I feel like the weekly quest “Return Lost Souls” has vastly outlived its usefulness by this point, especially since the game is quite literally raining endless amounts of Anima down on players thanks to Korthia being an incredibly good zone with regards to how much Anima you tend to get.
I personally don’t find running around in the Maw breaking open stone prisons for about half an hour each week particularly fun or enjoyable, but I understood its purpose in 9.0 and the rate of acquisition alongside the fact that it rewarded Renown gave me a reason to do it. Now, though, we get two Renown a week assuming we’re caught up and neither weekly source of Renown comes from Return Lost Souls.
At best, the quest can be used as a source of a single means of catchup Renown, but why would I spend thirty minutes doing that when I could spend thirty minutes doing several Layer 5-8 Torghast runs, utterly steamrolling through it on any character I play and probably getting at least 1, if not several, levels of catchup Renown from that? I’d imagine even folks that dislike Torghast as a feature would vastly prefer running Torghast for Renown over spending lots of time just mindlessly grinding out 20 Redeemed Souls in the Maw.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the whole system is that I’m perpetually behind on Redeemed Souls on any alt I play, to say nothing of my main, who I had to swap from Night Fae to Necrolord for due to raiding reasons. It takes a couple months to get what I may have already had with another Covenant, which makes the Covenant swapping system feel even more needlessly punishing than it already is.
I can’t think of a single “one size fits all” solution here, but in the event that a CM or developer stumbles across this post in passing I have a few ideas I can provide off the top of my head that don’t necessarily need to be mutually exclusive:
Allow players to indefinitely farm Redeemed Souls in the Maw if they choose to do so, without requiring the Return Lost Souls quest, and removing the weekly cap of 20 but allowing players to use said quest as a source of Renown catchup if they choose to do so. If players want the cosmetic rewards from Sanctum upgrades, they can voluntarily farm for them (although the grind is tedious enough that many players actively won’t want to, I’d imagine).
Allow players to obtain Redeemed Souls through other sources that make sense like Torghast, raids including LFR, and Korthia/Ve’nari Daily/Weekly quests.
Completely remove any Redeemed Soul currency, thus removing its cost for Sanctum upgrades.
Add a third Renown level to Return Lost Souls to match our Renown gains from previous weeks when the Korthia Campaign was ongoing.
TL;DR: Return Lost Souls and the Redeemed Souls currency feel extremely antiquated by patch 9.1 standards and how the currency is acquired going forward could probably do with a rework that makes it feel less tedious to obtain in large quantities.
I like this idea the most out of all of them. Grinds are much more fun when you can do them when you want for how long you want! This current system leaves me feeling controlled. Especially since if I don’t get all 20 in a week, I get none.
Same thing with Torghast and the vault. Just pet people play when they want for how long they want! Enough with the weekly/daily chores idea.
I was actually considering bumping this thread since 9.1.5 is looking more and more like the time to send Blizzard suggestions, but it appears that y’all have done it for me! Thanks!
Grateful Offerings are another currency I kinda understand the use for but agree just doesn’t really make much sense in context.
Like, yes. You can use them to buy the mounts/cosmetics you weren’t lucky enough to get via drops… but at the same time, it ain’t good enough considering how unbelievably LONG it takes to get 'em.
Tinfoil hat time.
I reckon grateful offerings were designed in mind for the long time gating/grind. Blizzard probably intended to see anima increase but limiting grateful offerings means you still have a grind and can’t take advantage of Korthia to collect everything in a far shorter time.
Also regarding the souls, yes and yes. Good ideas, particularly the alternative means of obtaining them.
I don’t necessarily want to attribute Grateful Offerings to malice here and I see a VERY clear purpose behind them, but I do feel like they’ve also somewhat outlived their usefulness.
A decent portion of what can be bought with Grateful Offerings are drops from the rare/elite mobs that potentially drop said rewards in the first place. In that respect, they seem like a form of “bad luck protection” for Necrolord players that have killed Sabriel the Bonecleaver well over a hundred times but never gotten the mount, which is something a lot of players would greatly welcome if it wasn’t implemented as it is here and/or tied to a metric ton of currencies that each have radically different acquisition rates.
I actually forgot about this, I was more fixated on a recoloured wrist mog I’ll never use but need to collect. I think in this respect, grateful offerings are fantastic and I’d personally love to see alternate ways to acquire cosmetic items if you have a streak of bad luck.
Agreed. I had to buy Korthite Clusters 3 times (before the max was changed) because I had an abundance of Anima but it will be weeks (literally) before I can afford to upgrade anything because of souls.
