Visual Clarity Overrated

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Good Morning Folks. On Thursday the Last Epoch Season 3 started and since then I have largely been focused on leveling. I finished Act 10 at some point on Saturday morning, and pushed into Empowered Monoliths last night around 7pm. I have a pretty solid build at the moment, but it is one that I just winged my way through rather that following a guide. In theory at some point I should probably optimize things, but I really how skill respecs work in this game. You can respec your character passives without much issue just by spending a bit of gold at a vendor to remove points and then immediately you can put them back. For skills, you remove the point… and then have to deal with not having that point until you have earned enough experience to level it back up again. I really hate this process and as a result I am avoiding it until I absolutely cannot progress any further in the current state of my build.

There are basically three things that have caused me to die in this game. The first is getting a loot lizard shrine and then freaking out about trying to chase them down and ignoring the packs of monsters between me and the lizard and just getting overwhelmed. The second is the fact that Gracie has decided that she needs to crawl up into my arms at a moment’s notice and the game does not have the pause functionality that I am so used to now from Path of Exile. The last death type is due to the fact that I have around twenty minions on screen at any given time… and I simply lose my damned cursor and given that Last Epoch does not lock the cursor to the screen area… it could be over on the second monitor. When I need to deftly blink away from some incoming attack I need to be pointing the cursor in the right direction and my old man eyes cannot see the stupid thing.

In Path of Exile I can equip a more visually distinct cursor and same goes for running a cursor pack through BlishHUD in Guild Wars 2. Unfortunately for some reason the way in which Last Epoch was built has caused them to be unable to modify the cursor at runtime, in spite of them exploring this at length. So apparently the accepted solution by the community is to run a tool called YoloMouse that you can buy from Steam for roughly $4. Aaron Action RPG has a video about setting it up for Last Epoch if you are curious. Now instead of a very hard to find cursor that blends in with everything… I have a giant 50px green arrow that clashes spectacularly with the screen and I can locate in seconds. Sometimes you just have to make adjustments… especially as your eyesight gets worse. Prime old man gaming woes.

I’ve been leveling as Necromancer with effectively 9 Archers, 5 Mages, 2 Wraiths, 1 Golem, 1 TRex, 1 Crab, 1 Random Incorrectly Named Mob, and then summon a Rift Beast when certain monsters hit 40% health. The only challenge with the build is that sometimes my army of minions gets distracted and I have to kill forcing them to stay on target. There is a bit of lag between when I command them to attack and when they actually do… but once they are on target things melt pretty quickly. I am running up to 6 Volatile Zombies at a time, with leap, and they essentially cause the equivalent of culling strike when they hit something at 15% life or lower. I do wonder if I would have better dps if I swapped my Golem for an Abomination per the trendy build… because it would have a single minion doing the majority of my damage and potentially allow me to rip through things faster.

I am running a truly aggressive number of uniques with this build… more so than I am probably comfortable with. That means I need to keep finding better copies or copies with legendary potential so I can get some of the stats that I would be missing if I were using an exalted item in that slot. This is not too terribly different from the snapshot from Friday with the addition of getting a lucky Nemesis drop of the Pale Ox chest, a slightly better Phantom Grip, a slightly better Evolution’s End, and then picking up the Primal item I am running the Tyrant’s Skull which gives me the TRex minion. Right now I am trying to chase a high LP version of Reach of the Grave but it seems like 3 and 4 LP versions are super rare. If only Cleaver Solution were worded differently… and converted Strength as additive Intelligence… I would probably be running that, but alas it is your Intelligence equals your current Strength.

I’ve unlocked all of the slots on my weaver’s tree and two are devoted to Reach trying to farm a good one to convert into a legendary. I have a Tolmats in one of the remaining slots and a Phantom Grip in the other so I can keep getting those pretty regularly. As far as my maps go I have the Nemesis Tower map in both slots because those are always useful to find on the monolith. Now I am starting to focus points on things that I actually want to unlock and the first two went into the node that makes Dungeon specific monsters appear in the monolith so that you can get those rewards without ever having to run those dungeons. Next I will probably focus on increasing the frequency of Rift Beasts in my maps so that I can hopefully farm up better copies of Tyrant’s Skull. Lastly I will probably throw points into the rest of the Loot Lizard nodes because while they cause me to play in imprudent ways… they are still a heck of a lot of fun and big loot bonanzas.

I’ve pushed The Woven faction up to level 5 and unlocked a few more maps to buy which will give me points to spend. Over on Circle of Fortunate I have it at 8 which gives items a higher chance to get legendary potential, and also higher chance of getting more of it. The biggest thing I need to watch is when I get a bunch of currency in either faction because I am notoriously bad at actually spending it down. These screenshots were taken this morning after I purposefully bought a bunch of prophecies and maps, but usually I am carrying at least 10k in each currency because I just forget about spending them. What I really want is a hideout that allows me to have a merchant from each faction in it, so that I don’t have to keep going over to an otherwise useless zone all of the time. Legitimately something akin to the Path of Exile hideout is now the thing that I think I want the most in this game.

As far as the campaign and new content goes… Act 10 was really solid. It felt a bit on the longer side, but I am not sure if that is just because I have the rest of the campaign memorized and optimized at this point. I was super happy to see the world turtle showing up in this content and lending us a hand. Originally we first saw this character in one of the weaver mas and since they already had the model it seems like a good place to add it in as they help us get across a broken bridge. There is some side content that is entirely missable but also pretty hilarious, so I suggest you duck into the areas even if the game is not pointing you into that direction. Ace told me about it which caused me to back track and figure out how to find it. In total it probably adds another hour onto the content and lets you start the Monolith at a much higher level. This also makes that first Monolith way more dicey if you are doing content skips however.

All told it is a good time… but I do admit I am feeling a bit of wanderlust and am contemplating rolling a Primalist to try out the earthquake bear thing. There is also part of me that wants to see just how badly they nerfed Judgement, and if it is still as viable for bossing and deep corruption as it was last league. I need to group up with Ace and do some nonsense because I know that will be a heck of a lot of fun, and will make everything feel more engaging. I am feeling sort of rudderless at the moment. I am having fun, but also not sure how much effort I want to put into grinding things out like I did last league. I am sure I will probably at least attempt Aberroth once, but I don’t enjoy the Harbinger chase nearly as much as I do other parts of the game. I don’t really like bossing in ARPGs… and that holds just as true for Last Epoch as it does for Path of Exile. I would be perfectly happy never pushing any higher than 100 Corruption were it not for the fact that the game sort of forces you to do so.

I am not sure what is up but I am not really feeling this league and this character as much as I did last go round. Necromancer is a way more passive gameplay style and I might try pivoting to something else and see if that brings back the magic. I will think about it today and see where it leads me. Are you playing this season? What character are you playing? Drop me a line below and let me know how you are enjoying it.

AggroChat #535 – Dino Go Honk

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

Hey Folks! This week, we have the entire crew and start off talking about Last Epoch Season 3 with the release of Beneath Ancient Skies.  We talk briefly about the patch reveal for Path of Exile 2: The Third Edict, and while it sounded promising, it is mostly a bunch of nerfs.  From there, we talk a bit about some of the news coming out of Gamescom 2025 and specifically the date reveal for Hollow Knight Silksong.  Ash talks a bit about the Kirby Air Riders Nintendo Direct and some of the things that came out of that.  Bel talks about his further descent into madness with Miniatures and Warhammer.  Finally, Kodra talks a bit about some more Starfinder Society with Starfinder 2e.

Topics Discussed:

  • Last Epoch Season 3 – Beneath Ancient Skies
  • Path of Exile 2 0.3 – The Third Edict
  • GamesCom 2025
  • Hollow Knight Silksong
  • Kirby Air Riders Direct
  • Bel’s Further Delve into Miniatures and Wargaming
  • Starfinder Society

Hey Folks! This week, we have the entire crew and start off talking about Last Epoch Season 3 with the release of Beneath Ancient Skies.  We talk briefly about the patch reveal for Path of Exile 2: The Third Edict, and while it sounded promising, it is mostly a bunch of nerfs.  From there, we talk a bit about some of the news coming out of Gamescom 2025 and specifically the date reveal for Hollow Knight Silksong.  Ash talks a bit about the Kirby Air Riders Nintendo Direct and some of the things that came out of that.  Bel talks about his further descent into madness with Miniatures and Warhammer.  Finally, Kodra talks a bit about some more Starfinder Society with Starfinder 2e.

Topics Discussed:

  • Last Epoch Season 3 – Beneath Ancient Skies
  • Path of Exile 2 0.3 – The Third Edict
  • GamesCom 2025
  • Hollow Knight Silksong
  • Kirby Air Riders Direct
  • Bel’s Further Delve into Miniatures and Wargaming
  • Starfinder Society

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Witchy Goth, Sloth, Toucan, and Capy

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Good Morning Folks! Yesterday was the release of Last Epoch Season 3 aka Beneath Ancient Skies and I spent all evening leveling a Necromancer. There are a number of changes to the way that minions work in this update and I wanted to give it a spin. More importantly the supporter packs added a Sloth that hangs out on my back and a Toucan, which added to my existing Capybara pet allows me to run around with a great party for adventures. I’m just a Hot Witchy Goth roaming around the countryside raising the deads to make the baddies pay. My character this time around is the aptly named “BelMakeDeadGo” and I am sort of yoloing my way through the leveling with the plan to actually follow some build guide once I start running into problems. The way minions work in Last Epoch is in general so much freaking better than the way minions work in Path of Exile, because while they fixed Animate Guardian… Spectres are still a giant pain in the ass for the first game. I also think I like exploding zombies better than angry flaming skulls.

I’ve had an exceptional amount of luck in getting things to drop that are actually useful for my build. The first unique drop that I got was Doublet of Onos Tull, which is not phenomenal… but early on is super good at making your minions just deal more consistent damage by making them all deal bleeds. Shortly after that I got Tolmat’s Incorrect History of Eterra which I have never used, but is super fun because it summons a random zone specific monster to fight along side you… which is pretty freaking solid overall. Add to this a Reach of the Grave and a Crab ring which just added more minion goodness and another disposable easily resummoned target to soak damage. The real amazing drop was Evolution’s End which dropped after letting the league mechanic go to its maximum number of evolutions, and allows me to summon the beast that I built during the process of creating it. When I get a unique to 40% it pops into the battle and feels sufficiently like a Kaiju joining the field. It gives big “Let Them Fight” energy.

Speaking of league mechanics, the primal hunt involves you following around an NPC named Skarven Bloodhorn as he opens up rifts to the location of a specific beast. The rifts are marked with 4 claw slashes in the air, and clicking on one either summons a new cave to explore and find a new beast to grant mutations, or summons a beast to fight that has all of the mutations you have chosen to date applied to it. It honestly took me a bit to grasp that I was stacking mutations and making things harder and harder, because for a bit I thought maybe this mechanic was just wildly overtuned. After you have killed enough beasts you can pop into a zone and fight the final form one last time, and upon killing it a fancy unique will drop. I am not sure if it is always a version of Evolution’s End, or if there are more things on the loot table because I have only taken one all the way to completion.

I think this will go much faster when we are in the monolith, but during the campaign it essentially took me all of the way until level 45ish to complete one of these having never skilled a single primal rift. What I ended up with was a beast two two extra heads, one frost, and one ice… that summons these pretty brutal whirlwinds that chase the target down and that periodically divebombs the target location. This was a massive pain in the ass to fight while I was unlocking it, and it was super good at churning through my minions forcing me to run away and resummon everything. Now that it is on my side… it can just wreck pretty much any boss and I am kind of happy I suffered through the process of getting it unlocked so that I can use it going forward. Pretty sure I am going to be using this neckpiece for a really long time, as it seems to scale well as I level.

One of the nice things about this mechanic is that you can spend the beast parts that you collect with Skarven to unlock primal uniques. You can only equip one of these at a time, but was pretty happy to see that Tyrant’s Skull aka the relic that summons a TRex minion, is just something I can buy off this vendor. This is not something I will get anytime soon because it requires 13500 Ancient Bones, 15 Primordial Fangs, and 10 Primordial Horns… the last bit is not even a resource I have seen yet in any form. Looking it up this appears to be something that you either exchange at Skarven for other parts, or comes from one of two different woven echoes. Since I only really care about one of these items right now, I will probably start exchanging my Primordial Pedals for the Horns that I need.

All told I am having quite a bit of fun leveling a Necromancer. I am going to likely not make a ton of progress tonight, because I am meeting up with a friend to paint miniatures. Note this is not something I have done in almost two decades, so I am sure I will be rusty as heck. If I produce anything worth sharing I will likely turn that into a blog post at some point or share on my various social medias. Mostly the point of today is to go over and there and try a bunch of different paint ranges so I can figure out what I am going to buy my way into. At the moment I seem to be leaning towards Pro Acryl, but I could be easily convinced to go in any other direction after today’s outing. I still have to do some cleaning and rearranging before I can reasonably set up a painting area.

Are you playing some Last Epoch? What character did you end up creating? What do you think of the new league mechanic? Drop me a line below.

Helena Steps Up

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Hey Folks. Yesterday was a massive reveal for Path of Exile II, and there is a lot of interesting stuff there happening in that game. I am actually excited to give it a shot once Last Epoch Season 3 (which starts today at 11 am CDT) has run its course for me. All of that said, the most exciting change that happened yesterday… did not happen in Path of Exile II but instead was thrown in as part of a Path of Exile 1 patch that added the new MTX sets. Helena has now gained the ability that Sin and Doryani have in Path of Exile II, where she will identify everything that is in your inventory. Better yet it has the same Ctl+Click shortcut that exists in Path of Exile II, so now when I finish a map my first step is to walk over and have her bulk identify everything. Unfortunately that means that Lily is no longer my vendor character and Helena just got elevated in her location in my hideout significantly. I moved Lily over to the side a bit because I still feel like the ability to buy gems is a pretty huge role.

If you have not seen the presentation I highly suggest giving it a watch because it goes in depth as to the massive design changes that are a foot in that game. The full patch notes are also available if that is more your speed and you do not feel like watching an over hour long presentation. The biggest take away that I had is it seems like they are genuinely trying to make the game feel less clunky and then highlighted a bunch of ways they are trying to achieve this. Namely things like weapon swaps no longer having an animation lock, shield charge dropping its cool-down so you can spam it, and the addition of a sprint key to speed your way across large empty chunks of map seem like they will improve the flow of game-play. More important than all of this… they are introducing the first step at an asynchronous trade system that works somewhat similar to how the brokerage system worked in Everquest II. You post items on a vendor and then people come to your hideout to buy those items, all without you needing to be online.

It is going to take a bit for the changes to really sink in, and since I am not likely to start on the 29th I will be able to know whatever is busted before rolling my character. However I think I am probably going to try and revisit something I did this league where I played a Warrior archetype with Crossbows and leaned heavily into Armor Explosion stacked on Explosive Shot and then used Blueflame Bracers to convert that damage to cold so that I could also freeze things. The biggest change will be that since I can use the same support gems on all of my abilities, I can really lean into the armor break and armor explosion mechanics, while also dipping into some of the nodes that they highlighted in the warrior starting area that do fun things with armor break and fire damage. I still think there is probably a build here, and that it should also have more survival since you can now get the ability for armor to apply to elemental damage on gear.

My tree was somewhat of a mess but once the build sites get updated for the new information I will probably sit down and plan something out so I am not winging it every time I place a point. I still feel like the two handed and armor break nodes are really key to rush towards at first, but after that I sort of lost focus and went all over the place. Since I can throw attack speed gems on every node that should improve the feel of the crossbow abilities a bit, given they already feel a bit sluggish. There is a new support gem that they previewed that shows your crossbow reloading every time you break armor, and since that is my entire focus… so that I can make things explode based on broken armor… it should have a lot of synergy with what I am trying to do. I am just hoping that this build type goes under the radar enough to still be functional by the time I start a character.

I’m actually excited to play some Path of Exile II at some point, and that is the first time since the pre-release client came out and I saw what the game played like. I’ve been pretty down on this game, and I know that is disheartening for some folks who really like the changes it made over the Path of Exile formula. I will likely always love Path of Exile more, because I have spent over 2000 hours playing the damned game at this point. However getting into Titans Quest 2 made me appreciate a slower pace, and I played some of my crossbow dude last night and it felt better than I remember it feeling. I never beat the campaign on this character, but I did get another character to 85 during the Dawn of the Hunt league. I just did not enjoy the game enough to push any further, even though I was having more fun with crossbows than I was with Twohander and Shield Smith of Kitava. I still hate the way that characters ascend and find that entire process miserable, so I am definitely going ranged for the upcoming league to make Sanctum more tolerable.

However that is not what today is about. Today is hype for Last Epoch Beneath Ancient Skies, and you can check out the full patch notes here. I am going to be rolling a Necromancer of some sort and will likely wing it through the campaign and then build something more seriously after that. The ancient area has long been my favorite part of Last Epoch, so I am pumped to explore more of it. Mostly I am trying really hard not to fall back on Warpath Sentinel that I have played so many times in the past. The Judgement build ate a bunch of nerfs so I am hoping Necromancer can reach a point where I can at least do the endgame bosses. More than anything I am looking forward to hanging out with Ace and doing some group play over the weekend. I have plans for Saturday during the day but Thursday, Friday, and Sunday I am hoping to group up and do some nonsense. More than anything I am on the hunt for the Tyrant’s Skull so I can have a TRex minion.

I hope to see you all in Last Epoch today, and then eventually in a few weeks Path of Exile II.