Good Morning Folks! Yesterday, we got Shattered Omens, the new season for Last Epoch. Last night I did our Thursday Funday nonsense, and during the middle of it, I was asked what should be a simple question… How long has Last Epoch Been Out? Technically, I have been playing small amounts of the game since November 8th, 2018, when I bought into Alpha 0.5.3. However, I really started playing the game seriously on July 12th, 2022, in its pre-multplayer variant, because things were really starting to cook. Collectively, the AggroChat crew started playing more regularly when the Multiplayer release dropped on March 9th, 2023. The answer that Sita was probably looking for was February 21st, 2024, when the game officially launched into its 1.0 version. So, at this point, we are a little over two years into the lifecycle of Last Epoch as a “complete” game, and I say that in quotes because we still do not have all of the acts that will eventually be in the final version of the story. We are on Season 4, but I have no clue what the actual number should be because originally, they did this whole patch number “cycle” nonsense instead of just calling them seasons.
One of the most delightful things about playing a new Last Epoch season is that I get to once again roam around with my adventuring companions. I’ve been a pretty avid supporter of the game and purchased pretty much every MTX offering backer set that they offer us, because they are priced so much cheaper than the Path of Exile league packs. For example, the Fractured Legend’s supporter pack, which features everything available for this Season is $59.99 as compared to one of the Mirage supporter packs, which runs $90 for technically less stuff. I love this game and want it to survive so I keep giving it money, but after many years of doing this, I have a fancy Capybara, Toucan, and Sloth that hangs out on my back… and running around with this trio of animal companions makes me happy in ways that I cannot quite adequately explain. Maybe I am too old school, but I believe that you really should support the games that you enjoy playing in some way or another, and have always done so as best I can.
Each time a new season drops, they have added new content to the game, and slowly, bit by bit, the frequency of “interesting things” in maps has increased. This time around, starting with Act 2, we have the appearance of something called the Omen Window. This is your classic ARPG “kill things in a circle” mechanic and reminds me a bit of a mix between Ritual and the new Unstable Breach, for Path of Exile players. Ritual, because you are confined to a specific fixed location, and Unstable Breach, because random monsters are summoned and you fill a bar, which breaks the “boss” encounter out of its invulnerability phase. When you take down the boss, the encounter ends, and you are rewarded with a bunch of corrupted loot and some of the crafting currency for this league that allows you to corrupt your own items. Essentailly these are Vaal Orbs for the Path of Exile player, or for someone not familiar with the concept… it is a final step that you can do in crafting an item which can produce some wild outcomes… but also keeps you from further modifying the item.
It is hard to fully explain just how game-changing this has been for the campaign. These are all items that I got from my first two Omen Windows. If you get a good corrupted weapon in Act 2… You can literally keep using it all of the way from the campaign because it is dropping with stats that you cannot get until the Monolith. For example, the ring on the left with +11 Strength on it… is something that I am still using in Act 7 and will probably keep using until I finally get some other way of replacing that huge boost in attributes. I have held onto these for when I ultimately level alts, because the stat packages are just too wild. For example, that axe with 96% increased Physical Damage and 26% Damage Leech is pure nonsense. Sure, it would have been much better if it had rolled with flat damage, but I am not going to complain at all. You can corrupt your own items, but be VERY careful because I corrupted a level 10 dagger…. and it ended up swapping it to a level 56 required dagger base, effectively bricking it for me.
I started screenshotting some of the early drops from Omens, because it was freaking wild. This one for example dropped two completed legendary items. Granted, they were more akin to the random legendaries that you get from the Nemesis system, but they were still extremely strong… and I am using several items that I got early on from corruptions. The only negative that I see about the power of the Omen Windows is that it sort of makes every other encounter feel worse as a result. Exiled Mages were already pretty bad, because you only really care about them if they can drop something that your build specifically needs. I am thankful that you get a little warning message in chat when you enter a map with Omens, and in theory… it might not be a bad strategy to just farm the same map over and over for corruptions in one of the first areas. What was so interesting about this while leveling, is if you get a really strong item… it might convince you to try some things that you had never tried previously.
For example…. I probably never would have leveled a Sentinel with Prism Wraps and Calamity. However, I got a Prism Wraps off my second Omen, which had +1 to all skills… making it insanely powerful for leveling, and I am still wearing it. Calamity similarly has a huge amount of physical resistance on it, and given that I am dealing fire damage, I just rolled with it… especially when I got a pair of Falcon Fists later from a Nemesis egg. I would likely never run a Vipertail on a Sentinel either, but since so much of my power comes from procs… and I greatly benefit from hitting really fast… I started using it for the melee attack speed and kept using it because the poison damage was pretty overpowered since I was hitting very fast. Code of an Erased sentinel, I only included because I am pretty proud of that being the first one I picked up off the ground, and turning into a pretty formidable item. I am sure I will have to wear proper gear once I get to the Monolith, but for now this leveling package feels really strong.
I am level 47 and made it to Heoborea in Act Seven, without taking any deaths. I am sure once I hit monoliths, I will lose my “deathless”, or potentially before, because I keep doing dumb things. Path of Exile II introduced the ability to pause the game while playing by hitting escape to bring up a menu. A few leagues ago, this was also added to Path of Exile, and it was a very welcome addition that I adapted to quickly. As a result, I keep hitting Escape, thinking I am pausing the game, only to watch the corners of my screen turn red as I start getting hit. This is muscle memory… and at some point I am going to do this… alt tab out and come back sad and dead. I would love it if EHG added pause to the online portion of the game, but then again… they have a lot on their plate. There are a ton of quality-of-life tweaks that I would love to see, but some of them seem to be lines that they do not want to cross. For example, I would love to have my pets pick up any of the loot that gets vacuumed into your inventory, like affix shards. I won’t be holding my breath on that one.
I should be able to wrap the campaign up tonight. I don’t usually take any skips and go out of my way to unlock the various dungeons as I am near them on the map. Though I do remember the latest acts taking quite a bit longer than the early ones. I am still going to complete them, though, because you can apparently speed through the monolith faster if you have completed the campaign and are not required to do as many of the early monos. It feels like I am gaining levels much faster than normal, so I am interested to see what level I am when I open up Monos for the first time. I am sure I will be playing this hard and heavy all weekend long, so if you are around, feel free to friend me. My Account ID is Belghast, and the character I am playing this time around is a Forge Weapons Forge Guard called BelForgedNonsense.
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Good Morning Folks. Last night I stayed up way the hell too late, because I got focused on working on seasonal challenges in the Mirage League. I’ve reached the point in the league where my main build is extremely fleshed out, my second build of the league is pretty solid as well, and I have turned my attention to trying to complete as many challenges as I can before I wander off and play the Last Epoch Season that starts tomorrow. I usually come back later and finish things up, because ultimately my goal is to get 34 Challenges so that I can keep the streak of the same size totem pole in my hideout for each of the recent leagues. I’ve already placed the one for Mirage, and you can see it is a bit lacking so far, but hopefully time and focus will fix that.
Yesterday, I finished up three challenges to knock off the list. Deadly Deeds is one that involves running a bunch of juiced league content, and I completed my final one by running three legion five-ways. This was a big part of why I respecced my third Atlas passive tree over to Legion, so that I could collect a bunch of emblems and finish this one out pretty easily. Seized Strength focuses on completing endgame content that is associated with various leagues, knocking that one out by finishing a fifteen-wave simulacrum. Leathal Leaders I did not end up screenshotting, but I wrapped that up by clearing an Alva Temple and completing a Vox Twin encounter. Finally, I took a few of the gems that I had been leveling and sacrificed them to the Vaal gods so that I could get a corrupted outcome and finish up Glorious Gemcraft.
At this point, I am sitting at 26 of 40 challenges, and have a handful that are pretty close to wrapping up. Coveted Currency mostly just requires that I spend some currency buying coins to imbue things with in order to complete my last objective there. Remarkable Realms, unfortunately, is going to have to wait until I can farm up a Doryani’s Machinarium in Delve because they are going for 16 Divines at the moment… and I refuse to pay that when I run as much Delve as I do. I could, in theory, reroll Kirac until it eventually shows up, which is an option because I seem to be generating a bunch of gold at the moment. Magnificent Memories is honestly pretty close as well, and I have stacks of Originator-influenced maps that I could be running. I need to get in the habit of using Exalted Orbs on maps so that I can get them up to 8 mods before running them for maximum impact.
Last night I also dinged 99, which feels like it is faster than I usually do in leagues like this. It could just be all of the times that I took the Mirage wish that gave me bonus experience. I should probably queue up a bunch of maps that I have with full Mirages, while burning through some of the challenges related to running map content with scarabs, and hope for the experience bonus. In theory, a FULL map with that bonus would be really nice and a decent boost. If I really want to push through experience, though, I should probably either spec one of my trees to an Alva strategy or a Betrayal strategy because both reward a ton of experience for completing them. I think the Alva scarabs are pretty expensive right now, because it seems like Alva maps sell for quite a bit of currency at the moment. Delve is also a pretty great source of experience, and it tends to be relatively safe for me. Tonight is pretty much my last push for getting to 100, though, before I lose focus and play a bunch of Last Epoch for a while.
In other moves, I shuffled some gear around and picked up a new shield and helm, so that I could, in theory, run Malevolence in addition to the auras that I have already been running. Due to socket pressure, I had to drop the arrogance vitality setup, but I still have 2000 life per second regen, so that is fine. I lost a bit of regen with my new Archdemon Crown setup, but gained quite a bit of single-target damage, so I think it shakes out. Mostly, I wanted to buff my damage before I tried the Legion 5-Way and Simulacrum. I have another double influence shield that I have been crafting on, but I doubt I will actually hit anything better than the one I am using. I played pass down the gear to my friend Carthuun, who is a bit behind me in Righteous Fire progression. Sure, I could have sold it for some divines, but generally speaking, I would rather pass gear down to a friend than profit from it.
I feel like I am in pretty good shape for the launch of Last Epoch Shattered Omens tomorrow. I know I will cycle back around to Path of Exile after Last Epoch, but I am hoping I get a good few weeks to a month out of Season 4. I think a lot of the changes are going to be really good, and I am mostly trying to figure out what I want to do for a build. I know I will probably make a Minion Necro at some point, but I don’t think I want to start that. I am contemplating going with Forge Guard and doing the summoned weapons nonsense since I have never actually done that. I will probably talk tomorrow about some of the builds that I am contemplating. For this morning, however, I am pretty happy with the progress I made in Path of Exile last night.
The post Mirage Progress appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks. I am slowly climbing out of the abyss that is whatever the hell crud I ended up getting. What is remaining is a cough and congestion. I started taking some over the counter fake dayquil to help with some of the symptoms and that has improved my general quality of life. I am hoping between today and tomorrow I will have kicked it enough to feel comfortable trying to be around folks for Thanksgiving. Which will probably just mean that I catch something else… but that is the life of someone without much of an immune system. I still have no clue what exactly I have had since it came on Thursday afternoon, and still has held on with a vengeance all weekend long and into this week. Since I tested negative for Covid and Flu, I am guessing just some sort of a random viral infection.
Since I was pretty out of it, and honestly continue to be… I spent a good chunk of yesterday watching some shows. I burned through all of Season 4 of the Witcher and it was “fine”. The storyline continues to be a complete and fucking mess, at least compared to either the books or the games… but the characters are mostly on point and I have to just treat this as its own thing. Liam Hemsworth honestly might be doing a better job of Geralt of Rivia than Henry Cavill did, which is probably a good thing considering I personally gave some major stinkeye at this actor swap given how invested Cavill was in the show. I think he was fundamentally pissed at how much they strayed from the material, and Hemsworth is doing an adequate job of being properly Geralt-ish. It feels like they are attempting to tell the storyline leading up to the second game, more or less, but a lot of the scenes differ wildly from either the book interpretation or the game interpretation, which are themselves two different things. Its fine… and was very watchable, but you have to put that lore accurate side of your brain asleep when dealing with this project.
I also started To Be Hero X, which is a Chinese Anime that I had heard really good things about. Essentially it is a world where everyone has something akin to the social credit score and if this gets high enough, you start to develop super powers. However those super powers are directly influenced by the way that people feel about you. If effectively social media feels that you are super handsome, you will legitimately keep getting more and more handsome. Its a weird concept but the art style is freaking amazing. It flows between at least three drastically different art styles as it tells various stories centered around effectively normal folks who were thrust into the life of a hero. I am not sure how far I am from the end of the series but there definitely have been set up a bunch of interesting background elements and I am curious how some of the plot threads are going to wrap up.
Over in Path of Exile I am still alternating between mapping on my Ice Trapper and then Delving on my RF Chieftain. I thought I would take a moment and talk through what I am running for Scarabs. The goal is just to add additional mobs to the map, which makes my Ice Trapper level faster and also provides for a bunch of potential drops. I am running Alch and go copies of Tropical Island which I am oversustaining, but recently swapped all of my favorite slots to Strand with the goal of eventually flipping between those two maps. Wide open layouts really favor the area of effect of the ice trap lifestyle. Then I add in Two Scarab of Monstrous Lineage, Two Scarab of Adversaries, and One Scarab of Hunted Traitors to add a bunch of extra mobs to the map, while running with my Niko/Betrayal/Beyond atlas. All the while I am running blue altars with support on the tree so I can knock out that 100 maps achievement, and then I will probably swap up what tree I am using and go with something that can do red altar support so I can knock out another one.
One thing that I have been doing that I think I am going to stop doing… is running the 10,000 Blue Zanthemum strategy. I’ve been sending it with 250k dust and occasionally this produces divine orbs, but it does not feel like it does so often enough to make it worth my time. I am probably instead just going to save up enough materials for one of the multi-million shipments and see if I can get mirror shards instead. I’ve not touched mappers, but I have heard they are producing a lot of good stuff this league, however the gold cost is just outrageous. I am not mining at all because mining generlaly produces gear, and at this stage in the game… especially with the addition of the tree tree… I have no interest in random gear. Basically my last few days have been super chill mapping while watching something on the television, and that is about as much activity as I can really take.
Tonight I plan on doing some Grandmaster activities with Ace in Destiny Rising so hopefully I will remember to take some screenshots of our shenaningans.
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