The Netherlight Crucible That Could've Been

The Artifact system has been a defining feature in the Legion expansion and while I might have some concerning things to say, it does at least accomplish the goal of making endgame activities a little more meaningful to do. While I suspected that Concordance of the Legionfall would be the end of Artifact traits for this expansion, patch 7.3 added another vector of Artifact progression I didn't expect in the form of the Netherlight Crucible. The feature has received a fair amount of criticism mostly because of the randomness of a relic's traits, an issue I try to further explain here.

Aside from the randomness, I was a bit disappointed with the Netherlight Crucible despite there being some thoughtful design put into it such as making it accessible account-wide upon completing the Argus questline and attempting to balance the traits. This led me to brainstorm theoretical alternatives to what the Netherlight Crucible could've been, especially while keeping my thoughts on the Paragon-esque Concordance of the Legionfall trait in mind. I concluded that the Netherlight Crucible could've been used as an Artifact Power sink and in this article, I'll describe what I came up with to accomplish this goal.

The Design of the Alternative Netherlight Crucible

As I mentioned above, I started by considering the design of Concordance of the Legionfall. At the moment, it has 50 ranks and it seems unlikely many are going to earn all of them by the end of the expansion. My idea involved downsizing the amount of ranks to 5, maintaining the same Artifact Power requirements to unlock that many ranks. Since there's fewer ranks, I reasoned that each rank after the first could provide more power at 1000 stats per rank and capping at 8000. This would be the goal for the 7.2 patch series and while it's a bit of a grind to reach 5 ranks of Concordance of the Legionfall at Artifact Knowledge 40, it shouldn't be as demanding considering the best players had as much as 10 ranks of Concordance of the Legionfall (or 61 Artifact weapon levels).

Unlike in the 7.1 patch series, Artifact Power could still be accrued in anticipation of patch 7.3, though it wouldn't necessarily be that advantageous since the weekly Artifact Knowledge increment of 7.3 would remain, giving players a chance to catch up. The Netherlight Crucible would be made available at the same time and while the first tier of benefits, which are used to increase the item level of the Artifact weapon, would be available immediately, the other two tiers, along with some other benefits, would be unlocked by spending Artifact Power. Doing so would unlock these features for all of the character's Artifact weapons, which would encourage players to play multiple specializations a bit more. The costs to unlock Netherlight Crucible benefits could be as follows:

• Tier 1 benefits are available immediately.
• Tier 2 benefits are unlocked by spending 15 billion AP.
• Tier 3 benefits are unlocked by spending 150 billion AP.
• The ability to pay for a Total Reroll, Tier Reroll, and Single Reroll is unlocked by spending 750 billion AP.
• Discovery Reroll and Replacement Reroll are unlocked by spending 1.5 trillion AP.

These costs could be adjusted, but I set them to specific amounts to account for increasing Artifact Knowledge and the current "cost" to unlock such benefits based on Artifact weapon level. For example, the total amount of Artifact Power needed to unlock the first relic slot's second tier costs 18 billion Artifact Power, 12 billion of which is spent to raise Concordance of the Legionfall from rank 5 to rank 9. I reasoned that since all of the relic slot's second tiers would be unlocked at the same time, it could cost a little more Artifact Power. It also helps that much like before, traits don't require Artifact Power to unlock for each relic after the initial payment.

I initially toyed with the idea of having players spend Artifact Power to unlock traits on each individual relic. However, I discarded the idea since I reasoned that looting relics would be less enjoyable since in addition to having to visit the Netherlight Crucible to empower a relic, one would also have to spend some Artifact Power they might not have to do the empowering. However, to make an effective Artifact Power sink, there has to be an infinite sink of sorts and that's where the new reroll system I devised comes in. Aside from costing a lot to unlock (unlocking both sets of reroll methods would cost a little more than it does to unlock 27 ranks of Concordance of the Legionfall), there would be additional costs to use the rerolls themselves. These costs are as follows:

• Total Reroll: Rerolls all tier 2 and 3 traits at the cost of 25 billion AP. The first use of this is free and doesn't need to be unlocked.
• This means that each relic can be rerolled once for free, which will help to dampen the frustration of randomly rolling undesirable traits even if one doesn't have the Artifact Power to unlock reroll features since the player won't have to farm new relics as much.
• Tier Reroll: Rerolls all tier 2 or 3 traits at the cost of 15 billion AP.
• Single Reroll: Rerolls a single tier 2 or 3 trait at the cost of 10 billion AP.
• Discovery Reroll: Allows you to choose one of three new traits to replace a tier 2 or 3 trait at the cost of 50 billion AP.
• Replacement Reroll: Allows you to choose a new trait to replace a tier 2 or 3 trait at the cost of 100 billion AP.
• All Rerolls also reset any points spent on the relic.

The general idea is that as players earn more Artifact Power, they'll be able to expand their options in terms of controlling the randomness of the Netherlight Crucible. The numbers can easily be tuned and the rate at which the reroll features are unlocked can be changed. For example, each individual feature could cost a lesser amount of Artifact Power to unlock that totals a very high amount, providing options to reroll Netherlight Crucible traits much sooner. Ultimately, I think it's important to make more precise control over the randomness more costly since it creates a tradeoff where players decide between risk and time spent.

I think it's also best to leave the Artifact Power sink in this state for the remainder of the expansion. While there's other things that could be done such as an Artifact Power to Order Resource conversion, I reasoned that the ability to control the randomness of the Netherlight Crucible is sufficient. This is because as players accrue more Artifact Power they'll have more freedom to experiment with different trait builds which can be enjoyable for everyone, especially more hardcore players.

Final Statements

While the idea is not perfect by any means, this alternative version of the Netherlight Crucible accomplishes a few goals in my eyes. As mentioned above, players criticized the randomness of the Netherlight Crucible's traits, which I added a system that gives players increasing control over said randomness. By adding an Artifact Power cost to this control system, I removed the need for a Paragon-esque power trait like Concordance of the Legionfall, allowing it to be capped at a much lower point in favor of exclusively increasing the power of Artifacts in 7.3 through the Netherlight Crucible. Thanks to the implementation of the Netherlight Crucible, I was also able to devise a different Paragon-esque system that emphasizes convenience and utility over raw power in the form of trait rerolls.

The aforementioned accomplishments have also given me some good ideas on what the probably weapon-less Artifact trait system of future expansions could be like. In an upcoming article, I will describe this system and based on my current brainstorming, there's other Artifact Power sinks possibilities.