The Grind of Abyss (Opinions so far)

[Useless NPC]

REVISIONS
Small but important addition to "Bugs" section.

It goes without saying that this difficulty is insanely difficult for sub-level 189, this in its own right is a problem (some players may not be able to reach skill floor to survive)

I have now completed 18 Abyss games, with around 5 of these being solo (And like 70 deaths when soloing with 'wrong' builds). Here are my thoughts... (These are opinions regarding problems I have) <-- Note that I really enjoy the update though

Completing one of these games as a level 180-189 player solo requires a dramatic change in player behavior to have success; some of these behaviors are not quite fun.

The number one worst thing that I find myself doing to stay alive is exploiting level geometry to prevent enemies from attacking me; this is not something I'm proud of, and rarely did I have a need to do this when early level dc hunting. To elaborate, I'm talking about crouching behind coffins, boxes, televisions, bathtubs, etc. so that I am 'safe' (because you are never truly safe) from attacks. These spots, if removed, would severely inhibit my early progress for abyss chests solo; I do not see them as a big concern developer-wise due to the risk involved with cornering yourself.

Second. I had to abandon my agile builds in favor of a fat-armor tank to prevent being killed in two and sometimes three melee hits (I had 240 hp before). I'm equipped with a ring of sacrifice such that I only have one health point, all for the additional damage needed (7% hp loss upon blood donation will not kill me). I dislike builds such as these, but it seems to be my best chance against the aggressive hordes. My point is that I'm having less fun in that regard (but only to a minor degree). All playstyles should be viable in a perfecty balanced system (which I understand would be nearly impossible to achieve).

Third. Abyss coins are very scarce for me. I have opened four abyss chests and leveled two rank 4 trinkets to level two. I have something like eight other abyss chests lying in my inventory. I broke down 36 DCs and maybe 5 or 6 duplicate rings for abyss coins. (Side note, in the future, I will level up duplicate rings a bit before breaking them down since higher level rings yield more coins [or I was told]). I currently cannot open any chests or level up my trinkets further. I feel like I either need to start breaking abyss chests or farming for dcs.

Why is the above paragraph important??? I am struggling to level up rank 4s to assist me in my acquisition of them! Certain rank 4s are going to be more beneficial than others for starting up the difficulty (A pistol trinket is going to help much more than a marine gloves equivalent trinket).

Solution: the player can keep 75% of the abyss coins from wanderers they have killed even if they die (but not the chest if they killed all three AW).

The 'all or nothing' current system is barring certain players (who may not have as fast reactions or game intuition) from acquiring these chests. Perhaps a button should be added that allows the player to buy an abyss chest at the cost of a demon chest, 100 abyss coins, and a sizable portion of fragments. Even players who cannot beat the difficulty can earn some chests through hard work. This button would be unavailable until the player is something like level ~170 (That way they don't just skip the majority of rank 3 progression). Note that the player would still need to open the abyss chest after buying it, but at least any high level player could persist enough to get one (without relying on others). This also assumes that players can earn coins even if they died.

Fourth. The enemy buff that allows enemies to die once (then turn green) is extremely tough (in fact, it is this buff that causes me to camp in 'safe' spots 70%ish of the times I do it.) It drains your ammo and allows enemies to overwhelm the player (not the type of fun challenge either). I have no complaints about the other buffs though (the normal enemy to rotten buff is challenging in a positive way).

Other Suggestions:

Wanderers can still be challenging to spawn. I find that I have the greatest level of success when I play fast and with relatively high heat (unintuitive and not 'normal' for a severely under-leveled player.) Although mystery is great, it can be frustrating to players who apparently don't have a 'normal' playstyle; give the player a hint as to how to spawn them.

It can be sometimes tough to locate wanderers. It seems that wanderers spawn in either the same color room the accompanying crest that spawned them was located in, or the color room the crest is for. I run to rooms listening for which sounds most like a cluster-*ahem*, and usually find the wanderer in those. The wanderers should utter phrases similar to when they first spawn and when they see you, while they move around (like doctors). Each wanderer should have distinguished voices or phrases to tell them apart.

The 'witch wanderer' should have one other clue regarding when he is going to attack. I like that he is stealthier than a witch, but at least you can tell where a witch is when you don't see her. If wanderers muttered phrases or laughed or cried (whatever is most appropriate) this would not be a problem.

5-player games are an occasional glitch that the community finds to be very fun. Although lag can be severe in these games, the host has the option of limiting the number of joining players. I think that the player limit should be increased to 5 (looks like you can squeeze another player status bar in the hud from 4 player games). By default the player limit option will continue being 4 by default (with 5 being optional) since that's what the co-op is 'optimized' for.

Level 150s have an extremely small likelihood of completing abyss on their own, perhaps the level limit should be raised to ~160-170 to avoid issues. I don't like suggesting this, but unlocking the difficulty at 150 is 'bold' to say the most (although I'm sure that with an extremely skilled player, it may be possible).

The balancing and developing time would be rough, but a beastmode equivalent would 'fix' most of these problems.

Bugs

Client players sometimes cannot see AW health. Players can still rejoin without being dead after dying (by equiping higher health trinkets) <-- Intended feature, does not need higher hp trinket. Important one: when a player joins while a client is reloading their weapon, it 'breaks' and can no longer be used (reloads forever).

[Sonnenblume]

Regarding the acquisition of Abyss Coins, I think it would be helpful if killing 3 Abyss Wanderers provided some coins in addition to the Abyss Chest. Right now it seems weird having to break so many Abyss Chests down in order to get coins.

[Zod]

Escrito originalmente por Yavor:

Escrito originalmente por Useless NPC:

It is an armor build using a ring of sacrifice. If you ever see me in a lobby, don't hesitate to join. You're always welcome :)

Sure. Looking now at the current state of multiplayer, everyone is playing Abyss on the Quad Damage challenge, hoping not to get hit. I find it funny. :)

Huh? I don't play on quad and have gotten numerous ACs.

Abyss is hard and it's supposed to be difficult to tackle the absolute hardest difficulty!
Before going into Abyss I had a build prepared that I felt would do pretty well.

I was wrong and had to make several adjustments before having a fair chance of completing a game.
Then finally yesterday a R4 trinket that fit my build dropped and it all got SO much easier.

What I'm trying to say is that instead of saying that it can't be done and should be nerfed look at your build and see what could be changed to increase your odds of surviving. What is it that kills you? What can you do to avoid that?

For me it was gearing up with an armor build and make adjustments to increase my damage that did the trick. Also I had to learn to play much more cautiously (from being used to rush through every game)

[Yavor]

Escrito originalmente por Zod:

What I'm trying to say is that instead of saying that it can't be done and should be nerfed look at your build and see what could be changed to increase your odds of surviving. What is it that kills you? What can you do to avoid that?

For me it was gearing up with an armor build and make adjustments to increase my damage that did the trick. Also I had to learn to play much more cautiously (from being used to rush through every game)

I cannot make more adjustments because I'm using my strogest build comprised of R4L7 trinkets and a high level ring. Any adjustments to the build will only make it weaker.

The current problem of this game (I'm tired of repeating it) is that a whole difficulty level is missing between Unearthly and Abyss, which is the same as saying that there is no transition between the two difficulties.

[Zod]

Escrito originalmente por Yavor:

Escrito originalmente por Zod:

What I'm trying to say is that instead of saying that it can't be done and should be nerfed look at your build and see what could be changed to increase your odds of surviving. What is it that kills you? What can you do to avoid that?

For me it was gearing up with an armor build and make adjustments to increase my damage that did the trick. Also I had to learn to play much more cautiously (from being used to rush through every game)

I cannot make more adjustments because I'm using my strogest build comprised of R4L7 trinkets and a high level ring. Any adjustments to the build will only make it weaker.

The current problem of this game (I'm tired of repeating it) is that a whole difficulty level is missing between Unearthly and Abyss, which is the same as saying that there is no transition between the two difficulties.

The thing is that plenty of people have been able to complete Abyss games with a wide variety of challenges / game modes and builds.
You just have to find the weaknesses in your build and fix them then try again.
Maybe you need to level a different ring or try a completely different main weapon but to just nerf Abyss over an over again would just make it way too easy once people start accumulating higher R4 trinkets.

You aren't supposed to jump into Abyss with a build that maybe isn't fully optimal and yolo-solo it.

The choices as I see it are:

*Try a different build / gather higher trinkets

*Play with others

*Play really really cautious and slow

If you thin out the monsters enough it's basically just you and the Wanderer, sure they can take extreme amounts of damage but with few other monsters around its a game of kiting and attrition.

[Touchdown]

Except that he's right. There is no transition from Unearthly to Abyss at all. I find it completely impossible to play without Quad and I'm tired of being one-shotted too. How is being cautious going to help you when you get cornered by a demon speeding Rotten Clown that takes four clips to kill?

The persistent problem with the difficulty in UNLOVED is that Paul insists on high-end difficulties being balanced for both entry level players (full R3L7 gear for Abyss) and the new top tier (R4s). That is... just... physically impossible. The result is that Abyss is not fun for neither of those groups. Unearhtly players can barely survive while the inevitable R4L10+ players will most likely breeze through it (unless they play the Rotten Challenge).

And so the ancient problem with UNLOVED comes round again: there's no campaign. When you look at something like Diablo 2, you enter the new difficulty as the same character with the same gear, much like in this game. What is the difference then? The game has a progression. Act I enemies are nowhere near as tough as Act 5 ones. So there's a difficulty spike but you're still going from easier bits to harder ones. In UNLOVED the difficulty is flat.

[Yavor]

Escrito originalmente por Touchdown:

Except that he's right. There is no transition from Unearthly to Abyss at all. I find it completely impossible to play without Quad and I'm tired of being one-shotted too. How is being cautious going to help you when you get cornered by a demon speeding Rotten Clown that takes four clips to kill?

I tried running in circles and shoot him in the left eye while he was demon-speeding but it didn't work. I don't know why. Maybe I wasn't concentrated enough. ;)

[Sonnenblume]

Here's an interesting idea I had today: Abyss Keys. An Abyss Key will automatically open an Abyss Chest when used in conjunction with one. Abyss Keys can be constructed in your inventory from a combination of Karma, fragments, and rubies.

This will not only provide a purpose for fragments in the late game, but will also help with the Abyss grind by allowing players to keep Abyss Coins for upgrading their r4 trinkets.

[Big fish]

Escrito originalmente por Sonnenblume:

Here's an interesting idea I had today: Abyss Keys. An Abyss Key will automatically open an Abyss Chest when used in conjunction with one. Abyss Keys can be constructed in your inventory from a combination of Karma, fragments, and rubies.

This will not only provide a purpose for fragments in the late game, but will also help with the Abyss grind by allowing players to keep Abyss Coins for upgrading their r4 trinkets.

Coming from the Discord news regarding this. Just gonna leave my upvote on the matter.

[Zod]

Btw does anyone have a rough idea how many coins are needed to get a R4 trinket from lvl 1 to 13?

[potterman28wxcv]

Escrito originalmente por Zod:

Btw does anyone have a rough idea how many coins are needed to get a R4 trinket from lvl 1 to 13?

Do you have the numbers for lvl 1 to lvl 2 and lvl 2 to lvl 3?

If L12 is lvl 1 to lvl 2, and L23 is lvl 2 to lvl 3, the formula should be something like
12 * L12 + (L23 - L12) * 12 * 11 / 2

[Zod]

Escrito originalmente por potterman28wxcv:

Escrito originalmente por Zod:

Btw does anyone have a rough idea how many coins are needed to get a R4 trinket from lvl 1 to 13?

Do you have the numbers for lvl 1 to lvl 2 and lvl 2 to lvl 3?

If L12 is lvl 1 to lvl 2, and L23 is lvl 2 to lvl 3, the formula should be something like
12 * L12 + (L23 - L12) * 12 * 11 / 2

After reviewing some screenshots I found the following:

Level Coins
1 > 2 - 47
2 > 3 - 94
3 > 4 - 141
4 > 5 - ?
5 > 6 - 235
6 > 7 - ?
7 > 8 - ?
8 > 9 - ?
9 > 10 - ?
10 > 11 - 470
11 > 12 - ?
12 > 13 - ?

[potterman28wxcv]

Escrito originalmente por Zod:

Escrito originalmente por potterman28wxcv:

Do you have the numbers for lvl 1 to lvl 2 and lvl 2 to lvl 3?

If L12 is lvl 1 to lvl 2, and L23 is lvl 2 to lvl 3, the formula should be something like
12 * L12 + (L23 - L12) * 12 * 11 / 2

After reviewing some screenshots I found the following:

Level Coins
1 > 2 - 47
2 > 3 - 94
3 > 4 - 141
4 > 5 - ?
5 > 6 - 235
6 > 7 - ?
7 > 8 - ?
8 > 9 - ?
9 > 10 - ?
10 > 11 - 470
11 > 12 - ?
12 > 13 - ?

It seems to me that it costs multiples of 47 coins.

In that case, the amount of coins needed should be 47 * 12 * 13 / 2 = 3666 coins = 48 abyss chests (if each abyss chest is 77 coins)

We have 9 slots for our R4, so the total amount of abyss chest to get is 432.

If you spend 15 minutes per abyss chest (optimistic), that's 6480 minutes, or 108 hours. Double this value if you spend 30 minutes per abyss chest. Quadruple it if you spent 1 hour per chest.

Note that I didn't take into account the amoutn of time required to open them all and get rid of all duplicates until you find the ones you want.

[Useless NPC]

Potterman's numbers check out. I actually just did the calculation simultaneously. Note that in terms of Dcs, it would take 524 to completely max 1 trinket. The grind is simply too long. (Also people who have multiple max level rank 4 trinkets right now (like more than 2) should be deemed slightly fishy this early.) THE GRIND IS NEVER ENDING

[Mader]

Don't forget about possible suspected bug that deliver duplicates more often than it would happen by pure chance!

[Godsdoomer]

Useless NPC,

Yes I agree I am wondering how some players are level 300+ already. Maybe they dont sleep....