I’ve been playing this game for over 3 years now and to be honest I’ve hit a bit of a wall.
I was thinking about features that could be implemented into the game for players (such as myself) who are finding it hard to push to the upper floors.
Having a mode that rewards skill and good knowledge of the game with high quality loot (or maybe not even a mode maybe this could function sort of like maps where you could find a key to this challenge) would be perfect.
Idea
A 1-life mode where you start with no loot and have to navigate your way through a few floors (maybe 20). After every 5 floors you have a choice:- keep going for better loot
- exit the dungeon with some of your aquired loot (maybe be allowed to choose 1 item to keep for every floor you've done, ie. if you leave at floor 10 you can transfer 10 items to the actual game
If you complete all floors then you get to transfer all your loot to your main characters in the actual game.
How to enter mode
I don't think a 1-life mode where you can permanently lose your main character would be any fun so I think you should enter the mode through the main menu where you will start the mode with a new (temporary) character (at whatever level your key drop is - next paragraph).Of course this could lead to exploitation (as why would you ever farm normally if you could just play 1-life for the high drop rates) so there should be some fee to start playing it: not gold but some sort of rare ‘key’ drop from the normal game, so instead of this mode being a replacement to the main game it would act more like a legendary map - great if your lucky enough to find it.
Rewards
As I previously said I think the main incentive of this mode should be the high drop rates and the risk/reward as to whether or not to cash out or to continue on in the hopes of finding better loot.Saying that I think it’d also be a great oppurtunity to experiment with different builds and game mechanics (as experimenting is very expensive as is) as the game mode would force you to use whatever items you can find and to try to manipulate them into some sort of build that’ll allow you to fight through the floors.
Difficulty
I think that the lower floors should be relatively simple just so everyone can at least get to floor 5 if RNG isn't in their favour or if they just don't have enough experience with the game to try and piece a build together. This way everyone can get some use out of this mode (as entry is a rare key drop).Floors 6 to 15 should get exponentially harder then, forcing you to really get the most out of your gear all while providing fairly high drop rates.
Finally the last floors should be difficult enough that even an experienced player will never be able to complete the whole mode reliably. This should only be possible for those runs when RNG is on your side and you get a particularly OP build.