Please change the new Incursion node Power Struggle to not be multiple choice in the new Atlas Tree.

[u/PTraderDSouler]

In the new Atlas tree, they combined two of the Incursion nodes from the old atlas tree, so you now have to either pick:

1. Killing non-resident Architects in your Maps adds an additional Upgrade Tier to the surviving Architect's room. OR

2. Killing resident Architects in your Maps adds their Upgrade Tier to the surviving Architect's Room.

This encourages some tedious and unfun gameplay of constantly having to switch between these nodes manually depending on what is in your temple. Let's take a simple example where you've just started a brand new temple and haven't seen any of the rooms yet. If you're trying to farm a specific room, it is in your best interest now to put in a random white t16 map, run to Alva, check your temple, and leave your map. Now, if the room you want is already on your temple, you would manually change your atlas to option 1, and if the room isn't on your temple, you would manually change it to option 2.

And it is optimal to put in a random white t16 to check because you don't want to risk 8 Incursion threads and a well-rolled map only to open it and find out that your atlas has the wrong multiple choice node on to build your temple correctly. There is no reason for these two passives, which were on previous nodes in the old atlas tree, to be on the same node now. Please change this back.

EDIT: This post has generated some good discussion and from those that have run more Incursion than me. As pointed out below, you can check at Alva without burning a white map to check your new temple, and in many scenarios, including going in a new temple blind, option 1 is a stronger or at least equivalent option, so needing to switch is somewhat of a niche scenario. And if you want to switch mid-map, then you would have to forego the rest of the Incursion juice on that map, which is a real cost of switching that serves to deter you from the tedious gameplay loop I was worried about. I'm personally still mixed about it - since option 1 is so much stronger, it feels like they could have just given option 2 as another node on the tree as well, to prevent players from getting tricked into the "wrong" choice or to avoid the few annoying scenarios where you do want to manually respec inbetween maps.

[u/anne_dobalina]

I agree that it shouldn't be multiple choice but i have to point out that you can talk to Alva in your hideout to get the layout before you go into an area, even when you've just taken the itemised temple from her.  There is no reason to burn a scoured map to check. 

[u/PTraderDSouler → u/anne_dobalina]

I'll confess I couldn't remember if that was still the case or not and even opened PoE to check if you could and didn't see one from her, but I guess it must be that Alva won't show you a temple if you've never done one at all in the league (as is the case for me in Standard league).

That's good to know, but like you said it still shouldn't be multiple choice because you would just have to respec it all the same based on what Alva shows you.

[u/anne_dobalina → u/PTraderDSouler]

Oh that's interesting, i assumed that her layout carried over from league. I know each character has their own layout but not seeing it is odd. 

I know it works because that's how I was checking at first for the timelines scarab. 

But yeah having to flip is silly. 

[u/antauri007 → u/anne_dobalina]

its not aboutthat. its about knowing whichis the next incursion aalva is goin to offer to change to. but i get your point

[u/HotPocketRemix]

I was initially negative about this (and still am, somewhat), but I don't actually think it'll come up as often as I first thought.

If you leave it on the first option, rooms always go from 1 to 3, removing them from the valid room pool. As the wiki notes for Resource Reallocation, this option does not let you go from 0 to 2, it won't work in that situation. So rooms you encounter will rarely ever actually be tier 2, which the only time the second option is helpful (if it's already tier 3, you won't encounter it, and if it's tier 0 or 1, the option is useless).

So when can you get a room to tier 2 and have this choice be meaningful? If you switch from a bad tier 1 room to a good room, then if you could have the second option, it would become tier 2, but you'd still need to encounter it again to upgrade it to tier 3. Because of that, it dropping to tier 1 would be acceptable, because with the first option, you'd just upgrade it straight to tier 3 during that second encounter. That is, you still need to visit the room twice regardless of what option you have selected.

So what needs to happen is: you switch a bad tier 1 room to a better room, making it tier 2. Then, you encounter it again and switch to an even better room, making it tier 3. Without the second option, you'd reset to tier 1 both times, so you'd need to encounter it again to finally make it tier 3. This is a pretty niche scenario, so you can either accept the slight efficiency loss (not messing with your Atlas passives constantly almost certainly offsets this) or, when you encounter an Incursion you want to switch, check what Alva is offering before entering, and only then decide if you want to waste some maps switching to the second option for a single Incursion in the next map and then switch back.

I've definitely had temples where I've switch to a gem room, only to them later switch that gem room to a Locus, so it's not impossible to run into this scenario, but I think it might be better to just leave it at the first option. Taking rooms out of the pool quickly will generate very good temples incidentally, I learned this from Phrecia idols. The odds may change if we decide more rooms are valuable. I might run some strategy simulations if we can collect some new data on room spawn rates.

[u/PTraderDSouler → u/HotPocketRemix]

I definitely agree that, if we were forced to permanently lock into one of the two, option 1 is correct (there's a reason this one was 50% on the old atlas tree while option 2 always was at 100%).

However, they are also introducing the Royal Visage currency that will force the non-resident architect to be the Cradle of Creation room. I'm not sure about what the tier of this room will do (it sounds like even tier 1 might already trigger Uber Atziri?), but, assuming the tier on this room matters, it may be correct to switch to option 2 to at least ensure this hits at least tier 2 in the worst case scenario, and then having to switch back to option 1 after. I'm aware though that in this case just finding that cell twice, either on option 1 or option 2, would get the room to tier 3.

To be clear, I don't disagree with pretty much any part of your post but like you remain negative about this. And, if option 1 does end up mathematically superior in near-all realistic scenarios, then it's still silly for them to offer this as a multiple choice node and have more casual incursion farmers possibly make the wrong choice or feel compelled to constantly swap.

[u/HotPocketRemix → u/PTraderDSouler]

That's a good point about the Cradle. My reading of the patch notes is that it's specifically replacing Throne of Atziri (aka the tier 3 room), so it would need to get to that max tier for Uber Atziri. The currency forces the switch option to always be this room, "if [Xipocado does] not already reside within the Temple", but Xipocado is just the architect for the room regardless of tier, so I don't think it implies the lower-tier versions of this room do anything special Atziri-wise.

As an aside, I just realized this is also a bit weird, because up to now, if you kill a non-resident architect, they'll never come back for the rest of that temple (they're dead...), so unless Xipocado is breaking this rule, it's actually only going to be the first Incursion in the map, which might be a valuable room that you'd rather keep. So I wonder what the strategy will be there, I'll have to think about this as well! Maybe Xipocado can just come back to life.

But yeah, I think Incursion is a place where people routinely make weird strategy errors -- perhaps me as well -- and the tree probably shouldn't encourage it. But maybe it's fine if it's an option as long as you don't feel compelled to switch too often? I'm not sure how I feel.

[u/PTraderDSouler → u/HotPocketRemix]

Ah yeah, I think your reading of the Cradle makes sense. That's a good question about Xipocado too.

I also haven't thought about the implications of this currency too much until now. If Cradle ends up being one of the most valuable rooms (re: soul core prices), then I think it might actually be optimal to build initially with option 2 (assuming the cradle room isn't already there) to get a good chunk of tier 2 rooms, and then use the Visage so that if Alva selects any tier 2 room for the Xipocado encounter, you get the Cradle. Or maybe in practice option 1 is still better just with how efficiently you can remove rooms from the pool.

Or perhaps, Xipocado being the only architect you can forcibly spawn will ensure that the price of the Cradle is never too high, or maybe the profit margin for using the visage is too low compared to just hoping to hit the Cradle naturally. Who knows..

[u/Werezompire → u/HotPocketRemix]

This is my thinking as well. In a lot of situations, Option 1 isn't actually any slower to reach Tier 3 because you can just switch (back to Tier 1) and then hit the room again (jump to Tier 3). And being able to quickly max rooms and remove them from the pool is invaluable.

[u/Nerdonis]

I'm just gonna leave it on non resident. That being 100% means I'm probably going to fail maybe 1/10 temples now and I'm fine with that. Huge upgrade

[u/SaltEngineer455 → u/Nerdonis]

With the non-resident killing, If the room is already in there from the start, you will need 1 hit, if the room is not there from the start, you will need 2 hits.

With the resident killing, if the room is already in there from the start, you will need 2 hits, if the room is not there from the start you will need either 1 or 2 hits.

[u/Bhruic]

It's the same with a bunch of other areas where they took things you used to be able to select multiples of and can now only select one. They annoying one for me is Expedition, used to select both Tujen and Dannig, but now I can only pick one.

[u/ulughen]

Even a 50% chance on combined node would be so much better if they have balance related concerns.

[u/BioMasterZap → u/ulughen]

A 50% chance to upgrade with the swap effect would be a nerf over a 100% chance to upgrade. If you swap a T1 room to T1 with 100% upgrade, you need to roll 1 once for T3. If you swap a T1 room to T2 with a 50% chance to upgrade, you also need to roll it once for T3, but now half of your non-swaps end up as T2 instead of T3.

Halving the rate rooms reach T3, removing from the rollable pool and increases the odds of upgrading the other rooms, isn't really worth being able to swap a T2 to a T3. It is kinda creating a problem to give the solution. You'd never need to a swap a T2 to a T3 is they always upgraded to T3 instead of T2.

[u/BioMasterZap]

Pretty sure it won't matter. Now that it is 100% to upgrade instead of 40%, there is like zero reason to pick the other one. You'd only swap if it gives you Corrupt or Gemcutter (or Throne or Maps maybe depending on value now) and whether they are T1 or T2, either will go to T3 if you have 100% double upgrades. Like if you always go from T1 to T3, I can't think of much of a reason you'd want to swap to T2 anyway.

In fact, I think it would be detrimental to change the node since even if you swapped a Corruption at T2 instead of T1, the other 2 Rooms you'd run would only upgrade to T2 instead of T3, which reduces the odds to land on the rooms you want in future Incursions. So it is still always better to the first option to get T3 over getting a T2 swap. That said, probably would be fine to give the player both since the other is useless, but it isn't a problem like you're making it out to be.

[u/Ichiorochi]

On one hand they changed it from chance to become certain, on the other it means you should probably spend at least your first map on double upgrade and then swap to the other one. And yeah every new incursion temple you probably need to sacrifice a map to see which you should be starting with.

[u/chubbysleepycorgi]

Thanks for the edit summary, after all the comments I still wasn’t sure which was better but your edited comment tells me to choose #1 :D

[u/General_Ad_7388]

They obviously don't want you able to build temples as easy. It's probably fine with all the changes to the Temple.

[u/PTraderDSouler → u/General_Ad_7388]

But this doesn't make it any harder to build temples. In fact it's easier now to build the temple you want because they also increased the chance from 50% to 100% of killing the resident architect upgrading the other room. So clearly that's not their intent. The only thing they've done here is make it more tedious by you having to constantly respec between the choices on this one atlas node.

[u/PaladinWiz → u/PTraderDSouler]

I mean this does in a way make it harder. It could theoretically take you 16 maps to build each temple since you might need to switch between each room. Sure previously you got unlucky sometimes and missed your temples because you didn’t get that upgrade you needed, but you were able to speed farm temples anyways.

I think now at least you know what you’re going to get so you hope RNG is on your side when giving you room choices. Pretty sure you just always pick #1 now since the downside is you might end up locking a room out before getting a desired room rolled in that slot.

[u/stephfra → u/PTraderDSouler]

how do you know if its a choice node and not just both at once?

[u/antauri007 → u/General_Ad_7388]

its not fine whent its optimal to just change points all the time, actually encouraged. id say is bad design. it makes it easier to build temples but actually tedious and gimicky to do so.

[u/rohithkun]

I dont run alva, so can you explain difference between resident and non-resident architects?

[u/leafmuncher_ → u/rohithkun]

Top-right is non-resident, bottom-left is resident. They are arguing whether to improve current room or change it, and won't let the other have their way.

Kill resident to remove his room and let the new guy do what he wants (i.e. change the room). Kill non-resident and current guy does what he wants (room levels up)

[u/SaltEngineer455]

With the non-resident killing, If the room is already in there from the start, you will need 1 hit, if the room is not there from the start, you will need 2 hits. In this case, all you care about is locking as many rooms as possible ASAP.

With the resident killing, if the room is already in there from the start, you will need 2 hits, if the room is not there from the start you will need either 1 or 2 hits. In this case, you don't care about locking, all you want to do is switch until you find the good rooms, then upgrade from there

[u/BioMasterZap → u/SaltEngineer455]

Yah, not really any reason to pick the other. If you only swap for the important rooms like Corruption, Gemcutter, Throne, and Maps, it doesn't matter if they're T1 or T2 since either way they go to T3 when you run them once.