Bastilles / POIs still have low to negligible relevance

On Normal Mode, clearing a POI awards 13 T1 essence, or 25 if it is a harder Infestation challenge.

However, this is not where the bulk of T1 Essence is acquired. There are around 13 POIs before entering the Abeyance challenge, which totals 13x13 or 169 T1 Essence. Somehow the player can get around 700+ T1s after running around the map collecting "Treasured Items" and clearing POIs.

This severely undermines the importance of POIs, and if a player is on Explorer Difficulty, the POIs award even less, making them even less of a priority for players.

For the Abeyance Realm, the quest steps should just be tutorial guidance to help player get set up to survive the Realms, and award nothing.

If POIs are to be emphasized, they should be providing more T1. Or other sources of T1 should be reduced.

T1 as a Tech Tree currency is also not recommended. It encourages farming activities which are not related to unlocking technology.

Instead, players should try to build an item repeatedly until they succeed. Each attempt adds a random percentage toward 100% learning, with more complex technology giving less advancement per attempt.

With the Tech Tree no longer requiring Essence currency, Essence then can become a valuable commodity solely for crafting magick items. Essence can also then be more restricted since the scope of use is reduced -- POIs can be fey caches of magick and the primary or only source for players.

If buildings can be fixed at no cost with a Hammer, then maybe weapon repairs can cost no Essence but out-of-combat time. This way we can further focus Essence as being solely for magick, and POIs as an important part of the game for getting Essence.