Some Out of The Box IDEA for future POE.

- You will start at the entrance of a 7-zone dungeon level with a pseudo-randomized character - within some constraints. You can pick the class, and maybe there's some spicy pre-determined load-outs/builds you can get lucky with but it will likely be from a set of semi-pre-determinative options with room for variance within them.
- The option to participate is unlocked only after you beat the campaign. Doesn't matter how, but you can't do this before you beat the campaign.
- It also requires an appropriately-sized gold fee for entry so as to limit indefinite farming, and to ensure adequate attention to the core game and other game mechanics.
- It's not an "endgame replacement" or something like Delve in poe1, or trials here in poe2, where you can only farm that one thing if you want. It has a semi-prohibitive cost of entry so you have to consciously engage with it in the context of your desired progress in the core game.
- There's some knobs and levers you can adjust before you start that revolve around the amount of gold you pay, which can do things like influences the "quality" of your randomized starting load-out, or the amount of space in your "extraction" safe which you will fill with items you wish to loot from the dungeon, or if you want to pick a certain starting modifier-type for the first level.
- The character and zone level starts at 65, always,
- The "levels" are structured in a way where you traverse through 7 separate connected zones that have stacking modifiers, and culminate in a random boss-fight in the 7th zone which will have a random unique modifier.
- The exit from one zone to the next presents you with a choice of 3 zones, each will add it's own modifier that stacks on to your existing modifiers as you progress, choosing another one after the 3rd zone, and so on, until you get to the 7th, where you have 6-modifiers and you will get a random boss-arena modifier, as well as a random boss.
- If/when you die, you are able to extract whatever you've already put into your "extraction" safe. You get a chance to add/remove items to the safe at the end of each "level" after you beat the boss.
- If you die before you make it through the first 7 zones, you will not have had a chance to access the extraction safe yet - so you don't get to extract shit lol. And if you brought in a piece of gear to craft on, it's also gone.
- As just mentioned, as part of the initial fee, you can pay to bring in a piece of gear to craft on, but if you die before you get a chance to stash it in the extraction safe, it also disappears forever, so you know... choices lol.
- The zones modifiers reset every 7 zones as you go onto the next "level" (ie. you did seven level 65 zones, now you can catch your breath, put some things in the extraction safe, and then progress to the level 66 area where you again pick from one of three zones to start off with)
- This makes it so you can't perma-brick a run and you don't have to suffer through any bad mods for more than one level/7 zones.
- The "good" modifiers would be along the lines of "Drop more axes" or "Drop more divines/exalts" or unique items or lineage gems, or runes, etc.. with commensurate difficult mods that tag along, but nothing build breaking or run-bricking. Normal map mod stuff.
- Crafting orbs are NOT extractable and any of them in your inventory are destroyed as you exit the boss arena on each level, as you access the 'extraction safe' room - there will be an increased amount of orbs that drop to compensate, so the incentive here is to USE them in the dungeon. Even divines, mirrors, or locks.
- Once gear is put into the extraction safe, and you hit that "finalize extraction" button, you can't take it out or modify it until you get out of the dungeon and take it out with your non-dungeon characters. It is safe until then.
- The items that your dungeon crawler equips can NOT be extracted. But you can still craft on those items while in the dungeon.
- Death in the dungeon is permanent. One life. You will be able to access anything you've already placed in your "extraction" safe on another character, but the random one you spawned with in the dungeon, anything it was holding, had in it's inventory, or was on the ground of the dungeon is gone forever.

So where is the Skip:

- After a minimum number of completed floors - somewhere around 10-11 levels of progression, (the character would likely be ~75 lvl) you get the option to choose to forego any loot extraction whatsoever, and instead you get to keep the character you've built along with all of the gear it's wearing.
- A key aspect here: the gear it's wearing will NOT be tradeable, not salvageable, and can't be sold to a vendor - if you remove it, the gear is destroyed.
- The character will be selectable on the main menu and playable like any character as long as you have an open slot. You have to give it a name at this point.
- Keep in mind, this required a very hefty gold investment - and the character just went through an 10-11 level gauntlet where they likely encountered juiced-up versions of the campaign encounters with extra difficulty modifiers, having their knowledge of crafting and ability to be flexible with points, drops, skills, and everything else, along the way. They also can't zerg-rush it - dying isn't allowed.
- There is no effect on market prices this way, as their gear is not tradeable - they do not exit the dungeon with loot that can be used by another character, or with any sort of economic advantage. They will still need to complete their atlas as any other player would.
- Since you can't bring out / reuse loot or gear on a skip-character, it means if you went into the dungeon with existing gear you wanted to craft on, a skip would cause you to lose this loot or restrict it to being worn by your skip-character until it was destroyed. It makes it so that if you are going to use this as a skip mechanism, you do not receive any potential benefits from using it as a loot-extraction & crafting tool for existing characters.
- For those concerned, normal campaign progression bonuses like skill points, choosing charm bonuses, or things like the +5% cold res consumables that drops from Beira or the Karui tattoos in the Eye of Hinekora - they would all have alternate ways of being obtained while dungeon diving.

These levels would be juicy, large, and would have tons of gear and orbs dropping, and certain rooms on certain levels could have static campaign bonuses to grab on the way through, all the way until you get through 10 levels (which increase level by level, 65-74, and then after the 75th level you can choose the "pseudo-skip" option)

I believe if this were implemented this way, it would be a best of both world scenario - people with existing characters can use it farm for loot or risk crafting on their existing loot, and people sick of their existing characters could use it to start a new character in fresh way every time because of the randomness when you get that initial level 65 character (it will suck really bad probably).

Some notes:
- It's juicy as fuck, but also difficult. You might get some awesome loot, but you're going to have to be choosy about what you want to extract - you can't have it all. If you're using it as a campaign skip and then find and craft that GG crossbow in the bossroom of the 10th room, well, now you have to choose if you want to continue with the skip and take out the character/no extraction, or extract that crossbow and anything else, but have to pay another hefty gold-fee to campaign-skip another new character.
- The idea is to make you have meaningful choices that dictate not only how you progress, but also how far, and why
- Maybe this run is gonna be a quick 7-level craft-run for some boots you brought in. Maybe after those 7-levels you're not satisfied - will you keep risking it as you progressively go through higher level content in order to keep crafting on it? All while balancing it with crafting the gear for the character you're using to progress.
- Maybe you didn't bring any gear in at all - you're here just to craft on the stuff that you find on the floor with the hefty amount of orbs that are gonna drop, and you paid the extra gold for the chance to see more wands.
- Maybe you are here to make a dungeon-diver character as strong as you can and farm to the highest levels of the dungeon, after which you decide to take it out of the dungeon, without extracting any extra loot other than what you're going to be wearing - just don't die!
- Bosses also appear within the zones, not just the last zone - it's just that the last zone has all the modifiers including the boss arena modifier. Other bosses can be guarding juicy treasure within the levels themselves. You're not gonna strategically scamper past boss encounters by doing this lol.
- I'm also imagining cool ways to spice it up with other elements like adding in special fragments when you open up the dungeon that let you start out with "special" starting loadouts. Maybe some are submitted by supporter pack contributors and it works like reliquary keys, just for user-submitted level-65 builds. Maybe it causes the dungeon to have some unique/specific dungeon encounters/drops/restrictions. It's a pretty wide sandbox.