As you look down the list of items required for sacrifice, most of them fall into similar categories. You’re going to be running lots of bounties and lots of GRs. Nothing too interesting, there.
But a couple items really pop out, and in my opinion, should not be included: challenge rift cache and Staff of Herding.
There’s been a lot of talk about Staff of Herding already, so I’ll just say, everyone knows the rare piece is the gibbering gemstone, so why not just require that?
The challenge rift cache though really makes no sense. There’s no way to grind it out or hunt down the right demons or whatever the season theme is supposed to be about. It’s just a silly time gated external thing. You can’t even use one of your season characters to get it. (And you can’t get it at all on the PTR.) This just needs to be removed immediately.
I’ve always hated challenge rifts and I agree that the challenge rift aspect of this should go away. It’s the only bad part though. The staff is just fine.
I don’t care about half the classes and I don’t want to be forced into having to learn them or use them. It’s busy work that isn’t fun that I have to do in order to progress on the character I like playing. Bad design.
All the requirements should be more like those unique ones, instead of just being “run the GRs you were going to run anyway”.
Now, Challenge Rifts, Set Dungeons etc. are all quite terrible content, so I also understand not wanting to do them. Still, better than the requirements being GRifts at least.
Each requirement should have been something more akin to the season Conquests instead. Of varying difficulty of course, to create some natural progression, while also offering different paths to go.
It’s time gated in that you can get at most once per week. I’m sure you already know this.
You only get one and if you use it NS or HC or SC, it’s gone and no matter what you have to wait a week for the next one.
There’s nothing about it that makes sense to include in a season theme. It’s purely external. Everything else on the sacrifice list you can acquire at your own pace with your season characters.
I don’t mind doing challenge rifts. In fact I wish they were taken more seriously. But there are not related to a season in any way, so shoving that into the season theme is really stupid.
I don’t mind the challenge rift one so much because you only have to do it once…even if you NEVER do CR’s just do it on a week that’s easier and it should be fine. The ones I’m concerned about are the staff of herding and the set dungeon one. Those are gonna probably take the longest and aren’t really catered toward casuals. I myself don’t mind the grind but I can see those being a huge no no for a lot of the community. They might want to rethink those ones
Because once you have the Gibbering Gemstone, the rest of the components are easy to get.
I hadn’t thought about it until now. And I’ve never tested it. But, for the PTR, I wonder if you could successfully complete a Challenge Rift on the Live server, but leave it in your in-game mail.
When the PTR starts, do a PTR Copy. Then, see if it shows up in a newly created Season 28 Character’s mail. Since we have 30 days before our mail is deleted, we’ll still have time to collect the Challenge Cache in Season 27 Live.
Good thing the staff of herding is close to the end, but I won’t go out of my way to do it. If I accidently find the gibbereing gemstone as I am doing bounties or just messing around, say goblin hunting, then fine.
I’m not making a game over and over again for the off chance that Chiltara will spawn, especially since there is only a ridiculously infinitesimal chance that the friggen gibbering gemstone will drop. Getting party locked because of RNG on top of RNG is no fun at all. NO THANKS!
Since Patch 2.4.1 Chiltara spawns quite often. But, you’re correct about the Gibbering Gemstone. Its drop-rate was reduced, currently making it the rarest item in the game. (Outside the Cosmic Wings). So, even if you do encounter Chiltara, don’t hold your breath for her to drop the Gemstone.
