I log into a public bounty game. The players start to split farm. A portal opens. The bounties are interrupted, everyone does the portal.
I star to level up my altar. I reach a point, where I need a cache from challenge rift (completely different mode) in order to advance. I have claimed it for the week, I’m effectively interrupted for three days.
Who thought those were good ideas?
Start a solo game, run around killing mobs until a Vision opens, open the game to the public and start doing bounties.
With the Vision open, no more will open and those who join won’t know that one is open already.
Luckily, for those who don’t know about this altar mechanic from three seasons ago, the mistake is only made once.
Plus, three days isn’t the end of the world. This season, I used the first cache to level, and I absent mindedly opened the second by mistake. So I spent a week and a half at that node.
This is what pub bounties are now. Visions are better for getting bounty mats than doing bounties. On top of that, Visions are far, far, far superior than bounties for getting all other general mats.
If you need a specific bounty legendary, it is best to unlock double bounty bags with the Altar and farm that act on your own.
Another way to force split bounties is to:
create a game
find a Vision in a non-bounty
open game to public
farm bounties
Season has been going for 15 days now. There has been 3 Challenge Rift caches to grab. If you used one for opening weekend, you still had a chance to get 2 more.
This is the 3rd season for the Altar. By now, you should know you need one for the Altar. If, for some reason, you are unaware, now you know going forward.
I haven’t played seasons in a long time. There are other games out there, there’s also life… and on top of that, I rarely play seasons.
That aside, I don’t think the mistake is mine, TBH. I’d say it’s pretty weird and unintuitive for me to have to sacrifice a reward from another mode in oder to progress through a seasonal theme.
Also, on the offchance, that I wanna try out a seasonal theme, I don’t feel I should have had to learn it however many seasons ago, or watch a guide on the internet. Sometimes I just wanna play. Putting the progression on hold through something as weird as this is… I’d arugue a mistake on the dev’s end…
Not the end of the world, but it seems rather lame, just saying.
Quoted for truth.
There’s no point to me gimping the game, when the Vision is better for bounty mats.
I have played for a day. Hopped back into D3 and the season on a whim.
…
Seasons generally start on a Friday night. When you catch the start of the season, easy to use first challenge cache to level, spend the weekend progressing, and by the time you reach the Challenge Cache node on the Altar, you’d be close to the Monday reset since it’s pretty deep into the steps on the Altar. It is a bit of bad luck on your starting point to where you got blindsided, but you’ll know for next time since you discovered what the journey entailed.
Hell, my dad didn’t even get the first cache, since the build used was not something he was familiar with and the public join was bugged for it, so he started the old fashioned way. Took me about an hour of trial and error to get through the challenge, and when I joined back up with him, was able to split my mats to create us both level 70 weapons and speed up leveling.
The only time to really need to run bounties, is clearing them all once for the season journey, and to farm out your RoRG and to farm any specific legendary powers you want (mainly, Gloves of Worship for Follower) which the latter two are easier once you unlock double bounty caches. It is pretty easy to get into the swing of things, I didn’t play much D3 after RoS and only started playing seasons since season 28.
Just an FYI since nobody has mentioned it yet, but the Altar is not a seasonal theme related thing, it’s now a permanent fixture within seasons so you can expect to need a challenge rift cache in all future seasons as well
I agree it would be nice to know the altar requirements in advance.
I mean, sure, websites exist.
I’m a much lesser creature so my own road block has been RORG.
Only a block compared to, say, 50 DB which just happens.
In the grand scheme of things I agree it’s a petty problem.
Except, sure, most of D3 is farmable in one sit, so this is an exception.
I definitely agree that bounties are more about story fun these days with visions being massively superior. Especially with so few vision maps.
In fact it’s raining so much stuff that I can’t imagine doing anything but GR in a group now.
Would be nice if magic find didn’t reward more but better items. A toggle at least for certain sessions (public included).
But, don’t take it as a complaint, and I might be wrong, in that raining legs is a good way to find all powers quick, and then just do GRs. Except, no time to sort legs in a public game.
Even with my petty paragons (play time) I’m sitting on nearly 1000 of each mat in both modes (vision goblins were gracious). More (10k) of the basic ones.
That’s still faster than doing them solo. If you don’t like that mentality, just play solo or start a game with a Fissure active yourself. Start a new session go somewhere random where you can find different dungeons and try to activate a Fissure inside of them. Only open the game to public when you succeed to do so.
So you opened it? If you are clumsy like that, idea is claiming it in your inventory when you are in front of Altar. Also you have plenty of attempt along the 3 month long Season.
…but might get suspicious… 
Try opening a vision in (a bounty in) a dungeon… At least no “revealing” portal visible then… Only “traces” that someone was running around in an area…
I guess I know why I don’t to public bounties any longer since we have them, because it was annoying me endlessly… In the clan we decide if or if not. Playing solo it’s the same; sometimes I can supress the urge , esp. when leveling a new char at season start and when looking for a specific item that only falls from caches.
EDIT: …well, should have read the post until the end before replying… 
This about right you never know who open the vision. The vision are great and gives a lot things. But the problems with them people that never say anything. They do them and next thing it is closing. In all the games I have done bounties in. Only 1% of the people say anything.
I don’t do vision in public bounties. #1 almost nobody ever say anything, #2 You always have that one person just races through them like no tomorrow. #3 if you get to the end you might be full and say something. Then have that one person that doesn’t care and opens the chest. #4 You always have that one person that only does visions too.
I was in bounty game and there was that person only doing visions. I happen to open one kept going to finish the bounty before even thinking about going into it. Next thing I know he is in doing the vision. So I went to kick from the game. Plus this is happening a lot. It says I can’t kick that person at this time. So what is that all about.
Again Vision are great, but most of the time 99% of the people are to greedy to share them!!!
This is why I haven’t done pub bounties since day 2 of S29. Too many ways for it to go wrong.
The thing is do people know that getting all these bounty mats. If you don’t have the soul what good are they doing you. Say I have 10,000 bounty mats, I need 100,000 soul. To use them at the cube.
One of the accounts in the family last season got almost 100,000 yellow, blues, & whites doing vision. It got 35,000 DB, 1000 ashes, 20,000 soul, 10,000 bounty mats, and over 1000 key stones.
The thing is Blizzard has to stop and rethink what is going on here.
20K souls is good for 400 reforges… even with a good chance of a primal
No reason to worry about an excess amount of bounty runes. Some of them can be spent on crafting perfect gear at the Blacksmith (Crimson, Aughild’s, Guardian etc.).
Why focus on bounties though? Only reason for me was the first time doing season journey. If someone opened a vision, fine. Second reason is for getting RORG from act 1. Easily done solo. Is there a reason to do public bounties since we got visions?
All this info is freely available online. If you want to “do it yourself” then don’t complain. Mystery and discovery is the journey for doityourselfers.
I spent hours leveling myself without the cache and then spent a few more hours powerleveling my best friend only for him to stream on discord when he opened the cache infront of my eyes and uninstall d3.
I’m still gonna powerlevel him next season though. That’s what friends are for.