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Just a random thought experiment to add some customization and player agency to the endgame. This could be a faction where you can choose from multiple options for each rank and it can be expanded in the future aswell. Some example rank rewards off the top of my hat:

Rank 1: Option A - More echo quests are ambushes. Ambushing monsters have 30% increased attack, cast and movement speed for the first 10s.

Rank 2: Option A - More echo quests are spire quests. Spires are now mounted on top of or pulled by patrolling strong elite monsters.

Rank 3: Option A - Shrines spawn a pack of monsters upon activation, including at least 1 strong rare monster.

Rank 4: Option A - Siege Golems appear more frequently. They can now also spawn as cold, lighting or necrotic variations.

Rank 5: Option A - Osprix Lightmages sometimes spawn as Osprix Voidmages instead, dropping at least 1 Glyph of Despair on kill.

Rank 6: Option A - Arena echoes spawn 5 waves of monsters at a time. They also have a 30% chance to include a random arena boss that can drop arena-exclusive uniques.

Rank 7: Option A - Ambushes are led by a pack leader, which has 50% increased damage, hp and size. Pack leaders can drop a Leader's Vault Card, which can be consumed to open a Lightless Arbor vault with 50% reduced gold cost once.

Option B - Shrines give you a random 2nd shrine effect. Shrines also have 10% chance to spawn 3 additional monster packs and 2 loot lizards.

Rank 8: Option A - Spire quests contain 1-3 additional spires. For every spire destroyed, all remaining spires in an echo gain 10% increased attack speed, hp and drop 1 additional unique item.

Rank 9: Option A - Siege Golems have a global range now and can shoot you across the entire map (like spires). Siege Golems are guaranteed to drop at least 1 double exalted item.

Option B - Dungeon keys dropped from monsters have a 10% chance to drop as a Veteran's Dungeon Key instead, giving you instant access to the dungeon boss.

Rank 10: Option A - Mob packs have a 0.1% to be replaced by a Temporal Alchemist that drops a Rune of Potency on death. This rune costs 0 FP and can be used on any exalted item to give it the "potent" tag, guaranteeing that it transfers at least 1 exalted affix when slammed into a unique in the Temporal Sanctum.

Option B - Echo quests with "kill waves of enemies" (forgot the actual name sorry) have a 2% chance to be replaced by a quest where you have to defend a Legendary Blacksmith from waves of strong enemies and upon success he drops a Legendary Smelting Pot that can capture the essence of a unique item, which can be crafted onto exalted items. This works kinda like Rune of Shattering, the Smelting Pot destroys the unique, capturing 10-100% of the unique's stats. In order to add these stats to an exalted, it needs to have at least 2 open affix slots and using the filled pot costs 20-30 FP.

I know there's not that much endgame variety yet in terms of different events or activities, but I think you can still make a lot out of what we have now, maybe with the occasional recoloured asset.

Obviously all numbers and balance is pulled out of my ass and not based on anything at all, it's essentially just public brainstorming :D

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2 months ago - /u/moxjet200 - Direct link

Cool idea and you're definitely thinking in a similar-ish space to us!

End game variety and meta progression is somethign we're looking to add a lot to for 1.2 (Season 2 as we'll now be calling it). Stay tuned!