickup range)
-No Healing
-Random Lords spawn intervals.
-Random Dopperganger enemy spawn intervals.
-No powerups/consumables.
-Gear lost on game over (giving gold a meaning again at endgame).

*Reserving for possible ideas in the future*

[🌺💗Tazzamorous💗🌺]

I would love to see dual artefacts. As in, each artefact has some upside to the downside.

Examples...

1. Enemies take +25% damage. The player takes +100% damage.
   
2. The player periodically gains a fire/ice/lightning shield that drains their life. It also damages enemies around them (or shoots fire/ice/lightning when hit).
   
3. All enemies have 0.1% chance to drop a chest/scroll. Chests/scrolls now have a maximum of 2 slots.
   
4. The player gains double the bonuses from multipliers. Enemies also benefit from the players modifier bonuses.
   
5. The player cannot crit. Enemies cannot block.
   
6. The player gains x2 exp. But must choose a trait to delete every 2nd level.

I really like the idea of trying to find the silver lining in something that otherwise makes your game difficulty harder.

[Trout Nemesis]

1) "Air Strike": collecting a powerup or health(with some cooldown) causes the floor to be randomly littered with red circles which explode after a delay.
2) "Too Many Options": Every trait from every character are in the pool of possible choices on level up. You start with no rerolls or banishes. There are no powerups or health consumables. Instead you can collect banishes and rerolls on the map to help filter the massive amount of traits.
3) "Mimic Infestation": There are more scrolls on the map than usual. Some of them take half your health and spawn a powerful elite.
4) "Cloudy With A Chance of ___": Your final damage is cut to 25%. If your target is on fire, electrified and/or frosted then you do more damage up to 100%. Having all three elemental debuffs on a target allows you to do 100% damage from all main weapons and/or abilities.
5) "Deadly DDR": An arrow occasionally points in a cardinal direction. If you move in that direction it fills up a bar. You have a limited amount of time to fill up that bar before something bad happens.

[RedRune]

- Invincible hunter: A specific mob hunts the player with decent, but not too high movement speed and does high amount of melee damage when he touches him. The mob can not be destroyed and can also pass walls (or use teleport like those blue skeleton mages from Haunted Caverns). That mob is also immune against debuffs and elemental stack application

- Deactivate random or specific blessing

- Darkness (simple gradient overlay that reduces sight - corners are nearly or even full black)

- Random stage coloration via filter or overlay that decreases elemental damage done by the player: for example a red filter or overlay decreases fire damage of the player, turqouise lightning damage, blue frost damage and so on)

- Reduced or slowed projectiles (for example -1 on all projectiles unless is only has one then it stays like that, or projectile velocity is reduced by x%)

- Reduced damage for tag X: melee, projectile, magic etc.

- Huge Attack Speed increase for final boss

- Cursed items: look like upgraded items but have a chance to be cursed when equipped. Decreased stats, cannot be unequipped until end of the run

- Double Shots (enemy multistrike): Ranged mobs emit twice the amount of projectiles they usually do

- Health drain & gold addiction: player health is constantly drained. Picking up gold heals for a specific percentage of the amount of gold

- Random class: The run starts with a class the player did not select, but the equipment and mark stays

- Health strategies: after each levelup players health is reset to 50% of his current maxhealth

- Panic attacks: players attack speed is increased, but his damage done and debuff/emental application rate drastically decreased

- Copying: final boss additionally uses one random ability that the player is using

[rorb]

• All enemies drop purple flames on death
  
• All enemies have their elemental stacks limited to 10
  
• No shrine of blessings bonuses
  
• Only 5000 / 10000 gold worth of blessings
  
• Allowed to enter a Hall with only 3 pieces of equipment
  
• Ability Upgrades locked at trait levels 5/10
  
• Two of that Hall's Lord at once
  
• Every 20 seconds, spawn 10-20 of those purple ghost skeletons that shoot
  
• -0.10 base regen every minute
  
• -1 base defense every minute
  
• No hero stat growth on level up
  
• Agony increases 2x as fast
  
• Using a potion (reroll, memorization, reverb etc.) gives you a timed debuff. These can stack. Lowered movement speed, no healing, lowered defense/block, lowered damage, lowered exp gain, etc. for 30-120 seconds.
  
• Cursed equipment you must keep equipped, with stat negatives or playstyle altering stat modifiers. Swordsman getting a "Chain Blade" with way lower base damage, but much more range and area. Archer getting a "Crossbow" with a higher base damage, larger projectile with much more base force, but way lower attack speed. This ofc wouldn't work that well with how their current trait trees are, but alternate styles are interesting regardless. A lot of work and balancing would be necessary though, so probably not worth. Still fun to think about.
  
• All stage bosses attack faster
  
• Player can also get affected by burn/frost/elec fragile/afflic/slow from respective enemy attacks
  
• Fewer enemies, more complex bullet patterns
  
• No exp bonuses from quest board
  
• Traits from Marks are only 50% as effective

I personally don't think inverted controls are a good challenge, it doesn't really test your skill as a HoT player.

[Oh The Folly]

I came up with more ideas than I was expecting. Hopefully some are helpful.

* Picking up exp damages you (exp magnets would have to be disabled, also a slider for how damaging it is would make this flexible for whatever difficulty someone wants). Or exp causes some debuff - the more exp drops collected in the last X time the stronger the debuff.
* No exp magnets
* Healing items and powerups move when you're close (either away from the player or randomly, like the gold dropping slimes). Or they expire over time like the gold slimes. Or both.
* Exp mimics which turn into powerful enemies/bosses when you get close
(Could also be funny if they didn't change form when you fight them. Maybe it could change to purple color to be distinguishable) To hide effectively they would have to only spawn around exp on the ground.
* Random high priority enemies - just like gold slimes there's a limited time after they appear to defeat them. Failing to defeat them in time has some penalty or debuff. Maybe crates can spawn them? Or could be like exp mimics.
* Constant rotating random debuff. For example, every 30 sec switch between -X% area, range, force, attack speed, projectile speed, etc. A harder version would be if the -% increased over time or with agony.
* Spawn two of the final boss so you fight a second one at the same time. Maybe spawn additional copies depending if player dps is high enough.
* Some penalty for each piece of equipment worn when starting a run. For example, if you only wear boots then one level of penalty. If you wear boots and two rings then three levels. Or maybe three different penalties.
* Same thing but including equipment picked up during the run. Wearing powered up agony equipment has extra penalty.
* When a chest is spawned it's automatically opened, and you are forced to pick an item in it to wear, which you can't take off or replace with something else (unless a future chest only has options for equipment slots that are are already cursed like this). Worse version: Only one item in chests, no rerolls.
* Scrolls offer fewer or one option, no rerolls. Maybe one additional option for Sage.
* No ability upgrades in scrolls. Or max one upgrade per ability.
* Ability upgrades in scrolls have a penalty. Or they're chaotic (for example range or attack speed will fluctuate). This is inspired by the orbs upgrade that makes them uneven. Sorry to say, but that has only felt like a debuff every time I've taken it.
* Scrolls appear much more frequently, but are the only way to level up abilities (abilities don't show up in level up)
* Fewer or one option at level up, no rerolls.
* Some penalty for using potions.
* Some penalty that increases for each ability taken.
* Each character gets a debuff or stat down every ten levels. Stronger version, it happens every level.

[Lazerbacon]

This concept and all these ideas are amazing!

[Spunk Mayo]

Some modifier ideas:

* One-Hit-Kills. Works both ways for players and enemies. Could, alternatively, only work on players.

* Random equipment.

* All-class traits to pick from, meaning you can get abilities and traits from any class or ability.

[LegenDaddy]

able to take 1 uncommon item each time you won the round and also never ending mode (increase max agony to 10)

[Error404]

Any idea huh? How about this one:

Instead of the fallback traits Alms and Health, Basic Traits like Strength and Vanguard show up and you can level them infinitely. In exchange, those same bonuses for the fallback traits are also applied either fully or doubly to all enemies as well.

How about this one:

Exp Bonus +400%, but your characters level up bonuses are inverted so you lose instead of gain those level up bonuses.

Or, how about this one:

Your % damage can be alot higher, but normal bonuses do nothing and your damage % scales entirely off of Pickup Range.

Also, Lightweight Summons:

Double or Triple Base Summons, but you lose 25-30 base damage or 100%, whichever affects your summon more.

Or a more simple one:

You start with either a normal or doubled Ethereal Shift chosen at random.

[timmylawless]

Enemies health increases by 1% every 200 kills.


Enemies periodically move at +-20% movement speed.

Attacks do between 1-300% damage.


Enemy bosses gain a reflective shield for X seconds after nearby enemies die.

[furmiga3d]

i think it's a great idea. See i love destiny, D1 mostly, and the thing i liked to do the most there was strikes, even more after they impolemented the modifiers to incrise difficult... but here's the thing, i get that's supposed to be for the endgame only, but, i don't think players will actually use the modifiers if they only turn things more difficult, it must be a high risk high reward situation from my point of view, it has to have some beneficit to actualy use it...
Also, i don't know if there's a plan for it, but i would enjoy a infinite mode, with no time.

[E]

I'd go with a mode that is ONLY elite/boss mobs, meant to be short (~10 mins?), starts with an already punishing high amount of those (elite/boss) mobs and keeps ramping up crazier and crazier numbers until it is basically impossible to survive. (See how far you can get)