It's just a great system deployed too late in the gameloop. at high blood magic skill your perpetual skeleton companions do 150dam a hit and will solo the mistlands for you. If the game had a magic progression and players hit the mistlands proficient in it (and the playstyle change) then it'd feel as clean as it plays. Instead there is zero conveyance that it's the thing to do and people are eating it trying to play in carapace armor, thinking that's the end all equipment set, then saying the mistlands unilaterally sucks.

With external knowledge that the game is suddenly about magic, the grind and tedium becomes the biggest problem. Once you have the setup for refined elitr it's just resource gathering to make it. Same for the foods. If you're doing both while using the fire/shield staffs then you're grinding your skills through gameplay, but that's still easily tens of hours of ignoring the console, not having fun, on the spreadsheet promise it makes magic the best thing in the game north of 50 skill. Assuming a friend hasn't been nolifing it since the public beta and just throws you a whole set of magic gear. The resources being so centralized and common (to a very extreme area) are going to play hell with personal progression in a multiplayer space.