Review of 0.3

Hello again,

It might seem to be a bit late to give some feedback on 0.3, given that we'll soon see POE1 3.27, but better late than never.
In truth I've spent more time playing this release than complaining about it, which is perhaps the best summation of my experience of it.

The Good
Lots to put here. Almost everything is a great improvement over 0.2.
Notable highlights:
- Async/Offline Trading: I think that I'm not the only one to praise this. It is a literal game changer and has empowered me to spend less time trading and more time playing. Has also increased my crafting opportunities as it's a source of currency and bases. Some refinements might be in order like a set of filter drop downs in the buying side of the trade to highlight the currency type and amount ranges. This is to allow buyers to not be duped into paying DIVs for items that are worth EXs.

- Act 4: A lot of work has gone into this. The Narrative, the settings, the environmental surprise events (the exploding ship wrecks got me real good) and the Solitary confinement section in the prison are stand-out excellent set pieces. Well done.

- The entire Hinakora area in Act4: I'm going to guess this will eventually be a new Ascendency Trial. Eager to see what you will make of it. I like lore elements and I think a dream walking narrative style element is great.

- Changes to Minions. Finally I can have a pure minion build from Act 1 and use that to complete the campaign content with the various Act Bosses. Thank you.

- Abyssal League: I like the implementation of the mechanic on the whole, and the new Abyssal Depths have good loot. The Crafting system is very useful too. I did miss the Well of Souls entirely in my first play through and had to Google it and go back to the Mastadon area.
Maybe consider having the entrance to the Well of Souls as being like an Abyssal Depths entrance in the centre of a set of connected Abysses. So just gaining entrance to the Well is the reward of battling an appropriately large horde of Abyss Mobs. This would make sense from a narrative standpoint IMO.

- Skill Gem changes: More Levels of Gems and allowing multiple of the same supports on different skills is also great. Thank you.

- Endgame Map Variety: There's a lot more variety in endgame maps.
Lots of unique maps with Atlas points on offer. Makes it less tedious. Thank you.

- The addition of a buff to increase charm slots.
This is a small one but it's still appreciated by me. Thank you.


The OK
- Interludes: They felt a bit too short. More like a large multi-section Map, than an act. Some of the bosses were essentially re-skinned ones from prior Acts. Clearly a work-in-progress and beyond that I look forward to seeing how these will progress into fully formed Acts of their own.

- New gearing options: I like the concept of Exceptional Items (I haven't found one yet) and all the new Socketables are OK.
Some of the new unique support gems are OK. Most seem a bit meh.
I noticed that when viewing a support gem to see what skills it's compatible with, the default attack skill (eg. Bow Shot) is not listed in the compatibility table. Is that an oversight?
Or are all support gems compatible with default attacks?


The Hmm
- Changes to Towers / Tablets: I understand and agree with the intention behind removing the "Tower Juicing" mechanic in the endgame but there have been some unintended consequences to things like map sustain and the occurrence of Ritual has fallen off the wagon entirely.
I used to be able to sustain maps by just running a map and get at least one guaranteed waystone from the last Rare Mob. This doesn't seem to happen any longer. It's now possible to not get a single waystone in a map from the boss or any of the Rares. Even with Waystone drop chance in the 50% range.

- Of Tablets, Towers and maps: The with Tablets only method is somewhat behind that of Tower Juicing. The issue here IMO is of Scaling.
Scaling: Before with a modest two tower setup, using only 2 tablets a tower, one could apply two "base" precursor tablets with total 4 mods across dozens of maps, then apply two more tablets (eg Expedition and Breach) to the same set of over a dozen maps. This relatively cheap and quick setup gave over a dozen maps, 4 mods and two mechanics to do PLUS say 4 mods on the waystone itself. In comparison the new system with a 4 mod waystone can only apply half of the number of tablet mods with the mods from a waystone.
Plus the new tablets are typically only 10 uses whereas before they could apply to a lot more than 10 atlas nodes.
To do the same as before requires one to apply 4 tablets per map.
Which is not possible.
Also the tablet mods are supposed to have been increased to compensate?
But the values would need to be at least doubled in order to come close to as before.
So the new map juicing system needs refinement. I would suggest allowing tablets to be Rare with up to 4 mods.
And on that note, given that the new juicing system requires a tablet every 10 maps or so, the drop rate of tablets is definitely not high enough to sustain only 10 uses per tablet. The Tablet drop rates seem to be tuned for using them in the occasional tower.

- Ritual: There seems to be a problem with the game spawning rituals and dropping ritual tablets. I have dropped one (1) Ritual tablet thus far and about three (3) Omen of Light. So in my experience that Ritual Tablet is three times as rare a drop as an Omen of Light?
Doesn't sound like the maths is mathing on this one.