Forbidden Sanctum

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.

Good Morning Friends! Friday saw the launch of a brand league in Path of Exile and I finally landed on playing Pohx’s Righteous Fire Juggernaut build. Mostly I think I wanted a fairly cozy and low-stress league start and Pohx is maybe one of the best guide builders in the community. Ash and I have talked a bit about this, but various guide makers have various risk margins that they are willing to live with. Velyna seems super chill as a human being, but she is willing to live with way more stress than I want in my life and as a result, I am not super likely to be following any more of her builds in the future. Ash commented that really what we are looking for… builds from people who are willing to take that build to Solo Self Found Hardcore… where they can’t realistically rely on the market for items and need sufficient survival to keep from dying to a random one-shot.

A few leagues ago I had attempted to go down the Righteous Fire path but ultimately stalled out because I loved the play style of Wintertide Brand. In the Inquisitor RF path, this is supposed to be just a jumping-off point, but I leaned into the gameplay so heavily that I never really made the conversion to RF and started going off in my own direction trying to make Wintertide a viable endgame build. In the last league, I took my love of brand gameplay and went down the Storm Brand path, and it was largely fine other than the fact that again I had to deviate to pack on survival. This time around however I committed early on mentally to following the path and trusting in Pohx and so far it has been awesome. I made the switch around level 40 to running Righteous Fire over Rolling Magma, and am now 63 and still trucking along happily.

This has been without a doubt my easiest league start so far, and I am not sure how much is chalked up to following Pohx’s guidance and how much is the fact that this is effectively my third league. The big thing I have noticed is that I’ve yet to die to any of the act bosses. Starting with Hillock I have one-shot every boss encounter so far and the only deaths I have taken… were due to some lag spikes on particularly nasty trash. Since so much of the build relies on health regeneration, you have to be deeply cautious around anything that might impair your regeneration rate. I can’t survive terribly long due to the damage I am dealing myself constantly from Righteous Fire so I have to make sure and disengage or potion to get through the rough spots.

As far as the Forbidden Sanctum league mechanic itself, I am not necessarily the biggest fan. It is a mechanic that greatly favors glass cannon builds because your health bar is not actually your health bar. You instead have this bar called “Resolve” that goes down every time you get hit by anything, and if you are not dodging literally everything you are failing. Ultimately the highest rewards are gained by letting the reward from each floor ride until the end of the map… but that also means you are at risk of losing everything. So my personal preference is to take the reward that effectively cashes out at the end of every floor. That way I at least got something for my time, and so long as I keep that perspective the experience is not too bad. It ends up just being a way to get some supplemental crafting currency which is usually worth my time.

As far as currency goes… this league seems to be way more generous than Lake of Kalandra was at the start. I am in act seven currently and have six raw chaos orbs and one exalted orb. That in theory should give me a good start toward buying some end-game gear at some point. I saw my first Chaos Orb drop in Act III, and my first Exalted Orb in Act V. I am hoping this trend continues and that I see a Divine Orb or maybe my first ever Mirror before too much longer. Normally speaking I have not seen much in the way of raw Chaos drops until maps. I’ve seen a number of the kooky loot types where a single mob will drop like six of an item so it really does feel like we have arrived at a happy place after the wild mood swings of Lake of Kalandra loot. Here is hoping they don’t screw anything up!

I am having a freaking blast… but so far my friend Ace is not. They tried another Minion build and it seems like maybe those are not quite back to normal. I hope either the build improves or they can figure out another build because it is going to suck not to be fucking around in the endgame without them. I want everyone to be happy and engaged in the league because it will make my long-term experience more enjoyable to see everyone having fun. It has been interesting to see how my opinion of different mechanics has shifted now that I have this wildly survivable killing machine. I hated Incursion previously and now… it is super easy and just a case of how fast can I move around the map and soak up more kills. I am looking forward to encountering my first Breach because that was also a mechanic that I loathed but I have a feeling it is now going to be my jam.

Are you playing Forbidden Sanctum in Path of Exile? How has your league start gone? What are your thoughts about the seasonal mechanic? Drop me a line below!