50+ bug reports (and climbing), suggestions and critique

Hey GGG, and thanks for making another great game!

Here are my observations so far. I intend to edit fixed ones out as patches roll in for ease of use. For any coder looking at this, trying to recreate a bug and fix is, let me just say: You have already created an amazing sequal to an amazing game. It just gets better from here with your effort!

I have tried to group the bugs into easy, medium and hard to recreate in order to expediate bug resolvement.


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Bugs:
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- (easy) Holding down raise shield and then holding down shield charge works as expected, and as a bonus shuts up the character about cooldown. Holding down shield charge, then holding down raise shield does just holds up the shield instead of the same result.

- (hard) flame wall occasionally seems to not want to cast on certain terrain. If the spot is invalid (like mob spawning map areas in the bog f ex - very nice touch btw!), instead of picking the nearest valid point, it just does nothing. Also, cast time seems to be different if i hold down to cast twice and click to cast twice. Similarly to this, sometimes when raising shield (holding the bind), flamewall does not want to cast on valid terrain. Clicking a few extra times seems to solve it, but with a noticeable delay. This was very noticeable in Temple of Kopec near the "sun", as my minions died and i was left to defend myself with raging spirits unwilling to cast. Flamewall (and probably also other skills) also seem to struggle from the cast sequence described later if raise shield is involved.

- (easy - as a quick fix at least) mob ai - both enemy and friendly - does not seem to have a catch all for not being able to move anywhere. This means that both mobs and minions occasionally get stuck in terrain (especially doorways). It would work better if their AI had a clause for when they are not being able to move in the desired direction, check other directions and pick one if available and move there for a few seconds. That would automatically clear the terrain/door "indigestion".

- (medium) For some reason, it seems switching between the map (U) and game takes a "lot" of resources. I play on a rather old system (I5 2500k 3.3ghz 4 cores from 2011 and geforce 970), and i get a little bit of cogwheel screen just switching back and forth when you'd think the map is merely an overlay getting updated every so often when gameplay demands it. However, when something needs updating (a new zone connection has been found, a new objective, whatever), it can take quite a bit of time, like if a lot of shaders etc need to be recalculated. Something feels off here, as it ought to be near instant even on low end systems even older than mine.

- (hard) Some sub goals do not seem to update properly. As examples i currently have a troubled camp icon next to both jungle ruins and infested barrens, and i visited them both. I am certain of this, since with new content i visit _everything_ on a map before continuing. The same goes for bubbling respite on the apex of filth. Maybe it is by design they stay lit? It does seem odd though, as some of the places have a "finish", while some do not.

- (hard) Much in line with the above, sometimes waypoints seem to be forgotten. In my case, i do not have the matlan waterways waypoint open, although i did open it, and did everything on the map.

- (easy) shield charge has a rather noticeable hitch at the end of the animation (which honestly looks quite unprofessional, sorry), which causes the character to move backwards slightly and also stop movement for a brief moment. I believe i had it most noticeable on witch with ingenuity and unbreakable support. For some reason, since i added main, there is less of a hitch. Might also be a level/area issue, i am not sure. Either way, when you reproduce it, you will not be in doubt. The character moves visibly 5-10px backwards and there is an odd stop in motion.

- (easy) Several vendors seem to have their dialoque placed on top of other interactables on standard screens (1920x1080). I am aware that hardware is moving forward, but i do believe this is still the most prevalent resolution, and as such i find it an odd design choice as it hampers the players experience.

- (easy) As above, while on the caravan, the stash is placed right next to a turn right section (stairs up, path right), which often can often - especially if crowded with players - lead to a misclick making the character run up the stairs and above the stash, rather than straight to it.

- (easy) After unlocking the salvage bench, some places do not have it. For example at the gates of halani i believe it was. Instead it will be a mix of "town" and "wild". Why the gray area? It seems to me it would be more clear to pick either or: Have all vendor/craft options, or none. That way, everyone all players are on equal terms regarding what they need.

- (easy - medium) Mob and minion AI: Often, both mobs and minions will attempt to attack eachother (and sometimes succeed) during "half terrain". Half terrain being no pathing, but line of sight. It seems there is a good deal of work there, sorting which abilities should do what and when, because right now it seems a bit like a mess sometimes.

- (easy) There was one boss, i think it was jamanra (normal diff), where the voice calls did not match the actions taken about half the time. At that time i was playing minions, and died over and over to him, so i had plenty of time to study the calls. Many of the calls could mean any of 2 or 3 actions, which was very un PoE like.

- (easy?) Zarka, in her dialogue about hmm i forgot... But she says something along the line that "this story hasn't changed and is the same word for word". However, in the end, she mentions the number of generations since x, which must have changed over time. A very minor detail i know, but thought i'd write it down for good measure.

- (easy) while we are at dialogues, many spoken and written dialogues do not match up. In my opinion, the spoken ought to always overwrite the written. In other words, relisten to the dialoques and rewrite the wordings. Tbh i'll happily do it, but i can only do it in a 2-3 languages.

- (possibly hard) spirit: While leveling 1-22 with regular minions (skelly warriors, snipers, arsonists, cold), i often noticed when switching spirit around (adjusting minion count) that sometimes i would get more or less minions than my spirit should actually allow. I have a feeling that if i explored that bug further, i could exploit it to a much larger minion count than i should be able to have.
MUCH LATER EDIT: There is definetely an exploit here. I do not want to know the specifics so i haven't tinkered with it, but i have witnessed enough oddness to get one more minion than i should have, so i know it is there. Please fix it before someone does something crazy :D

- (easy) mousing over mobs while shield is raised (bind held down) is working as intended, except on rare mobs. You have to release raise shield to view them and their stats at all

- (easy) temple of kopec: "The vaal were smarter than they have right to be, and this is proof of that". Why do i get this? If it is the "sun", i have already seen it on the layer above. If it is something else, well, i do not see it. - I have later found out that this is a delayed message of their artificial sun. Placing a proper trigger for when f ex the first time the player is exposed more than 50% would probably solve this. Or, speciic areas could also work.

- (unknown) reforging bench appears without any explanation, lore or hint

- (hard) cinematics/dialogue scripts and shaders/cache: Sometimes dialoques start when you can still see, well, nothing. That should probably change :) (example: Vaal in the past)

- (easy) utzaal: After defeating viper, Alva shows in the middle on overlay map but it not there (after being abducted)

- (possibly easy) Servi's grandson Apus: I still have no idea who that it. I haven't seen him/it anywhere. Occasionally i hear her making a remark about him/her/it like "Apus, get down from there" and i look around and there is nothing. Maybe this is by (clever?) design, or maybe there is a bug at play here. Is it the imaginary grandson she never had, with a twist of inspiration from Aladdins monkey Apu? Is it a little play on psychological manifestations of what we wish to be? Or perhaps just something not implemented yet?

- (easy) utzaal: There was an area in my case near the aggorat checkpoint, where the audio was a repeated chanting. But nowhere near was there any area that would warrant such chanting. I am guessing this is an errant piece of tile generation? - Past date edit: It was the chanting of the viper natzysomething encounter. It should probably cease to be after completing the encounter.

- (easy) some mobs (non statue) are unresponsive until you pretty much walk up next to them - especially true in the vaal areas

- (unknown) utzaal -> aggorat: waypoint is already selected when zoning in. Either this should be the norm or it shouldn't - Past edit, honestly i dont know what i meant but it made sense at the time at probably still does. There is something here, i just cant remember what it is.

- (easy) aggorat: Enemy mob banners (like conqs in poe1) are not marked as hostile for minions and they will not attack them. Update: Neither can the player attack them. Past edit: Still true, they are on a timer rather that attackable with a "morale debuff". Feels like a blunder, but might be of design. Clarification ought to be easy.

- (easy) loot filter ground items: Occasionally, a mouseover on a filtered (or non filtered at all as is default) will flicker when hovering over the bottom section of the bounding box. I am guessing that the mouseover coords and mouseout coords are not the same, and one triggers the other creating a continuous flicker effect.

- (medium) Aggorat, rejoice plague: Several times when i clicked this, my character ran behind it. After several times i have tried to reproduce it, but then it works as expected. So something else must be afoot here.

- (hard) disenchant: Items able to be disenchanted do not always light up vs items not able to be disenchanted (universal)

- (easy) clicking on town portal while in map mode does nothing

- (easy) after the "final" battle, doriyani is marked as an enemy during the "cutscene" and attacked by minions during the talking


Suggestions:
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- skills window: Why not have an equipped gems window at the top? Sometimes, with lots of mixed (aka not suggested) gems it can be a pain to find and upgrade

- when exploring new areas with multiple new zone connections, players will often enter a new connection, grab a waypoint and then return. It would be smoother for both the player and for server resources, if finding a connection in a zone enabled the waypoint in the next zone. That way, the server wont have to waste resources on an instance that may or may not be used at all, and the player has a much smoother experience. Much like in "vaal in the past" where you can see Alva's icon on the other side of the zone, waypoints could show like that and be activated once close enough in the neighbouring zone.

- when right clicking an uncut gem (any kind) and picking a category that you have gems in, but do not meet the requirement (level, stat), the gem does not show up rather than showing up and showing that you do not meet the requirement and what the requirement is.

- This one is a bit nitpicking, but the witch has a line in the apex of filth i believe it was, where she says "i cannot abide filth". This is a little odd, as in poe1 entering the temple of solaris she says something along the lines of "i would love to see the insides of this spell! I cannot abide housework".

- Speaking of the witch dialogue, why did she go from power hungry (revenge i suppose) but just, to overconfident and arrogant towards others that aren't to her particular taste? She really doesn't sound like a person you could sympathise with anymore, and i must admit i really dislike that.

- Skills window: Gems (gem sets) are draggable, but picks up the set you aim on. Why not have the whole sub window draggable instead?

- Like above with the skill window, why is there not a collapse all, expand all option?

- One more for the skill window: Why cant you see both base gem and modified gem levels without howering over each one?

- Gem interface and gem/stat/duplicate restrictions. These are actually pretty clear, but only if you look for them. It took me a while to understand the system, simply because it wasn't properly bent in neon from the start. Great system btw, once you know how it works.

- This one is not a bug per se, but seems more like an oversight. I played regular witch minions up until around 22 when i started to really struggle. At that point i switched to flamewall and SRS, and suddenly everything works as expected. With this build, i literally have to press 1 perhaps 2 buttons on clears (raise shield, flamewall) and i have no issues and good speed. With regular minions, everything is a chore. Skeleton warriors do not tank (no agro). Minions die very fast even if investing in all minion nodes, because there just isnt enough damage. Unearth has a very nice graphic, but the actual effective area of it isnt like the graphic. You can cast it on top of a corpse, and it will not hit. You can aim at corspe and be slightly off, with the graphic hitting on the side, and it will not hit. This is extremely problematic since the summoned minions have such a short lifespan and you do not have time to waste if you want a rolling contagion/ed/other with them. Speaking of which, that short lifespan also often means you cant stop to smash urns/pots/other, open chests, turn corners etc. The minions you have prepared are gone by then, whereas raging spirits are ready every time you cast a fire spell. Also, micromanaging minion commands on top of their position(s) without actually getting a payoff is just... Well. Lets just say that this is not raging spirits being overtuned, it is regular minions being _WAY_ undertuned. I understand wanting to make minion builds more active and involved, but currently we have the involved but not the reward for doing so. Micromanaging everything is less playable than pretty much any other archetype right now as far as i have heard.

This brings me to a secondary problem: Stat weights rolling gear. I have rolled just about every scepter i have found so far, and getting +minion level is very rare. Getting +spirit is even rarer. For the above to balance out, i attempted to get both (and still do because, well, it is the optimal), but have not succeeded yet in getting both stats on a single item. Well, that's not true. I have gotten +spirit and +1 minion level, but when i was at +2 minion level stage for that piece of gear. And +2 minion far exceeds the slight spirit improvement. Either way, i doubt adjusting the weights would do anything for the above problem without skewing many other aspects of the game.

- This one is also not a bug per se, but rather a thought experiment. We have the same inventory space as we did back in the first days of PoE1, which is fine (maybe? im not sure at this point). However, it seems the poe2 direction is back to the basics with less loot and more basic crafting (which i love). However, that also means a lot more return trips to disenchant blue loot and try your luck on white bases. So why do we still have to play inventory tetris to get the full use of it? It isn't strictly bad, but when you do it many times an hour, it becomes just an unnecessary chose weighing the time of picking up that extra 1-2 pieces of loot versus porting back and forth twice instead of once. Several ARPGs already have sorting options that auto cycle between the tetris options (Grim Dawn is a good example). As a side note, vendors have the same issue. Two sequences of loot selling can have one fill up nicely, and the other need two (or more!) because there is no automatic slot sorting.

- while on the refund passives tree screen, it would be convenient to be able to see current stats (int/dex/str), perhaps as well as currently equipped or next tier gem requirements

- every time you click an uncut gem, it is actually a great repository of knowledge. Why is it there is no interface to search gems all of the time but only when you click an uncut gem?

- utzaal: When i neared the ultimatum key, i heard the start of a dialogue. It quickly ended as i got in combat, and i can not retrigger it nor see it in chat.

- map overlay zoom in/out options: Rather than having these fixed, wouldn't it be prudent to have them relative to their size? Keep their current value and scale upon enter/exit. But if the map is very large, have a larger zoom out, if it is small have a smaller zoom in (although i expect the zoom out is the most important one for seeing where you havent been)

- map overlay contrast: For year and years, we have had the same map overlay and options for it. However, in poe2 i feel the colors are more vibrant, and far more often matches or blends in with the overlay making it either invisible or needing to be larger. How about some tests on map overlay using contrast colors? Say, read a pixel, pick a contrast color, make a blend, add alpha. Although probably a pipe dream, it would be nice with a setting where "one size fits all" - per player that is. That being said, GREEEEEAAAATT work on the scenes in poe2. So many great sceneries, especially the jungle! Shame the overlay is so hard to see in many of them, primarily the desert (light) ones.

- when running then clicking and holding raise shield, there is a lot of character "sliding", as if moving into place. Speaking for myself, i want the character to stop when i want it to stop, and speaking for everyone else i am pretty sure they want the same rather than the sliding! Great effect though, and nice when moving back and forth with shield up.

- while in past vaal, is the double portalling really necessary?

- important area captions: They are short lived, and sometimes you just don't get to read them because: Real life. And as far as i can tell, there is no way to re-read them other than exiting and entering the area again. Perhaps a more elegant solution lurks somewhere?

- exiting the gateway (vaal past) and returning through the gateway sometimes makes the character hitch back and forth when walking "up and right" from the portal exit.


Critique:
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- When i saw the system for the new ascenscion, i was almost done. Two systems i've hated in poe1 combined. But... I must admit, you have pulled it off so that the sum is more than its parts.

- When i saw the trialmaster i again thought oh no, another one of the annoying old league mechanics. But you have completely revisited it into something new, spectacular and honestly quite epic feeling. Big thumbs up!

- When i saw alva, again i thought oh no, incursion. Probably my most hated mechanic. Instead, you have made the story around her, and not her (hated) mechanic, and it works!

- Ritual: Yeah, i played through those parts, and while ok, it didn't quite feel... on the mark. But, a better reuse than straight up for sure. It isn't that i hate ritual, ritual was actually my best league. But only because i happened to play a build that could handle it exceptionally well at the time (blight gloves made most of the difference) while many other builds struggled. I do miss my (earned) ritual hideout too which to date in my opinion is one of the best MTX's you have ever created :)

- default filters or lack thereof: I know as poe2 progresses, there will be a lot of filters and options. But wouldn't it be a good start to be able to customize a little from within the game itself? Say a character only wants to see X armor type if it has Y mix of armor/evasion/energy shield. That would be a dialog of with a line of text and 3 combo boxes and some design. Lets assume the same for weapon types, another line and some combo boxes. Just to get players started, remove clutter and time wasters as they progress and get to know about filters.

- I have experienced 1 (one) occasion where i couldn't make a town portal when i was supposed to be able to (aggorat), but i could not reproduce it after moving.

- Instance lifetime: I have never had this issue in poe1, but in poe2, managing your skills, crafting, checking vendors etc. Sometimes that takes longer than a portal lifetime (8-15 minutes as you say). Which means i have to redo a lot of stuff. It is not a big deal, but i thought i would mention it as instance lifetime does matter a bit more now, especially in early game.

- monsters in a zone respawn eventually. The time and a timer just might be a good thing for those playing, having to take extended afk breaks every so often. If they are only supposed to respawn on death/new instance, then there is a bug somewhere.

- checking stats, i am heavily CPU bound, and while i am not surprised, i am more surprised of when i am CPU bound. As an example, as of this writing, i just zoned into The Black Chambers. CPU is showing 100% or close to 100%. I am doing nothing. The scene is doing close to nothing. What is using the CPU? Sure, there is the scene itself, the rendering and so on, most of it ought to be on the GPU. Here i stand, not in a party, no global chats open, no mob entities spawned, but CPU usage is just about maximum. It does strike me as odd. My hardware is old, but when nothing is happening, nothing should - also codewise - happen.

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There are lots more, but thats all i can remember for now. Keep up the good work

Final edit:
That ought to be it for this time around. There will be more as there always is, but thats what i could find/think of for this round of reports :)

Bumping here, as i can't find my thread and want to be sure it has been posted. It was a good deal of work after all in my spare time.

Edit:
I see it now, all good.

Here's a couple more:

- (ought to be easy if not spaghetti code) During cruel, if you get an inscribed ultimatum, you automatically get the trial quest, even if the ultimatum is not an ascendancy point rewarding version

- (easy) After completing trial of chaos with a non ascendancy rewarding ultimatum and then porting to town, you are taken to normal ziggurat camp instead of the cruel version

- (ought to be easy!) After completing trial of chaos with a non ascendancy rewarding ultimatum (as above!), the quest still lingers although the player has not received a correct level/ascendancy point rewarding ultimatum

- (probably hard) Occasional crashes with "failed to unpak <file>", f ex quadrilla. Works fine after restarting, so something in the unpacking can fail and is not handled

- (hard) Occasional crashes with no messages seem to reset some caching, and it takes a very long time to get back in play (on an old system like mine)

- (ought to be easy) old bug also present in poe1: When entering an area an having a player voiceover while also clicking (in this case summoning) an npc, both voiceovers play on top of eachother. This example is from porting into the machinarium and summoning alva, but it is a general issue.

- (easy) when progressed past normal difficulty and consulting the map (above or below), the player can not immediatly discertain if they are in cruel or normal difficultly other than hovering nodes and checking monster level. Suggestion: Highlight current act icon.

- (hard) a little extra stab at the minion/mob AI and pathing. You really (and i mean REALLY) need to fix this, this isn't just a minion thing but also a general mob thing with them getting stuck in narrow pathways blocking eachother. This matters heavily for both general gameplay and minion gameplay. For mobs, it is often slightly less of an issue as many mobs have jump/charge/gap closing abilities. But many of them do not as well, and while the non minion player might not notice as much, it also means a different experience for them with all the mobs in narrow spaces that SHOULD have come forth, but didn't because they were blocking eachother while wanting to navigate the same space.

Also, a little example of troublesome pathing (for minions at least):
Consider a somewhat broad (x8 character widths) and long hallway, divided up by a wall running along the middle but open on each end. With many minions and choosing a side, they will quickly block passage, and any remaining minions will attempt to travel on the other side to reach the player. Instead of going all the way though, they will linger on the other side due to range/roam restrictions. To navigate them all into the same hallway, you either have to carefully move slowly into one hallway and/or use direct minions a lot.

As far as i can tell, what you need is a few isValid checks on pathing, so that two or more branches of actions are not conflicting with eachother, in this case ending up with the result that the shortest path is in line behind the blocking minions already "settled down".

I also just encountered another instance of pathing bug where the same is true, activating and standing next to the large soul core site in the infested jungle. At that point, my hell hound starting "spazzing out", flickering apparently trying to path inside the navigation mesh for the soul core entity.

- (medium) not 100% sure this is a bug, but there is both a #travel and a #movement tag on gems. That said, there are very few movement skills so far as far as i can tell (checking travel, movement, blink, teleport etc), with shield charge being the only one feeling somewhat universally usable (aka all shield wielders). I understand this is most likely due to you wanting dodge to be the favored movement during fights rather than poe1 like movement skills. However, sometimes you want to traverse a lot of map, and dodge doesn't quite fit there. Shield charge does the job, but ofcourse only for shield wielders. I do not know if all twohand or dual wielders have skills to get the same job done. A solution may be just disabling such movement skills during boss battles, but it would be hard to give a reasonable story explanation of why outside of game balance.


Btw, GREAT job with saving the exact state of an instance so you can pick up where you left after a crash (well, apart from explored map data, but hey, much better than ever before like this)


Suggestion edit:

- Because of the new gem system, players may need to respec stat nodes quite often. It is a (darn) shame that you can't see current stats in the gem window, only required stats. Also, equip hover should probably say in the tooltip if it would bring the total stats below a gem threshold. I think you have hinted that this is the case in a video, but as of right now it actually isn't :)

- when clicking on a waypoint on the surface which connects to a waypoint below the surface with only 1 option for that specific waypoint, why not let the player travel there instantly? If the player wanted another underground waypoint, they could have used the underground map or the surface waypoint connecting to it



Critique:

- Just noticed during cruel, that the crops in ogham farmlands burn down when using flame wall. What a great detail to add, big kudos to whoever suggested, aproved and implemented that. Shame the hay stacks dont light on fire too (i guess they could burn down as well, just for scenic effect)

- Great idea with the gems stat and refund system. Now it feels rewarding to get a (generic) stat node because they are or can be rather vital rather than just "meh" :) I find myself constantly balancing all 3 stats every couple of levels to keep everything working, or choosing the best of an evil.

- empty chests (yes the lowest of the low), feels like they have no merit. I mean, it might as well say "empty chest". If there is just a scroll of wisdom in there, all good, it isn't empty. Otherwise, i'd say just leave it as scenery or change the name to empty (just like the already looted areas in act 2 which i think is a great addition storywise)

- invulnerable npc actions: Sometimes it would make sense if they run away rather than just miraculously survive whatever onslaught happens on top of them. A good example could be Alva in the machinarium, after inserting the first soul core. I did notice she covered (kudos on that! - but not very noticeable unless you look for it), but really, as she values her life ever so slightly above exploring, she ought to have fled to safety and then return after combat has ended. In my humble opinion at least :)

- gem skillup: How is an uncut gem supposed to make an existing gem better? The mechanic is sound, but the explanation and visual feels weak. How about skill gems being a cluster of gems? First one made being the main one, each uncut gem cut and placed around it into a cluster (think visuals). Add to that possible +levels from gear that could make another visual around that gem cluster. Something that mechanically does not matter at all, but player wise is very visually and personally pleasing. You could even add MTX on that part.

- also want to mention i love the currency drop changes. They are rare enough that you can't just craft what you need but have to rely on both luck, knowledge and persistence. But they are also common enough, that the player is not afraid of using a lot of (previously) very valuable currency crafting better versions of their own gear. It feels like a very good balance right now (perhaps with the expection of blacksmith/armorsmith currency which is obtained with the somewhat rare salvageable equipment). That said, this also means that you don't just take any piece of equipment to 20% quality but have to prioritize if/when to use those currencies. I expect those needing weapon quality to struggle with this however. As a minion focused player, i have no need for it at all (which is also rather strange as a sceptre isn't a martial arts weapon for some reason - you can't hit with it at all). Maybe it is a good thing? I mean currency exchange, supply and demand, those needing and those who do not? I do not know, for that you would need a bigger view on the economy aka you side or the coin.

- machinarium: There have been several bug reports with missing soul cores, but for me there has been exactly 1 for opening the first area and then 3 afterwards. This doesn't mean they don't have a bug ofcourse, just that i haven't experienced it while being aware of it.

- After defeating Kamasa (cruel diff, but probably the same on normal) and walking to the end of the duct (opposite the start), there is a hole in the tile mesh holding the downwards ledge. I did not notice this the first time around, probably because the texture below the tiles blend in pretty well with this piece. Walking while looking at it makes it very apparent though.

- (easy) all runes look like desert runes (graphically) once socketed

- (easy - duplicate, see later report) everytime (or almost every time? i am not sure) when you teleport to the top of the ziggurat in past utzaal on cruel difficulty, doriyanis voice over plays "It is time", before actually getting to that (final) scene.

- seems since yesterday, there has been a small change. 2 of my barya coins now state that they will award points. I am about to do the trial now, but the quest still states "Ascent to power: search traitors passage" although the trial of sekhemas is already unlocked.

- (probably hard) during trial of the sekhemas, ascendancy points lvl 61, second trial, second room: Hourglass trial, there was so much lag causing constant freezes - presumably when monsters were spawning it seemed - that i lost over 1000 honour to actions not even visible on my screen

- (probably hard again) second last (6th encounter row) of the same trial as above, another hour glass room and another set of crazy lag. Some visible, some invisible monsters, warping and stuttering. Barely made it with 26 honour left. Before these two laggy hourglass trials i had ~1400.

- (yeah... felt like super hardmode) i made it to the final boss room, but as expected i did not make it with 26 honour left due to those two laggy rooms. It only took a graze and i was done for. Just not ok.

- had another barya with potential points reward. Very first trial was hourglass. This time, it did not lag, and i only lost 10 honour (from 1928 -> 1918). Thats how much of a difference the above lag made.

- (something isnt right here, balancing, hard) ended up dying to the twins second phase (1 of them down) at 2nd out of 3 trials although i had plenty of honour at the start. AoE everywhere it seemed and visibility close to none. That attempt took 1½ hours or more for nothing and represents pretty much everything i hated about the lab and then some since there is even more rng and time investment involved in this version.

- (probably hard) as i am progressing (t2 waystones atm), lag/fps seems to worsen. As far as i can tell, it isn't really that there is more happening on the screen. There are more modifiers to calculate for sure though, both between my character (gear/passives/atlas/minions) and map (modifiers, mobs). That said, poe1 was able to handle a quite massive amount of calculation on that part without any slowdown on my old hardware. Surely this hasn't changed? I mean, i understand if graphically and to some extent CPU wise due to the new engine and more in the pipeline i am getting more congested, but the baseline calculations ought to be low performance hit. Right?

- (easy) Endgame map: Expedition encounter does not show in tooltip on valid nodes (icon shows fine though). I can't help but wonder that all information on a map node ought to be pulled from the same object instance, so if the icon is showing correctly, why isn't the tooltip? Please don't rush it guys, make good code, not spaghetti <3 People (me included) can wait until it is ready!

- (medium) Expedition end voiceover (this time Gwen) fired before all expedition monsters were dead

- (hard, implementation) Expedition (Gwen) has expedition currency, but no currency exchange (Gwen)

- (hard, exploitation) Holding down guard, using map overlay and doing (S)RS and arsonist minions, i can pretty much offscreen a map boss (or map rares as it is at my stage right now), without the "boss" targetting me. This might just have been coincidence so far though, i will keep testing.

- (unknown) artificers orb: Works on martial weapons and armor. Since sceptres are neither, are sceptre users left with 1 less slot than everyone else? (or possibly 2 if 2 slots apply normally, i do not know)

- an extra stab vs the sekhema trials and the chosen (old) mechanic it is paired with:

--- The win clause is surviving, but surviving is more about not getting hit than actually surviving

--- As above, many builds in both poe 1 and 2 are centered about being ABLE to take hits, as both poes are mostly about spike damage and not playing perfectly to not be hit at all (if that is even possible all the time, i doubt it)

--- It takes AGES even compared to the highest difficulty of the old ascenscion, and you still might be left with nothing in the end producing a very unhappy camper. And when i say ages, if you want to be careful (i mean 3 trials = well, 8 maps per trial maybe 9? Lets say 8, so thats 24 runs +/- all the extra rng it now has to take you to the end. Even if you take only 5 minutes a map, that means each attempt assuming it is (almost) successfull is 2 hours. And thats only if i got the 8 map nodes per trial correct. Thats just about the full time a general working person has to play in an evening, and they will most likely leave with a bitter taste in their mouth. Have you thought this one through?

- (easy) relic affinity does not work. Have to transfer it the old fashioned way.

- (easy, layering) item linking: Cant link an item if the chat window is covering said item

- (easy) can not compare a gold charm to a gold charm. Quite possibly and very likely the same for other charms. Probably just a flag missing.