Port work is beginning for Apotheosis. This means a ton of things are going to be redone, looked at, touched up, or perhaps even removed. The current slate of preemptive changes thus far looks like this:
Garden Module
No real changes. The content in this module is focused solely on the growth cap changes to bamboo, sugarcane, and cacti. The way they work might change a little bit, but not in a way that would be noticable.
The psuedo-changes are because the world height is no longer capped.
Potion Module
Endless Quiver will be moving to the Enchantment Module. This has been a long time coming but the change was never made due to binary compat reasons.
Everything else (sundering, ancient knowledge, potion charms, recipes) will be staying as-is.
Village Module
This module will stay exactly as-is.
Spawner Module
Overall the spawner system has been well received and requires little changes. The biggest problems / questions are usually "how does the inversion modifier work" and some clarity will be provided on that front through JEI or something.
The Capturing enchantment will be staying in the Spawner Module, and not moving to the Enchantment Module. Additionally, disabled modifiers will probably be conveyed a bit better in JEI (and likely be hidden, rather than their current implementation of using a barrier).
Enchantment Module
This module is huge and certainly a very big draw for the mod. However, the changelist is daunting and some of the mechanics (quanta, specifically) can be difficult for users to comprehend.
With the introduction of additional table tooltips in 4.8.3, there was some additional data for the user to be aware of, but still the math and mechanics are complex and unfriendly.
Eterna will remain as-is, since it is straightforward. The actual eterna value might be doubled-up such that the eterna matches the level exactly but nothing special really.
Quanta will likely be scrapped and replaced with a different system that can be explained to the user. This also means scrapping the vanilla randomness factor (the base 15% quanta that is applied in vanilla).
Arcana will be kept. Hopefully there is a way to convey the effects of arcana, which impacts the minimum enchants received as well as the relative enchantment rarity weights.
Item Enchantability (which is a vanilla mechanic) will try to be modified in such a way that makes it clear what happens when you have a high-enchantability item, rather than it flying under the radar.
I'm not quite sure yet what the final system will look like, or how much it will resemble the vanilla system or even the current system. There's a lot to do there and a long way to go to make an enchantment system that is both clear, concise, and also not annoying.
The Altar of the Sea will likely be removed. I don't believe this feature is used regularly and doesn't fill a good purpose or niche.
The Anvil changes will be retained. Splitting and Obliteration may be removed, since the Enchantment Library effectively does what these enchantments do better.
There's a chance they are kept, but perhaps made into single-level enchantments that always function, instead of the current 20%/level success chance.
Corrupted enchantments will have a pass-over. This is Berserker's Fury, and Life-Mending. There probably needs to be more than two enchantments there to really classify that as a category.
Anyway, Fury is in a good spot, but Life-Mending is pretty much never selected over the traditional counterpart (due to ease of access).
Life Mending will either be reworked or removed. There may also be additional changes to how easy Mending is to acquire, since it trivializes other repair types.
Crescendo of Bolts, Icy Thorns, Knowledge of the Ages, Nature's Blessing, Rebounding, Reflective Defenses, Scavenger, Shield Bash, Stable Footing, and Tempting are all well-received and achieve a good purpose.
Hell Infusion and Sea Infusion have limited use and are not exactly "desirable" enchantments. They may be retained as their purpose for a stepping stone on the bookshelves, but they might also just be deleted or swapped to bookshelf-only enchantments.
Miner's Fervor will be kept. Occult Aversion is going to be removed as type-specific damage reduction is assessed once again.
The Enchantment Library is staying and will remain as-is. There will be a new tier of library with a higher point cap added at some point in the future.
Deadly Module
The deadly module is the second-largest module at this point.
The affix system is going to be redesigned from the ground-up (For the fourth time, now).
This means new affixes, new names, new methods of obtaining affixes, and better handling of affix movement/upgrading.
Going forward there will be efforts to ensure additional clarity in affixes (such as min/max values, rarities, descriptions).
The boss system is pretty solid the way that it is. Random entities can be added with arbitrary gear sets, and can be mixed and matched pretty well.
I think there's a big issue with how strong some bosses are, and there's little inbetween of normal mobs and high-level-bosses.
Lower tiers may be introduced.
The worldgen features will need to be revamped because of all of the generation changes in 1.18, so we'll see what happens to those.
As for specific affixes:
Armor
- Armor, Armor Toughness, and Max HP affixes will stay.
- Certain other affixes that buff non-defensive stats may be added to the armor category to further increase diversity among gear pieces.
- Such as a chestplate with +Attack Damage or +Draw Speed
Generic
- The Enchantability affix will be removed unless sufficient changes to item enchantability can be figured out in the enchantment module to make it worthwhile.
Heavy Weapons
-Affixes in this category fulfill the notion of building a "heavy weapon", and will all be kept. There might be a slight nerf to the armor pen affix, since 100% armor bypass is fairly powerful.
Melee
-Cold and Fire damage affixes will likely be removed.
-Attack Speed, Crit Chance/Damage, Life Steal, and Reach Distance will all stay.
-Loot Pinata and Damage chain need to be reworked or removed.
Ranged
-Everything but Sniper Damage is pretty solid here, sniper damage just needs additional clarity on the effect.
Shield
-All of the shield affixes feel useful as well, and with the new changes detecting and working with modded shields will be easier.
Tool
-Tool affixes were never very plentiful. Hopefully more affixes can be added to this category. The existing ones will all stay.
The current method of affix transmission is going to be scrapped. It may not return at all, because frankly it defeats the purpose of finding cool loot items™