I have done some testing on delves since the first build in PTR, here are my summary of the issues.
The major issue in season 3 delve is this - curios. In this season, almost every curios are with the exact same style of design - focusing on buffs and debuffs, on the players/Brann/monsters. While in season 2 - the most popular season of delve - not because of the new role of tank Brann - which got nerfed to the ground after maybe 2 weeks or less, the most exciting and successful reason is also this - the design of the curios. There are some of the major curios on both combat and utility sides can provide huge damage burst for the players, such as the robot raptor, transformer, football bomb, etc. These are excellent tools in early season when most players are undergeared, they are still very helpful in midseaon for certain specs which will always struggle in delve and also can always help new players. Even at the back end of the season, such curios are still the top choices for speed runs even players are mostly overgeared. But in season 3, such “borrowed power” are completely gone, when everyone’s gear level will suddenly drop down by 45 ilvl, curios focusing on buff/debuffs are pretty much meaningless for delve players. Delve is not raid, nor even close to dungeons, except for some boss fights, no battle really will last for more than one and a half minute, how to complete a delve efficiently is purely about its mechanics, never really about the fight.
I dont know if it is too late to make any changes on the curios, but if you can do something, please do consider this and make some changes, the current setting of curios is pretty bad.
Delver’s bounty - locking this feature behind season pregression level 2 is a mistake. These are my testing result : for each level bar of delve progression in season 3, you need 4200 points. To gain such progression points, you must complete a bountiful delve AND also open the bountiful chest with a key.
Completing a level 8 bountiful delve and open the chest will grant you 200 points.
Completing a level 11 bountiful delve and opne the chest will grant you 300 points.
To reach level 2 on the S3 progress, you will need 8400 points in total. That will be equal to : 42 times of level 8 delves completion with 42 keys or 28 times of level 11 delves completion with 28 keys.
Some may agrue that doing 28 bountiful delve in a week is nothing and pretty doable with an alt army, I dont argue with that.
But is delve really the feature designed or catered to the group of players that will complete 28 level 11 delves in week 2 to unlock such benefit? I don’t think so.
Btw, I am pretty sure the drop rate of the bounty treasure map will be nerfed in season 3 back to the same way of early season 2, so why do you want to take the fun out from the players for a feature they really enjoyed?
For the new delve : The Archival Assault, this story : Waygate Wiles, it has major issue in the design. It is taking triple the time and at least double the difficulties to complete comparing not only to the other stories, but to all existing delves. Please review it and make some adjustments.
Do you mean level 2 to purchase the item that guarantees a map drop, like the scrambler now? Or you need level 2 before they can drop at all inside delves?
the item that guarantees a map drop - the item itself has no extra requirement to purchase, it will only require 2000 undercoin.
however, to enable the map drop, you must reach season 3 delve progression bar 2, otherwise even you will use such item, the map should not drop at all.
This will be even worse, just think about the players may not even aware of such change and gathered 2000 coins to spend on the item and only find out the map will not drop at all, I can understand their rage.
To reach level 2 progression, your efforts will be what I have mentioned above, which is clearly a time gate/road block thing.
the new delve boss is still no activated in PTR, I have upgraded the cloak to the max level 730 and completed all 4 chapters of quest and also completed the new delve quest from Brann, but when I went to the new room of the new boss, there is no option for me to enter.
when I received the cloak, it was clearly mentioned in the talent tree of the cloak, the second level of the talent will unlock secret doors/fights/content in delve, I dont think this is activated yet.
Would like to know when we can have a chance to test both.
You can challenge her delve variant by buying the item for 2k undercoin. That’s it! Sorry to be a buzzkill, but it’s been that way all 3 seasons.
The delve unlock is Flickergates. They appear as little shadow portals. Also, there may just be a giant gateway that you can take to a super secret room that can give you an alternate completion. They don’t appear all the time, so don’t fret if you don’t see one in every delve.
“The delve unlock is Flickergates. They appear as little shadow portals. Also, there may just be a giant gateway that you can take to a super secret room that can give you an alternate completion. They don’t appear all the time, so don’t fret if you don’t see one in every delve.”
I am not sure what “flickergates” you are referring to.
There are some new small portals in all delves now in PTR, but clicking on those portals will only grant you some undercoins. There is also an achivement related to it by clicking 10 of those shadow portals.
In the new delve, I have only found some new portals in one of the story - Waygate Wiles, but none of those doors/gates were activated in order to get into the other rooms.
If you have more details, please share.
PS. the patch note had mentioned another new delve feature : leaving a message for your friends to see. Before this build, there is a vendor in the Dornagol delve center selling some kind of memories of previous legendary heroes of WOW, such as Jaina, Illidan, Arthus and more. I bought those and can’t use them in any delves.
And in the new build, these items had been removed from the vendor.
If anyone will have any info on this, please do share also.
All I know is that I’ve seen delves where there were absolutely no flickergates, I’ve seen delves where there were multiple flickergates, and I’ve seen delves with gateways pre-existing that lead to the secret rooms.
In short, I wish I could give better value, but I got nothing.
But one of those secret rooms, i admit, made me crap myself when I saw what I had to do in it. (wasn’t actually that bad, but the ptsd lingered)
Overall, I am pretty disappointed about the designs of delves and also the response and updates so far in PTR, we are about 2-3 weeks away to go live and the situation is still clear as mud.
On the Delver’s treasure map issue - locking behind season progress bar 2, which players will need 8400 points to unlock.
In the latest build, Blizzard made a new change - for the weekly quest that you will finish first delve at any difficulties, you will receive that quest item and returning back to the Delves center in Dornogal will grant you 750 undercions, now it will also give you 1400 points of season progression.
Lets do the math again :
Week 1, no bountiful delves, weekly delve quest will grant you 1400 points.
Week 2, weekly delve quest will grant you 1400 points, you are 5600 points away. If you want to complete it in week 2, you will need 28 bountiful lelve 8 delves completions with 28 keys, or 19 bountiful level 11 delves complettion with 19 keys.
Assuming normal average players will have one main and 2 alts and each characters will do 2 bountiful delves for each week and main will do lvl 11 and alts will do lvl 8, each week you will gain 1400 points and you will at least get 6 keys. You can unlock this feature in week 4.
Flickergates (I think finding several in one delve like The Underkeep was a bug before they finished their S3 changes for delves) and Ethereal Gates have a chance to appear from the start of Patch 11.2, and in every difficulty. The big Ethereal Gates (fixed location) and Flickering Ethereal Gates (chance to spawn when interacting with a small Flickergate) will be inactive until you unlock the Reshii Wraps’ second trait node. When unlocked, they will teleport you into a different area (Secret Room) with only one big hall, the treasure room, and a short objective to complete your delve run alternately.
If you wanna test them for their chance to appear, you could constantly reset some delves where you can see Ethereal Portals almost from the starting point when they are up. (e.g., The Dread Pit, Skittering Breach, Nightfall Sanctum)
Delver’s Journey from the Cipher Key Weekly Quest was always there and is 1500, you were probably capped if you didn’t see it (or it was not enabled during testing). At certain points, the quest rewards were even doubled.
Darkmoon Faire is up in Week 1, and you could prepare a char to do that Weekly with the rep buff in Week 2, which would result in 3300 Delver’s Journey from two Weekly Quests.
We are in Season 3, and there are a ton of activities to get 4 guaranteed Restored Coffer Keys easily starting in Week 2.
I have done more testing the last 2 days and I noticed 3 possible outcome of this.
a rather small gate will appear in various different locations in delves, and could appear multiple times, clicking on such gate will usually grant you some undercons and something else like materials. A rather small chance will have a season 3 delve boss clone with around 55 mil HP appear and she will also drop things similar to above, I have not seend any gears drops from her - of course may not be activated yet. Then, like you have pointed out, there is another type of big gate will appear in delve, usually mid-way through in delve, and when you will click it, it will take you to a secret room, usually will be 4-5 groups of trash - but not easy trash because there are 5-6 mobs in each group and then an elite at the end in front of the treasure room, the elite has significant less HP than the normal delve boss. As you have mentioned, completing this secret room will basically finish the delve itself. I even tried to go back to the delve itself - by riding the helicopter and run back from beginning, only to find out the final room is locked, for some open map delves, I guess the final boss will not be there.
On the delve progress, regarding this Cipher Key weekly quest, I am very sure that the new update was coming from the latest build 2-3 days ago. Because after the new build, when I turned in the quest in Dornogal, there is a special effect appear on my screen above my character, and progress bar appeared and it clearly shown 1400 points were rewarded. If you have not completed this quest this week, you can try it also, otherwise we can wait till next week to check again.
my main concern is not the keys nor the number of runs to unlock it, its all about comparison and expectation.
putting such gated blocks is just going backward.
The curios are getting so much worse, Nemesis has many issues - so difficult to spot, there is group with 6-7 mobs and then they will even keep summoning for more - I dont see how many specs other than tanks can handle such group at all, more contents mentioned in the patch notes were not able to be found or unclear info provided such as the gates above.
I am not even complaining about the runed crest will go back to 8+3 instead of 10+5 right now from level 11 delves - as people probably dont understand such benefit is similar to a dinar for delve, I do believe many will complain on this after the patch will go live.
I did the Weekly last week with DMF buff and got 1650, and this week (Monday’s Build 61981) I got 1500 without any rep buff, and that was the last time I got Delver’s Journey. For whatever reason, I got stuck at 17950/42000. (Maybe you’re too, and you only had 1400 left to this weird cap)
Opening Bountiful Coffers no longer rewarded Delver’s Journey, and with yesterday’s Build 62049, Bountiful Delves are completely gone.
The little progress bar effect you mentioned when gaining Delver’s Journey comes with the “Plumber” AddOn. By default, this currency is completely hidden.
Ky’veza’s Shadow Clone from Flickergates dropped very specific weapons in the past, and almost every time, I had tons of duplicates. When you haven’t seen any recently, it’s probably inactive or much more RNG added.
The “Ethereal Routing Station” (Secret Room) has 5 appearances:
“Boss Rush” - 3 random Delve Bosses (defeated at ~50% HP)
“Invader Duo” - the 2 former Nemesis bosses (their ambush versions, so also defeated at ~50% HP)
“Dodge Ball” - A maze of purple balls with an Elite at the end
“Hard Ethereals” - several Ethereal trash packs
“Mixed Spawns” - several packs of captured creatures released
I am not sure how many delves you had done so far, but my progress in S 3 is 5600/42000 so far.
And I had completed all 4 stories of the new delves more than twice, I tested all new stories in old delves, I got 3 weekly vault rewards of 649 from last week and this week I have done 6 level 11 already. And I am still not able to unlock the treasure map yet.
I noticed yesterday the bountiful delves were gone also, so as of now, other than the weekly quest, what else can provide the progression points?