Minor spoilers below:
Well I had my fun for the weekend and I made it from Fractal 51-75. I’m going back to school tomorrow and won’t be able to play until Christmas so I thought I’d share my thoughts.
1. Fractals were fun, I enjoyed the increase in difficulty, but some of the instabilities seemed gimmicky and obnoxious (Cliffside exploding enemies.)
2. I was super disappointed the collection wasn’t fixed this weekend. I was looking forward to getting a gold skin but unfortunately now I’ll have to wait.
3. I was disappointed that ascended salvaging cost so much. I was looking forward to dumping my rings and clearing up bank space but I don’t have nearly enough gold.
4. There is a new rare collections achievement for salvaging ascended items. It’s called “Ascended Recycling” and requires individuals to salvage ascended gear and consume 6 powerful legendary items called “Salvaged Greatness, Puissance, Grandeur, Excellence, Brilliance, and Dignity.” If you eat all 6 you get a “Fractal Reliquary” and a title called “Fatebreaker” (lol at that title. just call it RNJesus won’t you?) The “Fractal Reliquary” trades fractal relics for something useful in the same vein of Mawdrey and the others.
5. The achievement for beating levels 51-75 gave me 2 golden relics. The description implies one can combine 4 to get a golden weapon in the forge. I discovered that they can also be used in other mystic forge recipes to upgrade the “old”, “blue” fractal weapons. They combine in the forge with “stabilizing matrices” and any old fractal weapon skin, but I couldn’t find the 4th ingredient. They also combine with stabilizing matrices and piles of crystalline dust, but I couldn’t find the 4th ingredient for that recipe either. Things that are OUT: gift of ascension, mists stone, all the mist essences, globs of dark matter, bottle of elonian wine, balls of dark energy, stars/ingots/bricks, vision crystals, philosopher’s stones, mystic crystals, agonized essence, 1 agony infusion, +5/7 versatile simple infusion, cube of stabilized dark energy. If anyone finds the 4th component to either recipe, let me know. As of right now you can’t get more than 2 golden fractal relics by any means that I am aware of (unless by the fractal relic eater, see point 4) so I don’t know how one can combine 4 relics into the forge to get a golden weapon.
Overall it was a fun experience and I am looking forward to playing again and getting to 100 during the holiday season.
Happy hunting.