Good Morning Folks. We are a little less than five days into the 3.28 Mirage League in Path of Exile, and I am having a hard time gauging my progress. I had a medical procedure on Friday that caused me to get a very late start on getting through the early campaign. Then that same night, we had a Tornado pass within a mile of my house, and sirens woke me up at 3:30 in the morning, making Saturday a bit of a mess. Then Sunday was, of course, the bi-annual mass hallucination that is Daylight Savings Time… meaning Sunday and Monday were also fucked. I still feel relatively out of it with my brain struggling more this year to adapt to the change than I think I can remember in any other year. I guess on one hand, I am glad that I decided to roll with another Righteous Fire Chieftain because I can do that progression in my sleep, and am already at a pretty stable point. Now, essentially everything is just tweaking and perfecting the build since I am sitting at level 87 and can probably do red maps without much issue.
I made one of my slowest times through the campaign, I think I have ever experienced, in large part because the campaign itself was way more enjoyable. One of the things about the Wish mechanic is that they force way more additional content onto your map, so that there is usually an Essence or Strongbox at minimum caught up in the Wish area, so it can be duplicated. There is a meta achievement for doing 30 Essences, and I got this done around Act 6 for reference as to how much bonus content was being added to the campaign maps. This also produced a stupid amount of gear, which meant that I was never really struggling to find anything to equip. I think this might have made ground loot more viable as well, but it is hard to tell. I do know without a doubt that I am getting way more currency than I have ever seen at any other point during the campaign. I was picking up chancing bases left and right because I was swimming in Orbs of Chance, but sadly I did not actually convert anything useful into a unique.
The bulk of my gear is stuff that I either picked up or crafted. I made the gloves with the Breach tree, and am working on an upgraded pair of boots. The sceptre and current boots are ones that I picked up off the ground, I believe from a wish area, and the helm is a cheap elder influenced base that I picked up for a few chaos and then threw Essence of Horrors at until I got something usable. I would have preferred to get Burning Damage and Concentrated Effect, but unfortunately, I did not hit that and am rolling with what I have for the time being. I am watching out for an ArchDemon Crown from Ritual, which is probably going to be my next target upgrade hat. At some point, I need to deal with my total lack of Chaos Resistance, but I will probably be devoting that to my ring slots. Maybe I should start heisting in an attempt to get a Helical ring base.
I’ve bought three items from the market: the Elder helm base from above, a reasonably well-rolled Immortal Flesh, and a Cloak of Flames. Unfortunately, right now I only have a four-link, and I need to upgrade to a six-link pretty soon. Unfortunately, Black Morrigans are over 2 Divines currently and last I checked, there were zero Omen of Connections on the market. So that likely means I will either be brute forcing a six-link, saving up 1500 fusings, or buying a corrupted six-socket and trying my hand at tainted fusings. There is one that I almost bought yesterday that had six white sockets, but I instead bought Essence of Horror to make the helm. Moving up to a proper six-link for both my helm and body would greatly improve my general clear speed, but the changes of Hinekora have honestly alleviated that stress a bit. Explosions are way more reliable, and it is rare that I do not get at least one explosion in a pack of mobs. I know this will fall off a bit as I enter red maps, but for the moment, it seems viable.
That is one thing that I am uncertain of… how I feel about the new Atlas. In theory, it is a better system because it will easily allow you to swap between maps without much fuss. However, in practice, it does not feel anywhere near as exciting since Maps are not a generic consumable resource and are not tied to specific content. Sure, once you hit t16s and had completed your Atlas previously, maps stopped being loot and became a pure commodity. However, in early progression, it was exciting to see a new drop for a map that you had yet to run. That little dopamine hit is gone because everything is effectively the same now, and instead, you are trying to force your Atlas tree to keep upgrading map tiers instead of trying to get connecting maps to drop. Similarly to the whole Path of Exile II atlas not feeling exciting… there is something missing with this new design. I know that once I finish out my Atlas progress, I will probably enjoy it more, but while leveling it feels worse.
Similarly, I feel like I am locked into a specific Atlas Tree layout because I need to keep producing higher tiers of maps. I am only now starting to add some flavor to my Atlas, and as a result, the first 30 or so points felt like they were required. Now I am optimizing the layout a bit and splashing in Niko, and will eventually start splashing in Breach, and maybe Harvest. When I get my second tree, I will be diving hard into Einhar in an attempt to get a Black Morrigan spawn and probably pairing that with Beyond and maybe Ritual to attempt to brute force an Omen of Connections. Progression is so much faster than before, because I was doing Yellow maps really quickly… but then felt like I needed to fill out all of the points that I had missed along the way. The positive, however, is that I am going to have plenty of low-level maps to dump into the bank for folks who are slower than me in progression, since they are all now generic commodities.
I have pretty good defenses for the level of gear that I currently have. At some point, I will shift to going block-based, but right now, all of the shaper shield bases that I could craft on are stupidly expensive. The cheapest ones, pure armor bases that I have found, are 50-100 chaos. I could limp by with an evasion shield if I were absolutely desperate, but I am just not sure I am willing to make that level of compromise. It is not like I have the Harvest or Delve crafting resources yet to really finish out the shield anyway. I am in that awkward phase of being strong enough, but not really having any of the core pieces that I need to push to the next level. I thought I would also post the currency that I have found so far as a reference. The big difference that I have noticed is that I have seen so many Exalted Orbs, because at this point, I might have seen one normally and have had nine drop. More important than that is that I seem to be swimming in Chaos and Alchemy orbs, which have allowed me to craft pretty much the entire way from Act 1 to plug holes in my gearing. Being able to freely craft really has made ground loot start to matter more than it ever has before.
Really, I am just in a state where I need more time devoted to the game in order to push through this awkward phase. I am slowly starting to build out Delve, but I need to invest so much more azurite into upgrades before it starts to feel comfortable. I also need to just churn through more maps so that I can get more Atlas points… which will make mapping feel more rewarding. I am really looking forward to getting my second tree, which I might be able to hit tonight, because I believe that happens normally around 50 points. I’ve unlocked Maven witness and Exarch altars, and should unlock Eater before too much longer. I’ve also been told that I largely want to focus on completing the lower left quadrant and then work my way around clockwise, with the lower right being the hardest area. Essentially, the lower left is Eater/Exarch, the upper left is Zana, the upper right is Elder/Shaper, and the lower right is Maven.
Are you playing the Mirage league? What are your thoughts so far about the Atlas changes and the Mirage mechanic? Drop me a line below.
The post A Rough Start for Mirage appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Hey Folks! This weekend was a bit wild. I had a tornado pass within a mile of the house, and then, in my very sleep-deprived state, I decided that it was a good idea to record two podcasts on Saturday. One of them was obviously AggroChat, but the other was sitting down with a long-time friend of mine from High School that I have referred to by the enigmatic title of “The Librarian”. Better known in some circles by Kaleon or others as Jason, this is someone who has known me for an extremely long time, and as a result, this show gets a bit more personal than normal. Every episode ends up revealing something about me, just by the nature of the conversation. This show, however, goes into some extremely “real” places with my past and the past of “The Librarian”.
This is the first episode in what I hope is a series of brand new recordings. Originally, I was going to sit down and record with all of the AggroChat crew, and I still want to finish that out. The challenge is always timing. This took up roughly two hours of real-world time that got edited down into an hour and twenty minutes once I compressed the silence. It is sometimes a challenge to figure out a time when you can spend that much time talking to a person and recording it. Hopefully, you enjoy this episode and will be around whenever the next one drops as well.
The post Bel Folks Stuff – Episode 10 – Featuring the Librarian appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Ace, Ammosart, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! We are down an Ash this week but start off talking about the Path of Exile League launch. Bel and Ace have different opinions of the league mechanic than Kodra, so we talk a bit about that. We also talk about the new holy strike and how it is so much better than glacial hammer. From there, Ace and Kodra talk about Everything is Crab and convince the rest of us that we should also be playing it. Kodra discusses the mixed bag that was Emerald City Comic Con, and Tam ventures forth into more Retro gaming with Kolibri. Kodra discusses Croak and a few other Steamfest demos that he played after last weeks show, and Bel shares some thoughts about how chill the World of Warcraft community seems to be right now. Finally, a quick topic about Pokopia, which we will likely revisit on another episode.
Good Morning Folks! Yesterday was a lot, and today itself is also going to be… a lot. I have my MRI finally, which I am having to do some prep for because it seems like it is going to be way more “invasive” than the normal MRI. So I took the day off from work to recuperate from that and also to deal with the prep work for today. This whole getting cancer thing is complete bullshit, and I would not recommend it to anyone. As part of the whole cancer thing, I have been put on Tirzepatide to help me lose some weight and lower the potential complications of the eventual surgery. That has been its own wild ride, and when people say that it removes your ability to be hungry… they are telling the truth. I am eating more out of a sense that I should be eating three meals a day rather than a feeling that I need to. It also has had this weird side benefit of clearing my mind and quieting a lot of the anxieties and negative voices. Both are welcome side effects, but it has made me react to certain types of meals a bit differently. You got a picture of a Fungal Strider from Harandar accompanying this paragraph just because I think they are neat.
My focus has been on gearing my main, and I have struggled to find a pair of boots, because in theor,y I was able to fill every other slot through World Quests or by killing random rares in the world. I finally bucked up the courage to start queuing for dungeons, and I have been shocked at how relatively chill this experience has been. The last time I did dungeons in any form was during Shadowlands (other than Panda Remix), and at that point, folks were mostly assholes about everything. There was a rampant number of people who would drop after one boss, and then spend the entire dungeon complaining that we were not going fast enough or doing things in exactly the way they wanted them to be done. This time around… I would swear that most of the folks running random heroics are stoners, because they have all been super chill about pretty much everything. I get that we are on week two and maybe all of the most hardcore players have moved on to Mythics, and are no longer running heroics… but whatever the case, I will take it.
The other possibility is that all of the most hardcore players… got exported to Final Fantasy XIV during the great exodus. I know over there, the previously super chill dungeon running got significantly worse during Dawntrail. It makes me wonder if there is this malignant group of gamers that just sort of make every game worse, and when they move on… “nature finds a way”, and the balance returns. It feels like every older MMORPG that I have played, that is no longer living through its heyday, seems to be this way. Has World of Warcraft finally reached the place of being this niche experience that only people who really enjoy playing it have stuck around? If so, I am freaking here for it. A large chunk of why I had avoided World of Warcraft was due to the stereotypical “WoW Player” and the negative impact that it had on running group content. Panda Remix was a lot of fun, but I mostly decided that was due to the fact that we were effectively playing throwaway characters and nothing really mattered. Maybe the community has drastically changed since I last attempted to play it. Someone can fill me in with some of the details I might be missing, hopefully.
Whatever the case, I am having a heck of a lot of fun, roaming around the world and doing various stuff. The defend the base event in Voidstorm is quite a bit of fun, and most of the interactions I have had with other players over chat have all been positive, or at worst neutral. The game feels like it is just genuinely nice to play, and mostly just really good features to interact with. I love Hunts and hope that functionality continues forward, and I love the fact that it seems like all gearing paths end up in the same place and the same gear levels, regardless of the type of content that you want to interact with. I need to spend more time leveling up Delves, because I have been ignoring them to my detriment, but it also seems like I arrived at the same destination of having full 220 gear in spite of this. Has this normalization of gear acquisition been part of what smoothed out the raised feathers of the community? I guess time will tell when the raid opens, and I get access to the raid finder.
I had been struggling to fill my final slot, which was boots. None seemed to be available crafted on the Auction House and I inspected every other plate wearer in the dungeons I had been running, and they all seemed to be stalled out with 198 ilvl boots as well. Even though killing rares, I had probably gotten a dozen pairs of boots, but they were mail, leather, or cloth, and not a single set of plate boots. The greater internet theory of complaining and drop chances, however, won out again, because the moment I made a public post griping about the impossibility of getting boots… meant that the very next dungeon I ran, capable of dropping boots, dropped a pair. This only ever seems to work when you are genuinely frustrated, and not actually a way of gaming the system. I am sure I will stop playing quite so much when the Path of Exile league drops this morning, but I kind of hope I can keep doing a bit of both.
I am very curious to hear from you all who have stuck around and kept playing WoW, if you have any theories about the community and how it changed since BFA/Shadowlands until now. Is it, as my friend Ace suggests, that we all got old and mellowed out? Whatever the case, I appreciate what I am seeing from the playerbase.
The post Did Elitists Abandon WoW? appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
