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.
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.
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.
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.
Good Morning Friends! I am unfortunately what you would call a “microtransaction enjoyed”. Not that I love having parts of a game carved up into bite-sized monetary transactions, but I enjoy cool cosmetics. Grinding Gear Games knew how to hit me right in the feels this time… when they introduced the crawler bear. Normally in Delve, you follow around an automated minecart-looking thing called the crawler, and in one of the league packages this time they have a skin that turns it into an adorable bear friend. So when you are doing other content he follows you around as a pet, and when down in Delve he leads the way for you. This is so definitely in my wheelhouse that I would have bought whatever pack he was in… thankfully it was the cheapest one.
Last night I finished the campaign which meant that I needed to go on a bit of a shopping spree to get my gear in order. Thankfully I managed to get a Seven Years Back Luck card from one of the Act 10 zones that I was able to turn into 60 Chaos Orbs. Other than that I had picked up around 15 Chaos Orbs through completing the campaign and I judiciously spent almost all of it on getting my character to where it needed to be to comfortably start mapping. What this meant more than anything was getting my resists capped and my armor up a bit, and then swapping around gem sockets so that I could fit more auras and have things in a more standardized setup. The armor should bump up considerably once I get my final Labyrinth done… of which I have yet to see a trial in any of the maps I have completed.
Every armor slot needs improvement, most specifically I could not come anywhere near close to touching a six-link in the correct colors and wound up going with a five-link corrupted for 20 chaos that will be “good enough” to hold me until hopefully, I can replace it with a well rolled Brass Dome. Right now prices in general are just completely bonkers. Let’s take Blessing of Chayula as our canary in the coal mine. This is an item that used to vacillate between 20 and 50 chaos, and now they are going for over 400 chaos. Essentially this item is needed for crafting items used by a good number of builds including the Poison Summon Raging Spirits meta build last league. I am uncertain if the Breech changes are really as bad as people seem to think they are, but it was a popular mechanic for farming and now the community seems to have agreed that it’s no longer profitable… which means everything that drops there has a wild price tag.
The biggest problem that I am currently having myself is that I am just not getting much of what folks generally call “bubblegum” currency. The biggest thing I am having a massive drought of is Armourer’s Scrap and Blacksmith’s Whetstone. By this point in the league, I would normally have everything I am wearing at 20% quality without issue… and now I am essentially consuming them as soon as I get them with zero stockpiles. I’ve also yet to see a single Exalted Orb or Divine Orb and am in a constant struggle to get Chromatics and Fusings. I’ve also not found much in the way of tainted currency yet, but I am hoping that changes as I get further into maps and delve. Vaal Orbs are currently the thing I am concerned about given that in order to get Atlas credit for red-tier maps I am going to need a stockpile of them.
That said I am a very long way from red maps, or even yellow maps honestly. As of last night, I have completed 16 of the 115 nodes needed on my Atlas. I’m essentially running what I have easy access to right now, and hoping that either Kirac missions or map drops get me further. At some point, I will create the spreadsheet that I usually use to track these things, but for the moment it is just me and Ashgar participating in this league so I have not really felt super rushed to get that ready. However, I am already to the point of not being able to remember if I have already gotten credit for something. So this is likely going to get created today for my own benefit. I wish there was some indicator on the map itself if you have full credit for it already.
Since I love Delve, I’ve made a hard beeline to pick up all of the Niko nodes on the tree. After that, I will likely circle back around and get strongbox nodes for a tree that looks a little like this before expanding out. Specifically, there is a node called Mining Byproducts that states that you have a 10% chance to get azurite from chests and nodes in the area. Thing is… I am not sure if this means small white-quality chests in the zone or strong boxes. In either case, I am going to do some experimenting because maybe I have been doing this wrong all along. Maybe I should have been opening all of those damned chests in a map because maybe they would have been giving me more sulphite. If nothing else I like opening strongboxes in a map so I almost always include them regardless.
As far as Delve goes, I have made piteous progress. Essentially right now I am trying to cherry-pick Azerite nodes and chest nodes so that I can build up a stockpile of resources. At the moment Delve crafting resources are not worth selling. However, as the league carries on and folks start trying out complex crafting projects… I fully expect this to change. I think enough videos circulated in the last league stating that Delve was a “get rich quick” scheme. However, I know that Delve is very much an acquired taste and I do not expect most players who might be trying it now, to stick with it. I should have probably gone for shaping the seas and skies first, but I wanted to start my Delve engine as fast as I could given how sparse currency has been to this point.
All told I am personally enjoying myself, but as many folks have commented it feels like playing standard. I have little to no interest in the league mechanic as a whole because it isn’t terribly useful in the grand scheme of things. In theory, I could keep weapons in my second set of inventory slots and then use those for trying to unlock crucible trees… but generally speaking, I use those instead to mule gems for leveling and corrupting. I don’t love the idea of keeping random weapons in my inventory spots either. At some point I am probably going to try my hand at getting a good scepter base, and then trying to find one with a decent tree… that I will then use in a Delve crafting project. In the short term, however… I still have a ton of mapping to do and progress to make in Delve.
