Good Morning Friends! I will warn you when I am on an ARPG kick… the posts are not going to all be winners. You have to somewhat really care about ARPGs and the loot that they can drop to fully enjoy these. That said I am not really playing anything other than Path of Exile so that is what you are going to get for a while. As of last night, I am knee-deep in Act Nine and sitting at level 73… which feels like I am a bit higher level than I was in this same place during the last league. After some rifling through my past posts for the Kalandra league I remarked that I was level 70 at the beginning of Act Ten, so I am making a bit more XP overall and it could just be that Righteous Fire is better at fully clearing a zone. I am doing really well on various resists but I am not sure how that will hold up once I get the debuff applied after killing Kitava the second time.
One thing that ultimately concerns me a bit, is that most of the gear that I am currently wearing… I have had it for a very long time. One of my rings for example is really nice but has an equipment level of eight. That means in order to transition into mapping I am likely going to have to go through a lot of socket pressure and upgrading in a very short period of time. If my resists were going to be good, then I could probably honestly start maps in the current state I am right now. However, once Kitava nerfs my resists again I am going to be hurting, especially in the fire resistance department. Not that resists are all that important but I do plan on finishing Cruel Labyrinth before I kill Kitava.
One game mode that I hated with my last build, but don’t mind at all this time around… is Incursion. Essentially for those not familiar with the various hold-over league mechanics in Path of Exile, the NPC named Alva sends you back into history and you can impact various rooms in the Temple. Essentially the overarching goal is to open up doors, which can be done by killing NPCs and getting a key to drop. You are trying to link up all of the rooms so you can run the entire Temple as a giant contorted map. Last night I managed to get my very first incursion ever where I could reach every single room in the instance. More impressive is that I took zero deaths and only had scant few close calls while trying to run the map once completed.
The rewards were not phenomenal. My loot filters seem to really be impressed by them, but in truth, most of it was vendor fodder. I held onto the unique and the belt because someone might find them useful, but everything else wasn’t of any use to me. There was also the problem that by the time I reached the end of my run, my bags were pretty full of other interesting drops that I left a lot of this to rot on the floor. Sure I could have dropped a portal because I still had five doors left… but running an entire temple with every room unlocked… is “a lot”. By the time I finished, I was very much ready to be free of that place and move on to something else.
I am still seeing my fair share of kooky kalandra-style loot drops, like this time when apparently a rare thought I needed a unique amulet and a bajillion ivory spirit shields. I am honestly kinda happy that they managed to keep some of this weirdness because it brings a smile to my face every time a dozen of the same item drops… even if said item is mostly worthless. I think more than anything that is one of the aspects of Path of Exile that I enjoy the most… the always confusing and surprising loot drops. Most of it is junk, even using an item filter… but every now and then there is a jewel in the rough that feels amazing to get. In chasing that unicorn you end up with enough raw currency that you can buy your way out of most holes.
Now for something a bit fun, because I had not really compared it myself yet either. I took some screenshots of my currency tab six days into the Kalandra league on 8/25/2022 and we can compare that with this morning’s screenshot some 4 days into the Sanctum league. At this point in the league, I feel like I am seeing way more Alchemy Orbs which is a good thing, because that is a positive for “Alch and Go” map sustain. I also have way more alterations overall which I had noticed them dropping a lot. I am down a bit on raw chaos and at this point in Kalandra I had already found a Divine Orb, but I’ve found two Exalted Orbs so while it doesn’t exactly shake out as an even it feels like I had similar tier 1 currency drops. I felt like I have had way less smithing currency, but really the difference is mostly negligible I think it was just that in Kalandra league it tended to drop 10 at a time in the lake.
All told I think I am doing pretty solidly at the moment. We will see what the next few days bring as I transition over to white maps.