Month: December 2024

Path of Exile Creator Land Run

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This is going to be a bit of a weird one, for anyone not deeply entrenched in the names and faces of Path of Exile content creators. Essentially what triggered this blog post is a simple message that I saw scroll across my timeline over on BlueSky. Ziggy D, a content creator in the Path of Exile community that I know almost exclusively as “the guy who does the Q&A discussions after a Path of Exile League announcement“, got snatched up by Maxroll. I’ve been a supporter of Maxroll for quite a while since Raxxanterax took a role with the site in the lead-up to the release of Diablo IV. They’ve seemingly pioneered this model of going into a community and signing up a bunch of creators who are already known for creating great content. However, this is not just something they are doing right now.

On November 20th Lolcohol, another Path of Exile Content Creator announced that he was taking the leap and going full-time content creator and at the same time announced his partnership with a site I had never heard of before. This of course caused me to do what I always do and furiously google it to glean some understanding. It seems like Mobalytics is a big player in the MOBA guide space, and is now casting out its fortunes with ARPGs. It turns out it was not just Lolcohol that they snatched up but also signed a bunch of other names that I actually care about. Here is the list of folks on the Content creator team that I immediately recognized:

There are a few other names listed but I have no clue who they are. If you have read any of my discussions about Path of Exile, you will probably recognize at a minimum SirGog and Jorgen, two creators that influence me pretty heavily. I am certain I will watch to see what sorts of content gets released on this site as we roll into POE2, and how heavily these creators end up promoting it.

I talked at the top of this post about Maxroll and their recent land grab for creators, and quite honestly they have a very impressive team as well. I think the big thing they are known for among creators is their profit-sharing agreements. This is something that ZiggyD went into at length in this thread on Bluesky. I know at least in their support of Path of Exile 1, their guide creation and the way they format the information has been presented has improved massively since their first few outings. That is the biggest thing I like about the site and why I have decided to become a supporter, is that they keep changing the site to service the content better. Anyways like I said they have a pretty stacked list of creators and these are the ones that I immediately recognized:

Like I have said before it was really the involvement of Raxxanterax that made me sit up and pay attention to Maxroll initially. More recently getting Zizaran to come on board in a major way was a huge boon to the site, because essentially he is synonymous with Path of Exile and New Player Guides. I also like that basically it is a single site that I feel entirely comfortable recommending to friends who are just getting started out. The initial round of POE guides were a bit bait, but they have improved drastically over time.

However, we can’t really talk about POE Guide sites without talking about POE Vault aka the site owned by a major player in the MMORPG space Icy Veins. Until the advent of Maxroll, Icy Veins was my go-to site for Diablo III guides and information, and for years it was probably the most recognizable single source of guides for Path of Exile. The thing is… it isn’t anywhere near as clear to determine who is actually being sponsored by IcyVeins to create guides for them. I know that GhazzyTV is, mostly because he has talked about it specifically and his role in helping to manage that site. For a lot of folks, it was just a convenient place to host the text version of their otherwise largely YouTube guides. Pohx for example hosts his guides there in spite of having an entirely custom wiki surrounding his infamous Righteous Fire content. So while it is uncertain what the relationship is with the site financially, there are still quite a few creators who seem to support the site:

There are other names associated with the site, but those are the main ones that I would personally care about. The danger of the site is there are also quite a few guides that feel like bait. Example… I would take anything maintained by TbXie with a massive grain of salt because the friends I know who have attempted to follow their guides have struggled considerably.

It certainly feels like most of the guide creation for Path of Exile and Path of Exile II, has been consumed by three websites at this point. It makes me wonder if this trend will accelerate as they attempt to effectively lock down the remaining talent. I question though… how much money is there really in creating guides for an ARPG? There will of course be plenty of guides unaffiliated with these sites. Reddit and the PathOfExile2Builds subreddit which is patterned off the already excellent PathOfExileBuilds will be a likely source. It is just really weird to watch this land grab happening for Content creators because I do not remember similar things happening in the MMORPG space necessarily. There was always the eternal war between Icy Veins and WoWHead but it seemed to be way less centered around “celebrities” from those communities.

My hat is in the ring with Maxroll, mostly because it is the site that personally seems to be the most valuable to me. I am however really interested to see what sorts of things SirGog and Jorgen end up creating on Mobalytics.

Path of Exile 2 Acendancy Spoilers

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Good Morning Folks! Yesterday Grinding Gear Games released the full reveal of all of the major nodes for the twelve ascendancies that will be playable in the Path of Exile II Early Access. This is critical because at least in this first release, players will be unable to respec their ascendancy. Generally speaking, you don’t have to be super certain which direction you are going to be going in Path of Exile, because you can always change ascendancies at a later date. You will still be able to move points around, but shifting from Titan to Warbringer on the Warrior class for example would require you to roll a brand new character. This has been a point of contention for veteran players, Zizaran specifically in his recent interview with Jonathan asked for them to release the full ascendancy information ahead of time.

Right now my game plan is to go Warrior and rush the Regen/Armor cluster marked with number one. We don’t have a complete build tool yet, but a number of the nodes have been data-mined from the various videos that were released of the last LA Streamer event. So far this seems to be the best tool available with updated information, and where I pulled the above screenshot that I took into photoshop. The next goal is to pick up the one-hander nodes at #4 and then head down to pick up all of the mace nodes at #2. Then I will path down to #3 and hopefully be able to pay the strength requirements to swap over to Giant’s Blood which will allow me to run the Two-Hander and Shield setup that I plan on going permanently. I will likely have some abilities set up with this configuration, and then others will be swapping over to a dual-wielding Two-hander weapon swap. Once I get Giant’s Blood I will be dropping the Onehanded nodes at #4 and picking up the Twohanded nodes directly across the path from them.

However, I am stuck with which of the two Warrior ascendancies to go with. All of this time I have said I was going Titan, but one of potentially the best nodes is buried behind a fairly awful one. Hulking Form seems really strong because this will not only give me a 50% increased effect on the attribute travel nodes but also all of the small nodes that give other benefits throughout the tree. Like I said though, it is buried behind Colossal Capacity which is a nice quality of life, but otherwise useless node. I also want Crushing Blows and a 40% More multiplier against Heavy Stunned enemies, but taking Hulking Form would force me to bypass some of the other good nodes like the ones that cause Slam skills to gain Aftershocks.

All of that said… the Warbringer tree is looking pretty tasty as well. Namely, there is a potentially wild node called Imploding Impacts that lets your Armor break attacks go into the negatives, increasing the amount of damage dealt with your attacks. This morning however SirGog pointed out that unless the damage calculations have changed for Armor, there is the potentially to break the game. I am also a big fan of Warcaller’s Bellow which causes corpses around you to explode when you do a Warcry and Greatwolf’s Howl which removes the cooldown from Warcries in general. There are also a bunch of block-related nodes that might be good because I am absolutely going after some block on the tree to allow me to passively shed damage. Basically I want high armor, high regen, and high block to attempt to create a pretty tanky character.

In other general Path of Exile II news, they released an announcement yesterday that preloading will be available on Thursday aka Tomorrow at 7 pm CST. This is specifically for the standalone client, but I would expect that it should be available through Steam shortly after that point. I am not sure if I will do the Standalone client or the Steam client. Right now I am running POE1 with a separate client, but have been contemplating moving back to the Steam client just to have better time played tracking. Hopefully, this gives folks enough time to download if they have slower internet connections. Essentially they were playing a game of chicken so that they could hopefully release the game without giving time for folks to data-mine the hell out of the client before it goes live.

Lastly, they released a video yesterday as well showing off a series of Twitch drops, and a promotion with Twitch for gifting two subs to a streamer. I will likely do this thing because the Chimaera pet is kind of adorable, in that so hideous it is cute kind of way. I will absolutely be farming the Twitch drops as I often do, even though none of them are particularly exciting to me save for the pet.

Path of Exile Stash Tabs

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Good Morning Folks! I’ve had a bunch of friends asks me assorted questions about Path of Exile II, the supporter pack tiers, and what they should spend their cash shop points on. So I am doing what I do almost every time a bunch of people ask me the same question… create a blog post that will hopefully help many players. So the first question is whether or not the $30 supporter pack is “good enough” or if they really need something in the higher tier packs. Path of Exile does this weird thing where they sell supporter packs for the same face value as they sell shop currency. The cosmetics that are included in the various packs are just that, pretty things you can equip but have no real bearing on the game itself.

There are a few examples of cosmetics that grant you some nice-to-have ability. For example, I have a ring that keeps track of all of the currency items that have dropped on the ground since I equipped the cosmetic on that character. I have a map device in my hideout that I just swapped to recently, that keeps track of the number of White, Yellow, Red, and Purple rarity maps that I have run during that League. These do somewhat improve my enjoyment of the game, but they are not required to have by any means. The supporter packs have cosmetics in them that will go away at the end of the year when they roll out the next version of supporter packs. Similarly, the league-specific supporter packs go away when the next league starts. So if there is something that you absolutely feel like you have to have, there is a bit of time-limited FOMO surrounding it but it is not game-changing.

What is however fairly game-changing is the ability to purchase additional stash tabs. Once purchased these tabs carry forward for each league that you play, and when you start a brand new league you get an empty set to populate with items that drop during that event. When a league ends you get remove-only versions of these tabs in the Standard league so that you can retrieve your items. I have a lot of them, but I am also a massive packrat when it comes to gaming. I am one of those folks who install a mod to disable encumbrance in pretty much every game that has that concept. This is what I have spent the vast majority of my supporter pack currency on over the years and I have every specialty tab, as well as a number of quad tabs for storing things during the league. I recorded a video yesterday talking through my feelings regarding various stash tabs you can purchase, but I will dive into it in written form this morning.

If you bought the basic $30 supporter pack, that means you have 300 points to spend. First I would absolutely wait until there is a Stash Tab sale going on. In theory, these should occur every 3 weeks or have traditionally… which means if that schedule holds on Friday just as the POE2 Early Access is beginning there should be a Stash Tab sale going through that weekend. The three tabs that I would focus on as a brand-new player are the Currency Tab, Map Tab, and Premium Quad Tab. Currency essentially allows you to store 5000 of every individual currency type in Path of Exile/Path of Exile II meaning there is a heck of a lot of value in that one tab. Map Stash tabs are the second most valuable tab specifically in the endgame and I feel like similarly, the Tablet drops which replace Maps in Path of Exile II will likely fit into this tab. Premium Quad stash tabs are four times as big as normal tabs and also have the ability to sell items from them on the Trade website, which gives you the option to become a market baron later on.

Like I said you want to wait until these go on sale because you cannot buy all three for your initial 300 Currency at the normal prices. However, if you wait… you absolutely can. Generally speaking, the sale price is 20% off.

Stash TabNormal PriceSale Price
Currency Tab7560
Map Tab150120
Premium Quad Tab150120
375300

So off sale you are 75 points shy of being able to get the three tabs with your 300 points, however, while the tabs are on sale it works out to be exactly 300 points pending the sale is the standard 20% off.

So say you had bought the second tier of supporter packs and had 600 points to play with, here are the other tabs that I would suggest as useful. Essentially my methodology here is to choose the tabs that give you a lot of storage for things that are otherwise annoying to store in a bulk tab. Divination Cards are sets of cards that you can turn in for items, and this tab stores 5000 of each individual card type which is way more than you can stack in a single tab of any other type. Essences are going to be really critical for crafting in POE2 and again these store large quantities of each individual type of essence so well worth having. Fragments are similar in that most of these don’t stack in your inventory but will stack to large quantities in the specialty tab. Lastly, the Unique tab is something you are probably going to want at some point, especially if you are the type to hold onto uniques just in case you might have a build that needs one later.

Stash TabNormal PriceSale Price
Divination Tab5040
Fragment Tab7560
Essence Tab4032
Unique Tab140112
305244

So again if you wait for these tabs to be on sale, you can pick up all of this for that extra 300 points and then have some left over to play with. Essentially always wait to buy stash tabs until they are on sale because the sales happen on a fairly reliable basis. Again if the pattern holds, the next time they should be available is starting this coming weekend.

The cool thing about Stash tabs and cosmetics in general is that within reason, they apply to both Path of Exile 1 and Path of Exile 2. I got some bad news yesterday that apparently guilds do not transfer between the games, so I will have to create a new copy of our guild in Path of Exile II, and similarly will need to rebuy the guild stash tabs. However like I said above… I am going to wait until the Stash tab sale before doing this so that I can stretch my points as much as possible. If you can wait, I would say a general rule of thumb is to never pay full price of any cosmetics because there are other reoccurring sale types that cover hideout decorations and skill effects as well.

The last bit of advice I would give you is to avoid the cash shop traps. Firstly they have blind loot boxes that you can purchase that give you a random cosmetic from a unique set of cosmetics for that league. They have built-in duplicate protection so that is at least nice, but if you are patient enough all of the cosmetics from these loot boxes go on sale as individual microtransactions during the next league, so roughly three to four months down the line. So if there is something specific that you want you can just pick that up rather than wasting your money trying to pull it. Lastly, the Stash Tab bundles are only a trap because once you get used to using Quad Tabs, you will wish that you had never purchased anything but those. The bundles are normal tabs, and there is no way to upgrade 4 normal tabs to a single quad tab at least not as of yet. The difference between Standard and Premium is that Premium tabs give you the ability to list items on the trade site from them. Essentially you are paying for the privilege of having that tab indexed by GGG so that you can list items from it.

I am hoping that this has helped someone out there because admittedly everything about Path of Exile and Path of Exile II… is a lot. The thing is that Grinding Gear Games is one of the few studios that I actively want to give more money. I feel like the Microtransactions really do get funneled right back into game content, because so many of the leagues are outrageously detailed. Even the loot boxes have some really interesting stuff in them, but like I said you should really focus on building out stash tabs for your account because those are things that are always going to be useful for the life of your account. Given that I exclusively play league content, and never play standard… having a fresh set of tabs each time a brand new event rolls around is super nice. You can also keep those remove-only tabs pretty much indefinitely so at the end of a league I just dump them in a folder named after the league that just finished and ignore them unless I specifically need something from them.

The Waiting Game

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Good Morning Folks! The weekend before last I had put up most of the Christmas decorations, but on Saturday I finally got our little tree up. Essentially we have a very small tree on top of the entertainment center because the cats have yet to figure out how to get up there. Prior to that I just had the tree skirt and runner with my two goofy little snowpeople. It is especially sad that the Christmas season is shorter this year because I do love hanging out downstairs with a laptop and seeing the cycling lights out of the corner of my eye. For years we did not do any sort of a tree and then at some point, I got tired of this, and for the last decade or so we have done a small tree on top of the entertainment center to feel festive without the cats attempting to climb it.

The box to the left of the tree in the above picture is the only gadget that I bought in the Black Friday nonsense. I hate airing up tires. I’ve always been annoyed that the process was not as simple as dialing in an air pressure and then having the tire inflated to that pressure and it shutting off. In my brief roaming around I found this doodad, and have now used it and it works beautifully. Essentially it is roughly the size of a double-thick battery bank and you set the pressure on the readout, hook it up to your tire’s valve stem, and then start it, and it will shut off whenever it reaches the desired pressure. Yesterday afternoon I used it and it really was as simple as it sounded, It used about 1/3rd of its battery capacity to air up four tires that were low due to the temperature drop.

This is going to be one of the longest weeks in history, as I anxiously await the beginning of Path of Exile 2 Early Access. I’ve been trying to distract myself with POE1, but I am uncertain that it is really working. I did however get a wild drop of div cards. Not that any of these are terribly valuable, but I came across a Diviners Lockbox and had the bit where I can open it an additional time… proc five times in a row. I would like to hit level 100, but I still have like five pips worth of experience left to go and it is coming so slowly either through maps or delve. I thought about starting a brand new character, but I am not sure it is worth the effort given that I am going to abandon it rapidly.

I’ve also been playing a lot of Starfield, but that is way more of a janky mess than I remember it being. I have no clue WHY I stopped playing it. My guess is a POE League or something similar. Whatever the case it has been on my radar to start back up at some point. I’ve played about 40 hours on this current playthrough and am starting to get into territory that I no longer remember in the main story. As is always the case with any Bethesda game, the side content feels way more engaging than the main story. I talked about this on the podcast over the weekend, but there is a mental disconnect between how good this game looks… and how dated the systems and interactions feel. This is very much Skyrim in outer space, and if you had told me this was a total conversion mod I would probably believe you. It feels like there is about a Skyrim’s worth of content, but it is spread out across many planets that are devoid of any interesting spots save for one or two highlighted ones.

I’ve also encountered a number of frustratingly glitched-out quests. For example, I was trying to join the Freestar Rangers and did one of those janky follow-the-NPC missions. Upon getting into the room… the escort seemed to have forgotten why she brought me to the room because the Marshall that I was supposed to be talking to was busy in the corner reading a book. The NPCs won’t interrupt each other so we sit in this eternal dance of a quest being completely stalled out without a way to get past it other than using a console command. There are also weird interactions with your companions. For example, the companion that I married… will say things like “I saw this and thought of you” and then proceed to hand you 603 Credits. Why that specific 603 credits reminded her of me… no fucking clue.

Then there are things that are cool but also superfluous. For example, at some point, they added dune buggies to the game, so that every time I land my ship it is outside waiting on me. The thing is… every quest lands me a few feet from the entrance to the POI, so there is never much reason to use the vehicle. I could of course wander off and go explore the planet, but also I know that there is nothing of any interest other than the fixed POIs that have already been labelled on my map. It is a game with epic amounts of fast travel so that nothing actually feels like you are really exploring space or the planet’s surfaces. I feel like I want to finish the MSQ at least once, and I enjoy some of the moment-to-moment side quests… but this is very much not a great game. It does not deserve a lot of the ire that it has been given, because everything is hyperbole in online discourse, but it also doesn’t really work.