August 2026 Version Update

Someone in ambu gear or this new gear isn't clearing a V20, so it doesn't matter if they can enter it. Letting people enter is intended to build interest among the contingent of folks who have done Sortie or Limbus to get stronger gear but see Odyssey as too difficult or tedious without trying.

I'm not gatekeeping V0 clears. I'm saying that you make the gameplay loop worse by herding everyone straight toward top content and throwing away the stuff they could have worked through. You can get dozens to hundreds of extra hours of playtime that doesn't rely on partying with tryhards if you don't skip all of the older content. If you herd someone straight to Odyssey, that disappears because they will be too strong to find the content challenging or the rewards meaningful.

Some people benefit from that. If you're returning to a group of friends that want to carry you, cool. Getting carried will make you able to participate effectively in that group faster. That isn't everyone. I don't know why this is a hard concept. There is considerable gameplay value in doing older content while not overpowered for it: all of you *** did it when the content was new. If you haven't had fun with any of the content, why even play?

That older content is still relevant and needed. No one said anything about skipping it.

Getting them V0 doesn't do anything other than let them survive more.

It does sound exactly like gatekeeping. Why can't someone in V0 Ody armor farm Escha and UNM just like someone in stopgap gear.

Nor does getting them V0 mean they have to do daily sortie or tryhard V25s. A tiny percentage even bother with that stuff.

Why can't someone with gamesharked lv99 pokemon farm and level a new team by hand?

They can. The reward scale has just been completely obliterated and nothing short of Sortie or Limbus feels relevant any more. Instead of making progress on each upgrade step of their AF, they see the piece as worthless until it's final. Instead of using a random piece of Escha or UNM gear until they get something better, they throw it in storage until it's +1ed and fully augmented (if they even do it).

Again, perfectly fine if the person has a group ready to help them catch up and run those events. Plenty of folks sitting near the top for a long time and still playing. A whole lot less fine if it's a noob who was told to buy a Sakpata clear and then has no knowledge or connections to do anything from there.

"You don't get to have any fun until you rise up the ranks, young cadet."

The new stop gap gear is better than R0 escha and unm, so I'm not even sure what is your point anymore.

Rising up the ranks is meant to be the fun part. I'll just have to be glad that SE understands their game better than the folks here. I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you.

You say that like I haven't lived it myself.

Fun was not how I would describe grinding two months for a set of ambu +2, before they changed the rewards from ambu.

I get it just fine. Every time SE makes it easier to obtain certain things that were once hard, malignance, ambu +2, i119 armor that doesn't suck, all the old vets start crying about progression paths and back in their day.

If you spent 2 months of your life grinding something you didn't consider fun, that reflects worse on you than the content. That's compulsive behavior.

100%. Addictive and compulsive.

Parts were fun, and fun as a whole, but still, yes.

Debate ain't been out a full 24 hours and we already Candace Owening.

People keep mentioning reforge, do we have a link to where that came from? Event, talk, blog, whatever

couple pages back, along with an interview i think from one of their talks where they mentioned these new filler pieces though i dont have any link for that, but less its a TL error they made it pretty clear itll be improved in some fashion

Link to official topic

Awesome thanks

I'm still hoping they do more with it, some sort of REMA from besieged or a REMA equivalent for body armor... something interesting and not copy paste design so I'm hoarding the points but I'm afraid it'll stay another present for multi boxers to have a quick and easy path to escutcheon materials.

Wouldnt hold my breath on that one.

They've done everything they said they had planned (whether people like the implementation of it or not), so there's no reason to believe they wouldn't do the next step in reforge. Especially if they're looking for ways for players to progress towards malignance gear.

This is just phase one. SE retrofit SoA with a NM system to reward fresh level 99 players with the base set of armor. That is the player who this content is meant for. It was never going to be useful on day one unless you are literally day one level 99. We should really only be comparing this gear to eminent/homestead level gear.


It makes a lot of sense if you approach from that angle. I don't think it's coincidental that these NMs are conveniently located in/on the way of/to SoA quests and missions. It's probably not coincidental that a lot of placeholders are also repeatable RoE objectives, so at least you can be productive while you're camping.


This feels a lot like when we talked people back from the ledge when empy +2 stats were revealed...

they said it was going to be a bridge between Ambu +2 and Malignance, so that's what we're comparing it to. hope that helps.

We're not there yet bruv. You start with the starter gear. You later will be able to challenge more difficult content to improve the gear so that eventually it's malignance adjacent.

The comparison isn't meaningful until we have the results. How much better and how hard do we squeeze to obtain juice? TBD

THEIR own words were this stuff would be better than Ambuscade equipment at base level.

Does it really make sense to you that basic NMs would drop gear on par with malignance? Why would the base armor be full strength if they've clearly stated that the gear needs to be reforged to improve?

Dude, honest question:
Can you read??? Lol