Ultimatum: Temple of Chaos Rework

1. Easy to Make: Quality of Life Improvements

• After killing the Trialmaster at the end of an Ultimatum, the teleport should return the player to the entrance of the Temple of Chaos, not to the city. Running multiple temples becomes unnecessarily frustrating due to forced city returns.
• Leaving the temple between trials should not close the temple instance. Players should be able to re-enter without losing progress.
• Upon returning, the character should be placed near the closed door to the next room, not at the very beginning of the temple.
• The same logic should apply after completing all challenges but before fighting the Trialmaster. If a player needs to leave (e.g., to purchase a Fragment of Fate), they should not be required to run through the entire temple again.

These changes are minimal in scope but would significantly reduce friction when chaining multiple temple runs.

2. Temple Layout and Topography (Critical QoL Rework)

The current terrain and verticality are extremely frustrating. Elevators and moving platforms are disruptive and unnecessary.

• All rooms should exist on a single level.
• Elevators and vertical movement platforms should be removed entirely.
• Paths between rooms must be short and streamlined.

Room flow should remain similar to the current system:

• Select debuff.
• Room opens.
• Clear room.
• Short corridor to next room.
• Repeat.

If friction is reduced through layout improvements, overall temple length can be increased to maintain completion time metrics. For example:

• Increase from ~5 rooms per boss to approximately 15 total rooms.
• Balance completion time through encounter density rather than movement inconvenience.

The goal is to preserve average completion time while removing artificial frustration.

3. Trial Reworks

3.1 Survive the Monsters

Currently one of the most frustrating trials. The 1.5 minute timer often forces players to stand idle due to insufficient monster density.

Proposed redesign:

• Adopt a scaling wave system similar to Hourglass Trial in Trial of the Sekhemas.
• If the player kills monster wave, the timer decreases faster.
• New waves spawn dynamically based on kill speed.
• Higher kill speed = faster completion.

This eliminates idle waiting and rewards active play.

3.2 Escort Trial (Flying Statue)

• The statue should automatically match the player's movement speed.
• It should follow the player directly rather than lag behind.

Escort friction should not be the difficulty.

3.3 Sacrifice Trial

Instead of three separate circles:

• Create one large central circle.
• Spawn monsters that rush toward the player.
• Kills must occur inside the circle to fill the meter.

This centralizes combat and reduces unnecessary movement downtime.

4. Modifier System Overhaul

Room modifiers should meaningfully scale risk and reward similar to map modifiers.

Desired direction:

• Increased monster quantity/density.
• Increased monster rarity.
• More rare monsters instead of normal ones.
• Chance to spawn unique enemies.
• Chance to spawn two bosses simultaneously.
• More aggressive monster behavior scaling.

Interesting player-impacting modifiers could include:

• All damage converted to Chaos.
• 50% less damage dealt, 100% increased attack speed.
• Every third attack repeats automatically.
• Balanced trade-offs that meaningfully alter gameplay.

Modifiers should feel exciting and rewarding, not simply punishing.

5. Monster Level Scaling

• Base monster level should be 81 (consistent with Temple standards).

Introduce a “Juiced Ultimatum Orb” that:

• Increases monster level further.
• Adds additional modifiers.
• Improves reward scaling.

6. Rewards Rework

Currently, the primary motivation to run Temple of Chaos is the Trialmaster’s ability to drop the Adorned Diamond. Other rewards lack value.

Proposed changes:

• Enable targeted item rewards (choose base types or specific affix pools).
• Improve overall drop pool relevance and scaling.

Corrupted items should:

• Spawn with maximum quality/sockets.
• OR have unique corruption that does not block further item improvements.

Temple rewards should feel competitive with other endgame systems and not rely solely on one chase item.

Summary

The Temple of Chaos has strong core potential but is currently hindered by unnecessary friction in layout, idle-based trials, and underwhelming reward structures. Streamlining movement, reworking passive timers into active scaling systems, improving modifier depth, and significantly upgrading rewards would make the content competitive, engaging, and worth repeated runs.

I've seen points 1-3 multiple times in the past year on this forum and others like steam and reddit. They are such a waste of time yet the devs have not made any changes to them. Either they are backlisted or it's intentional. I would not count on them reading this feedback here as some of the bugs and changes described here span over a year with little to no acknowledgement.

At this point, I don't even know if devs are readying early access feedback forums. Seems more like a blackhole where we discuss this amongst ourselves.

I don't think the developers will ever change the Chaos Trial. Most people hate it and run to the Sechem Trial instead. It's really sad. I enjoy running this trial, not even for the reward, but simply for the fun of it.