Harvest feedback

With the changes to harvest moving to itemized currency I have noticed a few things about how it feels.

1) Entering the sacred grove feels incredibly hollow.

It feels like the actual harvest zone is not needed anymore since we have no need to store or organize specific crafts we do have access to the horticrafting station within the maps anymore.

2) Triggering the plots feels like a non impactful choice.

The monster names mean little anymore I find myself going for any amount of color rather in the text than caring if it is a specific mob listed. This creates a situation where I am asking,

Do I need to know these monster names?
Is there any change I can effect knowing the differences?

Neither one of these has a clear answer.

Suggestions for improvement:

With the actual zone feeling in a off place I suggest you remove the plots from the dedicated zone and the zone itself to integrate them into the maps in smaller 'off shoots' that only hold one (or two) plot(s) at a time. I like the idea of following the harvest blue glowing roots down a thin offshoot to find a harvest plot. This would make it feel more natural and interesting as Oshabi is planting these all over the atlas where the lifeforce is available to grow the fruits.

I can illustrate this idea if requested.

The lifeforce labels them self on the harvest plots need to be simplified even just a icon of the lifeforce you have a chance to drop would be improved from a list of monster names. I would not hint at the amount of life force to expect like the current system seems to imply. "3 x wild beasts 2 x beast 1 x blue text beast" but rather just the icon of the type that can drop.

As for the crafts themself I enjoyed the old harvest system and having my stash with tabs of items ready for when I got a specific craft. This was always for the hard to craft items like an explode chest or others that some builds benefit from. This was always for the character I was playing at the time. I like the idea of having an option to create a harvest item that is account locked but will allow access to 'More' powerful harvest crafts. This will have to be below the top tier power of the most powerful items to still have a path for further upgrades and still allow the life force to be itemized and tradable.

The biggest thing about harvest was the feeling "yes I can try to reroll this item in a special way with this crafting method instead of spending my other currency. I hope I get one of the mods I am looking for so I can try to further craft this with the targeted re roll(more chaos etc)."

It made items themselves feel like they can have incremental upgrades with a bit of a gamble.

Re rolling items with a needed mod with MORE LIKELY was fun and can always have the option of the bad option and completely re rolling off the mods. Then after I always wanted to try again because I knew that I utilized my knowledge to give me the best chance as I saw it to improve that item.

Often the journey of an item is as follows:

Find a good base type
Try to quality it to 30 - Syndicate or Delve

Try to get all sockets - Harvest or jewelers orbs or Syndicate
Try to link - Harvest or Fusing or Syndicate
Try to for white sockets - Syndicate or Delve

While this is happening you are using Harvest to try to roll a good item. You end up spending a lot of time with certain items. Putting in a lot of work and crafting it. Its a long journey that can make a player connected to that induvial item. Harvest helped facilitate this feeling with crafting the specific mods you need for your character.

Items are the most important things in this game Nothing feels better when you finally finish a long craft of an item where you have engaged in almost all of the appropriate content in the game, countless re rolls, and a dash of luck it feels special.

With the changes it feels much less special. Something about crafting within maps made it feel good. Like you are taking risk to going into the atlas to bring out more power for your character.

Removing the harvest zone from maps will make it feel more special when you fight Oshabi herself.

One small thought that I am going to toss out at the end of this is What about a system similar to scourge where you have to lock 1,2,or 3 items into the horticrafting station and the crafts found in the maps would only be able to apply to those items. This makes the matching crafts to items far more difficult for the TFT people as the decision has to be made before you enter the map. This would allow to keep the current itemized and crafting options with a gamble to get a high value craft that applies to your locked items.