Hey, everyone! With the revamped Temple of Elemental Evil content appearing in this preview, you should be able to find the new items for the pack inside that content!
We talked through a lot of feedback from the last Preview, did some bugfixes and adjustments. Here's the short version of what has changed in Preview 3:
- The new Augments and some new Wands are now available in the Dojo with the other items!
- The new TOEE items should now be dropping in their intended locations.
- The new Heroic armors now have Blurry (was Dusk in Preview 2)
- The new Legendary armors now have their intended Lesser Displacement (was Dusk in Preview 2)
- The "Pendant of Subtle Life" item from Preview 1 is, in fact, Bracers, so it has been renamed to "Bracelets of Subtle Life"
- The Bracelets of Subtle Life now also have Insightful Mystic Diversion in addition to their other effects.
- The Pendant of Subtle Pain now has Mystic Diversion in addition to its other effects.
- The "Stormsniper's Lenses" from Preview 2 have been renamed "Blazing Sniper's Sights" to better reflect their place in the Fire-themed item set from this pack.
- The Insightful Deadly on the Blazing Sniper's Sights and Eternal Flameguard's Lenses has been replaced with Quality Deadly.
- The False Life effect on the Pendant of Subtle Pain has been replaced by Quality Accuracy.
- Instances of Lifesealed in this update's loot have been replaced with Deathblock.
- The new Docents should now display the correct colors.
- Goggles from this pack should now glow in the correct colors.
- The Eyes of the Lady of Rot and Decay no longer have the Temple's Monolith set, which they were not intended to have.
- The Frost and Flame ring is now part of both the Temple's Inferno and the Temple's Tide sets.
- The Earth and the Sky ring is now part of both the Temple's Monolith and the Temple's Tempest sets.
- KNOWN ISSUE: Helmets from this pack may not yet be displaying the correct appearance.
We talked through a number of other feedback points that came up, including Spell Crit augments and re-adding the crafting/weapon system, but do not have plans to move forward with either of those in this Update, sorry.
We'd love to hear your thoughts on these changes and the items as a whole!
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If you weren't here for Preview 2, or just want a refresher, here's the high level overview of loot in this Update!
Existing TOEE Items You Have
To start off, none of the existing Temple of Elemental Evil loot is changing at all. Everything you have, from the static drops to the crafted items, is staying exactly as it is, including its Minimum Level (7/26, or whatever else it may have had).
New Items!
Items that drop from the revamped Temple of Elemental Evil will now be ML8 in Heroic and ML31 in Legendary, reflecting the raised CR of this content. The Temple has also been split into a larger number of overall quests, and those quests need End Chest loot! Each of the new dungeons has items that drop in that dungeon's End Chest. These items are on the Loot Guy in the Test Dojo in this Preview! They're all new, with the exception (sort of) of the Armors, Docents, and Robes; these are new items with new names, but have the appearance and effects of the old TOEE's fully-upgraded armors. As the crafting system isn't returning (see below), we created static versions of these armors that don't require upgrading. Instead of one overall TOEE Set Bonus, there are now four - one for each of the four elements represented in the Temple.
Random Encounter Chests!
Random Encounter chests in the Temple no longer drop named equippables, but that doesn't mean they're not worth searching for! There are some new Augments to be found in the new Temple, including Rubies of (Element) Blast (an effect formerly found on the craftable weapons) and Rubies of Implement's (Element), which grants both an Equipment bonus to that element's Spell Power AND the standard Implement Bonus found on Spellcasting Implements. There are both Heroic and Legendary versions of all of these Augments! In addition, there are a few fun wands we've included this go around. They're likely not top-tier endgame items, but may have some interesting uses. Let us know what you think about those! These are all on the Loot Guy in this Preview!
Optional Encounters!
There are a few tougher optionals in the new Temple, and that's where you will be able to locate the old named items you used to be able to find in the Temple's Random Encounter chests (Sapphire Sting, etc). These items are unchanged, still retaining their current stats and Minimum Level. We'd discussed upgrading these to the new power level and minimum level, but for balance and overall gameplay reasons we have decided to leave them alone. They are important items to a lot of builds, though, so we wanted to make sure they remained available to find, hence why they will be dropping in chests after defeating these optional encounters.
That's about it for new things! We did want to address one more point before we wrap up though:
What happened to the old crafting system?
We took a hard look at the existing TOEE crafting system and ultimately decided to leave it behind. Existing ingredients will continue to exist, but won't drop anymore. Existing bases and crafted weapons and armor will continue to exist, but won't drop anymore. The crafting station will still exist somewhere, so if you have leftover ingredients you can use them to finish up anything you might be working on. As we said above, we made static named versions of all of the fully-upgraded armors that you can find in end chests, but we won't be adding new Weapons to this pack.
The old crafting system had literally more than 500 distinct craftable bases. Obtaining the exact one you wanted was extremely daunting in Epics, and nearly impossible in Heroics. We experimented with a few methods of obtaining the bases in a different way, but dealing with that many base types was either performance-intensive or a bad gameplay experience. The existing crafting system was needlessly grindy in Epics and almost impossible to finish in one life in Heroics. And ultimately, there are already good weapons available in other content at both of these levels. The TOEE ones aren't holding up a critical niche, all of the weapon art can be found on other weapons in the game, and we've added some of the new Augments to help bring some of that flavor to your existing weapons.
We're really excited for you to check out the revamped Temple of Elemental Evil, and we hope you check out the items up for preview on Lamannia! Let us know what you think!