Changes to the Labyrinth

I lab and do lab every single league. My youtube channel is full of result from 100XLAB, 200etc. I do this a lot and I gave my thoughts on the enchant system here.

https://youtu.be/2LtycR2yDo4


Let me know what you think, thanks

Lab continues to suck.

You fight Izaro up to 12 times per character, which is waaaaayyyyyyy out of line compared to every other boss in the game. Also, the lore is nonsensical (we run lab 4 times because ... why?, why does merc lab exist when merc difficulty no longer does?, among other problems). Plus, gating character progression behind a mini-game instead of the main game is an odd design decision that makes the experience feel alien and non-immersive.

When a merc or (especially) eternal lab run fails because of a disconnect -- and that's the only reason I fail at getting ascendancy points these days because Izaro is very predictable -- then it's a borderline rage-inducing event that means POE doesn't get touched for a while.

On that note, I've had a big uptick in sudden disconnects kicking me out to the login menu in the past month or thereabouts. That uptick plus lab killed my interest in leveling up some higher level characters in the last league; re-running merc / eternal lab is irritating enough that I find other things to do instead.

Izaro the Boring can get the fuck out of this game anytime, from my perspective. Make the process of earning prestige classes suck less and make it make more sense.

Legion introduces more ways to get gems, the only thing lab really has left is enchants being rare. Hope they dont change it.

Only problem wit Lab in my opinion are enchants. Its normal that the best enchants are rare , true, but still there are like what, 400+ enchants ? And more than half of them being extremely useless. It will be good if some of those useless ones are either reworked, so they actually give a good buff to the otherwise bad skill, or the skills themselves be redesigned so they are not actually bad, therefore the enchants end up not that bad either, or just remove some of them.

Of course there will be people saying " Yea but they should be hard to get, you should not be able to grab them easily " and i totally agree with that. Also, with every league come new skills therefore new enchants and they just keep growing in count. At some point obtaining the one you need becomes pointless. Yes, you can always buy it from someone that had that particular one but does not need it, but at that point when the chance to get the enchant is 1/500 or something, the price becomes too much to be worth.

Something has to be redesigned so you actually see a point in farming your own lab enchant, because lab itself is quite fun part of the game, but as already mentioned in the comments, you cant run it on any character. You need to make a specific one who is a lab farmer in order to farm it and get the enchant.

Someone mentioned that they should be put in the bench for crafting, but that`s a bad option in my opinion, and it contradicts the part "good ones should be hard to get" . A good option might be to just remove the tier from Merc Lab, and leave the tier from Uber only. That will shorten the list significantly, but wont make them that much easier to obtain, with the head enchants being available only in uber tho, as otherwise people will farm merc and then they will be very easy to obtain.

100% for make lab shorter, removin some rooms and make every room shorter + add options to sell/save enchantment mods into crafting bench

GGG pls!

While I consider the lab the worst part of the game by a wide margin (trap-dodging in the dark is the opposite of the rest of the game) I do think the ascendancies should be gated behind something and I'm fine with doing it on one or two characters per league. The lab is not hard, it's just a boring chore that has to be done ovver and over during the league.

My solution is to put the ascendancy tablet in the same room as the Waypoint and defeating Izaro on each difficulty unlocks those points for your account.
This way you still have to do the labyrinth but at least you can make your league-starter a good labrunner if you want or simply wait til high level to clear them.

Maybe Eternal lab should still have to be done once per character but then again, why? Increase the rewards from running it so that the people who do enjoy the place can farm it while the rest of us can beat it once and just leave it behind.

My 2c... In some ways I like that the Labs are longer, especially for character progression (Ascendencies). Character progression should take longer and take some effort. Instead of always making it shorter, how about an option to keep it long to receive Ascendencies, but have the option to run it shorter for chests and enchantments. A simple checkbox on the Lab selection dialog could drive it.

really excited

Let's all play without Ascendencies !

I HATE Labs!! There, I said it!
If I wanted to play a puzzle game, I'd play a puzzle game. I play PoE to kill monsters! If all the Labs consisted solely of fighting mobs I'd love them! But I can't stand the traps and switches and puzzles!! I avoid Labs until I'm WAYYYY over leveled and the whole thing just drains all the fun out of the game for me. I've actually logged out rather than face a Lab...

If Labs are going to be around, please just get rid of the traps, switches (especially TIMED switches), and puzzles. Just fill the Lab maps with hard mobs and maybe have several mini-bosses that must be killed in order to progress to the next zone? Anything would be better than dying, AGAIN, to a stupid spinning, zig-zagging, spiky, blade covered log thingy!!!

Lax