Bargain Brass Dome

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Good Morning Friends! I always feel bad when I have to miss a day of my normal posting schedule like I did last Friday, but it was needed. I hinted a bit about this on my Gamepad.club account but essentially we had a routinely scheduled downtime go south on Thursday night, which led to some corruption and caused us to have to restore the machine from backup. This meant I was on a call until after 1 am and then up again at 6 am on another call… leaving me completely dead to the world and largely monosyllabic all day long. I am so not used to late nights like that and generally speaking I am heading to bed around 9:30 pm during weeknights and while I occasionally fuck around on my phone until midnight… there is a significant difference between that and being “on a call”.

Apparently, it was an international “set up your backyard” weekend because I saw several folks talking about working on theirs in my social feed. We drug out our patio furniture and set everything up this weekend. We even had lunch out on the patio just off our bedroom on Saturday and it was delightful. For whatever reason… last year we never really spent any time in the backyard. I think in part it was due to us getting a late start in setting things up and also the heat starting super early. We’ve had the two resin rockers for a half dozen years, but they are still extremely comfortable to sit out there and chill in. My wife spent a decent amount of time out reading, but I of course spent most of my free time over the weekend playing Path of Exile, but in theory, I could probably set that up on the Steam Deck and do that from the back patio as well.

As far as progress goes in Path of Exile, I have now completed all of the normal maps and am missing eight unique maps. I am going to try and get these through Kirac missions if I can, but eventually, I will get tired of waiting and just buy them from the market. I have to say this season was my absolute smoothest path through T16 maps. I think in total I took 3 deaths in ALL of my mapping… which is damned impressive given how in previous seasons I have barely limped across this line. I feel like I am finally getting a grasp on how exactly to make a build feel the way that I want it to feel, and I was shocked at how quickly I assembled a workable Righteous Fire build this time. Granted most of that knowledge does not directly translate to any other build, but it is nice to feel like I can solve my own problems finally. In theory, I also feel like I could probably build RF Juggernaut without following a guide at some point in the future given how far I have veered off the template at this point.

This is what I look like currently with my defensive layers in place… namely my armor flask and molten shell active. I finally have all of my flasks configured to use automatically when full, and with me regenerating 3 charges each time I get hit, they are rolling the majority of the time. The thing that I really want to work on is getting my life regeneration higher, so as I now start swapping out some of my gear for better options I am going to prioritize getting that a bit higher. Being wildly over-capped on resistances is in part due to the fact that I am running Purity of Elements. I am continuing to do this only because I have not wanted to solve getting immune to all of the elemental afflictions on their own. That is probably a calculation I will eventually work towards so I can run auras that increase my damage rather than quite as many defensive layers. I am running Defiance Banner right now only because I had the reservation space and my Stone Golem got to the point where it could no longer stay alive for more than a few minutes at a time.

I am about to make some shifts in my gearing that are going to add some significant benefits, like being at 90% physical reduction without buffs active. The Brass Dome has been nonsensically priced in this league given the popularity of RF and other tanky builds. I picked up this 4% max resistance version for 1 Divine and then spent about 150 Chaos Orbs in Jewelers, Chromatic, and Binding Orbs to get it to six links and the right colors. Still, this is a massive bargain as compared to the 10.5 Divine Orbs that an equivalent six-link in the right colors is going for right now. Essentially I am waiting to swap until I have finished level 95 and have another talent point to allocate. Right now if I made the swap I would lose more life regeneration than I am comfortable with until I can afford to allocate the “+15% life if no modifiers on chest” which should give me around 750 more life, and with that make up the difference in regen. At that point, I will swap over to a level 21/20% Righteous Fire instead of the Vaal Righteous Fire that I have been using.

I think once I am rocking my Brass Dome, the next major swap I am going to do is start shopping for a pseudo-six-link helm for Fire Trap. At the moment I am running a helm with “Socketed Gems Deal 30% more Burning Damage” and a shitload of armor. This is fine but I have one banked that I am working on getting chromed to the right colors that have level 20 Burning Damage and level 20 Less Duration, which should be a massive boost to my fire trap damage. The problem is I will need to replace my 30% reservation efficiency with Purity of Elements enchant from Eternal Labyrinth… and we all know how much I hate running that place. So essentially this is going to be one of my pet projects, but in truth, I would take Vitality or Determination reservation enchants as well. Those would probably be the better option given that at some point I hope to stop running Purity of Elements. Regardless it means I am going to have to start getting over my aversion to running the Labyrinth.

All of this… fiddling with numbers and stats and gear… is I think why I enjoy Path of Exile so much. I always loved gearing in MMORPGs and one of my favorite things to do back in the day was create a “hit list” of things that I wanted to farm up for my characters. Path of Exile absolutely scratches that itch for me and as I am getting items… I am often finding things that make me want to roll new characters to take advantage of that good luck. Now that I have a build that I thoroughly love in the Righteous Fire Juggernaut, I have this feeling that I am going to be starting with that for as long as it is not nerfed into the ground. Then from there, I will branch out into other builds like the Toxic Rain Pathfinder I am working on. I figured I would close out the post with this truly nonsense unique map drop from the other day. I specced my Atlas Tree into the node that duplicates map drops… and as a result, I have filled the guild bank up with unique maps to help anyone coming along behind me.

I hope you all have an excellent week, and I am sure I will be bringing even more Path of Exile nonsense.

AggroChat #430 – Nihilist Luma

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Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

We start the show with some discussion about Path of Exile launching the new Crucible league…  and how the seasonal mechanic is sort of awful but the gameplay state is great.  Grace talks about a game hand designed for them called Dredge.  Tam talks a bit about another city builder of a sort called Ixion that causes some rough choices.  We talk a bit about the Super Mario Bros movie and how it is way better than we expected.  Because Nintendo makes screwed-up decisions we talk about hacking the 3DS to use an unofficial storefront.  Ash talks about some disappointment about the first drop in the Battle Network Legacy Collection.  Kodra talks a bit about the series finale for Owl House and playing Burgle Bros board game.  Finally, Bel talks a bit about some of the books he has been reading.

Topics Discussed:

  • Path of Exile
    • Crucible League Start
  • Dredge
  • Ixion
  • Super Mario Bros Movie
  • Hacking the 3DS
  • Battle Network Legacy Collection
  • Owl House Series Finale
  • Burgle Bros
  • Book Updates

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

First Crucible Divine

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Good Morning Friends! Yesterday was a pretty big day, not only because we now have a brand new roof on our house… but also while listening to the constant banging I made quite a bit of league progress. First up I stopped putting it off and finished my fourth Labyrinth which means I have a fully specced out crusader. I could say that I was avoiding it due to a pretty significant bug happening in the armor scaling of the Unbreakable ascendency ability, but in reality, every game seems to have one activity that I loathe and put off for as long as possible. For Diablo III it is Set Dungeons, and for Path of Exile it seems to be doing my 4th Labyrinth.

I hit level 90 last night and woke up this morning to find out that the Unbreakable Ascendency was fixed, which means that this is a snapshot of what my defenses look like right now. I had been using the armor mastery passive that doubled the armor of my hands and feet in order to help out a bit with not quite hitting the physical damage reduction cap, so this morning I dropped that point. I am wildly over-capped on my resists, but that is in part on purpose because at some point I will drop Purity of Elements to add on some additional damage generation auras. The challenge there is always that I will need the Charisma anoint and some ways of making myself immune to elemental afflictions. In mapping and Delve I feel sufficiently tanky and quite honestly do not feel very far off from the point I reached last league when I had a Brass Dome.

I’ve finally started to feel like Delve is providing again now that I can comfortably hang out around depth 100. I will continue to push down a bit, but right now I am hunting resources. I got my very first Divine Orb of the league down in an Abyssal City. It was my first City of the league as well, but right now I am branching out to the side “City Hunting” as they tend to provide the bulk of the resources I am looking for. My goal is to keep gaining “tanking” ability and start going down to around 200-250 hunting Aul the Crystal King. Quite honestly though the build is feeling very stable on what has been a fairly low total investment. I picked up a slightly better Immortal Flesh with minimum resistance loss and bought some tainted currency to get some quality on my chest piece. I think the next big upgrade I will be going for is either Legacy of Fury boots or going all the way for a well-rolled Brass Dome.

As far as currency goes, yesterday was really good for my bank. What is not reflected by this comparison is the 30 chaos that I spent yesterday on various minor upgrades. Getting a Divine Orb really helped my spirits, but you will notice that I am also up significantly in almost all of the basic currencies. Notice that things I struggled with like Armourer’s Scraps I now have a pretty decent stockpile of them. What I really need though at the moment are some instilling orbs so that I can get my flask routine online as well. Generally speaking, I run all of my flasks with the setup of gaining 3 charges every time I am hit and then consuming the flask anytime it hits full charges. This adds a whole other layer of defenses to the build and at the moment… none of them are functional. I think this might be why I enjoy leagues so much it feels like I have a constant string of minor projects that I can engage with in order to improve my character. My happiest moments in World of Warcraft were when there were activities that I could be engaging with on a nightly basis, that would show incremental movement for my characters, and Path of Exile sort of scratches that same itch.

The biggest improvement from yesterday is probably in my Atlas progress. I am now well into yellow maps and have done a few red maps. In total yesterday I knocked out 24 Atlas bonuses and then picked up a few passives from Maven and Eater progress. I’m essentially alternating between making progress in Delve and making progress in the Atlas and then using map completion as fuel to refill my sulphite stockpile. At some point, I really need to start doing some Heist, because I’ve yet to really even engage with that mechanic. Mostly I need to level my rogues so that I can start doing missions for Replica Uniques and Alternative Quality Gems. Speaking of gems I have a crop of 6 copies of Righteous Fire that I have been muling in my secondary weapon slots I am just about to do the 20% quality vendor recipe and level once again. I am hoping out of six corrupts I will get a Level 21/20% gem. If that pays off I will start doing the same for Fire Trap.

As far as my Atlas passive tree goes, I’ve picked up Shaping the Skies, Seas, and Mountains as well as all of the nodes that are beneficial to the production of Delve resources and Niko missions. I’ve gone through and picked up quite a few strongbox nodes as well and am working my way toward the node that makes all strongboxes corrupted and rare. Since Delve provides quite a bit in the way of Divination cards and Maps, I opted to only focus on the strongbox nodes that reward currency and duplicate that. If I get a bossing character leveled up I will likely shift back to what I did last league where I do mapping on a character that can stomp Metamorphs and invest some points into that mechanic, and then focus on RF Juggernaut for doing Delve and Heist only.

All told I am having a freaking blast even though the crucible league mechanic itself is a bit of a bust. My hope is that once I get fully built out on the Jugg, I will be able to handle full-strength crucible mobs and then start chasing some of the specific uniques that are worth something. More specifically I am probably going to start stockpiling some higher-level Champion Kite Shield bases in a tab for attempts at finding an Aegis Aurora. What I am really hoping is that in the coming week, the prices for resonators stabilize so I can start selling those as well. For the moment I am sitting on a stockpile because the prices are just too low and I know given time they will trickle up in price. When that finally happens my currency machine will be online and I will be able to fund pretty much any project I might have.

Bang Bang Bang Bang

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Good Morning Friends. Right now my world is banging… and footsteps… and the occasional saws-all on the roof above me. To keep my calm, I am giving you all a picture of Gracie snoozing on my desk from a few days ago. The cats are unfortunately freaking out, which is not shocking given the amount of noise that is happening that they cannot find. So a few weeks back we had one heck of a windstorm, and a few days after that I found shingles in our yard… which led us to contact a roofer to check for damage. There was some, but more than anything our roof just showed signs of normal wear and tear in the windswept blistering heat of Oklahoma summers. So today we are doing what all homeowners dread… spending a lot of money to get the roof replaced. I’ve taken the day off work because there was no way I could reliably attend conference calls with all of this banging. I also needed to be around in case they needed something… so as a result of both I am getting a bit of a late start.

I am still trucking along in the Crucible season, and am still pretty comfortably melting maps. At this point, I have knocked out 37 of the 115 maps in the process of unlocking my atlas. I’ve now entered the beginning of yellow maps and I seem to still be able to wreck them without much issue. I’ve run a few poorly rolled maps without taking a death, so I am already considering myself in a much better state than I was at this point last league with only 60 chaos spent on gearing. Every single slot could use an upgrade as I am kinda rolling around in what I would consider the bare minimum for everything. I need to pour some more points into Dexterity so I can finish leveling my Fire Trap. I also at some point really need to swap out my Vaal Righteous Fire for a level 21 version of the base skill.

As of last night, I’ve completed the Atlas passives that will fuel Niko missions and be able to Delve as often as possible. I also picked up Shaping the Skies and am now working my way towards Shaping the Seas. I legitimately had no clue how cool these nodes were before now, or I would have made a beeline to them from the start. What I assumed they would do is give me free access to the options on your map device that you already can pay Chaos Orbs to use. What actually happened is I got one called “Monstrous Treasure” where it converted every single pack in my map… to a Strongbox for about 30 or so in total. It took me three trips back to my hideout to ferry all of the loot worth keeping… so many div cards and maps and general currency. It wasn’t really paying out in a ton of chaos or higher, but it was absolutely worth my effort. So I am looking forward to seeing how this feels when I pick up the complimentary node.

I still think Crucible as far as mechanics go is sort of shit. It is very limited in its usefulness and seems to just create dumb items. For example, right now I am using a fairly mediocre Opal Sceptre that I picked up off the ground. The available tree looks a little something like this… and I have bolded the options I took.

  • Adds 7 to 12 Fire Damage. 10% Chance to Ignite.
    • 25% reduced Attack Speed.  Attacks with this Weapon have 30% chance to deal Double Damage.
    • Minion Instability.
      • Inflict Lightning Exposure on Hit.  25% chance to be inflicted with Lightning Exposure when you take Lightning Damage from a Hit.
        • Socketed Gems are Supported by Level 10 Energy Leech.
      • Brand Recall has 40% reduced Cooldown Recovery Rate.  40% increased Brand Attachment Rate.
        • 15% increased Explicit Elemental Damage Modifier magnitudes.

So this item doesn’t really make a ton of sense for my current build… but in theory, it would be super useful if I end up building a Minion Instability Summon Raging Spirits build for example. I guess I am just thankful that nothing on the tree that I have chosen comes with a negative effect. For example, if that first node would have been the 25% reduced Attack Speed… that would have been pretty awful for a lot of builds. I think a lot of the complaints from the players have been when the node they cannot “unchoose” effectively makes it so they can no longer use the item. In theory, if you get to the forge map you can scour nodes but that is a lot of fiddling to fix what is effectively a broken item, especially if your item is say… an appropriately colored six-link bow worth a few divines.

It seems like I even had a better night than I thought I did. Granted this is nowhere near what I would consider a wild profit but between the Delve that I did yesterday and maps… without really selling anything on trade I managed to pick up 21 Chaos Orbs. I also picked up quite a few bindings and chromatics but wound up blowing through my jeweler’s orbs making bad decisions. The biggest benefit of last night though is I managed to find enough quality items to finish getting my armor slots to 20% so that was a not-insignificant bump in armor. My hope is eventually to get enough catalysts from Metamorph to put some stats on jewelry. Granted that nothing I am doing is anywhere near the rocket start that most YouTubers and Streamers have, but it feels pretty dang successful far as I am concerned.