Season 3 of The Bazaar is near with new Expansions on the horizon. It's an exciting time as we await and discover what new mechanics are in store. The patch is expected to go live on June 4th, 2025.
First up we get a glimpse at the new "Quest" mechanic. As you'll see in the reveals below, there are items which have their abilities locked. In order to enable them, players will usually have to purchase enough of a specific type of item. However, some items come with alternative unlocks that can happen during combat.
We'll have to wait and see how everything unfolds as more items are revealed, along with any changes that come from the patch.
Blank Slate is pretty funny as the first item to literally "Do nothing". However, as it stands currently it's tough to evaluate, because we don't definitively know the values. Some numerical context was provided to the creators, although given we haven't seen the patch notes, nothing is set in stone.
Having the potential to gain all five effects alongside a greatly reduced Cooldown is pretty crazy, especially factoring in its Slow and Freeze capabilities. Keep an eye on this one!
Eternal Torch is the first of the new "Quest" items, showcasing a locked ability behind an otherwise underwhelming item. Obtaining 10 Burn items is definitely a requirement, but the payoff is pretty good.
The main issue is that Mak tends to go tall with Burn rather than wide, meaning it's more about stacking 1-2 items (ex. Calcinator + Fire Claw) instead of having multiple separate triggers.
It's possible Eternal Torch could be quite viable, if its Burn scaling gets a good improvement at higher tiers. Overall, it seems like a decent mid game item to help transition into the late game.
Excavation Tools is clearly powerful in a vacuum. Assuming its effect is online, a three second Cooldown Small item that Charges two adjacent items is crazy.
Of course, this ultimately comes down to what the pool of Relics look like. As it stands now, there aren't a ton of them, and certainly not ones that would immediately fit together.
Even at Silver-tier this is a strong effect, so it can only get better as it upgrades. If a number of items gain the Relic tag after the patch, I definitely expect to see this in play.
Frost Totem is a scary looking item. Combining Freeze with the potential to Charge could be absurdly broken, depending on if there's enough good Relics to support it.
Freeze is the strongest mechanic in the game by far and only gets better as the numbers increase. Mak's already got a really strong core especially with items like Sapphire.
That said, finding 10 Freeze items or 20 Relics could be a challenge, so it'll likely take some work to get this online. However, if you do (and can upgrade it), Frost Totem might just be insane.
Idol of Decay is the Poison equivalent to Eternal Torch. While Burn is usually strong than Poison, I actually see this being more useful due to the nature of Mak's Poison builds.
It's incredibly easy to spam triggers with all the Self-Poison items, meaning you could scale this up really fast comparatively. It could essentially be an alternative to Nightshade, and is slightly faster.
Overall, I don't expect it to be amazing, but it should be playable. It just depends on whether you even need the additional Poison in the first place. Oftentimes the Self-Poison/Regen engine is enough to sustain itself.
Life Conduit is another Quest item based around Regen. Given how many Regen items Mak has, the requirement looks relatively easy to fulfill.
Its payoff looks pretty solid in the early game, allowing you to passively scale the item's Regen, as you Regen. That could build up to a decent amount with little investment.
However, later on this is definitely too slow, as you can't afford to wait several seconds of passing time just to scale it. Mak's already got plenty of strong Regen items anyway, but as far as early game options go this one seems pretty good.
The Devs certainly love to add scaleable Multicast, as many of the recent Expansions have included it in some form. Multicast Slow is obviously strong too, as we very much know from Seadog's Saloon.
As a Small item this has very low investment for a potentially massive reward. Consider this with Magnus' Femur, which also happens to be a Relic, and you can already imagine its power.
What makes this so strong is that it scales with Enchanted items, meaning you can forget about the specific Tags entirely in many cases. Mak's already going to have more Enchanted items than normal thanks to Reagents, so it shouldn't take much to make Makroscope effective.
Sands of Time is essentially the Slow equivalent of Frost Totem. As stated before, having the ability to Charge could make this solid, although I do believe it's quite weak comparatively.
Seeing both Makroscope and Frost Totem leaves me feeling pretty underwhelmed looking at this. Although with the existence of Magnus' Femur, it's still got potential.
I think it'll depend on what its upgrades look like. If the scaling effects the Slow quantity over the duration, Magnus' Femur can really benefit from the extra triggers. If not, it probably won't justify its size on board.
Soulstone looks like a wild item that could turn into a variety of things. At the time of writing this, it isn't clear what the effects actually do, so I can't really give a fair evaluation.
What we do know is that there's two separate Quest lines, giving you two effects once fulfilled. However, 15 Items is a LOT, especially Freeze items.
It'll be interesting to experience to play patterns with these types of split Quest items. Players may have to decide and forgo picking up certain items in order to avoid completing the wrong Quest.
We haven't had any decision points like this before, so I'm really looking forward to diving in to this new inventory-based mechanic!
Tomb of the Ancients reminds me of Seadog's Saloon with its built-in Multicast effect. Anything item that has a scaleable Multicast value is always something to look out for, even if it's Cooldown isn't as fast as preferred.
We don't really know what the Quest effects are at this time, but it's hard to imagine any Multicast Freeze effect being bad, even if it's only a 0.5 second Freeze. Don't forget Mak has Sapphire.
We'll have to see how difficult the requirement is to pull off. This would involve finding multiple Quest items early enough so that you have enough time to complete them, and that could be challenging. Either way, I'm excited to try it out!
