Good Morning Friends! It is another day and another Path of Exile post. I thought maybe breaking the atlas complete boundary, would end up taking away my desire to play the game but thus far it has not. In fact, I seemed to have a grand ole time last night running maps for experience and actually manage to push over the level 90 barrier. When I dinged I got an achievement called Diminishing Returns, which apparently only 6.5% of players have ever accomplished. My rarest achievement is Atlas of Worlds for completing the Atlas and only 2.2% of players have accomplished that. Now in theory I begin working on gaining a reputation with the Maven, Searing Exarch, and Eater of Worlds.
I’ve been woefully neglecting that side of the game while grinding out the Atlas since I was laser-focused on getting the maps completed and getting the map bonuses. In theory, I probably should have been letting the Maven watch my victories, but adding the Maven makes them ever so slightly more difficult and at that point, I wanted to get those bonuses before anything else. This morning I took care of my Tier 12+ Maven invitation, and now must have her witness my victories on Tier 14+ fights. Based on the wiki, this is the last step in that sequence, and will give me her final invitation to the crucible. If I were min-maxing this apparently choosing specific bosses to have her witness changes the odds of getting specific unique drops. I’ve made zero progress on Searing Exarch or Eater of Worlds, so I guess I need to focus on getting some progress there as well. I know all of this is ultimately what unlocks access to boss invitations, and in theory, my next BIG objective would be to down all of the “ubers”.
Last night I dove further into the trading system than I have ever before. Up until this point I had only been involved with purchasing items, but last night I sold a Divine Orb in order to get some liquid Chaos for other purchases. This was a bit of a disorienting mess and I quickly realized why folks run the POE Trading overly as it catches the messages and buffers them for you. Within minutes of me putting up my Divine Orb, I was flooded with messages and in less than 5 minutes from pricing it I had sold it. Essentially at this point, I have done enough trading that it seems to follow a specific sequence of operations.
- Buyer clicks message link from Official Trading website
- This sends a canned message indicating which item and what stash slot the item is located in and its price.
- The seller teleports to a location with a stash box, usually a hideout.
- The seller chooses one of the incoming messages.
- The seller invites the player to a party.
- The buyer teleports to the location the seller is at, with currency in hand.
- The seller opens a trade window and drops the item being sold.
- The buyer drops the currency in the trade window.
- Both sides have to mouse over the trade to verify it is what they are expecting.
- The seller usually seems to hit trade first.
- The buyer hits the trade and completes the transaction.
- The seller kicks the buyer out of the party.
I’ve seen this exact same sequence play out over and over, and often times not a single word was exchanged during it. It happens so quickly and efficiently that it might as well have been an auction house transaction.
Why I was bothering with selling a Divine last night, is that I was attempting to play broker and purchase some items for a friend. The trade aspect of the game is daunting and not everyone is willing to deal with it, but there comes a time in most builds when you need some items to beef up your progress. The other problem with the trade game is that you are trying to find the best item at the moment you are searching. It is extremely rare that you are going to find the perfect item, or if you do… it might be prohibitively expensive. For example, I was trying to follow a guide and the guide got the gem colors wrong… that is easily fixable. What is not fixable however is that the helm I got had the wrong implicit… which is apparently super important. The cost difference between the item was 35 Chaos for the slightly wrong item… and 3 Divines or roughly 600 Chaos for the correct implicit. I know when I got my gear I made some slight sacrifices and have largely been fine, and I am hoping that the same will be true. Otherwise, I will keep shopping for that perfect hat.
In other exciting news… I got an email yesterday in my inbox that I had been waiting for. I finalized my purchase of the Steam Deck and am now waiting anxiously to see a shipping confirmation. I went with the 64 GB model because the price was right for my interest at the time. I am also not concerned with upgrading the SSD inside after the fact, but based on the testing I have seen there is not a massive difference between loading off the SSD and loading off an SD Card. So for the moment, my plan is to use a 512 GB SD card for storage. Expect some coverage of my first steps into this world at some point in the future.