I’ve been grinding the reckoning for a while trying to get a notorious helmet for the moments of triumph triumph. While I was driving myself crazy with this grind I thought about the difference between the reckoning and the menagerie, and why I thought that the menagerie was fun while the reckoning made me want to die. I believe that the menagerie has (had) 2 things that makes it a much more fun experience.
1.) the menagerie has forgiveness for blunders. In the reckoning if you make a mistake you have to start the whole thing over which is torture, especially if you have been doing it for a while
2.) the menagerie has much better and much more reliable loot. While the final chess fix made the loot less reliable (by that I mean a larger chance to get the exact item that you were pursuing) it still is relatively reliable and that makes it feel much better than the reckoning. I can struggle for around 15 minutes in the reckoning and get gear that I already had rendering that time worthless and forcing me to restart the reckoning spending more and more time attempting to the that helmet that I need where in the menagerie I can just enter the ruins and have a decent chance in getting the item that I wanted.
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I've only completed a lvl 3 encounter ONCE and that was pre Orpheus Rig Nerf. Every other time I've tried to run something higher than lvl 1, I get the most incompetent sons of -blam!- that ever popped out of their mommas.