Good Morning Folks! We are on day four of the Trial of the Ancestors League. According to the /played command, I have put in 32 hours so far and that got me through the campaign and up to comfortably doing yellow maps. I dawdled a bit during the campaign but enjoyed the ride. I am on such a different trajectory than I am used to because I am playing what is commonly referred to as a “map blaster” character. This means that I am designed to decimate oncoming packs of mobs before they can touch me… but the trade-off is that I have very little in the way of proper defenses. This sort of flies in the face of everything that I know about building a comfortable character, but somehow it is working. I ran with a friend who needed credit for a map I was just about to run yesterday, and he was laughing at how much nonsense is flying around the screen when I get moving.

My big lucky drop of the weekend was picking up a corrupted six-link bow, that was in the right colors… or at least “right enough” colors. This is going to hold me until I get much deeper into my character and pick up something in the range of a 1000 dps bow. This bow would be awful for the more popular Toxic Rain/Explosive Arrow builds, but it works beautifully for my build as realistically I want flat damage against three elements, and this has two. The bleeding bits on the bow are a bit meh as is the accuracy because I am capped without needing it on my bow. I would have rather had some attack speed but in the realm of corrupted gear this is pretty solid. I need to get some beyond mobs and hopefully get some tainted currency to get some quality on it.

I know I had said that I was going to try and craft my own gear… but at this point, I am fully engaged in the trade economy and have made a few smaller sales. On Sunday night I started poking around looking at prices for six link chest pieces and managed to snatch this one up for 25 Chaos Orbs. This spent the largest chunk of my currency that I have gathered up so far but seemed like a good call. It has really good evasion and decent armor and while there are various elements of this that I would change, again it isn’t bad for a corrupted item. I wish it had more resistance on it, but that is sort of my general problem right now… the fact that I am pretty much capped in only one element.

Another really lucky drop was that I picked up a Poised Prism with some decent resistances on it. This is in theory the suggested quiver for this build and I had hoped that I would see one drop. Truth be told… apart from eventually replacing this with a perfect roll I think this is pretty damned good. I’ve seen all of the common quivers at this point, so it seems like they just drop more often than other uniques. I am hoping to see a Prismweave to replace the Wurm’s Molt that I am currently wearing. Unfortunately at the moment, I can’t really afford to get rid of the Molt, because it is helping to fix some of my attribute problems. I am pretty much starving for Strength and Intelligence, and having to use up a handful of significant suffixes to gain more.

The other purchase that I made was a pair of Shadows and Dust gloves. Namely, this is a way of getting rampage on the build, and it seems to really help my clear. I picked these up I believe for 2 Chaos and then threw some jewelers orbs to add some sockets. I need to recolor these in order to set up a cast when damage taken combo with Immortal Call, just to add another smaller layer of defense. I’ve got my auto snipers hit set up in my boots at the moment and all of my auras are in my helm. I am still running clarity because I still have mana problems. My ballista is at least now running off Lifetap which is fine given I have a decent chunk of life leech. Truth be told when I am killing things, I have no real mana problems… it is only when I am setting up for the next run.

I’ve never played a character before that was this much of a glass cannon and was always riding the edge of falling apart completely. At the moment I have 100% spell suppression which is good, and decent enough evasion though I would like to see that MUCH higher. My armor however is complete shit and my resists… are awful. I’ve contemplated trying to create a Taming ring, but so far I have not seen any of the component Berek rings drop. I could farm Heterochromia cards, but one of the problems I am running into as a mapper… is that without buying maps from the market, you can’t really reliably “Farm” anything over and over. I feel like all of the mapping strategies involve either buying specific maps or buying scarabs in order to set up ideal conditions. I would for example love to be trying to farm Legion, but that requires Legion Scarabs. Delve honestly was just more simple… and quite honestly more rewarding. I ran literally any map until I got Sulphite and then Delved until I ran out, and then repeated the virtuous cycle.

I can’t complain though, I am only one day into mapping and I already have 32 maps completed and have done one of the Maven Challenges. I need to find a zone connection diagram that I can reference because I need to be running connected maps in an attempt to get the maps I am missing. I am not super in a rush to get to red maps, because on my test version of this build… that is where things started to fall apart without being resist capped. What I really want to find is an Ancestral Vision, because it would solve my elemental ailments problem completely. I currently have 50% elemental avoidance and Ancestral Vision would get me the rest of the way to 100%.

As far as my Atlas tree goes… I am sorta all over the place at the moment. I rushed to get Shaping the Skies and Mountains to start getting some free map device unlocks. I’ve picked up a little here and a little there on the essences and picked up Stream of Consciousness since I won’t have a steady supply of scarabs for a while. I am slowly working my way up to the Einhar nodes that unlock access to the beasts that sell for quite a bit of currency. I figure at least until I have unlocked everything I will be doing essence/beasts to hopefully make a little currency. Essences mostly because I want to maybe be able to craft some gear at some point. Beasts mostly to hopefully sell some split beasts and mirror beasts.

I’ve done only the smallest amount of Delve, basically running down my Sulphite supply each time I fill it up. I know that this build is very much not designed for the rigors of the deep, but for the most part, so far it has been “fine”. I mostly just have to keep blowing things up in front of me for fear of anything actually touching me. Mostly I am working on the tedium of setting things up and getting some initial darkness resistance and light radius unlocked. I know at some point I will level another character that is more specifically designed for delving and then be running that in the deep. I will say though… the little bit of Delve that I have done… has felt generally more rewarding than most of the mapping I have done. Heist is still the mixed back it always is, but for the most part, the build has done excellently there.

All told though I am pretty happy with the build and pretty happy with where I am after 32 hours of play. I will continue to chip away at the Atlas, and I am hoping by the time I have unlocked all 115 maps, I will have enough currency to do a massive overhaul of my tree to something more enjoyable. I would really like to focus on Legion, and I have to say… Blight, Legion, and Breach are all awesome on this character. That was really my hope that I would be able to do some of the mechanics that I mostly ignored in the past because they were just not drift-compatible with the Righteous Fire lifestyle. I’ve seen my first Exalted Orb pictured above, but I have yet to see a Divine Orb drop. When I start getting some of those, and a bit more of a liquid position in the currency market… I will feel better about my decisions.

I realize I have not stayed true to the SSF-lite attempt that I originally planned. Truth be told though… I actually have arrived at a point where I enjoy the trade economy in this game. I’ve made several smaller sales and have already set up the infrastructure to be able to sell more stuff as I get access to better items. I am not sure what happened to the person who used to avoid the auction house like the plague. Right now I just don’t have much value that anyone would care about. I have a friend who will probably be willing to knock out the Void Stones for me because I sorta doubt this character is going to be able to do much more than the first two. I have a lot of mapping and farming though before that is even a real concern.

Anyways! I hope you all have a wonderful week. I will be over here in the corner chipping away at this nonsense and completely happy.