My Quick thought about Mirage

Hello Exiles,

After about a week of playing and completing all the challenges, I wanted to share some quick thoughts about both the base game and the league.

First of all, the base game feels amazing this league compared to 2025. For me, the biggest wins are the improvements to ground loot, QoL changes, the removal of T17 farming, chisels being removed and integrated into Atlas bonuses, the new map system, and the improvements to juicing mechanics with Astrolab. These changes are honestly the main reason why I'm enjoying the league so much.

However, on the other side, I feel the Mirage mechanic itself is the weaker part of the league.

During the campaign, I actually had a lot of fun with it because Mirage often spawned Essences and Strongboxes nearby, which felt very rewarding and helpful. Even though I'm not a big fan of the loading screen, the mechanic still felt engaging at that stage.

In maps, however, the Mirage mechanic doesn't really click for me. The main issue is that you're essentially redoing the same map again, with a loading screen every time. Some maps also have very bad layouts, which makes the experience feel even worse.

Another problem is the Mirage chests. Honestly, they feel completely worthless. Even the big chest at the end rarely feels worth opening. Personally, I would much prefer something like a loot explosion when leaving the Mirage, similar to Alva's mechanic. For example, if you manage to clear all the monsters inside, you get a bigger reward explosion instead of opening random chests.

Regarding the Mirage buffs, after the first week I even started wondering if some of them are actually working. For example, buffs like "More Currency" or "More Divination Cards" don't really feel noticeable. As for the bronze, silver, and golden chests… honestly, they feel completely useless.

The blue buffs, like shrines and other bonuses, are cool but that's about it.

One thing I do like about Mirage is that it interacts with other mechanics, but the balance between them feels very uneven. For example, Abyss feels completely worthless in Mirage, while Heist feels extremely strong, giving contracts and blueprints with massive reward bonuses. The difference feels a bit unbalanced.

The same applies to Astrolab interactions. Some mechanics like Abyss feel very weak compared to something like Breach, for example.

Speaking of Astrolab, I actually really like the system overall, especially the vault at the end, which feels very rewarding at the start of the league. I hope that in the future we’ll see more mechanics added to Astrolab, such as Essence, Heist, Affliction, or other missing mechanics.

The biggest downside of the vault, though, is that it feels very rewarding during the first 2–3 days, but then the drops suddenly fall off quite hard. It reminds me a bit of Kingsmarch mappers in that sense. This is not actually the first league where I felt this drop-off.

Last but not least, the overall server stability has felt pretty bad this league. I’m honestly quite surprised that this is still happening, as it has negatively impacted the experience at times.

Anyway, that’s my quick feedback.

Overall, thank you GGG for the huge improvements to the base game. I really hope you continue pushing the game in this direction.

what did those supporter packs cost you? a bmw?

I'd rather have a bmw.

actually id rather have a truck.

sunk cost fallacy only works when cost is meaningfull.
this appears to be random chance, like a saudi prince losing
a million at bakarat and not giving an f. I mean the man loves
bakarat, what can I say?