- Chrysalis
Be it a vaal virus, a demonic corruption, or some other form of twisted nature befalls Wraeclast in transforming its denizens and the surrounding Atlas monsters into twisted corrupted versions of themselves.
Small pustules and eggs litter corrupted zones transforming all things uncorrupted. That excludes us, the only beings capable of using Virtue Gems without side effects (afaik), thus leading me to think we are initially corrupted. We go in with our trusty new NPC's guidance to clear out the heart of this corruption - a massive Chrysalis encompassing the Unique monster of the zone, frozen in place much like Essence trapped monsters.
Chrysalis boss monsters would become more enraged and perhaps more buffed with each hit from our own corruption catalysts (skills). You deal damage to the surrounding Chrysalis reaching thresholds limited early on by 500 millisecond or 1 second thresholds, rapidly increasing in juiced-tiers after 2-3 seconds. This idea came to me after the outrage and immersion break of having to channel Crucible Forges could have been potentially better implemented by a DPS check that doesn't check damage number output, but if damage is occurring to the Forge/Chrysalis.
Out pops the chrysalis-juiced unique monster that would drop something that would allow us to craft Twisted Items. Twisted, if I lore'd right, is just another way to interpret "corruption" in the various states of what corrupted things exist. Twisted monsters and items could be malformed in cool and interesting ways (I have no examples).
Perhaps this league idea could also resurrect the Metamorph league ideas and implement them in a new way, twisting life in our own liking.
- Essence V2
Obtain an artifact from Alva while venturing into your first Vaal ruins, similar to the Crucible device that you could place in your equipment like Heist trinkets.
This artifact is a Tuning Fork and it grants you a "Detonate Mines"-like skill button above your skills when you insert the Tuning fork into your trinket/relic slot. This button could be used like a skill or as a toggle that will break open Essence imprisoned monsters while you're nearby or approach, respectively.
With this baseline, Tuning Forks can be crafted with Essences granting you several outcomes: player buffs; more modifiers to Essence imprisoned monsters; or the sacrificing the enchantments/affixes on the Tuning Fork in a map device to travel to different realms.
These enchantments or affixes could function similar to Harvest-enchanted flasks, losing its power when each time you enter a new zone or release Essence imprisoned monsters. Corrupting the Tuning Fork would permanently keep the modifiers without losing them.
In regards to endgame, inserting Tuning Forks into map devices could either let you enter psuedo-map zones or augment the inserted map with the correlating essences on the Tuning Fork. For instance, you could go to the land of the Harbingers, visit the Scourge of the Beyond, explore entire Abyss mazes, partake in realm of the Ancestors, reflect in the Lake of Kalandra, become lost in the Wildwood, cultivate an entire Harvest plantation, Breach dream worlds, or face off against the Delirium trickster god. Augmenting could just be the easy route of adding that content to the maps as if you added Scarabs or some other modifiers/mechanics that makes those old league mechanics a little more crazy.
Then if you want to go even crazier, you could have one-three Essence mods that turn your Turning Fork into a Sentinel.
You can always go for the GGG way of creating a few unique Tuning Forks, such as one that takes you to a psuedo-map realm to fight all the Eldritch bosses at once for dominance over the atlas: Shaper, Maven, Exarch, and Eater fighting it out like Lunaris and Solaris. Then if you're happy with the Tuning Fork idea, you could easily make some giant Tuning Fork Staves or Swords that have their own unique modifier and can be enchanted with Essences this way.
- Sentinel (added to Atlas Passive Tree)
Sentinel could be added to the Atlas Passive Tree as an opt-in mechanic with their passive cluster bubble as the condensed version of the Sentinel Controller, speccing into the Stalker, Pandemonium, or Apex Sentinels.
Once allocated, Sentinel content has a % chance to be added to a map, causing an inactive Sentinel to spawn at the entrance of a map like a Delirium Mirror. You activate it like an imprisoned Essence monster. From there, it follows you and you can activate its abilities on button use.
Then depending on y'all, Unique Sentinels can be a miniscule random chance of spawning, or have an increased chance with an Atlas Notable Passive.
Torment (strange idea)
This isn't an idea to expand upon the Torment league or its content, but to make the existing content feel better or perhaps more useful? I'm not sure. I'm not sure how anyone would implement this. Potentially a Unique Jewel, but it would have to offer something else in addition to my idea. The idea is: be the Tormented Spirit... temporarily.
I've always hated the AI of Tormented Spirits where I had to essentially guide them where I wanted to go if there was an immediate, nearby Rare/Unique enemy for them to jump into. It wasn't always consistent as they love to pause and ponder how they were tormented so much to become such a spirit. The Necropolis league further instilled this mild frustration click on Corpses which let these spirits out only to f*ck off in a random direction - and usually away from the next pack of enemies.
My idea was somehow making it so when you target one with a skill, walk through one, or just get near one, you can trap it in a jewel, divine vessel, or whatever temporarily until you leave the zone, releasing it on exit. But, like pressing a button of some kind would release the Tormented Spirit on your location (or mouse? but rip controller users) let you temporarily play as the tormented spirit running through enemy packs and selecting or grasping a rare or unique enemy to possess, ending the mini-game early. Could even have a bar timer to show how long you have in that mode.
Kind of imagine it being you using Charged Dash, but nothing like that. Your character still exists where they were when you started the "skill" but you control the "projection" for a short time and then the camera snaps back to your character on completion, or perhaps just like Charged Dash you teleport where the "projection" ends. The "projection" being your time as the Tormented Spirit in this case.
- Vaults of Perandus League (Perandus V2)
With a center focus on an exile Perandus individual - either lost cousin or "family friend" - this NPC also bargained with Prospero for a lifetime in turn for their works: horrifying contraptions based on merging powerful uniques. You guessed it, a league based on "Sets" of uniques you can get enchanted from our mad scientist.
Our NPC could be found in the Prison in Act 1, in a side chamber, serving multiple life sentences and you offer an executive parole deal for the same bargain they made with Prospero. That, or you act as their new Warden and that's the reason why we're out there on a murdering spree to farm uniques to deliver back to a caged prisoner to insane to let free.
As for the mechanic, enchanting uniques would be a fun way to link certain items, that up till now, have only either had lore connections or a varying amount of mechanical interactions with one another that worked well together. The enchant would randomly select between Lore, Influence, Synthesis, Replica, and maybe Corrupt; each of which have their own random table to choose from.
This enchant would then grant a Crucible-like tier list of additional mods to your unique items for each one equipped with the same exact enchant, such as a Xoph's Embers, Elder's Tokens, <NPC>'s Memories, Research Notes, Vaal Prototype (respective to the list above). Unlike, Crucible where you gotta grind to get those mods, you have to equip unique items that have the same enchants automatically granting their tier 1-? mods at the risk/cost of putting crafted gear on.
I really enjoy this idea as there are multiple ways you can make a certain unique tied to multiple lore instances; influence an item before chancing it; or perhaps corrupting a unique which is always fun to poof your items when double corrupting them.
Now, I doubt our maniacal NPC would do this out of the goodness of their own heart. They have goals and machinations of their own and would require heaps of uniques as payment to which they could barter back good ol' Perandus coins. Offer up enough coins to enchant, replace enchant mods, or purchase already enchanted uniques in a screen that looks like the Nameless Seer's inventory or a Ritual shop.
Finding some guaranteed uniques, coins, or perhaps map pieces every zone would help the grind. This could appear like Heist's Smuggler Caches or a good ol' Strongbox. Now I mentioned "map pieces." I like the idea of tying in mechanics with other mechanics to spread out the grind and make the league last longer while rewarding other players who like focusing on certain mechanics. In this instance, I like the idea of having map pieces be semi-rare drops that can be used at the Rogue Harbour like a generic Contract, except the reward is always a fun unique, lots of coins, or a full map.
By either getting a full map or getting 16 map pieces (4x4 vendor trade), you can then run a Blueprint in a special area called the Vaults of Perandus which I bet anyone can imagine the plethora of stuff you could find in there and how booby-trapped that zone would be. I'm sure the Ring would be more than happy to participate in some eclectic larceny.
Beyond that, I had in my mind the idea that the NPC would eventually become a boss of some kind that would focus on powerful Animated Guardians that had full access to their Set Enchants as the NPC got revenge or sought out some great treasure within the Vaults of Perandus.
- Voidborn League
The void has been eluded to for quite some time, such as with the divination card and the Valdo map modifier. All common information is about nothingness and either sending things to that nothingness or creating something from that nothingness. So... I have a dumb idea: nothingness cannot exist by itself - everything includes nothing.
Delving deeper, or perhaps adjacent, to the "other side, the unseen reflection opposite the mortal world", a new 4th-wall breaking N/PC makes their way from the void, beyond the Wildwood and into our realm - from the place the King in the Mists and Gruthkul once hailed: a realm of eternal torment caused(?) by nonexistence.
So, to cherry-pick keywords that I only have pieces to in the infinite puzzle of PoE's lore, I think it would be fun to introduce a new playstyle mechanic where this NPC is an unseen reflection of the PC that has their own voice lines commenting on this world almost like Tangmazu (Trickster God/Delirium's mystery voice).
This mechanic would be that you literally swap over to a Void version of your character - floating as if wearing the Voidborn MTX armor - causing the world to turn a bit muted like when Shaper would freeze time, and kill the same exact enemies but now juiced with Void energies, like being empowered by Wildwood Wisps.
This "swap" has a duration attached to it that refills on entering a new zone and as you kill void-juiced enemies, sending them and their loot to the Void.
Things sent to the void, become nothingness, thus becoming part of something that can make real that which is not - like pulling stuff from out of the void, like with the Void Div card or what the lore says about the King of the Mists ("belief is the only power in all of creation that can make real that which is not").
Then, once you reach town outposts or your Hideout, you can talk to this Void entity NPC and customize them, void-touch some loot (crafting), or create some loot from the nothingness (like pulling a Void div card) by spending a Ritual-like currency accrued from sending things to the Void while "swapped." Which I think is a fitting bit of allegory now that the lore players surmised that Rituals are tied to the King in the Mists, empowering them.
Then, having mini-arena boss battles with your void reflection would be a fun endgame league mechanic to grind some chase items for.
Returning to how the potentially-Nameless Void-reflection-N/PC would function, f*ck if I know. Is it a copy of your skills just going D3 Archon mode, or do you want to go crazy and implement some boss skills as temporary player skills in that form like Maven's 'Stay-Still' skill which is apparently called Tri-Beam Claws.
Then there's the whole reflection bit that you could go into even further and maybe bring back Kalandra in a fun and interesting way other than just a lore dump. Don't get me wrong, love lore dumps - just wish we could fight her or get her as a Patron akin to the Maven.
Of course, I didn't come across all the lore in the Wildwood/Affliction league, and I don't remember there being any actual literal link between the Void and the there one of those Maji's called the "place" the Nameless came from, so I'm probably a bit lot off base on my assumptions. Apologies for the fan-fic if I'm that off-base.
- Warband V2
This league mechanic could try and take the original Warband league idea and go even further with it. The idea here is to reintroduce the Warbands (Redblade, Mutewind, Brinerot, and why not the Renegades) in the campaign as mini-factions to join or fight against. Hell, could make Kirac his own faction.
Early on you gain access to a secondary "hideout" after earning some trust with the faction of your choice. Here you can make your own Heist/Trial/Sanctum-like area where other Warbands would attempt to raid: including other players (of the same level or progression).
Succeeding in Warband missions or other players' "dungeons" would grant you new traps, monsters, or whatnot to customize your own dungeon, akin to earning and placing totems and traps in Trial of the Ancestors and mixing that with creating your own Hideout (simplified). That, or you could create these dungeons with a system similar to working on Grand Heists with Blueprints, or make it somewhat modular with area customization and generation by using a Sentinel Controller tree (I'm trying to elude to like how you would create the maze to get to the heart of the dungeon).
Alternatively, upon reaching maps you can select your Guild's custom dungeon, created and edited by the Leader/Officers as your own, then progressing as a guild rather than on your own.
Lore-wise, I was thinking that with the calm before the storm after the Searing Exarch and Eater of Worlds was defeated, the opportunistic peoples of Wraeclast would seek to take as much of the Atlas as they could, causing Kirac some migraines and asking us, the player, which one we should cautiously use as allies. With a goal in mind, it could be all client-side perspective where there's a tangible place, object, or entity to reach to get a good enough stronghold in the Atlas for the next big fight; or it could be some fun good-ol-days Warband stuff where we got to see which crew was winning every hour across the Atlas.
I just liked the idea of creating my own Overlord-like dungeon to defend and then siege others - like Betrayal Safehouses or Heists.
