Monsters Mastered

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Good Morning Folks! I spent a good chunk of my evening hanging out in Path of Exile down in Delve hunting for bosses. I finished up the Masterful Monsters challenge last night which involved defeating 50 Delve, Syndicate, Bestiary, or Incursion bosses aka the endgame bosses from the original “Master Missions” that went away this league. I would say the vast majority of those 50 bosses came from Delve since I spent most of my time down there, but I did pick up a number of beast spawns to knock out some of those as well. It seems like Curiosity Vaal Aspects have slowed down in sales, so I decided to go ahead and turn one of them into an Adorned Jewel. I didn’t get a high roll but I at least got one that is over 100% increased buff so usable. I am contemplating swapping over to the Adorned version of the Righteous Fire build so might create a few more if sales don’t pick up.

I am still not certain how many of these achievements I am going to go for, but in theory I should be able to knock out the Heist one called Tactful Thievery easily enough given the stockpile of contracts I have. Sanctified Scarabs will also be pretty easy given napkin math I will need to run 9 more maps with four scarabs to hit the goal. Map Magnificence is a much longer stretch… but also doable if I just put my head down and grind maps. Once again per napkin math that should take me around 260 t16 maps to finish that one off. In theory, I could just burn through all of my corrupted maps on my Elemental Hit of the Spectrum Champion and not worry much about the rewards. After that, the objectives become significantly harder. If I can do The Feared… I will wrap up another one but given how hard Atziri was in that fight… I am not sure I will be able to survive long enough to take her down.

I also spent some time leveling my Witch, who for the moment is not yet ascended and leveling through abuse of Storm Brand of Indecision. Like I remember folks complaining heavily about how much this skill was nerfed into the ground, but it still feels phenomenal for leveling purposes. Basically, once I can equip most of the uniques I have sitting in the bank I will respec the character entirely to go down the Tornado of Elemental Turbulence path. I managed to fish for a level 1/20% quality one so I will begin muling it at level 34. I am going to be extremely slow leveling this character because at the moment I think I care more about knocking out “acheesements” than I do leveling yet another character.

In another piece of news… Maxroll has thrown their hat in the Path of Exile Bulk Trading game. On top of this, they have also created their own TFT competitor Discord that will eventually connect up with the new website. Recently Zizaran partnered with Maxroll, and he appears to now be the owner of this new Discord. On top of that streamers Subtractem, Crouching Tuna, and Tenkiei have joined in to moderate the moderators and make sure things stay transparent and on the up and up. So I wish them luck and I hope they continue to expand the functionality of this new site. So far it seems pretty solid for bulk trading and I might try and liquidate my coffins at some point over the weekend. I am still picking them up but I think I am mostly not going to engage with graveyard crafting any further. It just isn’t really my jam.

I don’t love that it is “Yet Another Discord” and I’ve only minimally interacted with TFT, but I do like Maxroll quite a bit and think that they are doing a good job of trying to create “best in breed” applications to support the games that they cover. I can’t see that anything they have done so far cannot be a positive in the grand scheme of things. Partnering with Zizaran was a good move as the official host of his guides. Pohx would be someone else I would love to see them work with, but he has invested a lot of time in his own website. Anyways I know that these posts are only useful for folks who are already engaged in Path of Exile, but given that it is already a struggle to keep posting this is kind of what you are going to get.

Masterful Monsters

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Good Morning Folks! Between yesterday’s post and this morning, I finished off two more league challenges. Namely, I knocked out the challenge involving killing a bunch of specific league boss encounters, and I finished the one that was focused around Essences and corrupting them. I am three kills away from taking out Masterful Monsters which I am largely getting down in Delve by hunting Abyssal, Vaal, or Primal bosses. I have a few Incursion temples that I could run to knock out Vaal Omnitect which would count as well. I chain-ran a bunch of Bestiary bosses to knock out a good chunk of these as I was sitting on a bunch of the portal crafts to spawn them. I think the next one I will start chipping away at is the Heist-related one where I am pretty close to finishing up a few of the meta steps, but largely I have not even finished unlocking all of the rogues.

I am to the point of Righteous Fire where it would benefit me to swap Fire Trap to my chestpiece, but I have a tricky coloring situation there. Essentially I picked up this excellent Cloak of Flames cheaply… and have been throwing tainted chromatic orbs at it when I get them. Basically, I need RRRGGG and there is no easy way to get that on a pure Intelligence base. I could throw 1000 Tainted Chromes at this or I could get it in my next drop. In theory, I should probably focus on farming tainted currency for a bit and try and knock this out given that tainted chromes are a bit painful right now to buy in bulk. I tried the bench craft for red and green sockets a few times and burned through some of my excess vaal orbs to no real luck.

There is a skill I have been interested in this league called Tornado of Elemental Turbulence that allows you to throw out three Tornadoes at a time, but they deal damage with a random element. It just so happened that this morning Mathil published a video showing off his wonky build for this ability and it looks interesting. It would be a way squishier character than I am used to playing, but I do kinda want to play an “offense is the best defense” character to see if I could get used to it. The positive of his particular build is it is mostly uniques… and mostly things I already have sitting in my bank. I also have a Witch character that I created at the start of the league to mule some abilities that I had planned on originally making into something Detonate Dead related. I might level it up and see what this build feels like.

That will however require me to do some transfigured gem fishing in the Labyrinth. Lately I have been using Doppelganger card sets to do this which turns in for a 20% Quality level 1 Mirror Arrow card. When you use the basic lab ability to swap a gem for a transfigured gem of that same color, it will respect the level and quality making it an easy way to get 20% quality green gems to level. I was doing this to get copies of Elemental Hit of the Spectrum for attempting to corrupt it into a level 21 version. I figure in the coming days I will do the same fishing for Tornado of Elemental Turbulence. This is one of those rare cases where I think I am actually corrupting for a 20/23% gem instead of a 21/20% gem given that Quality increases movement speed giving the attack better quality of life.

Anyways! We will see what comes out of this. I know Diablo IV dropped some information on Season 4 yesterday and that we will get more info after the campfire chat. I figure I will give that game another shot, but my hopes are not high. I kinda feel like the folks working on that game don’t really understand how to make an ARPG that ARPG players actually enjoy. There was a whole sound clip from one of the earlier campfire chats where one of the devs indicated that he thought Elden Ring, Hades, Hollow Knight, and Diablo IV were all in the same genre of “Action RPG”. While I think the itemization updates are good, I still have zero faith that the folks steering that project have a clue what the folks who will stick around and keep playing season after season actually want.

Anyways! I hope you are having a most excellent week. I am still struggling to focus and fighting off a massive “turtle mode” but trying to brute force my way out of it.

Embiggened Totem

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Good Afternoon Friends. I am very late in getting this post started, and quite honestly for a bit I thought I would just give today a pass. I’m still poking at Path of Exile and I find myself in the process of trying to finish out league challenges. For those who have never played this game, during a league there are a series of 40 challenges asking you to interact with various league mechanics. For your troubles you are rewarded with a Totem pole for your Hideout that grows in height based on the number of challenges that you have completed. There is also a set of cosmetic gear that will only ever be available for completing challenges and four tiers of ever fancier sets that also map back to the number of achievements you have finished. At 19 Achievements you get your first totem and around that same mark is when you finish the first tier of cosmetic armor. Starting with Sanctum I have set myself up to trying to get at least the “sad little totem” that is available during that league.

Last league I managed to complete enough challenges to get one size bigger, and this league so far I have gotten up to the third stage of the totem. Now I find myself in a pattern of trying to complete as many challenges as are reasonable for someone who generally hates bossing. Between yesterday and today I have completed three more challenges and find myself closing in on another one. Given I am still in the mood to grind I could in theory probably knock out a total of 32 out of 40 this league gaining me the full set of Tier 3 armor and another few steps of totem upgrades. This however will require me to keep respeccing to shift league mechanics. I ground out a bunch of Harbingers and Beachhead maps in order to finish out the last few steps for that challenge, and ultimately bought the last item I needed to craft a harbinger weapon from the market.

Currently, I have respected my Atlas in order to focus on Essences so that I could knock out a few very specific achievements… namely a Map Boss with 6 Essences and a Rare monster with 3 Deafening Essences. All that I have left there is to use a bunch of remnants of corruption and that will be another challenge in the bag. After that I need to spend some time specced into Incursion and Betrayal in order to knock the bosses of each game mode off of a meta-achievement that I already have six of eight. Fighting Incursion and Betrayal bosses will also give me a little bit of progress towards another achievement centered around fighting league mechanic bosses. I am getting most of those down in Delve however so I am personally having an easier time with that than a lot of folks are.

Each league SirGog puts out a video talking about how he would approach all forty of the challenges and for me at least this was appropriately timed. Given how many Doryani’s Maps that I have sold recently, I am guessing a lot of folks are focusing on wrapping things up. I have a feeling that I will get sucked into Diablo IV Season 4 when it starts later in May, so similarly I am experiencing a bit of pressure to get things wrapped up while I am still engaged. All of that said I am happy enough with my current progress so that if I never played anymore I would still be satisfied. I have a growing collection of sad little totems and they make me happy.

Hundred Again

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Good Morning Friends… which admittedly feels odd to say given how much I have failed this past week to say it. I am not entirely certain what I am going through right now, but it has been harder and harder to sit down and actually write something. I think mostly it has felt like I didn’t really have anything worth saying. I’ve been quietly plugging away at Path of Exile while listening my way through the Brandon Sanderson Cosmere books… and none of that seemed terribly interesting. When every blog post feels the same… I struggle a bit to find the desire to go through the motions. We’ve also had wild weather here in Oklahoma which led me to not even have a podcast this week.

Yesterday I dinged level 100 which makes for the second time I have done this in Path of Exile. I feel like I could walk away from this league happy with my progress. I am not sure why exactly I wanted to hit 100 this time around, but it was one of those nagging feelings in the back of my head. The first time I did so was largely to prove that I could, and after that, it felt like the novelty had worn off. This time around though I had reached a point where I was thoroughly happy with my character and mostly just wanted to ding as a bit of a victory lap. I am contemplating completely reworking a chunk of my character in order to fully switch it to the more powerful version of the build including cluster jewels. I have a good stockpile of currency and given that I have available to me all of the talent points… I could tweak my build to see what that version of Righteous Fire feels like.

Most of my currency is still coming from Delve, but the strategies have shifted a bit. In previous leagues, I made my currency a nickel and dime at a time through Resonator sales. With the graveyard crafting and some changes to the atlas making it so folks are printing azurite… the resonator market has crashed. Though ironically there are still folks occasionally buying my wares in bulk. Most of my currency is coming from Curiosity Vaal Apsects which sell for around 16 Divine Orbs each. There is a slightly lesser trade in Doryani’s Machinarium, Aul’s Uprising, and the various rings that go into Precurors. Basically, this means I am hunting for bosses above all else… which has the positive side effect of progressing one of the league challenges.

Generally speaking, my goal for every league is to get enough of the challenges completed in order to get the sad little totem pole which I think comes at 19. This is the second league in a row where I have gotten at least the first upgraded version. It is highly unlikely that I will ever hit 40 of 40 unless there is a mighty force behind me wanting something that comes from the end of that journey. I will say though that the changes in how Scarabs work, have made focusing in on specific mechanics far easier than they would have been in previous leagues. Running a full complement of scarabs for a single-league mechanic is almost as good as having your tree specced for it. I am slowly collecting Fortunate cards so that I can turn in and complete Divined Destiny. Maybe I can complete the full set of the upgraded armor appearances, but that is probably as far as I will be able to make it in this league before I run out of steam.

I went on a bit of a tear yesterday completing different Maven witnesses. I’ve admittedly never attempted any of these in previous leagues though I probably could have without much issue. At this point, I have completed The Formed, The Forgotten, The Twisted, The Hidden, The Elder Slayers, and am working on getting my witnesses for The Feared. I had no clue that when I took down Cortex it was a Witnessed version. I am just about done with a Chayula Breach stone so I should be able to get that witness pretty quickly then it just leaves Elder, Shaper, and Sirus. Sirus is the one that probably worries me the most because that fight is annoying enough on its own.

Delve is still my happy place, but mostly chasing The Feared is an attempt to prove it to myself that I could do it if I chose to do so. I don’t love bossing. It feels like a lot of effort for a very minimal payoff. Especially given how much the prices of everything has crashed this league, there just isn’t near the chase that there might have been previously. I sincerely doubt I will ever really chase Uber bosses because given that I don’t love the amount of faffing about required to fight normal bosses… I certainly don’t love the thought of grinding out the already painful t17s to get emblems in order to fight Uber bosses. My hope is that in 3.25 they make some significant changes to T17s which will hopefully make them less egregious.

Past that I have been helping my friend get started who is also playing a Righteous Fire Chieftain. I helped my friend Ric through a bunch of the gear acquisition and now I am helping my friend Lethbridge with some similar gaps in gearing. That is probably my favorite part of Path of Exile when I can help friends get the stuff they need. Acquiring something for a friend who is also playing is way more enjoyable than chasing my own goals. Anyways hopefully I will be a bit more regular this week with my blog posts but honestly… who knows!