Voidborn Reliquary Key

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Good Morning Friends! Prepare for yet another post of me doing some stupid nonsense in Path of Exile. I figure at this point all that is left reading these daily posts are the truly diehard folks, and the actual Path of Exile enjoyers… or I guess those who potentially hate read these? I am an “MTX Enjoyer” and I find that looking cool in a game helps my enjoyment greatly. In this league, one of the supporter packs went all in on the fire theme, and since I was playing Righteous Fire on Juggernaut it seemed like something I definitely needed in my life. What was truly fortuitous was this season when you pick up Kirac’s Vault pass you end up with a bunch of random loot boxes. One of these produced the weird cosmic flaming wolf pet that you see beside me called that apparently came from the Twilight Mystery Box. The cosmic aspect is even more perfect given that I tend to run the celestial MTX for my Righteous Fire aura.

I get that all of this is a colossal waste of money, but they end up making me happy and have no real in-game benefits. There are two things that I really spend money on in games are the first are things that add quality of life benefits, like the various stash tabs in Path of Exile, or the endless crafting storage in Elder Scrolls Online. The second is cool outfits, and I am more than happy to spend some real-world monies to look cool. It isn’t even that I care about the “flexing” aspect of wearing something, because it gives me zero real-world cred to have swiped a credit card. It just makes me happy to have a character that I think looks slick. Transmogrification/Wardrobe systems are among the most important parts of an MMORPG and if you are designing a new one… please put in a system that allows for nigh-endless customization. Do not be FFXIV and artificially limit the number of items you can keep, and instead be like the various systems that give you credit when you pick up an item for its appearance. I wish Path of Exile did this, because there are actually a lot of cool items that drop in the game already.

Last night was a night for exploring Delve, looking for bosses, and listening to Skin Game by Jim Butcher. I’m now somewhere around chapter 30 in the novel and managed to spend my 55k Sulfite and find I think four Abyssal and Vaal cities in the process. In all of those nodes, I managed to fight another Vaal boss and another Abyssal Lich. While yesterday was apparently the day of raw Divine Orbs dropping, I did not have anywhere near that level of luck but I did pick up a few rare items that are going to enable some specific brands of nonsense. While delving I also sold a few high ticket items or at least high tickets for me in the 100s of Chaos range. Thankfully people seem to be pretty good-natured about waiting for you to finish whatever you are doing in order to make the sale. Generally speaking, if I am in the middle of something… the price point of the item that someone wants determines if it is worth my time to respond. If I am just starting a heist run, and you are pinging me about something in my 1 Chaos tab, then I am probably going to ignore it unless you ask nicely. I had someone who specifically needed an amulet and they were fine with waiting for me to finish the activity I was on.

Last night I got the rare piece of the Ultimatum Aspect to drop in delve. Essentially this is a way to access a league mechanic that I did not even know existed. Apparently back in April of 2021 during the 3.14 Ultimatum League, there was a build-your-own-boss-fight encounter called the Tower of Ordeals, that dropped a number of interesting Vaal items. A little-known feature of 3.19 Lake of Kalandra was apparently adding these back into the game through 4 items that drop in different modes of gameplay.

If combined in your inventory in a specific pattern, as shown above, they combine to create a custom map that grants access to the Trialmaster from Ultimatum with a number of random affixes determining what sorts of things happen during the fight. For example, Choking Miasma is a cloud that deals Chaos Damage Over Time, and it means in order to do the fight I am probably going to want to spec my Pantheon into Arakaali which gives me extra resistance to that. For now, I am close to dinging another level on the Juggernaut and as such, I am going to file this away until I am in that post-ding “safe period” to try dumb things.

Another cool thing that happened last night is that I got a Voidborn Reliquary Key to drop while doing delve. Sadly I have no screenshot of when it dropped because I was in the middle of a darkness-filled abyssal city and hurriedly shoveling loot into my inventory as the darkness timer ticked down. It was very shiny and rainbow-colored on the loot filter, so it will likely be extremely hard to miss. They seem to be going for around 2 Divine Orbs for one of these keys, if not considerably lower than that. There is someone who priced one at 20 Chaos but I think they are just trolling. I figured it was worth 2 Divines or the loss of that in order to have the experience of opening one. When placed in the map device it teleports you to a map featuring a loot box that can be opened once. Inside it is an item dictated by the players who purchased the extremely expensive Voidborn Supporter Pack for around $500.

Purchasing the pack allows players access to a hidden interface on the Grinding Gear Games website allowing them to choose any unique in the game, assign a foil color, and then write a message to players when they open the item. For example, I pulled Ngamahu’s Flame in the Verdant Foil color scheme, and when I opened the item this line of text scrolled across my chat box.

A weapon from olden times, when Cyclone moved in straight lines.  Two birds in one with links undone.  This axe may finally shine.

I’ve never used this weapon but I am extremely happy that I managed to pull an item with a “real” message. There are apparently a number of items thrown into the mix as clear trolls like “this could have been a headhunter” on one of the other heavy belts. I have to admit this almost makes me want to create a build around this weapon since for some sort of flame-based juggernaut melee build, it seems like it could be rather good. I guess there is a Fire Cyclone Chieftan build that currently exists that utilizes this weapon or at least it did as of 3.19. If I got another key to drop though, I would probably just sell it. I’ve had the experience and it was good enough for me.

I think I have decided that I am going to stop engaging with the Sanctum league mechanic. I do not enjoy it, and while I can often get pretty far with my Summon Raging Spirits Necromancer… I just sort of hate the way the mechanic works. Sure you can save an entire floor’s worth of progress while doing other things… but there just never seems to be a time when I actually want to sit down and engage with it. I like playing tanky characters and have no interest in dodging all of the mechanics, and as such I will never really grok the way this game mode wants to work. As much effort as GGG has devoted to it, I fully expect this to land in standard and be something that we are dealing with going forward. My hope is that they modify it so that it works well for other styles of play because right now if you are going to engage with it, you really want something that can clear entire screens at a time. My hope is you can eventually collect an entire run and then interact with Divinia in your hideout to embark upon the Sanctum experience.

I think a better version of this would be to merge the Lake of Kalandra mechanic with Sanctum and take away the whole resolve mechanic. Have it so that each map you run builds the layout of rooms in your sanctum, and then once you have finished laying out a floor you save it as a map and run that. I really enjoyed the tile placing mechanic of the Lake, and were it not for ArchNemesis that would have been an extremely fun mechanic. Sanctum only works for people who are not building tanks that benefit from things hitting them. For example on my Righteous Fire Juggernaut, a large part of my defensive layer is from building six endurance stacks by getting hit. I just think between Sanctum and Lake there is one really great game mode that could be cobbled together. For the time being, however, I am mostly going to bail from engaging with the current league mechanic because there are so many older mechanics that I would rather spend my time doing.

I think more than anything, that the key to really enjoying Path of Exile long-term is deciding that it is okay that there are parts of the game you will never engage with. Each league mechanic is almost a game in itself, and I am more than happy picking and choosing the ones that I want to play. I don’t force myself into open-world PVP experiences, because I have learned that I don’t enjoy them. Similarly, I should be perfectly fine knowing that I don’t like Tower Defense games and as such, I should probably block Blight from my Atlas tree. Occasionally there is a game mode like Incursion that I did not like at first but have come to enjoy, and that is awesome as well. However, for me… this is the league of Heist and Delve and I am okay with that.