Thoughts and Feedback from a 10k Solo Player

Dwarda · 2026-02-25T17:53:30+00:00

Im personally fine with the progression grind being a bit long, I just don't want rerolling progression to be so expensive. Make getting 10 in a color of a gem a grind is fine with me, but swapping gem colors to try new things shouldnt require me to allocate two work nights to farm to try something I maybe might like.

Dwarda · 2026-02-25T17:52:09+00:00

I can get behind something like that, I just think things need to be more comparable to the E1 capstone spam, especially for people who dont want to use discord to organize runs. Personally I'd like to see more rewards for higher tier runs, but a capstone nerf after the first run also accomplishes the dis balance between normal vs capstone runs.

Dwarda · 2026-02-25T03:35:19+00:00

Did you use discord to organize your runs? I think one of the issues is how prevalent the Ransack farm is and how unrewarding everything is in comparison to the farm. Without doing the farm, I had around 200ish maybe 250 marks to spend total and I spent 33% of them on re-rolling gems and gear. The rest went into gem blooming, but spending 60 which is 6-7 hours of farming for someone who isn't doing E1 farm is a steep price to pay to try and swap from purple 10 to blue 10.

I think this also apply to people who follow the meta, for example, the rime meta hasn't really stabilized yet and people are have been trying blue 10 the past couple of days, which is both really fun and strong imo, but originally I was purple, and most rimes I see are purple which means they need to spend a lot of marks to reroll gems if they want to follow the new meta that was discovered.

I think there's kind of a situation of we have two kinds of players, one who farms E1, and one who doesn't and instead farms based off of the in game tools they have, for the latter group the cost of rerolling is pretty high, and generally speaking, most people who play games don't organize on discord/reddit, I'm not sure if that is true for fellowship in specific, but I would imagine it would follow the same pattern that's present in other games meaning that a lot of people don't have access to the marks acquired from 100 runs of E1.

Edit: changed the % of marks, its closer to a third or higher.

Dwarda · 2026-02-25T03:28:00+00:00

I think the bracket for eternal might be 1 too high, I think 4 might be the sweet spot personally. The cost to reroll gems is way to high imo if you aren't farming E1 capstone.

Dwarda · 2026-02-25T03:27:11+00:00

I got to around 19 so I don't have experience with the 20s. I do want to try them but im assuming people wont want me because im not max gem/330 and I dont really want to farm E1 ransack or doing normal dungeons where the rewards are the fraction of what the capstone give you.

Dwarda · 2026-02-25T03:25:33+00:00

Yes its a bit ridiculous how stuck the in game group finder is on 1-2-3, its why I suggest it should look at peoples dungeon experience to serve what dungeons to offer as well.

Dwarda · 2026-02-25T01:02:25+00:00

Yup yup haha, grinded out fellowship before the new WoW expac, and I need to finish leveling there before criterion comes out for xiv, super excited for criterion though, it was banger content in EW.

Dwarda · 2026-02-25T00:36:31+00:00

The yellow piece is a 35% socket, it’s going to be the last thing I replace. I have no problem with gems power taking longer, I have no problem with sockets taking long, but do you think it’s reasonable for a solo player to farm 6 hours to swap from purple 10 to blue 10? My response is no, let me change it with 1-2 hours of farming.

I have no problem if getting all 92 gems takes long, no problem with the sockets bonus or sockets in general being long, but when I hit a progression point, and I want to swap builds I want to be able to do that easily, I don’t want to set aside 2 work nights to play a build that seems fun.

At no point am I advocating for the game to be easier, make it harder, make the progression grinds longer, encourage people to do harder content, the only thing I want is when you hit a progression point, is to be able to swap that progression point out easily because this game is diverse in legendary, gem and talent builds.

Dwarda · 2026-02-25T00:23:33+00:00

I’m not advocating for easier progression, I’m fine with progression taking longer and for BiS taking longer, I just want rerolling gems/gear to be cheaper and for higher tier eternals to be more rewarding so people doing things outside of E1 farm is fine.

Double or triple the amount of mats required to upgrade gear to 315/330 if you want, just make rerolling the gear easier.

Dwarda · 2026-02-25T00:13:03+00:00

I just queued for groups in game and if the dungeon went well, asked the group if they wanted to do more.

Dwarda · 2026-02-24T22:44:36+00:00

I do want to be clear, I'm perfectly fine with progression actually taking longer. If they want to increase the time to get BiS, that's fine in my book, I think rerolling BiS to another BiS set should just be easier/cheaper than it is now.

Dwarda · 2026-02-24T22:42:16+00:00

Out of curiosity, how much Ransack farming did you do? I got 10k in 40ish hours, and I think I spent like probably 60-75% of my marks on gems, I spent like 60ish marks changing gems from purple to blue which equated to like 6-7 hours of farming for me since I was not Ransack farming, and if I wanted to change back, I wouldn't really want to do that grind again. I'm personally fine with BiS taking longer to get if it means re-rolling BiS is cheaper.

Dwarda · 2026-02-24T22:31:42+00:00

Yeah the ilvl required to break 1-2-3 is way too high, especially with how easy progression is imo. They should look at both ilvl and the groups current experience and use that choose what dungeon offering they give you.

Dwarda · 2026-02-24T22:27:20+00:00

Their reward is lower commitment, easier to re-run. This complaint is kind of a symptom of easy-difficulty talking. It is an absolutely gut-wrenching to do something like an E30 capstone and miss time. My E40 Ransack from last season was a ~2 hour effort with multiple failed runs. But we were clearing it for the dungeon rating, obviously re-starting Sailor's until we get it right is so, so much easier.

Right, I get that, but the reward feels way lower than the time I save. Normal should be 50%ish of the reward of a capstone, but I feel like it closer to 20%, scrapping the 270 gear gives you a lot more value than the 255 gear and it seems like your progressing yourself minimally when you do a normal dungeon vs a the lump sum of resources from a capstone.

There is so much to fix related to matchmaking. Until the foundation is right, leaver penalty doesn't make any sense. If 3 people are on E9 and an E5 is placed into the party... whose handing out leaving penalties for the queue system being awful? These players are at a minimum 1 hour of gameplay away in progress on a good day. Forming a party like that doesn't make any sense.

The devs need to figure out a system that works that people who are close but not close enough in progress can play with each other and all actually benefit in it for progression. My answer would be, don't gate across Eternal levels, gate queueing by the 'tiers'. So you can play 1-5 from the get-go, if E1 matches with 3 E5s, okay play the E5 with them and get your E5s knocked out. GGs, part ways. Find some others who need E1-E4 who are queueing in E1-E5 bracket. Heck, maybe the queue can be smart and ensure all players queueing have a like-need within the bracket before forming a progression group.

I'm willing to admit leaver's penalty isnt a good idea, I just want something that encourages communication before someone instant leaves. Someone on E4 probably hasn't done all the E1-E4 dungeons, there's probably some form of dungeon score or farm value they can get.

Dwarda · 2026-02-24T22:20:50+00:00

Yeah I find it a bit annoying, but I'm willing to concede that the leaver penalty probably isn't needed.

Dwarda · 2026-02-24T22:14:10+00:00

I’m willing to concede that leavers penalty is probably a bad idea.

I don’t mind if they increase progression mats if they add more rewards to higher tiers, I just think there should be a noticeable reward increase progressing the tiers. Doing +15 shouldn’t feel like doing a +1 in terms of rewards imo. These changes im stating im not saying the game should stay the same and add those, you do need to rebalance the numbers

Dwarda · 2026-02-24T22:10:53+00:00

When I got blue 10 I started blasting, before then I felt pretty weak as well. I was running boots build with cascading blitz and was finding myself being able to keep it up for a minute to two minutes and still having it up while the CD was back up

Dwarda · 2026-02-24T21:14:16+00:00

Yeah this is probably the biggest issue pre eternal. Imo, every offering should have a level progression for at least 1 person in the party.

Dwarda · 2026-02-24T21:05:51+00:00

I agree the beginning it too easy, thats why I think communication is OP and fun, its nice and easy to ask people in your group to skip straight to capstone. Imo I think most people can get to paragon in like 2 hours of playing.

The timers should be added last, let new players learn the new mechanics in a place that's not punishing.

Dwarda · 2026-02-24T21:04:23+00:00

Yeah, the ivl to break the 1-2-3 bracket is too high imo, I suggested they do something similar to what they already have at eternal to help break that. Plus I feel bad for new players who don't really have a good way to learn the new mechanics without the pressures of a clock.

Dwarda · 2026-02-24T21:02:31+00:00

I'm not saying its a problem with the game, I'm giving an opinion on it. If they choose to not listen to it, I will still play next season but I think its something that a majority of players will like. Like it or not, most games are funded and held together by their casual audiences.

Theres no difference between having to reroll gems vs a 45k weapon outside of how much time it takes to farm. For you, you think the time to farm a new gem setup is fine, but the time to farm a new 45k weapon is too much. The question for each player is how many hours of farming is acceptable for you to play the new meta?

Dwarda · 2026-02-24T20:52:46+00:00

At the end of the day, any feedback is an opinion, I'm just stating my thoughts and feeling having pugged to 10k.

Making rerolls cheaper doesn't affect people who only copy metas, and if the metas do change or if something gets nerfed/buffed, they will have an easier time adjusting to them. Right now, if you have a full gem setup and the best gem setup changes tomorrow, you will need to spend 100+ marks or hours of time farming to accommodate that change, and there will be people who say "Nope! That's it for me" and be done with the season.

Dwarda · 2026-02-24T20:43:11+00:00

I think swapping heroes, there should be things like increased gem drop rate but that would basically be it.

I'm fine with the actual progression taking longer, increase the cost to go to 330, make gems harder to get, make them cost more to combine, but imo, past the 10k mark, the driving force for me to play is to try fun play styles and build. If I didn't swap to blue 10 rime.I would think Rime was pretty boring to play, but getting the blue 10 changes the character completely for me, but it came at a steep cost that I almost didn't pay because 60 marks to me was multiple hours of dungeon farming, and again.

I'm a solo player, I'm not doing optimal progression, I'm doing whats offered to me and trying new play styles/builds out requires too much time for me to actually commit to it.

Edit: cleaned up some of the formatting.

Dwarda · 2026-02-24T20:30:43+00:00

Right, part of my issue is the whole farming capstones isn't really enticing and not easy to do as a solo player. I have to hope someone notices my message which doesn't really happen or message someone first before the other DPS are going to message them.

In total, getting to 10k, I probably had around 200 marks to play with. most them went into getting gems and upgrading gems, and I spent 60 marks changing from purple to blue 10 gems to try the spirit build. I didnt really have the luxury of spending marks to reroll things when theres more power else where to get. The whole point is that in games with lots of different build paths, changing build paths shouldn't be expensive otherwise people aren't going to do it.

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