Make more quests optional: less sloggy feel

I love PoE2 but the campaign is a real slog to replay. I think it’s because nearly everything is mandatory, a lot of the optional stuff gives too important benefits (like +30 spirit and passive points) to skip.

Compare to D2 where side quests give fun perks that you really don’t need:
- free mercenary
- free identification
- runes
- imbue option
- name inscription

Even the +5 stats hardly makes a difference in most runs. The only side quests that really matter are the +skills and + resist quests.

Other examples:
1. Last Epoch, where you can skip acts by doing challenging dungeons.
2. Guild Wars 1, where you can skip the entire mid game if you can pull off a “drok’s run”. That is an extremely hard path between the towns that are the end of the early game and the start of the end game.

In PoE2 I think a lot of things are unnecessarily mandatory, and more zones can be made optional/side zones. Eg let us skip Lachlan, which in turn lets us skip the mausoleums. Let us skip most of A2 by letting us storm the gates, which would be so difficult that the only way to do it is by being rushed, on alt characters, or by being extremely good at the game.

This would reduce the mandatory length of each playthrough, while keeping the amount of content for people to enjoy the same.

Thanks in advance for the consideration.