Kalandra Feedback from someone actually playing the game

I wanted to make a post giving feedback about the league as Chris has mentioned that he wanted continued feedback but I've been too busy playing the league to type something up. Warning, I have some contrary-to-reddit opinions but in an attempt to give my opinions some weight I want to say that I have killed over 1 million monsters between my two characters (ExtensiveTester and ReforgeKeepingPlayers) [https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/thi3n/characters](https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/thi3n/characters) so this isn't the opinion of someone who quit before maps and started typing up a storm on Reddit.

**1) Atlas Memories are fantastic.**

As advertised these were a way for players to experience juiced-content and have it be competitive with a fully-specialized atlas. Not only do they accomplish that... but wow it's so much more. I didn't know I needed giga-essence-infused Rogue Exiles or double Harvest boss plots but wow are they fun/rewarding and the team responsible for them absolutely knocked it out of the park. I have enjoyed every one of the memories and I look forward to identifying these. This subset of content is the single biggest strength of the league - perhaps up the droprate or lower the map tier threshold for these so more players can experience them.

**2) Drops are mostly fine for solo player experience.**

The fact that the league mechanic added zero monsters baseline to your map made things awkward while progressing the atlas around mid yellow maps - but after the baseline buff to quant/rarity done a few days into the league drops have been fine. I play completely solo, I do not call in MF-cullers, and I have adjusted my gameplay towards more "flat" mechanics.

That being said - I do think it's bad game design for monsters to even be able to drop 50 divines. Psychologically speaking, if players know that it is even possible for this to occur, it leads to FOMO or calling in the MF-Culling service. I could talk about this topic a lot but I think the actual root of the problem is IIR being able to upgrade the tiers of currency into the Exalt/Divine/Annul tier.

**3) Unique Rework was a success. Kind-of.**

I feel excitement when dropping a high tier unique and a second layer of excitement when identifying it to see if I got a good roll. However, uniques are still mostly garbage but I feel this problem will likely fix itself as more uniques get touched in future patches.

**4) The Divine/Exalt swap was a success. Kind-of.**

I think this goes hand-in-hand with the unique rework. While I understand what the team was trying to accomplish by making Divines the premiere currency I think there was a way to accomplish this without having Exalts feel bad.

Some suggestions for making exalts feel good again and having a bit of balance between the two as premiere currency items: A) Have Exalts be used on some of the meta crafts. Perhaps Exalts for Locking Suffixes and Divines for Locking Prefixes. One for Caster One for Attack. etc. B) Create more Divine Orb Divination Cards or allow creators to swap Exalt with Divines as a reward. C) Create Divine Shards droppable by Harbinger or other mobs. D) Perhaps bring back Harvest Divines on rare items... which leads me to my next point:

**5) Reforge Keeping Prefix/Suffix should be re-added to Harvest.**

This is an integral part of crafting influenced items as it is common to elevate two suffixes or two prefixes before using an Awakener Orb. Not being able to Reforge-Keeping can set back a player many many hours/divines worth of progress if it fills the item up with unwanted modifiers leaving them the choice of 33/66 annuling a non-elevated mod.

Personally, I would also like harvest divines, Reforge x with x modifiers being more likely, Reforge MUCH more likely, 5-link, and jewel implicits to return as well, but if those were deemed filler or part of the divine/exalt rework then at the very least bring back the Reforge Keeping Prefix/Suffix. *This is my single most desired change.*

**6) Make the Reflection of Kalandra tile more common.**

This is the chase thing to do this league. Let me send my expensive jewelry into the mist and share my awesome hits/fails with my friends. I have killed over a million monsters this league in T14+ and have seen the tile once. This is just like scarcity of Abyssal Bosses in Abyss League or Delve Bosses in Delve League, the Trialmaster in Ultimatum, etc. There is already a lot of inherent risk to reflecting jewelry there is no reason to have it be so rare.

**7) Tune up rewards in the Lake especially for higher difficulty zones.**

I can only assume the lake uses some type of delve scaling (more/less damage dealt/taken) and the tiles do a good job of feeling extremely difficult the harder you choose to make it. Creating good lakes is both a puzzle and requires luck due to the tiles being offered. The mechanic doesn't add anything to your baseline map so it stands that the lakes should be competitive with an atlas-passive-juiced map. I think both issue 6 and 7 could be solved by adding a 4th option when selecting tiles. This allows players to create more rewarding lakes and also increases the frequency at which we see the Reflection of Kalandra.

**8) Tainted Currency needs a buff.**

Let's ignore the fact that Beyond was previously the most beloved and insane juicing mechanic. For current Beyond to be competitive with other modern mechanics the tainted currency (namely Tainted Fusing Orb) needs to be good. The main use case for Tainted Fuse is to take a corrupted body armor and benchcraft 4 links, then use a tainted fuse for a 5-link, then use a tainted fuse for a 6-link. Current reported rates of success for a single 4-to-5-link is 10/90 with the fail case destroying a link. There are a few ways to make Tainted Fusing feel better: A) Up the rate to 30/70 or some other number B) Have the Tainted Fusing not be able to go backwards in link-number. C) Increase the number of Tainted Fusings dropped by beyond bosses.

**9) Headhunter needs a buff.**

A year ago I remember appreciation posts for Chris as the "Guardian of Headhunter, Keeper of Talismans". Other than Tabula I can't think of another item that is more iconic to PoE. Hell, even other games have references to Headhunter. I was disheartened to hear Chris say "we're not balancing around headhunter" in his most recent interview. I know Headhunter is a polarizing topic on reddit but I really do think it's important for this item to be a chase item worth chasing.

**10) Player autonomy for difficulty/reward scaling is important.**

I just want to put this thought out there as it seems like a pillar that is important to the game but was overlooked in the three philosophies in the "What Happened with Items" post. As a player in the endgame our ultimate goal is to push our character to the limits at the opportunity to be rewarded even greater for it. The new Uber Boss encounters are emblematic of that. For the non-boss-killing mappers out there our UberUberElder was being able to do Triple Beyonded 100% Delirious Quadruple Sextant/Scarab combos. The game has always had ways to scale up the difficulty for more reward (Map Tier, Applying Influence, Awakener Level, or even the most recent Valley of Darkness Keystone). As PoE leans harder into Archnemesis (a post for another time) player perception is that our player autonomy is being replaced by spamming rares in hopes of seeing a Pantheon-touched mob combination. I say player perception because I think the player does have autonomy in some ways but the fact such drastic outliers can exist brings me back to the point I made of FOMO/Cullers in feeback #2.

Ok I have typed way too much and if you have managed to make it this far then thank you for reading. This is by no means an inclusive list of all the feedback I have with PoE but these are the top 10. Some honorable mentions that almost made the list: early game difficulty, listening to alpha testers, mana reservation nerf, 20 fuses for a 6-link, state of melee, state of minions, spammy on-death effects, and exotic eldritch currency droprate. In spite of some of the negativity I'm sure this post will bring I do want to say that overall I still enjoy PoE and encourage players who are on the fence of coming back to play to actually login and kill monsters and pick up loot to feel the loot changes for themselves. For the not-on-the-fence-people who have quit and are voting with their wallet and concurrent player count... I understand where you are coming from and it's good to take a break especially if you aren't having fun. I am cautiously optimistic that the future of PoE is heading to a place where it's something we are all excited to play.