Deimos: Arcana - Steel Path Changes Megathread

[SilverBones]

Welcome Tenno!

With the release of Deimos: Arcana, we have included Steel Path Changes!

Introducing: Acolyte Minibosses & Steel Path Incursions (Daily Alerts)! 

Every day, five Steel Path missions will be chosen randomly, and completing them will award 3 Steel Essence per Incursion. Furthermore, this will unlock the node, even if you have not reached that part of the Steel Path yet! This should help improve the matchmaking situation, among other things.

NOTE: Steel Path Incursions will appear in the Alert section of the World State Window when you are set to Steel Path mode.

• As you play in any Steel Path mission, Acolytes will spawn and attack - defeating the Acolyte grants a guaranteed drop of 2 Steel Essence. Beware! If you get downed by an Acolyte, they’ll escape and you won’t receive any Steel Essence! 
• The Steel Path Acolytes now have the same Status treatment that Liches received earlier this year.
• Reduced the Melee attack damage on both Misery and Malice to avoid the more reported 1HKOs.
  • In essence (ha), there is virtually no RNG with Steel Essence anymore. Daily Incursions guarantee 3 per Alert, and Acolytes will always appear in regular missions (Endlessly in Endless missions.). The time at which they choose to appear may be a bit random, but if you kill mobs, they will come! 
• Please note, Acolytes won't spawn in Archwing missions on the Steel Path.
• Teshin’s Steel Path Honors will now have a Weekly item for you to purchase! There are 8 items total, meaning that every 8 weeks the store will reset and allow you purchase anew. Look forward to things like an Umbra Forma Blueprint, Shotgun Riven Mod, and more! 

If you have feedback to leave on the subject of Steel Path Changes, then please do so in this thread. Please remember that you should keep your feedback constructive and civil.

• If you like an aspect of the new content, tell us what you like.
• If you do not like an aspect, then tell us why, and what you would change to make it better!

Please bear in mind this is not a place to leave bugs you discover while playing. If you do need to report a bug, please use the dedicated Deimos: Arcana Bug-Hunting Megathread!

Thank you!
 

[xFirsTNG]

Very cool, but you can go back, the acolytes will be rotten

[Aisu9]

good list of change, but Chroma and Nekros need another look, only 25% for the one shot ? are you kiding me the master of death having Harder time to kill than the bloody maiden (it don't make sens, are you aware ?) switch them
elemental switch on spectral scream, trash it and put it on elemental ward. make it actualy act like a breath attack (deal damage like flux weapon curently deal)
also make the spread range and limite affected by power strenght and range, and give a lift up to range scaling, also give it a cone range, it's a breath attack not a dumb laser like wukong's old 1

[Kopi.]

Have to appreciate the effort and thought put into SE Alerts. It's a really good way to earn SE for some items, but why not leave the SE Drops by Exilus mobs and add this. Why? We could only buy one of the weekly item anyway...

[xFirsTNG]

14 minutes ago, KingKopiXL said:

Have to appreciate the effort and thought put into SE Alerts. It's a really good way to earn SE for some items, but why not leave the SE Drops by Exilus mobs and add this. Why? We could only buy one of the weekly item anyway...

Exactly, it will only make it more of a tiring farm that you do once and never again.. I only used Steel Essence 2x a month and only to buy Kuva

[ShadowTony]

I'm not 100% sure but maybe, maybe, having this voice line is irrelevant nowadays? Especially in non-Alad-related tilesets. 

Spoiler

 

[Skellius]

Why not let players choose how they want to earn steel essence? The changes seems to discourage long endless runs (which a lot of players actually enjoy).

While making Steel Essence accessible to those who don't want to do long runs I feel like these changes made it so that people who actually liked doing long runs no longer have a good reason to do them.

Content should be diverse and suit many different players.

I found doing long odin runs enjoyable because it was rewarding as well as fun (and it wasn't AFK farming either)

But now I dont know if there is anything like that to replace it.

[Kalvorax]

my feedback so far...LOVE the new addition of acolytes in endless missions...especially survival :D

BUT can you PLEASE look at how enemy level interacts with their powers? Ancient disruptors suck ALL energy away in a single hit.....and with these enemies NOT being special its quite stupid to go from full energy to nothing in an instant. it should be NO MORE THAN 25% on a hit WITH an immunity period to not losing energy.

Addition: I also feel that we should have a boss bar for when an acolyte is active so we can keep track of whether its dead or not.

[Gilmaesh]

Well, at least there are finally players with me in missions. It was kind of boring to do all the missions alone when you, like me, missed the steelpath update because everyone was farming 1 or 2 maps out of the hundreds of nodes. Adding alert is a good move to give a little bit of life to the starchart.

As for the steel essences maybe you could add some to the reward tables, remove some of the useless rewards and replace it with SE. I haven't test the acolytes in endless yet so depending on their spawn rate it might not be necessary. 

It doesn't really change the problems this mode have though..

edit: i did a quick 30 min survival and the acolytes seems to spawn every 4/5 min, i had 3k+ kills, i don't know if the number of kills make them spawn faster. They are quite weak to melee in solo. 

[SelimOo]

The update in Deimos is cool, it adds a bit of content. BUT now "Steel Path = Dead Game Mod", why we are limited in our farm, it's stupid ! 150 for one Umbra Forma. 5x3x7 = 105 so even doing the missions every day you still have to kill a lot of acolytes in addition. In addition, the goal of the Steel Path was to make the missions "more difficult", except that in no case they are more difficult if the players remain 15min to do their daily missions.

[BobbyPin]

Im on about 700hrs on wf, kinada new, but hear alot of joke about how DE change thing (seriously)

I dunno what the point they changing the SE. Right now, it force me (another player ?) To log in alot - everyday to do these SE alert with reward limit (am i right ?) .

Im no harcore player, but i rather spend 2-3hrs in one day that im free of work, doing thing, buy booster just for 2hrs run and wasted the time left than need log in and do everyday. Are we become mobile phone daily choir? 

 

[Lored]

I really want to get an answer to just one question. But I don't believe that any of the DEs will answer me.

Question: Why are the mission rewards in Steel Path still the same as in Regular Missions?

Personally, I'm tired of getting credits for completing Steel Path missions... I hope I'm not alone.

[Yell0w-]

 Rip farming Steel Essence on Odin/mercury. This will take too long for farming them. Steel path was only worth 4 farming this.

It´s sad that they didnt keep the normal spawn and just add the Acolytes as a bonus.

There must be more ways to stop afk farming instead of this.

[Gentleman_Bird]

I feel like Stalker and Shadow Stalker should also drop Steel Essence. Why not?

[Kalvorax]

34 minutes ago, Yell0w- said:

 Rip farming Steel Essence on Odin/mercury. This will take too long for farming them. Steel path was only worth 4 farming this.

It´s sad that they didnt keep the normal spawn and just add the Acolytes as a bonus.

There must be more ways to stop afk farming instead of this.

so we cant sit in a mission any more and farm tons of it....at least we NOW get 100% chance of 2 (multiplied by boosters) no matter the mission.

[TheLordOmega2]

150 essence for an umbra forma at the speed we're getting essence now? is that a joke or an insult?

[Daiwulf]

Suggestion: now that we have dedicated steel path daily missions, please update the navigation panel, moving both Steel Path dailies and Kuva Siphons from "alerts" tab to new dedicated tabs, like we have with invasions, syndicates and void fissures. Having 2 big blocks of missions in a single tab doesn't seem nice, and you have to scroll all the way down if you want to find the Siphons

Suggestion 2: Like Kuva Siphons, make a new Steel Path mission that is refreshed weekly that spawns all the 6 acolytes at once, then the stalker itself after they're dead, for a total of 15 essences (6 acolytes dropping 2 essences + stalker dropping 3 essences and his regular drops. Bonus: Randomize between Stalker and Shadow Stalker.

 

I did some solo endurance runs for essence farming before the update, and the change is probably better for me: now I can play with others instead of going solo survival, in half an hour you get guaranteed 15 essences instead of only start getting them after 30 min at the very least, people that can't affort to stay uninterruptedly for 1 hour can farm them now, the 2 (4 with booster/8 with smeeta) that drop from Acolytes each 5 min will also be good for endurance runs without the thought of "if I leave now, i will have wasted my time because it took 1 hour to ramp up the eximus spawns and only now the drop is at peak"

[General-Pacman]

I appreciate that you guys payed attention when people said on the test cluster that 100 SE was not a suitable price for an umbra forma. But I think you may have misunderstood what people meant.

[PookieNumnums]

this pretty much killed the best method of kuva acquisition in the game. steel path farming (while sure, MACRO farming may not be Ideal from your view point as developers) was by far the best method for players to obtain kuva to reroll their rivens. 

this is going to do three major things:

punish people who arent a part of the riven mafia (and their ilk)

really really really make the riven mafia and riven traders / collectors in general feel like they were stabbed in the heart

have a major impact on the riven economy. if kuva is harder to get again, rolls are effectively more costly, and the more people have to grind to obtain high demand riven stats the more theyre going to charge. so youre basically increasing the already stupid-ridiculous high price of quality rivens (stats or in demand weapons).

 

this is absolutely a terrible decision imho, all because you dont want people to afk farm. i really despise the term 'bandaid fix' but there isnt really anything else i can think of that actually encompasses what this change is at its core.

it does not address the underlying issue.

 

 

[polemio]

I like the addition of acolytes and the new steel path alerts

I dislike the removal of Steel essence from eximus.

Steel essence wasn't only farmed on AFK farms. Odin was an interception mission where you needed a proper squad and coordination to farm efficiently and one single mistake could cause the entire mission to fail and lose all your loot.
Furthermore the "nerf" to the AI done to kill the ophelia underground farm made any inactive farming way less efficient than active farming like in Odin.

• Suggestion 1: Revert the change to drop chance from eximus and let both systems coexist. PROS: Everyone will be happy and it's extremely easy to implement.

 

• Suggestion 2: Introduce steel path fissures and make any relic drop essence when opened. This will remove the afk farm while still allowing people the option of going endless and getting better rewards for their time due to relic resource booster scaling. PROS: Very similar to the current alert system and incentivizes relic cracking

[Gentleman_Bird]

I noticed that I just got 25 steel essence from completing a planet. Would it be possible to grant that steel essence to players who already completed planets prior to the new update?

[HEICHALOT]

Thank you for the update,

now 5 mins - 15 mins runs mean something. Sure it is not alot (2 essences per 5 mins), but it is guaranteed.

no more RNG which is nice.

Previously, in survival, one must atleast stay up to 90 mins for essences to drop "well", which made the first especially 60 mins run super dry. Solo survival using Khora gets me 45-65 essences in 60 mins (more per hour after that ofcourse), while solo Grendel got me like 40-50 essence respectively. Those numbers are using resource booster and occasional cat's work.

Now, 60 mins give me a solid fix 48 essences with resource booster.

 

I'd choose a FIXED guaranteed result rather than RNG result

while I admit this update penalize longer runs (above 60 mins), but this give chances for more players who are struggling with essences

[Mephane]

Suggestion: like in Arbitration, have each round of an endless mission award 1 Steel Essence guaranteed.

[ThisIsMyWarframe]

So the hardest part of Steel Path is now the agonizing four, five or even six minute wait between completing the objective and waiting for the Acolyte to spawn. Awesome.

Sarcasm aside it's great that this opens up SP to more than 5 or 6 frames, but the punishment to long runs is a little extreme. I don't know how to improve it besides adding back the drops to Eximii just at a reduced droprate, but from initial playthroughs it feels.. bad. As in "I'd rather ignore Steel Path" bad.

The accessibility is great, but I think you leaned a bit too hard into nerfing long runs.

[n00body11]

I went with two different frames in Ophelia (Survival) to see how's the new Acolyte System works. My honest feedback? It is worse than I thought it would be. In my first game, I decided to go with Khora. Stayed in the mission for about 15 minutes (I got like 1500 kills or so) and no Acolyte spawn. Zero. I even decided to walk throught the map to see if this is a new "anti solo farm mechanic" and... nope, no Acolyte for me. So I thought to myself: well, DE maybe just hate Khora; so I decided to change my frame of choice: Saryn was my next pick. And the mission was just like the previews one (although I was running and dodging alot more with Saryn) and no signal from Acolytes. Plus, with this new "status effect on bosses" just killed Gara's Splinter Shield (because, of course, you guys buffed bosses armor and everything else to the roof). And I don't even wanna talk about the new Vault, where I have to spend nearly one hour to complete all the six Vaults in just one run (and, silly me, I thought you guys hated long runs).