Its a muli level dubngeon, with 200 lvls of difficuly. You have to beat a timer by mowing down mobs, if you succeed the boss encouter comes, beat the boss ad get materials for masterworkng and items.
Patch notes and the post I made should give you a good idea of what’s going on with the PTR.
Items can be “bricked” so to speak but honestly don’t think you’ll have an issue finding gear even with the reduced drop rates. Now the ultimate BiS gear will be nigh unobtainable but that’s the case now.
Tempering will definitely be mandatory late game, but Masterworking will only really be helpful for climbing the Pits.
The pits themselves are a much faster version of NMDs, no loot until the end, just run through and kill things. Its’ main purpose isn’t to gear you though so don’t expect a lot of items to drop, the whole purpose is to get crafting materials for Masterworking. This will be the ultimate endgame.
You will also receive items to fight the level 200 bosses here. Which when killed with give you a resplendent spark for the first time you kill them regardless of any other loot.
If you want more info that isn’t necessarily explained in the patch notes:
You collect rune shards, open the rift, random dungeon tiles, with random maonsters, there’s a timer, you don’t have to pick up anything, just kill as many monsters as fast as you can, afetr the bar is full, you are ported into a boss areana. You can increas the difficulty after bearting the previous.
reduced affixes/text to read on items; greater affixes (it’s a somehow a loot filter since you are able to see wich item have the greater affix from the floor), pit tiers, imprinting + mastercrafting system, buffs to my loved minions; just that it’s a huge step; not knowing yet the season theme and powers
You start at level one, depending on how quickly you clear it, you unlock additional levels (account bound currently). You can unlock up to 3 tiers at a time. You choose the tier you run, the entire pit is that level, there’s no level progression within the pit.
Bricked is a little harsh “not perfect” is a more accurate phrase.
It’s short, relatively fun compared to any other end-game content, it’s also quite easy when you’re 100 with even a moderately decent build.
Enemy levels start at 100 (tier 1) and go up to 200 (tier 100), to my understanding. I only made it to about tier 40 and then starting testing levelling.
Sort of, but not really.
It’s more like Diablo 3 Greater Rifts. Choose a level, get a timer (10 minutes) to clear it. Once you’ve killed enough enemies (no need to pick up any progress orbs, and there’s no loot drop), a portal will open to the pit boss, just like any nmd boss room.
Kill the boss, collect the loot (without dying to mechanics that don’t despawn, because there’s no safety bubble), then teleport out.
The itemization changes, if you want a little more detail are fixed because:
There’s fewer affixes to worry about getting, so chances of getting the right one are higher
There’s fewer affix slots on gear, so you have fewer slots to get right, increasing the chances of getting a good item
You don’t have to extract aspects, and they get upgraded with better ones that you scrap at the blacksmith, so you eventually will have all of the best aspects available in the codex at max roll
Fewer items drop on the ground, so you don’t have to keep sorting through inventory and going to town etc… typically everything you pick up will be scrapped anyway, unless it has 2-3 greater affixes, and there’ll be a change to highlight these items
Once you have a good item, you can select roughly what additional affixes you want on them with Tempering (2 affixes), limited attempts to get the right roll though
Once you’ve fully Tempered an item, you can farm the Pit for matts to Masterwork your gear, upgrading it much farther than you could with the previous ‘upgrade’ system, with 3 chances for ‘big’ upgrades to individual attributes.
In short, it’s much easier to get good gear, but it’ll be practically impossible to get the best gear, making the end-game progression last much longer and be more enjoyable.
It has slightly improved but I wouldn’t call it a fix. Rares are less useful than before. Still no use for common or magic items. No loot filter. There’s multiple RNG systems that represents a “crafting” mechanic.
Better than what we had, but still not great. “Legendary” is the new rare, Uniques are the new legendary, and everything else is trash.
