My first true Lost Relics experience was grinding Arcane Pits for days.
During the Easter event, when I signed up for the game, Pits was the highest level dungeon I could run consistently. As a two sword dungeon, it only required uncommon gear. I could easily play it over and over to farm gold and rare items.
Over time I became very familiar with the loot table for Arcane Pits. Almost every run's value consisted of Iron Ore and Coal drops from mining nodes. Anything else was rare.
In the pits, it was very gloomy indeed.
Post-Pandemonium Pits
After the latest update "Pandemonium," everything has changed in the pits.
Well, maybe not the starting square. That's about the same:
But after leaving this room, one of the very first enemies I kill reveals a key difference.
Literally a key. Now you need gold keys, obtained during the run, to open the golden chests that can be found within the dungeon. This is the case for all levels in the game, forcing players to kill monsters in order to gain access to the best loot.
One millisecond later, I kill another enemy for another fat drop. My RNG is insane lately!
Skulkhide has been going for 900+ gold on the marketplace, sometimes as high as 2000. Who knows if it will stay that way, but I've been farming this item in particular as a way to boost my gold balance.
Resource nodes now have rarities. If you don't have the appropriate level of harvesting tool (and skill level to wield it) you won't be able to get anything from the node. This is a huge change from before and has a lot of players returning to lower levels to grind up neglected skills.
I'm good to mine this uncommon node, in fact I can mine rare nodes by now.
The first node gave me nothing, but later in the level I picked up a Viterium Ore. Look at the color! Between the green mining node and the purple gems, it's a much more colorful time in the Arcane Pits these days.
You can fish in the Arcane Pits now. This was never a thing before. I can't even imagine how much higher my fishing level would be if fishing was always in here. I'm not complaining, I'm just happy I can fish now.
It also means more loot!
That's an Amaranthine Eel, worth 70+ gold.
After all is said and done, I have a nice bag of loot.
Natural Clay, Eel, Skulkhide, Watcher's Teeth, Viterium Ore, and Raw Jungle Perch. That's an amazing haul.
I'll probably sell all the Skulkhide and Eel but might hang on to the Ore and the Clay. Engineering is a skill that I very much want to level up. I'll need a lot of materials to make that happen, so I should hold on to all my mining loot.
Best Update Since I've Started Playing Lost Relics
That's it. I'm calling it. Pandemonium is the best update that has happened since I started playing Lost Relics. At least as far as Arcane Pits goes, the game is substantially more fun than it was before.
I'm excited to begin exploring more of the levels. Getting a membership pendant is high on my list, then I can start checking out some of the members-only levels. The structure of levels and difficulty was shuffled around with this update, so there is a lot to explore.
I'm excited to play a lot more Lost Relics in the future. This update is wonderful.