Friends… I have to admit that I was contemplating just sitting out of the Crucible League. I am still not entirely certain if I am going to go all in Path of Exile this time, but that itch in the back of my head… has returned. I still have some deep concerns about Crucible and the direction of the game, but also… I had a heck of a lot of fun in Sanctum League even though I was one of the few AggroChat folks who really got into it. I really loved the rhythm that I fell into of having a mapping/bossing character and then having my Righteous Fire Juggernaut do super chill Heist and Delve runs on. I have no clue what my plans are for the OP bossing character… but I am pretty sure I am starting the league with Righteous Fire at this point.
Pohx released his Righteous Fire video for 3.21 and an updated Path of Building guide over on his website. The main reason why I am interested in doing Righteous Fire again is that it is ultimately a playstyle that I enjoy greatly. Something that I have learned about myself is that I really like three types of builds:
Screen Clear Ranged Builds
Minions do the Work Builds
Super Tanky Damage Feedback Builds
My two favorite Diablo III builds sort of fall into the Tanky/Feedback builds with Whirlwind involving you spinning through packs of mobs and letting them break themselves on your whirling blades, and Invoker Crusader being a mega thorns build that causes them to essentially explode with damage if they touch you. Righteous Fire definitely falls into that sort of category where you are lighting yourself on fire and then running around and watching things burn up as they attempt to get to you. I’ve yet to really find a version of the Demon Hunter Multishot builds in Path of Exile that I really enjoy playing past about the midpoint in leveling.
The other reason why for a Righteous Fire start is because it does a good job of being an all-around character for doing a lot of different mechanics. More specifically it is good at the mechanics that I personally enjoy doing like Delve and Heist which each offer early access to a bunch of interesting types of loot that are much harder to get otherwise. To quote Jorgen, “Delve Provides” and with the Crucible mechanic focused around weapons… I have a feeling that Delve Crafting will be just as strong as ever as folks try and get that perfect Rare item with the perfect weapon tree on it. In Sanctum as soon as I had filled up on a decent amount of resonators I could pretty much liquidate them instantly which allowed me to funnel resources into shopping trips to fully equip builds.
The other benefit of just choosing to run up Righteous Fire which is a tried and true build… is it gives me some time to see how the other builds in the league shake out. I enjoyed Summon Raging Spirits last go-round, and I went with a fire-based build which was not nearly as strong as the poison variant but still good for doing Metamorph bosses. One of the things I contemplated last league was trying to build some sort of minion instability build turning the raging spirits into bombs. The above video talks about this sort of setup and honestly, I might consider that as my second build of the league.
I’ve never gone Boneshatter so I am contemplating playing around with one of those as well. I know this is one of traditionally the stronger league starts. I’ve also tried to play around with a Poison Rain build several times but never really got it playing in a manner that I enjoyed it. I think my problem with so many bow builds is that they tend to focus on ballistas doing the damage rather than hits doing the damage. I still want to find a fun and chill screen clear hit build that doesn’t cost 100 divines… but I have yet to really land on that. I figure in the next few days we are going to be flooded with builds but really we won’t know entirely what works until a week or so in.
The post Starting Righteous Fire for Crucible appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Friends! This weekend I played an exceptional amount of Last Epoch because at the moment that seems to be the game I am most engaged with. A few months back Eleventh Hour Games announced that everyone who had purchased the game before the launch of the 0.9 Multiplayer update would be getting a gift. Yesterday I noticed a post on the official discord stating that it was now live and in-game, and as a result, I have this really beautiful backpack with a ton of small details to roam around on a character that moves through content so fast that it is impossible to focus in on any small details. I mean it is really freaking cool honestly and I am happy to wear it and have it as an “I was here early” type thing, but it really does require you to zoom in to see anything.
Right now there are a number of microtransactions in the game, but most of them are limited to pets. For example, that amazing floating Runed Primordial Turtle means I was an Alpha backer of the game. If you backed the Kickstarter there were a number of Sylpine and Chronowyrm pets that you got. Currently the available supporter backs include weird anthropomorphic armadillo-badger sort of things called Skullen as pets. So far Eleventh Hour Games has been very clear that there will never be a way in the future to obtain any of these items, and while I think the Skullen looks sorta dumb, I am very happy to have my pet turtle and backpack… even though neither actually does anything. My hope is at some point pets might possibly work like they do in Diablo III and zoom around gathering gold for me.
As far as endgame progressions go, I am now officially in Empowered Monoliths, and boy do they occasionally just kick your ass. I need to focus on building out the rest of my kit before going too crazy with corruption. At the moment I am short on a couple of resists and when I encounter anything that really exploits those… I do not last terribly long. I think it is pretty cool that at any point you can flip between the Normal and Legendary versions of the Monoliths. This only supports my case for Monolith progression being account wide instead of tied to a specific character. That way if you want to run lower-level monoliths on your brand-new characters, you can do so at will by just choosing the normal versions.
I finished the first of the Empowered Monoliths and defeated its boss, and now am target farming Ending of the Storm which has nodes apparently that can drop unique or set gloves. Essentially I am trying to farm up Ravens’ Rise a unique set of gloves that blends nicely with my Necromancer build. In theory, I need to farm the Reign of Dragons timeline as well to try and get Dragonflame Edict the weapon that I am supposed to be using that drops from the boss. Out on Last Epoch Tools, there is a handy filter in the Item Database that lets you look at each timeline and what items come from it for farming purposes. If I did not already have Aaron’s Will, I would be trying to farm the Blood, Frost, and Death timeline as it drops chest pieces.
I personally cannot handle non-stop progression content, so I spent a chunk of the weekend working on a few different primalists. Right now I am leaning heavily towards Belgloam my Beastmaster because I am just having more fun with it than Belgraves my Druid. The idea with each of them is to go Squirrel build on the Beastmaster, and Swarm Queen on the Druid. However, for the moment I am enjoying the gameplay of beastmaster quite a bit more as I run around using upheaval with my pack of four wolves. I do not have Herald of the Scurry which changes my Wolves into Squirrels, but I will probably try and target farm that on the Necromancer. I can only imagine cackling with joy as my army of squirrel friends decimate my foes.
In the column of assorted dumb things I did this weekend, I recorded a series of videos. Essentially I have talked at length about the things I did not enjoy in Diablo IV, but I never really talked about or showcased the things that I love doing in ARPGs. So as a result I recorded a series of four videos… one in Last Epoch doing a Monolith Echo, and Three in Path of Exile doing an Atlas Map, a Delve, and a Heist. So if you have any interest in listening to me ramble on while I play through some content, here is your chance. I’ve also sort of come to the realization that I have been doing my “Bel Bungles” series all wrong. I should have just had a single video series given that I swap around games relatively often. I think at some point I might renumber all of my “Bel Bungles” videos and put them in a playlist.
I will admit recording the videos, and the announcement of the 3.21 Crucible League… caused a bit of a relapse this weekend. There is nothing in any ARPG that I enjoy quite as much as Delve. There is just something about the endless nature of crawling from node to node seeking out the treasure that soothes me. My hope is with the Crucible league that I can build up a Righteous Fire character again and then use it to fund other types of characters as I did in the Sanctum league. I know without a doubt I will be heading into Delve as soon as possible.
Anyways! I hope you had a wonderful weekend and that the coming week is at a bare minimum tolerable. I will likely be here continuing to do my nonsense.
The post Lovingly Rendered Backpack appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Good Morning Friends! Lairs Day has come and gone, but for those of us recording the show… it was still happening and as a result, we talk a bit about that. From there we talk about the repeated death of E3 and why maybe they should just call it quits going forward. Thalen talks about the apparent fact that Crunchyroll is known for killing games. Bel and Kodra talk a bit about the Zelda Direct and how apparently Tears of the Kingdom is going to be even more sandboxy. Super Adventure Festival is going on in Guild Wars 2 and we talk about the quirky new Fashion Wars event happening in Lion’s Arch as well as the test release of World 3 of the Super Adventure Box. This past week the Crucible League announcement stream took place and the patch notes were released… frustrating a good number of players. From there Tam talks about Terra Nill an ecological world-building sim. Finally, we wrap up the show with some talk about the books we have been reading. Thalen talks about the Broken Earth series and Bel talks about Legends and Lattes and the Bloodsworn series.
