Similar to stone, a number of "elder uniques" were added in War for the Atlas that can simply drop from The Elder himself. Game Designer Hrishi took some time to Go over the Cyclopean Coil, Blasphemer's Grasp, Nebuloch, Hopeshredder, Shimmeron, Impresence and Watcher's Eye. Each has its own unique market in POE Currency , both in terms of its distinctive appearance, but also with regard to what it increases the overall player experience through characteristic focus, ailment focus and much more.
[T]he unique items needed to be created in this manner that made them typically useful for a vast array of builds, and also to make a reason to keep fighting the Elder many times, or the items would feel as though they had no value.
The overall design of a good deal of elder uniques is they're intended for a large variety of builds. Because of this, the focus on those designs are attributes, ailments, charges, curses and auras.
Given the fundamental nature of maps in War for the Atlas, the feature itself involved a great deal of time in development. It has been a work in progress over the duration of the previous expansion, but also throughout the lifespan of PoE itself. The design of this machine is driven by two design goals: Random amounts are critical and "everywhere can be a functional end-game". Most interestingly, GGG looked in problems affecting the ARPG genre generally and how it planned to address the boredom that many players find at end game:
The big issue we faced when the end-game was in this state has been staleness of the end locations. Players who desired to discover the best items and earn the maximum experience were made to repeat the exact same few areas repeatedly. While the arbitrary levels were performing a lot of work, we needed a whole lot more variety. In the 0.8.6 patch, we added a special end-game called the Maelstrom of Chaos. This was a set of consecutive regions that sprucing upwards in difficulty level, with random critters and arbitrary tilesets (from a selection of eight).Throughout 2017, Grinding Gear was a hectic company with enlarging POE Trade Currency . Between The Fall of Oriath and War for the Atlas and together with all the new content added between, Exiles had a lot to do. Within our latest Exiled Tribune, we have a look back with the team in the year that was as well as catch up on design and development sites across several topics.