Hey Folks! On Thursday we had the reveal stream for Path of Exile Settlers of Kalguur aka 3.25 and it was nonsense. The patch notes are over 30,000 words long and involve some big shakeups to existing metas. The biggest thing is that melee may now be back on the menu because all melee-focused abilities essentially got their damage at least doubled. Detonate Dead which was a massive meta ability last league, is essentially dead now… Raider was deleted as an ascendancy and turned into Warden, and my favorite bow ascendancy Champion is far less powerful. Melee Totems were deleted from the game, Banners are essentially dead as they are used for only specific situations, and Warcries are universally worse for anyone who is not a melee character. Physical Damage Taken As conversion is essentially dead… because everything but a few sources lost that affix including the ubiquitous Taste of Hate.
So if there are so many negative impacts… why then am I excited about this patch? Essentially the game is getting what it feels like a completely new core system. We are building Kingsmarch a city that will play a heavy role in Path of Exile 2 and with it comes this entirely city-building mechanic. We will be able to recruit NPCs to help us along and build up Kingsmarch to add new functionality. There will be this whole material gathering and trading system that will allow us to send off NPCs while we are doing other things… and then reap the rewards of their work. I love this aspect of the Retainers from FFXIV, where I can send them off to gather needed things for me and check in every so often to a significant payday. In many ways, it reminds me of what the endgame systems of Wolcen were trying to be, where you are building this entire City for your account to benefit from.
By far the best part of all of this is the fact that we are now going to get a true Auction House system in Path of Exile. Right now it has limited scope and can only be used for “non-itemized” items aka items that stack and do not have individual rolls. However, this fixes so many problems in the game, and anyone who has ever tried to trade for bulk resources can attest to just how painful it is to gather up 20 Catalysts needed to quality up an item. In fact it was hinted during the Q&A session that this system exists because of the amount of frustration Mark Robert had when trying to trade for currency late game. He said he messaged over 100 people with no responses and then decided there had to be a better way. This is going to be amazing because honestly, I am going to be posting things while leveling that I don’t think I really need, knowing that at some point in the future, I will be able to buy them back when I actually do need them. I think the fluidity of trading will probably bring prices down considerably. There was also some discussion of trying to expand this if it is successful.
Settlers introduces a new currency called Gold, and really I think this is a dry run for figuring out how this is going to work in Path of Exile 2. Gold will drop from mobs and we will also be able to earn it through trading resources around the globe. What is interesting about this is that Gold will be an untradeable resource meaning that it essentially rewards playing the game rather than being an eternal auction house flipper. Mapping will be an excellent source, and I am hoping it drops down in Delve as well. I get that they nerfed the shit out of The Adorned so one of the major Delve cash items will weaken significantly… but I liked playing the Fossil and Resonator game long before that existed. With the fluidity of the currency market, I should have a much easier time selling my Delve wares than ever before.
Sending off harvested resources to other ports in shipments seems to be the high-risk and high-reward side of this gameplay. There were moments in the feature reveal trailer where they showed off bringing back three loot pages full of resources from a single shipment mission. I’ve always liked 4X games and specifically the city management aspect of them. Making cities pump out resources in Civilization is a heck of a lot of fun, and so far everything I am seeing makes me think this entire side game will be a blast in Path of Exile. I’ve never been someone who can chain blast maps without a break… and going to Kingsmarch to fiddle with shipments and such seems like a perfect pause button when I need one of those breaks. I am really hoping that we have our own private copy of Kingsmarch because I don’t really want another Heist problem where it is MTX hell whenever I want to engage with that content.
Another thing I am super interested in is the ability to have map runner NPCs churn through your bulk maps. Even contributing maps regularly to the guild bank… by mid-league, you end up with a glut of maps that you do not want to run. Delve is amazing for generating maps early in the league but given that it does not take your voidstones into account when maps drop… you end up with a bunch of sub-t16 maps that you would never actually run other than on secondary characters. This system will now be a sink for those otherwise useless maps and you can send teams of NPCs out to get interesting drops. Likely this is just going to be a lot of “bubblegum” currency aka alts, alchs, chisels, and the like… but that is still putting the map to more use than sitting there in your bank. I am not expecting this to generate massive amounts of divine orbs, but a non-zero amount of resources would be great.
The in-map encounters seem like they are going to be fun. Sure it is the good old-fashioned “fight in a circle” mechanic but anything that adds additional density to the map… specifically additional rare monsters is a win in my book. The fact that you start the encounter and then the resources are collected automagically is also a big plus. There is no real downside to engaging in this mechanic and as a result, I figure I will be gathering a ton of these resources just by getting through the atlas. One of them is a Crucible-style channel up to increase damage mechanic but that is probably fine given that it sounds like that one is going to be considerably rarer. Combine this with a bunch of returning mechanics like Sentinels showing up in maps… T16 mapping should be more enjoyable than it has been in awhile.
I’ve honestly BARELY scratched the surface of all of the features of this league. The presentation was limited to nothing but Path of Exile 1 content and was roughly 45 minutes long. I highly suggest you watch it as it is EXCEPTIONALLY content-dense. Now comes the challenge of figuring out what the hell I actually want to play. I could go with old reliable and do Righteous Fire again because I do love it so. I am also contemplating a Bleed-based Earthquake build on the newly changed Gladiator ascendency, specifically a block-based Shield/Axe variant that I saw the other day. I’ve had a lot of fun in the past with Volcanic Fissure of Snaking and given the melee buffs it should be in a pretty great place… though I am not entirely certain what Ascendancy I would want to play it with. Legitimately right now… I have no clue what I am actually going to do when Friday rolls around.
I do know that I am probably going to pause a lot of the nonsense that I am doing in FFXIV for a little bit as I get established in this new league. I will probably be spending a lot of time with my head down and focused on mapping while listening to Audiobooks. Are you going to be checking out this league? What build are you thinking about going with? Drop me a line below.
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Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, and Thalen
Good Morning Folks! I am going to give you fair warning… this is a very Path of Exile episode. We pushed that topic to the very end of the show but once you hit it… it is pretty much an hour of talk about the upcoming Settlers of Kalguur League. We start off the show with some discussion about Last Epoch and the most recent market crash that banned exploiters… but left all the gold in the bloated market economy. From there we dive into Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail and talk about the new Arcadion Raid. We then talk a bit more about Bel and Grace’s adventures in alting as they finish ARR and start into Heavensward. Finally, we do a dive into the massive meta-breaking changes coming with the Settlers of Kalgurr league in Path of Exile which drops on the 26th.
Good Morning Folks! As is often the case in the lead-up to Blaugust I occasionally give update posts. We’ve had a flurry of activity for initial sign-ups but there is still quite a bit of time before the event starts. As of writing this, there are roughly thirteen days left before the start of the event. If you have not had a chance to sign up but wish to participate, it is as simple as filling out this form. This will eventually cause your blog to get updated in the various spreadsheets that are shared out of participants as well as the OPML file that I will release closer to the event that allows you to add all of the participant blogs into a news feed reader. As always if you want a one-stop shop for Blaugust-related information, the Media Kit stays updated with relevant links.
As of the time of writing this post, we have had forty-one blogs sign up for the event. This is a far cry from the outrageous 103 blogs that we had last year, but like I said there is still plenty of time. We’ve often gotten a burst of activity as the first of August rolls around and folks wish to be included. Here is what our list looks like currently:
As I said above, I will be updating information a bit closer to the event as more folks sign up. So far however it is looking like a really good crop of new folks. Mastodon/Fediverse had introduced our little community of bloggers to a whole new group of folks. Many of them are already joining and becoming active on Discord. Out of the list above, sixteen of those blogs are participating for the very first time. While my personal energy level is a bit lower this year, I am excited that folks are still wanting to do this nonsense.
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Comparing the Noct Tanking Set from my Lalafell main and my Roegadyn alt
Good Morning Friends. I have to say I was overwhelmingly excited when I got to the point of the ARR MSQ when it started doling out the formerly Binding-Coil-era gear sets. For pretty much all of my time as a Lalafell I have used this set, dyed jet black, with the bunny kabuto for my signature look. So I was ecstatic to be able to have this appearance on my Roegadyn alt. Sure I could not wear the tanking skirt with it that comes from a level 80 dungeon, but I could get MOST of the way to replicating the appearance. I bounced around between all of the servers in Dynamis until I found the cheapest bunny kabuto for 160k and snapped it up to be able to compile the look. Then in all of my horror last night I realized… the proportions are all wrong on a Roegadyn. It just looks too bulky and my bunny ears are way the hell too small to really work in the same way. So alas… I wasted a bunch of money on something I am probably never actually going to wear until I fantasia again.
I guess I should once again give a fair warning that as I am talking through this ARR revisit, I am going to be talking about spoilers. Be warned if you have not made it this far into the game.Title Screen for Urth’s Fount the Odin Fight
We started off last night by running Snowcloak and then Odin which represented all of the new things that we had not run yet. Snowcloak was just as sleepy as it always is… and I maybe overpulled a few times leading Ace to have to scramble to keep my ass vertical. We pulled through it and it was a largely enjoyable experience. I still lament the loss of the proper version of the yeti fight where you throw snowballs at him. From there we ran Odin thinking it would be a long queue… but got in almost instantly. This fight is still exceptionally tough and we got some bad RNG on the first attempt and had to deal with a spear phase while he was casting his one-hit enrage attack. The second time though we managed to take him out right before the cast timer was finished. This fight is legitimately still probably more difficult than most of the ARR era Extremes.
Shiva Cutscene from Akh Afah Amphitheatre Hard
Knowing that Shiva was not too far off we put our heads down and quested along furiously until we unlocked Akh Afah Amphitheatre (Hard). It is sort of sad how stinking easy the ARR Hard versions are. When you have spent so much time farming the extremes to get mount drops for folks… the Hard versions just sort of feel like a cakewalk. I keep waiting for mechanics that never come, like I did not remember there was now ice floor phase in the Hard version, or at least not one we had gotten to yet. The music is still so freaking great and if you have not listened to it in a while, you own yourself to click through and do so right now. I have so much love for this era of the game because it represents the period of time when our little FC was the most active and dedicated. It was the era when we were actively fielding raids and hanging out with each other multiple times per week. While Ace and I have recaptured some of that in small bursts… I still miss all the rest of our team.
The Keeper of the Lake Entrance Unlocked in Mor Dhona
I stuck around last night and pushed through the story up until the point where Keeper of the Lake unlocked. I am very much looking forward to this dungeon because I can remember it being one of my favorites. It also has some freaking amazing music and a few really fun fights that make the player feel super cool for honestly dodging some rather simplistic mechanics by today’s standards. The story is heating up and honestly… I am starting to feel some “feelings” because I know what is about to happen in the next patch. It is hard to explain how emotionally it hit me to play through this content the first time. I was so oblivious to the catastrophe that was about to befall my character and my friends… but seeing it all again you can absolutely see the underpinnings of foreshadowing. A game had never quite doing anything like this before, not at least in the MMORPG space… so I was simply not prepared for the level of betrayal that was impending and as such did not heed the warnings.
The hardest part of this replay is having to run quests with Ilberd knowing what is about to happen. I so despise this person and everything that he and the Crystal Braves come to represent. I’m immensely bothered by what the hubris plays out in Alphinaud and I just want to shake some sense into his obliviousness. The writing was absolutely on the wall. I am seeing it now and it was clearly there for us… if we just chose to look at it. Last night seeing Ilberd say “you never betray your own” was just too fucking much. If I could change the course of the game I would… I would strike him down right now and suffer the consequences. I hate “Cold War” periods in video games… because I am a character of action, not politics. I was not designed for this, and quite honestly I think most of us are not equipped to handle it… which as a result is why this whole sequence managed to blindside so many. Unfortunately, this is a card that only works once… and every betrayal from this point forward has been spotted ahead of time because now we know it is possible… and now we are always on the lookout. Ilberd and crew shoot our faith… in a way that can never be regained.
Anyways… I am deeply looking forward to Heavensward because I want to hunt a Sky Whale. I’m probably looking forward to that fight than almost anything else at this point. Heavensward had some freaking amazing primal fights.
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