One of the strange occurrences that I have wanted so bad to message my wife about… is the changed behavior in Mollie our most skittish cat. She can be an extremely sweet cat, but also runs like hell at the slightest unexpected motion. She has been forcefully snuggling with me when I first crawl into bed, and gripes at me when I am not already in place when she expects me to be so. She runs away when Gracie decides it is time to come to bed, but for about thirty minutes at the start of every sleep cycle, she is there with me while I am fiddling around on my phone and doing dailies in the few mobile games that I play. I’ve attempted to get a photo of this, and so far this is the best one not only because I am laying down and attempting to take it… but also because the lights are off and the only light is from the television. It has only taken a decade to get this far… but she will headbutt me so freaking hard before she eventually settles down snuggling up against my side.
I did not join in the reindeer games in Guild Wars 2 last night because I was emotionally exhausted. I had a good therapy session, but it was a tiring one and after finishing that up… and doing the various nightly processes I just was out of it and fighting sleepytime. I stayed up until around 9:30 which is my normal bedtime, but was way too out of it to have joined in on any group activities. Instead I did some Audiobook and Path of Exile time as I started on Dead Country by Max Gladstone which is a new series with the flagship character of the Craft Sequence that I read over the last few years. There were six books in that series and I highly suggest all of them. What is awkward about those books is that they collected the first five into a single volume… then I guess Max decided to write a sixth book, and it makes my eye twitch that the artwork does not match the first five books at all which have a similar theme. Anyways looking forward to this new trilogy of which I think only two books are out.
One of the things that is not really being talked about right now in Path of Exile is how profitable Delve has been this league. It is a combination of the fact that there is no league specific crafting mechanic, and that the return of Kingsmarch has made gold fairly valuable because people want to run those big shipments for a shot at getting back mirror shards. Delve, Heist, and other second any secondary non-mapping content provides a pitiful amount of gold compared to juicy mapping. The common wisdom has been to focus on mapping and as a result… everything that comes from other mechanics has gone up in value. I put up a bunch of rare fossils for sale last night before I logged out to go to bed, and decided to take a screenshot when they had all sold showing you the sort of money I can pull in quickly. Divine Orbs are also really weak right now and only trading for 130 Chaos, meaning that converting up from Chaos is really valuable. I spent a lot of currency kitting out my Toxic Rain character and have made most of it back.
That said I spent a ton of currency this morning buying Awakened gems and 21/20% gems for the things that I could afford. I will likely never buy an Awakened Greater Multiple Projectiles as those go for like 300 Divines, but I did bump up everything that I could. Making this swap is always immediately noticeable in the speed at which you clear, and this was no difference because t16 mapping now feels extremely trivial. Mostly I am still in the process of pouring on levels so that I can get the passive points to finish out with a medium cluster and then unlock all of the jewel sockets that I have available to me so that I can start putting life and chaos damage over time multiplier in all of those slots. I have my health over 4000 which gives me a bit of a buffer and usually enough time to hit my life potion in time to keep from taking a death when my evasion fails me. I am still not great at keeping a life pot running at all times to mimic the effects of leech or regeneration. This is essentially the strength of a Pathfinder but I am bad at hitting the button all of the time.
The Mercs league had already slowed down considerably, but it is about to grind to a halt as Path of Exile II spoiler season has officially started. SirGog released a video this morning about the above spoiler posted on Twitter, and I mostly agree with him that this feels Harbinger Adjacent. I just hope they do not screw the mechanic up and make it worse… like they have for other mechanics implemented in Path of Exile II style. I am still not hugely supportive of the direction this sequel has gone so far, but I also know that large swaths of the community care about it and it will begin to drain attention from Path of Exile. Path of Exile II drops on the 29th, but it will have to wait until I have burned through the content in Last Epoch which drops before that on the 21st.
Good Morning Folks! Yesterday was a hellacious day for me, and today I am off… so since I did not get a chance to blog I am dropping a mega topic on you. Mostly this is something that I had been kicking around in my head for weeks but I simply did not feel like I had the time to devote to the topic during my normal morning blogging window. We are going to talk about Path of Exile and how the scope and complexity of that game has completely changed my viewpoint on what exactly the term “Endgame” means. At this point in the Settlers of Kalguur League, I am mostly in a game mode of wrapping up challenges, and honestly could in theory walk away happily at any point. Did I complete everything in the league? Absolutely not. Do I feel the need to complete everything in the league? Absolutely not. This morning’s blog post if anything is a post about coming to terms with not being able to do all of the things, or more so realizing that I don’t actually want to do them.
Sentinel League – July 2022
This journey is going to be illustrated as we walk through the last several leagues of Path of Exile, and how my perspective changed during each of them. While I first played Path of Exile in 2015, it was not until July of 2022 that I actually beat the ten-act campaign. I have fuzzy memories of playing during Delve, Heist, Expedition, Breach, and Scourge… and getting several acts deep into each of those characters but never really grasping the game to the level of being able to make it all the way through the end of Act 10. So basically my “Endgame” was beating the campaign… an activity that I now consider so trivial that I level characters for fun. I felt a real sense of accomplishment for getting that far into the game and in spite of not really having a clue what I was doing landed on a love for the ability Wintertide Brand.
Kalandra League – August/September 2022
The Lake of Kalandra League was the first time I was actively playing the game and prepared on the day the league launched. During Sentinel, I had spent time playing Explosive Arrow Ballista and also half-assing my own thing with Wintertide Brand, and given that I liked the brand playstyle so much I decided to explore Storm Brand. I found a guide and attempted to follow it, and then set my goal for that league to complete my atlas… which is all 115 Maps with bonus objectives including the ten unique maps. My “Endgame” in the context of this league was accomplished on September 12th, and honestly… I did not play much more than that. I had a rough time in Kalandra and part of it was how rippy some of the mobs were and other parts were how clueless I was about how one should actually build a character. In either case, I did not have as much fun as I hoped I would have, and damned near swore off the game until my friend Ace got excited for the next League Start. However, I definitely felt like I had reached the Endgame because getting through 115 maps… on a character that was not even vaguely close to having elemental resistance caps… was a challenge.
Sanctum League – December 2022/January 2023
As I said above, this is the league that I almost did not play. I set forth intending to learn how not to die and in doing so I embraced my old friend Righteous Fire for the very first time and learned the goodness that is Pohx. This was the league where I learned that Elemental Resistances were not suggestions, but the absolutely hard requirement to survive in maps and if possible you wanted to do something to increase your caps. I also learned one of the ways you can build a character that feels tanky and unstoppable. This is also the first league that I played where I absolutely hated the league mechanic. There are so many “Sanctum Enjoyers” out there, but running around and never getting hit is not a gameplay style that I enjoy. My player fantasy is to be an unstoppable juggernaut that bulldozes over top of the enemies… and RF with its constant reliance on Shield Charge really fits that fantasy. My endgame was getting through all 115 maps, and while I did not make a post about accomplishing that goal it happened at some point around December 27th. Apart from not dying… I branched out and played with Toxic Rain Pathfinder and Summon Raging Spirits Necromancer… cementing my love of SRS going forward. I had a freaking blast and it was during this league that I think some of the levers of understanding clicked into place that would serve me well going forward allowing me to build not just one character that worked, but at least four of them in a single league.
Crucible League – April/May 2023
Crucible was the first league where I was pretty much the only person in my friend group actively playing the game. This meant more than anything, that I needed to invent my own goals because the friendly competition of knocking out objectives was missing. In Sanctum I dabbled in Delve and had quite a bit of luck with it, deciding that it would be my core focus for Crucible. Again we had a league with a lackluster mechanic, and as such I kept my head down and focused on learning how to make currency that was needed to fund building characters. “Delve Provides” is the motto of Jorgen a YouTuber that almost exclusively covers Delve content, and Crucible is the league where I put that into practice. Trading became something that I tolerated to something that I actually enjoyed doing and as such in many ways, it became my endgame for this league. During Sanctum I had managed to hit enough of the challenges to earn a tiny totem pole for my hideout and as such I knew that I wanted to do at least 19 of them in order to earn another one… which has since then become basically my goal for every league. During the tail end of Sanctum, I recorded a few videos to highlight my point of what felt good and why Diablo IV did not at all… and that turned into me recording videos talking about various side projects and builds during the Crucible league.
Ancestor League – August/September/October 2023
For the Trial of the Ancestors league, I decided to league start something other than Righteous Fire. This was a mistake. While I was able to zip through the campaign extremely quickly on my Lightning Arrow Raider build… I struggled quite a bit with survival when I hit maps… more specifically the transition between yellow and red maps and getting my first two voidstones. So a few days into the league… I was running up a Righteous Fire Juggernaut and essentially starting over. I eventually came to love the Lightning Arrow gameplay style, but greatly preferred running it on Champion. Trial of the Ancestors was another league where the mechanic was sort of meh… enjoyable but also did not really seem to have much of a point to running it. So I focused my time on getting better at mapping and starting to deep dive into various league mechanics like Legion and Breach on a bow character. I also created a staggering eight characters during this league, my favorite alt of which was probably the SRS Guardian. My endgame was learning league mechanics that I had not really dealt with before… and also getting a totem pole.
Affliction League – Bel League – December 2023/January/February 2024
My friend Ace HATES trading. It isn’t so much that they hate buying items… they hate the way Trade is implemented within Path of Exile and the required interaction with other players. During Ancestors League they decided to go Solo-Self-Found which essentially walled them off from the rest of us. In Affliction League I proposed that we start a private league that would take trading off the table, but also allow us to share resources with each other. So as a result “Bel League” was born, and it was simultaneously one of the most enjoyable Path of Exile experiences, and also deeply frustrating. This is also the patch where they largely wrecked Righteous Fire in its previous state, so as a result I decided to try out Boneshatter, a build I had never played before… making my endgame learning how to play this dumb thing in a Semi-SSF environment where I could not buy my way out of problems. Mechanically being able to share resources with other folks felt amazing… but in all cases, there was only so far I could reasonably take a build before running into a wall that was lack of resources or lack of crafting knowledge. We kept the private league going for 40 days… which maybe was overstaying its welcome. When it dropped both Kodra and I went nuts with the economy and funding dumb builds. He got a Mirror of Kalandra drop, and this was the first league where I bought both a Mageblood and a Headhunter. So my endgame shifted from Solo-Self-Found sentimentality to breaking the dumb state of the economy wide open and building some truly broken characters.
Necropolis League – March/April/May 2024
Necropolis League was simultaneously a bad league and one of the best leagues. The League crafting mechanic was dumb and overly complicated, but the sweeping game system changes allowed for an environment where you could do some truly dumb things while mapping. In past leagues, I had reached this point where characters many times where they were comfortable enough, but I never really micromanaged my way into hyper-optimizing them. During Necropolis my “endgame” was seeing how far I could push my Righteous Fire Juggernaut which ended up requiring another Mageblood… but since so many of these were being created I got it for the super low price of 50 Divines. I spent so much time exploring the interactions with different combinations of scarabs, and this is also the league where I accepted that I don’t actually like “Bossing” and just bought a carry for my last two voidstones… the ones that take a stupid amount of time… so I could enjoy T16 mapping for the majority of the league. The endgame goal that I was not expecting was that I would ultimately hit 34 out of 40 challenges completed and get a massive totem pole for my hideout.
Settlers League – July/Current 2024
Now we are here during the Settlers League and I have to be honest… I am not sure what my endgame looks like as of today. Last night I pushed down to 400 Depth in Delve and knocked out my 19th Challenge for the league earning me a totem pole for my hideout. I’ve done a few T17s this league which was something that I could not accomplish during the last league. I’m level 98 and am trying to decide if I want to go ahead and make a push to hit 100, something that I have only accomplished before during Crucible and Necropolis. I would love to get my Widowhail build working… because right now it is doing more than enough damage but also completely unable to survive for more than five minutes when something gets the first hit in. If I can take that build to a comfortable state, my endgame goal might be grinding out the currency to buy it a Headhunter because of the two chase belts… I feel like Headhunter is way more interesting than Mageblood. I also want to try building some sort of bleed-based Gladiator since that is the new hotness so I will likely be running something up to do that. At this point, I have explored most of the endgame systems in Path of Exile and have firm opinions on what I like and don’t like. One thing I have not done is really dive into Blight Ravaged maps so maybe I will set that up as my new endgame goal… to reach a point of comfortability running them.
Endgames Shift Over Time
Essentially the entire point of this lengthy post was not necessarily about a trip down memory lane covering the last three years and Eight Path of Exile Leagues. Instead, it was to set up the notion that you should have a personal Endgame and you really should not allow the opinion of others to color your enjoyment. When you spend time on Reddit, YouTube, and Twitch… so much of the discourse around Path of Exile specifically tends to be about finding the most efficient way to print currency and “getting rich”. I’ve been fairly wealthy in this game, with enough currency to buy anything I wanted… and I gotta admit that is not a goal that I care about. Instead, I have to carve out personal goals that make me happy, that are things I actually care about and that I can focus on.
I have come to realize that this is true regardless of the game. I’ve been playing Final Fantasy XIV and I am doing the things that I personally enjoy. Some of that involves raiding, but also I am not pushing myself to dive in deeper than I want. I remember back in World of Warcraft feeling like an absolute failure when our raid was not progressing as quickly as the others on the server. I felt the need to “keep up with the joneses” and personally blamed myself when we were not able to. I’ve reached a point where “Endgame” is whatever I want it to be. For some games, it is just getting through the campaign and then walking away happily until more story content is released, and in other games, it is trying to consume every last drop of goodness. Being able to set your own personal endgame that is not beholden to the progress of others feels like a requirement to play games like these and not drive yourself insane trying to keep up.
It took me years to get a SkyScale in Guild Wars 2, and I am super happy that I completed the grind… that also greatly improved my enjoyment of the game. However, I did not really feel like I was missing out on something all the time I spent not paying attention to it. When you face a game with over a decade’s worth of content that is still relevant… it becomes impossible to try and immediately encompass all of it. So Guild Wars 2, FFXIV, and Path of Exile all live in these bubbles of having way too much stuff going on to really try and zoom to the end of it without missing a beat. As such I have personally found it all the more important to determine my own goals and decide what I considered reaching the endgame to be in all of those cases. I’ve also given myself the flexibility to revise what those goals are over time.
What lodged this in my head the other day was watching the process a friend of mine has been going through with Path of Exile. They were overwhelmed and were in that state before finishing the campaign. Thing is… there is no rush. There is no real forward push saying you have to complete this much content in order to feel validated. Sure you will miss out on things… but the journey I have been on started in July of 2022 and each new league taught me important lessons that I have built upon to reach the point where I am today. I stopped playing on the Steam client during the last league, but at that point, I was at 2500 hours… and I have very easily put in another 500 hours after that. Path of Exile is the sort of game where even after 3000 hours I feel like I still have a lot to learn, and as a result, there is no way any player is going to do everything in a single go.
The Endgame is what you make of it, and your personal Endgame journey is just as valid as anyone else’s.
Good Morning Folks! I don’t have a heck of a lot to talk about this morning, but I thought I would share something that I realized yesterday. I spend a lot of time in Delve and it is quite possibly my favorite game mode in Path of Exile. I would not be shocked if I had spent over a thousand hours running delve nodes. The thing is… the structure of Delve is something that has confused me a bit. Namely, I seemed to be missing the inherent understanding of how to find hidden nodes. There are a lot of things in this game that are based on rules, but for whatever reason I had yet to grasp something fundamental about the way Delve was laid out. Now I have to admit that I had heard this information before, but never fully grasped what it meant.
Veteran Path of Exile players speak like you understand what they are saying. I remember specifically Zizaran talking about this in a video here he was explaining that you could tell where hidden nodes were based on the connections that they were making. A node cannot have only two connection points. It can have one, it can have three, and in rare cases, it can have four… but no node can have only two connections. To illustrate this point I took a screenshot of an area down in Delve where there were two hidden nodes side by side… one azerite and one fossil. I’ve applied some labels to count the connections and you can see there are two places where there are only two visible connections. So I sketched an estimate of where I thought the connections might break off and labeled the expected node path in each case with a “3?” indicating a hidden third connection.
Last night I farmed each of these areas out so that I could take a follow up screenshot showing what the actual connections ended up looking like. I have highlighted the paths in green and in both cases I was more or less right. In the case of the Fossil node, the path broke off to the north instead of to the west, but it was in the same region. In any case looking for nodes that only had two paths connected to it, gave me a place where I knew for certain there would be some sort of path breaking out that I could bomb to get access to the tunnel.
Sometimes there are going to be places on the map where there is a hidden node, but there are two nodes around it that only have two connections. In these cases, you need to look for places where there might be a phantom fourth connection. If I were going to try and get to this currency node then I would start looking at the armor node and azerite nodes that I have highlighted. There is not enough room for a path to break off the Cartography node above the highlighted area, and while technically the singleton Lightning node could break north, that seems to happen really infrequently. Again you can have a single point of connection, three points of connection, or four points of connection but never two.
This is not my image, but it represents a concept that took me a bit to grasp. Delve is aligned to a strict grid of nodes. So when thinking of the way things connect up… there has to be enough room for a path to travel through without interrupting nodes you have already revealed. The way the biomes are laid out gives you a hint for where the edges of the individual blocks are. if you were to start drawing along those boundaries, you would eventually end up with a grid similar to the one above showing you where your hidden node has to be connected to. In the above example, we are going back to the rule of two again making it very clear where the connection is going to be. However in my example, if I follow the biome boundary lines, I cannot rule out either the two four connections that I have highlighted or the potential of that singleton going north.
Delve has long been something that was largely instinctual for me. I would get a feel of which tunnels I could dive down into the darkness and find riches, and which I should skip. However, I knew there had to be a method to the madness, and understanding the rules… makes it so much more straightforward to find those hidden nodes. Again this is something that EVERYONE might already know and I am just slow on the uptake… but I am going to take the risk to look like an idiot and explain it clearly regardless. That has been the problem I have had with most Path of Exile knowledge transfer, is that there is a general assumption that folks already understand core concepts. I’ve played roughly 2500 hours of the game and there are still core concepts that I am finally grasping all the time. It is my hope that this will help someone out there because I am too old for posturing that I know everything.
