Good Morning Friends! I am taking a break from leveling in Path of Exile to bang out a blog post. Yesterday at 3 pm my time the servers launched for the Trial of the Ancestors league, and I did not hop in the queue nearly fast enough apparently. It took me about fifteen minutes to actually get in, but once I did things were fairly smooth. Granted I did not risk logging out to the character screen for a bit just to make sure. I did not manage to get as far as I would have liked, but I did make it to Act 5 before calling it a night. Originally I had headed to bed around halfway through Act 4, but it was hot and I couldn’t sleep so I got back up and punished into Oriath.
Something that I did that is a bit out of the ordinary, is that I streamed Act 1 on Youtube. This was my first time really managing a stream through YouTube and for the most part… I think it went pretty well. When I was setting up the stream I did not really understand some of the options, and I think I could have potentially made the chat delay a bit less had I chosen the lower latency option. I had a handful of folks pop in and hang out, which was really cool. I however am not used to streaming… and after an hour of narrating my actions, I needed a bit of a break for my voice. I might try this again later as I start maps.
I’ve not really had much of an opportunity to play with the league mechanic, but you end up getting a silver coin pretty much in every zone. These work much like the rogue tokens do in that you click on them and they teleport you to the Halls of the Dead. From there you can talk to all of the other Karui combatants and enter a tournament match. Essentially you place attackers and blockers on the field and then try and take out the other team’s totems by clicking on them and channeling a bar to take it down. In theory, the attackers can do this for you, but it seemed to go much faster when I took care of it. Essentially I would wipe out a wave of attackers and then channel a totem, and repeat this process until all the enemy totems were down. It seems like it would be a fun mode with a party of friends, so I will have to try that later.
There are a few metrics that I tend to keep track of when I am leveling a new character. For example, the first Chaos Orb drop of the league was in Fellshrine Ruins, and before I had seen my first Chance Orb. I’ve had some really weird luck in this league because I think I have seen seven Chaos drop already before beating Kitava for the first time. I’ve also had a drought of Scrolls of Wisdom forcing me to do the Portals to Wisdom vendor recipe a few times. I’ve also seen way more Orb of Bindings and Jewelers Orbs than I am used to by this point in the league. As far as Vaal side areas go… I’ve only seen one, so that seems a bit weird and is harmful to my needing a Vaal Lightning Arrow. I tried to yolo corrupt the Lightning Arrow I had been using when I saw my first Vaal Orb drop… which raised it by a level and made it so I could no longer equip it. I had to go buy another Lightning Arrow from the Act 1 vendor to keep moving forward.
Since then I have wised up and am now muling four Lightning Arrow gems in my secondary weapons. The first death of the league was in Act 4 in the Mines Level 2. I ended up being too close to a mob with an “on-death” effect that nuked me. So far I think I have taken a total two deaths so far which seems good overall. I’ve also made it through the first Labyrinth and I varied my path a bit. The build that I am loosely following really suggested going for the Perma Onslaught node first before taking the Phasing node in the Raider tree, and then later speccing out of Onslaught and into the Frenzy nodes. I did not do this while leveling originally, so I thought I would give it a shot. It isn’t like I am going to be using many regrets in total so I should have plenty to do the swap at the fourth Labyrinth.
All told things seem to be going fairly smoothly. I’ve had decent luck when it comes to picking up random bows with the right sockets along the way. I am hoping that before long I will be able to start finding some five-link bows and given that I have a decent stash of chromatics built up, I should be able to force it to the correct colors. I am hoping to start seeing some more Vaal orbs, because I would love to swap over to Vaal Lightning Arrow at some point soon just for the additional damage on bosses. I am hoping that by the end of the day I am starting to dip my toes into mapping.
Are you leveling in Trials of the Ancestors? How has your journey gone so far? Drop me a line below.
Good Morning Folks! Today the Trial of the Ancestors league in Path of Exile launches at approximately 3 pm CDT, and I am looking forward to getting in and playing my brand new Ranger character. I spent some of last night poking around on the ghosts of leagues past, and more specifically my Storm Brand Inquisitor. During the Crucible league, I gave a few of my past league start characters a bit of a redemption arc, and I feel like this character needs one during Ancestors. Essentially I have no clue how I managed to complete 115 of 115 Atlas maps and spend quite a bit of time playing at the end game… without ever capping my resistances or having anything resembling proper defensive layers. As Ash suggested last night I just “died a lot”, which is true… but I did manage to get the character to level 90. Maybe I will roll a new Inquisitor and try and make a proper version of this build. Playing last night… it certainly is strong in spite of all of its problems.
I’m getting a bit of a late start on this morning’s blog post because I spent the first bit of the morning updating the Path of Exile Tools page. For those who do not know this… the Game Tools menu features a bunch of pages full of curated information about a given game. Sometimes it is woefully out of date like the Destiny 2 page as I have not played the game in quite some time. Essentially when I am actively playing a game I tend to update it with links that I personally find useful, so that I have a single place to get everything that I need. I make it a public page though so that it can help out other players. There are a few pages that I need to switch over to the modern “single page” format like FFXIV, Grim Dawn, and ESO.
Essentially EVERY section of this page got an update, but namely, I fleshed out the Crafting section a bit more. I also added an Economy section, as when I first drafted this page I was not nearly as engaged in the trade market. Previously I only had Zizaran on there for Streamers/YouTubers so I added a few more of my favorites. Basically, it is a much more useful guide than it was before. Some of these tools I play on keeping up on my second monitor while I play through the campaign this afternoon. Act 2 for whatever reason causes me to get all turned around so I am probably going to keep up the cheat sheet for that act for example.
Another thing that happened yesterday is that I tested out Streaming to Youtube for a little bit over lunch. All in all, I think it worked pretty well so I am contemplating streaming this afternoon when I start the league at least for an hour or so. I really have no clue how one links to their stream on YouTube but my guess is through the Live page. When I actually get a broadcast started I am likely going to just post the link to that on Gamepad as I am doing the busywork that comes with starting a stream. Fair warning… I might have a rough day and back out of this as it has been literal years since I last streamed publicly. Mostly I figured that I really have zero connection to Twitch, and given that I post our podcast and the occasional gameplay video to YouTube, it made a lot more sense just to stream there. It isn’t like anyone is going to watch me regularly, because it is highly unlikely that I will stream regularly. For something like a league start though, it might be fun.
Anyways! I am super excited to get started in a brand-new league. I’m hoping that my excitement rubs off on others and we get some folks logging in to check it out over the next few days. If you are playing Path of Exile on PC, feel free to friend me I am BelghastStern. Though to be honest… most group play is sort of butts, so we mostly just share resources in the guild bank.
Good Morning Folks! I’m in a bit of a holding pattern waiting on the Path of Exile Trial of the Ancestors league’s start tomorrow. In this downtime I find myself doing a ton of research designed to help make my start a bit smoother. Currently, my intention is to attempt to solve my own problems in a very solo-self-found manner, without actually flagging myself as part of that challenge league. This means there will be several phases that my build will go through… namely finding my first five-link gear, attempting to solve my resistance, and eventually finding comfortable six-link items to help with that process. The challenge is that it is very hard to brute force your way into a six-link weapon or piece of armor, and it will be a long time before I find 1500 Bindings Orbs which is what the guaranteed recipe requires.
White Tier Maps
As you migrate out of the campaign, you will find yourself moving into what is colloquially referred to as “White Maps” largely because the border of the icon has a white color, as compared to the later yellow, and red versions. Essentially this pool of 36 “white” maps is divided up into difficulty tiers one through five and are realistically not that far from the general difficulty level of the campaigns. Recently we got a big information dump for the Item Filter creators to update their filters, and with it came a full list of which maps are associated with which tiers. For the sake of this exercise, we are only going to focus on those first five tiers of maps because you should be getting quite a few of these as you progress through the Atlas of Worlds.
Tier 1
Bone Crypt
Arena
Barrows
Plateau
Tier 2
Dunes
Stagnation
Primordial Blocks
Estuary
Grave Trough
Beach
Wasteland
Mineral Pools
Tier 3
Overgrown Shrine
Strand
Cold River
Lookout
Residence
Bog
Forking River
Mesa
Tier 4
Cemetery
Moon Temple
Vaal Pyramid
Primordial Pool
Malformation
Iceberg
Graveyard
Cage
Tier 5
Atoll
Courtyard
Volcano
Bazaar
Cells
Tropical Island
Leyline
Alleyways
Divination Cards
It is extremely difficult to predict what maps might drop what pieces of gear, because for the most part armor drops are a complete crapshoot. However, there is a thing in Path of Exile called a Divination Card, and these drop from specific zones. If you collect a full set of a given card, you can turn them in for a specific item or pool of items. So as a result one of the most “deterministic” ways of farming six-linked gear is to set your focus on a specific zone that drops a specific set of cards. This morning I thought I would talk a bit about what is available in the white tier of maps. Quite frankly… there is a heck of a lot of useful cards available.
Six-Link Body Armor
[EDIT] – My fact-checker-in-chief Ashgar, pointed out that some of these cards namely Imperial Legacy, Dapper Prodigy, and Bowyer’s Dream cannot drop in the minimum tier versions of these maps. Item level 100 drops have a minimum drop level of 80. This means you will be able to run these maps once you get some void stones… but sadly not before that.
For guaranteed Six-Link body armor, we have four different cards to choose from. It should be noted, that all of these will reward a normal quality item, meaning you are going to need to craft it into something useable usually by throwing some essences at it. However, you can usually brute force your way into something that will work for your build. Of these probably the worst one is Emperor of Purty, which gives you an Item Level 60 Holy Chainmail which has fairly low stats but would be easier to get green sockets on for example if you needed that in an Armor/Energy Shield base. The best option is probably The Dapper Prodigy which will drop item level 100 armor, which makes it easier to get higher-tier crafting rolls on it. Celestial Justicar is specifically good for anyone needing a pure armor base as Astral Plate has extremely high armor and comes with an implicit bonus to all elemental resistances. The Chains that Bind is fairly commonly farmed though because it drops fairly frequently and can realistically be farmed while doing the campaign as it can drop off level 38 content, and all of the maps associated with Shavron’s Tower in Act 6.
[EDIT] – My fact-checker-in-chief Ashgar, pointed out that some of these cards namely Imperial Legacy, Dapper Prodigy, and Bowyer’s Dream cannot drop in the minimum tier versions of these maps. Item level 100 drops have a minimum drop level of 80. This means you will be able to run these maps once you get some void stones… but sadly not before that.
Weapons are largely only a concern for folks needing to use two-handers. Unfortunately for anyone needing a two-handed melee weapon that is not a staff… you are sorta screwed with the white maps this time. However, if you are a bow user… life is pretty peachy. The Porcupine is infamous because it is the most common crafting base for anyone trying to build a bow for Toxic Rain or Explosive Arrow, both of which want fast attack speed. I however will be going for Imperial Legacy for my Lightning Arrow build, which while not the best base is at least item level 100. I threw Bowyer’s Dream in mostly because it exists, but this only drops from the boss of that map so it is likely out of reach unless you boss rush Leyline. For staves, your best option would be The Dark Mage or if you can survive from a 5-Link the lesser Flora’s Gift also exists.
One of my favorite videos on the subject of the “easiest way to get a six-link” basically just comes out and says that trade… trade is the easiest way. A lot of the suggestions here are for folks wanting to avoid trade, but even then… if you want to buy a six-link you are going to need some trade currency. That means Chaos Orbs, Exalted Orbs, and Divine Orbs. While there are still some weirdos trying to run the Awakened Sextant scam, for the most part, you need to have the three most common liquid currencies in order to buy anything. A lot of early league strategies for money-making involve farming a bunch of bulk items and then trading those on The Forbidden Trove, which is a bit too far for me personally. If we look at the maps that are available to us, for the purpose of farming Div Cards that reward raw currency… the clear winner is Brother’s Stash and Brother’s Gift as they both drop from the same locations. Alternatively, if you need Vaal Orbs, then The Inventor is well worth your time, and if you need Exalted Orbs then maybe The Scout is worth chasing. What we really benefit from this league is three separate locations within White Maps where we can farm the brother’s cards.
So say you have a lot of expenses… and you need to target much bigger prey when it comes to farming currency cards. I guess at this point let’s talk a bit about some of the chase rare cards that are available in this league’s White Maps. Please note… you may go all-league and NEVER see one of these drops, but if you want to chase some “big game” there are some options. The biggest fish is definitely Unrequited Love, which is essentially a fraction of a fraction of a Mirror of Kalandra. At the time of writing this card is going for 42 Divine Orbs, and the price fluctuates wildly through the league. Next up you The Nurse which is a fraction of a fraction of a Headhunter belt and this usually goes for around a Divine Orb. Similarly priced is The Sephirot, but it is much harder to farm given that it only drops from a boss. Lastly, you have Divine Beauty which only goes for around half a Divine Orb, so you would probably be better off just farming the entire set of 12 and turning in for 7 Divine Orbs.
While I am spending all of this time talking about Divination Cards, I would be remiss if I did not at least mention Kirac farming. As you unlock your atlas you are likely to be leaning on missions from Kirac to help uncover new maps. One of the reward types that Kirac offers is a map that will drop a full stack of Divination cards. Most of the time these will be junk cards that give basic crafting currency, but there is always the rare chance of you getting a full stack of one of the most sought-after cards. When I farm Kirac missions for cards I rely heavily on Divcards.io, which allows you to input a map and it brings back quickly a list of cards that could drop.
So in this example, Kirac is offering me a Div Card mission for Defiled Cathedral. When I search on Divcards.io it returns the following results for that map. In this case… there is an exceedingly rare potential for dropping one of the most sought-after cards in the entire game… The Apothecary. Even though I know I am more likely to get a stack of a trash card like Her Mask, I am absolutely going to run this on the off chance that I get lucky. If there is absolutely nothing worth getting, then you can always use a Scouting Report to reroll Kirac’s Inventory. Getting a full stack of The Apothecary and then turning in for a Mageblood represents a potential 200+ Divine Orb payday. For me… if I ever got a Mageblood I would just use the damned thing.
Final Thoughts
For a league start, I feel like we have a shockingly good number of gear-farming maps available in those first five tiers. I think Div cards are fun because they give you a reason to farm a specific zone, and while doing that… you are going to be seeing a lot of other interesting things along the way. So if you set your mind on a set of Dapper Prodigy cards to get a six-link, you might actually see a raw six-link drop in the process. Not to mention getting likely several chaos orbs or higher crafting currency in the process of farming. Having farmed full sets of cards up many times, they don’t exactly drop quickly. What I like however is they set my focus on doing a specific thing that is going to likely improve my character, rather than just mindless random farming. In a game with an overwhelming wealth of options… having specific goals in mind can be extremely important. Even when I was spending hundreds of hours down in Delve, I had the specific goal of finding cities and more specifically Delve bosses.
Anyways, I hope this actually helps someone out there. I’m looking forward to the league starting on Friday, and I am hoping that I have a bit of luck when it comes to drops. I am not opposed to fixing problems through the trade market, but I am going to see how far I can get on my own.
