Alternatives to Campaign Skips lets discuss

Imagine you're level 80-90 and you've got a bunch of half-baked almost-good gear in your stash and the grind is getting kind of stale. You're up for a change of pace but you don't like the fact that making a new character is going to economically "stunt" you or whatever trade people imagine these days.

So instead you can go on a "Heist" 2.0 - you get to choose an archetype - spell caster, assassin, warrior - and maybe a few more. This part could even get a bit creative. They all come with a level 45 or so character who's got random gear within the archetype you picked and a tree started that is maybe good, maybe shit. Not completely random, but it's far from being fixed. Nothing that can brick your character, but I suppose some level-appropriate uniques could come into play here.

You've got to pay a fee to go on this heist, and it's not trivial - not multi-divines but perhaps just enough gold that if you're level 70 and out of the campaign, into a few maps, and feel like you're not quite going in the right direction and want to try again - you would likely have enough to get started.

To make this thing applicable to be something that people might want to run without making a new character is that crafting currency is more common to drop during it, and you can give your heister items to go in with (separate from their inventory). The heister can't wear your items, only carry them. And you can't bring currency out of the run with you.

You will eventually have to choose - you either do this for crafting gear - and you can craft the stuff that falls on the ground along with what you brought in - or you do it for a new character, and in turn only leave with what the character is wearing. Since stuff is pretty low level, you'll probably mostly be crafting stuff for the heister unless you bring in gear with you.

Your heist is composed of around 4-5 sets of dungeons that have interim and final bosses which kind of imitates the structure of an act. By the time your character leaves it should be ~level 65. You can still exit the game and go back and play your old character and then log in to the in progress "heister" from your hideout, and pick up where you leave off so you don't have to do it in one long session. The run ends when you choose, or if you finish it, or if you die.

But there's some interesting twists:
- You can't "remove" the gear your heister wears, ever. You can only replace it. You can still craft on it while it's being worn and replace runes and stuff though. You'll get the "are you sure you want to destroy this item" prompt when replacing stuff.
- You will be given plenty of opportunity to adjust your skill tree and get all the ancillary campaign "bonuses" in alternative manners and other skill gems will drop along with support gems - you can mold your heister into what you want. The starting seed is just to get you going and maybe be lucky with something good but you will have some autonomy over it. Not as much as if you were to start a fresh character the traditional way though...
- After each "dungeon set" or gauntlet or whatever you want to call it, you can opt to send up loot (that your heister is NOT wearing), and/or end the run, and if you choose to leave, you can still start off at the same level with the same heister next time - you just have to pony up the gold fee again. You could also start fresh with a new heister. Maybe you can keep 3 on the go at a time.
- After you complete the whole 4-5 set of dungeons, you have a choice: Send up the remaining loot you crafted along the way including the loot you brought in with you and crafted on, and you must say goodbye to the heister - OR - lose your heister's entire inventory, but keep the heister and anything it's wearing as a playable character at it's current level.
- All of the gear the heister is wearing can still NOT be removed even when it becomes a playable character. It can only be replaced.
- Reiterating that you can NOT send up currency, or leave with it from the dungeon, in anyway. Your best usage here is to use every orb you drop to it's fullest extent. Extra currency drop rates will exist here so that you can really slam away on stuff. It should feel like a fun slam-o-bonanza with no efficiency guilt that you're not saving your orbs for trading.
- You can pay extra gold at the beginning or in between sets to influence drops - maybe you want to see more axes, bows, wands, helmets, etc. - there is really no difference between this and going on a 200k boots gambling spree with Ange already but this way you're also gonna be able to slam away with all the ground orbs.
- Gold does not drop at all during this mechanic.
- Reiterate that death is permanent. If you die at any point, you lose everything including things you may have brought in with you during the run - unless you spent extra gold for "insurance" in the beginning - which should be VERY expensive, and per item.
- As a fun bonus the final boss can drop a unique map that lets you bring your normal character into a much higher level "heist" that has crazy currency droprates and only drops white high ilvl items and any rarity affects the chance for exceptional bases. Still can't leave with currency so you will be slamming (hopefully) exceptional bases here.

Probably a ton of kinks to work out here but I think it'd be a pretty unique system to play around with.