Good Morning folks. We are on the cusp of a new Last Epoch and Path of Exile II league and I cannot stop playing the Legacy of Phrecia event. What is probably even more wilds is that I think right now, there are more Path of Exile players than Path of Exile II players. It is really hard to prove this however because the majority of POE players do not use the Steam client. I switched to the standalone client some leagues ago because there is almost always a delay in league start because of the patch having to go through the Steam QC checks. However the 24 hour peak for POE2 is 35,015 and for POE1 21,117 and in the past they have stated than less than half of the players use the Steam client. Anyways I would believe it given how much trade volume I am seeing in small 20c trades. I can’t complete a map without someone pinging me for an item, which is way more active than a league normally is a month into it.
One of the things that I am chipping away at is the Gear Grinding Goals challenge for successfully running 200 t14 or higher rare maps to 100% completion. In truth I never really spent much time on the mappers when Settlers of Kalguur launched, but have seemingly hit my stride. I should probably finish upgrading my mappers all the way to level 10s, but for now I seem to be able to complete maps pretty solidly. I upgraded my last two voidstones over the weekend and as such I have a backlog of lower tier maps to consume, now that I only really care about t16s. As of this morning I have 50 more maps to go, and then I am sitting at level 99 and am mostly grinding out level 100. Getting this challenge won’t really move the needle and I will need to figure out something else to do to get another totem upgrade. I am hoping that I will actually encounter Sasan now that I am actively running mappers so I can knock out one of those associated achievements.
The thing about keeping your mappers running all the time is that you can also keep your disenchanter going pretty much all the time. More than that however they occasionally return some really nice stuff. I’ve gotten several 21/20 gems and while I did not have the mental fortitude to actually snap a screenshot of it… they brought me a Hinekora’s Lock. Admittedly when I got this, I did not realize the windfall that it actually was. I’ve gotten these to drop before during the Ancestors league and back then it was maybe 20 Divines. I was able to sell mine for 140 Divines. The Reddit regularly has pictures of folks having their mappers bring back a Mirror of Kalandra or even a Mageblood.
The only problem with getting a huge amount of currency this late in the league… is that I pretty much have already upgraded everything that I really needed for my build. I could of course have bought a Mageblood, and technically still can given that a reasonably well rolled one is going for roughly 110 Divines. However when it comes to chase uniques… I have always felt like my favorite is Headhunter. This is a belt that I have used many times on bow builds to help buff up both my damage output and my survival while mapping. However I have never actually used one on a Righteous Fire build… and in truth it would also solve another problem that I have been having in that I could not really juggle my stats in order to add in a Defiance of Destiny. So I spent 10 div on a well rolled Headhunter and 10 div on a well rolled Defiance and have been playing with both for funsies.
I lost quite a bit of regeneration but still have around 1300 health per second which is still enough to maintain righteous fire without any issues. However in general I have been able to hit nowhere near the numbers I am used to as Chieftain where I am only stacking Fire Resistance and can hit something around 2000 health per second. Basically Headhunter just makes any other build feel better as you are effectively getting a ton of buffs any time you kill rare monsters. The best of these is of course Soul Eater… and the worst is the one that gives you a Flicker Strike like effect that teleports you to the nearest rare monster. However since I care about being up close and personal with things… the flicker strike nonsense is way less harmful than it is with a glass cannon bow build. The only time it gets really dangerous is when I am delving… and it decides to teleport me out into the darkness.
Earlier I said that I did not initially buy a MageBlood, but could afford one anyways… so this morning I decided to go ahead and do that. I am not one of those people where the acquisition of money in general is an endgame unto itself. Currency in Path of Exile is only useful in that I can buy things with it that I will likely never actually see drop on their own. I am legitimately not sure what Mageblood number this is now… but I think my third? I think it might be my sixth Headhunter, and fourth Defiance of Destiny… because of all of the Tier 0 rarity uniques that is the only one that I think I have seen drop on its own. I am legitimately contemplating swapping over to a resistance flask setup because that would give me close to 90% fire resistance and around 85% for all of the other resistances. Regardless having a Mageblood gives me more options than NOT having a Mageblood.
Long story short… Legacy of Phrecia has been a pretty great event for me as a whole.
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Good Morning Folks. Yesterday we got a bit of news from Eleventh Hour Games that they would be delaying the launch of Last Epoch Season 2 from April 2nd to April 17th. This is to create some distance between their launch date and that of Path of Exile 2 and its first league on the 4th. This whole situation is frustrating because multiple sources have stated that Eleventh Hour Games was in communication with Grinding Gear Games regarding their choice of April 2nd making it an extreme dick move to schedule their own start two days later. I entirely feel like GGG is in the wrong here… but there also may be some external forces at work that we do not know about.
Whatever the case this is probably the right decision for Eleventh Hour Games. As stated in a Zizaran video talking about this situation, it is rare that people go back to a game after the launch… so that would likely mean folks would play Last Epoch for a day or two… if they even gave it a shot at all, and then would flip to Path of Exile II and never look back. I am disappointed mostly because right now I care far more about Last Epoch than I do Path of Exile II. I do not think that there is going to be enough in the upcoming patch to really shift the trajectory of POE2 enough for me to truly enjoy it more than the first game. I might be shocked on the 27th when they announce all of the content, but in truth I mostly just want to get my hands on the redesigned endgame for Last Epoch.
In the meantime I am still playing quite a bit of the Legacy of Phrecia event. In theory I should hit level 99 tonight and I am starting to pick back up and work on some of the challenges that I never completed from Settlers of Kalguur. I’m cycling between Delve and mapping and still only have two of the four voidstones unlocked. I should probably work on that, but I hate the process of grinding for the fragments required to attempt Maven and Uber Elder. The whole bossing system in Path of Exile feels bad to me. I feel like there should be quest support for all four voidstones like there are the first two so that you can knock these out in a relatively straightforward fashion. At some point I should probably try out a T17 again to see if I can complete that, but my build is not exactly great at bossing. Generally speaking I just do not enjoy that side of the game and the whole process of getting access to the fights.
I have burned through a good chunk of my reserves of gold and dust in order to start up a bunch of mappers. One of the league challenges from Settlers that I never knocked out was running 200 t14 or better maps at 100% success rate with mappers, and I figured I might as well start chipping away at that since I am still playing. If I can push to level 100 and complete the rest of those maps that will knock out one more of the challenges and potentially give me a bigger totem pole for my hideout. In truth Path of Exile is just a comfortable activity for me to spend chill evenings listening to an audiobook, and has kind of become my default gaming activity. I hate that among the AggroChat folks, I am the only one who seems to have really reached that point with the game.
I am also still pushing forward with Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon because I hate having a “did not complete” in my list. I swapped over to the Soundbooth Theater version of the audiobook and it is infinitely better than the one I was listening to earlier. There is a significant difference between being read a book out loud, and having someone act out a book… and at this point I have become spoiled by the later. This is a brutal story… in content… and in just how much graphic detail is put into it. I am not sure I would ever suggest this to someone else, but it has enough of a hook into me that I am going to see it to its conclusion. Effectively this is Hostel style torture porn, and my kink does not run in that direction.
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Morning Folks. Essentially each night I am progressing a bit in Monster Hunter Wilds, and then wind up back in Path of Exile for super chill mapping and delve time. There is only so much directed combat that I can take in a single evening. Monster Hunter Wilds is cool but also feels like it has zero chill right now because every quest leads to another big boss fight. I did spend some time last night roaming around and picking up materials so that I could upgrade a few things. It is probably weird that Path of Exile is known for being this obtuse nut to crack… but that I also find it my super chill happy place. I’ve been slowly working my way through unlocking all of the Heist quests, which given that I tend to find two to three rogue caches in each map… it is going pretty quickly.
Over the weekend I recorded another one of my dumb little videos where I effectively documented the state of my Righteous Fire Scavenger build. I personally find these useful because as I look back on various builds it helps me remember exactly what the state of the build was when I stopped playing it. This one was especially important I thought because we will not be getting Scavenger for very long, and the whole chaos explosions thing is really fun to experience. Essentially I zoom into a pack and it more or less explodes and then proliferates out to everything else in the area causing them to either explode or at least get whittled down in health so that my Righteous Fire can finish them off. I still prefer RF Chieftain because it is way more sturdy, but this is pretty damned fun.
Yesterday I bankrupted myself and bought a Putrid Cloister which unlocked the 3 Crafted mods benchcraft. Then I liquidated all of my available chaos to buy two Divine Orbs so that I could take the Sceptre I had been sitting on and turn it into a Damage Multi/Fire Multi setup. When Righteous Fire lost its flat damage the whole gem levels thing became way less important in the long run, and you are generally better off just trying for as much damage multi on your weapon as you can get. The other stats are largely just useless but I had a few exalted orbs sitting on my bank and figured might as well slam something on it. I even used an imprint beast on this just in case the regal orb bricked the item, so that I had one more shot at it. I now have an imprint that is mostly useless, but I would rather use it and not need it than need it and not have used it given that I captured the beast on my own.
While I was in a video recording mood I also took a bit of time and documented the final state of my Pohx League build, which was Ice Trap of Hollowness Trickster. I really do want to revisit this build during a proper league to see how far I can take it. Right now I just lack the evasion to make this feel more comfortable. I would really like to be able to hit 90% evasion chance and the limited trade environment made that difficult… or at least unaffordable. During a proper trade league there would be way more gear available, and I would probably be able to find an Ice Trap Dragonfang amulet. I had a search running for a few days and none of them showed up on the market. If this says viable, I may legitimately start it during 3.26 just to see how far I can take it, given that I already know I can run up a RF character as a backup in a few days without much issue if it crashes and burns.
This morning I got the first Tabula Rasa that I have gotten in a few league events. I think Crucible was the last league when I was getting these constantly. I had a bank full of various corrupted versions because I kept getting them, and kept rolling the dice with Vaal orbs. Not that I plan on leveling anything else during Legacy of Phrecia, but a Tabula is always a good way to start out a build. Though over the last few leagues I think I prefer some of the other starter chests if you can throw enough currency on it to get it up to four links. It is really hard to beat Thousand Ribbons for starter gear.
Last night I took out the Black Flame and then continued on and took out a corrupted Doshaguma and then a corrupted Rathalos. At that point I wandered around for awhile until the itch to play some Path of Exile caught me. I seem to only be able to take about three or four boss fights before needing to do something else for a bit. I looked at a quest guide and it does not appear that I am even halfway through the main story quest yet. I am not exactly in a massive rush, but I do prefer the endgame loop of Monster Hunter games to the story driven leveling process. Mostly I don’t love the whole fiddling around with temporary gear sets and would prefer to invest my time in a final build. It is what it is… and I find it bizarre the games that I enjoy the leveling process in like Path of Exile and the games that I just want a skip button to zoom straight to endgame goodness like Monster Hunter.
Anyways! I figure I will be flipping back and forth between these two games at least until April 2nd when the new Last Epoch Cycle lands. Depending on how engaged I get with Monster Hunter I might swap from Path of Exile to Last Epoch and then alternate between LE and MHWilds.
The post A New Sceptre appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks. As of this afternoon we will have had access to the Legacy of Phrecia event for a week. At this point I am level 94 and have mostly reached a point of stability with my build. Sure I would like to craft a new sceptre and am on the look out for a few specific jewels, but all in all Scavenger RF works pretty well. However I am not going to talk about any of that this morning, and am instead going to share my thoughts about the new Idol Based Atlas system. This entire event was touted as ideas that were left on the cutting room floor, and this idol concept was originally something that was abandoned in favor of the current Atlas tree system… which admittedly is damned near perfection. The first few days I was pretty hype for the idols, but now I have reached a point where I absolutely see the limitations and understand why this did not see the light of day.
The good about this system though, is that early maps feel amazing. You get a large number of Idols which allows you to cobble together something that mostly works. During White and Yellow progression I was essentially getting Delirium, Harvest, Niko, Essences, and Strongboxes every map… and Ritual, Expedition, and Betrayal pretty freaking often. This is way more content than you would normally have access to during early maps when you don’t really have that many Atlas points to spend. This makes the early game feel amazing… but you eventually reach a point where it starts to taper off.
By the time you are in yellow or red maps, you have quite a few points to spend on the tree which means that you have pretty much every node available for at least one league mechanic, making that single mechanic extremely juicy. In truth I tend to build trees that synergize with different abilities that are all on the same side of the tree. For example I might have a Ritual, Einhar, and Beyond tree as they all exist within a few nodes of each other so that by the time you near the end of your Atlas you have 100% chance for all of those mechanics and have a bunch of nodes that buff them so that they produce better stuff. I tend to be an “Alch and Go Andy” when it comes to mapping strategies, and I juice to extreme levels with the most expensive scarabs and most carefully rolled maps. I drop a map in the atlas, hit go, and then run with whatever content the device gives me.
For the heaviest juicers however… the Idol system is probably much better. For example Life Without Pants is a YouTuber that I enjoy watching content from, and he talks a bit about his strategy that centers around Harbingers. Essentially through the use of the Idols he can force something like six harbingers on a single map, always convert them to harbinger bosses, cause them to drop whole currency instead of shards, and then cause their cool down to be much shorter so you can complete each individual harbinger encounter much faster. Similarly Fubgun is running a strategy where he forces 36 Rogue Exiles onto his map and then uses Scarabs to juice that up considerably so that he can produce Affliction league levels of drops when you combine that with Ritual.
The problem that I have with the Idol system however is that it essentially forces you to go “all in” on a single strategy. Either you can cobble together something like I am running where it ups the chances of a bunch of different league mechanics to spawn, or you carefully craft a single mechanic and then juice it to levels that have never been possible before. The existing Atlas Tree lets you do a handful of of complementary mechanics really well, and I think makes the entire experience feel a bit better as a result. As someone who cannot bring themselves to skip mechanics when they appear on the map… it feels bad to do a bunch of mechanics with zero investment in them. Nodes that I thought might be good on their own like Crop Rotation, actually feel awful when you don’t have the rest of the points in the tree to buff it.
I think part of what makes the Idol system feel extremely bad is the fact that you are almost required to deal with massive amounts of very small specific trades in order to get an individual strategy working. Everything I am running I have cobbled together from the dregs of my bank. If you were wanting to run a hyper specific strategy though, you would need to trade for a bunch of specific rolls on idols… and then deal with the frustration of not getting answers from most of the traders because 1 Chaos trades are not worth stopping mapping for. If you want to bump things up to the next level, you are also probably going to be spending time deleting idols through the recombinator as you try and get a single item with four usable stats on it. This is graveyard crafting levels of tedium… which is again why I am mostly just yoloing my way through the system and trying to make something that feels halfway decent. This is yet another league that proves Path of Exile needs a fucking auction house already.
As glad as I am that the Idol system was left on the cutting room floor and we have our beloved Atlas tree instead… I have to admit that given the choice I would take this immediately over the systems in Path of Exile II. Everything about the Atlas tree in that game is awful, and it is entirely too focused on bossing. Bossing is just a subset of the Path of Exile 1 endgame, and most people… are not really focusing on it. Idols would go a long way towards patching the problems with that game’s system and forcing specific mechanics onto every map instead of the poorly designed precursor tablet system. Conceptually I like the exploration system because I enjoy it in Delve, but it just does not really work as a replacement for mapping. Part of the payoff of leveling and fully unlocking your atlas tree… is the agency to focus on only the mechanics that you want to focus on. You never really reach any of that payoff or any of that agency in Path of Exile II… which feels like the team missed that core tenet of the first game.
Phrecia has been a really interesting experimental league, and it was announced today that it is being extended by a month. I really like chaos pop righteous fire, and I would absolutely play something like this again in the future. Which admittedly makes me wonder what it would be like to play one of the witch based righteous fire builds at some point in the future. I do think that a lot of the ideas behind the Idol system in this league event could benefit Path of Exile II. Right now the endgame does not really work and feels way too far removed from the near perfect loop of game play that exists within Path of Exile’s endgame. All of POE’s problems center around on-boarding the player and gear acquisition for non-traders and non-crafters but the virtuous loop of the endgame was not something that should have been abandoned. Path of Exile II feels a lot like Destiny 2 did at launch… where it feels like they forgot all of the lessons that the previous game had learned. I am onboard for trying out quirky ideas in event leagues until they figure out how to make Path of Exile II feel a bit better though.
The post The Idol Based Atlas appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
