Morning Folks! If you have read this blog for any length of time over the last few years, you will know I am a “Delve Enjoyer”. One of the nuisances of Delve is that you need to pop out every so often to refill sulphite that you use to power the minecart or in my case the tunnel bear mtx… used to traverse the darkness. Generally speaking even with full Niko support on the Atlas tree it will take several maps to fully top back off your stockpile of 65,000 sulphite for a maximum upgraded capacity. When I am in the mood to Delve I pretty much want to do nothing but that. This makes the need to map for a bit in order to fill back up my stockpile of “delve juice” feel like a chore.
One of the components of the Necropolis league mechanic is Allflames which are used to swap out a pack of mobs on your map for a pack that has specific rewards. One of these is the Allflame Ember of Sulphite which removes a normal pack for a pack of 5-7 Monsters that reward Sulphite on Death. If you add the Sulphite Scarab of Greed which causes the map owner to gain 150% more Sulphite you have a wild interaction. In a T16 map, if you replace the top pack aka the one with the highest occurrence in the map with the Sulphite Allflame, and run one of these Scarabs you are pretty much guaranteed to top off your 65,000 Sulphite in a single map. Which of course means that I can get back to doing the thing that I want to be doing almost immediately. This is part of the reason why I am hoping that if nothing else… the Allflame mechanic goes standard after this league.
I am not super deep into Delve right now, but I am farming comfortably a bit deeper than normal this league. Generally speaking, I would stick in the 150 to 200 range and keep going horizontal looking for new cities and fossil nodes. In this league, it feels like I am much stronger than I normally would be, and as such I keep going deeper in order to test what the lower bounds of this build would be. I don’t necessarily want to leave super chill mode, at least not until I have dinged level 100. After that, I will probably start diving straight down to see where the break point is for my build where it transitions to something I can’t do quite as easily. In previous leagues, by the time I hit 500 depth, I was in pain. I am wondering if I can somehow make it down to around 1000 depth this go-round.
I have passed the halfway point in level 99 and am at the point where I plan on always carrying around an Omen of Amelioration just in case. During the 99 to 100 grind, a single death can cause you to lose at least a full night’s worth of experience progress. If I do take a random death the Omen will be consumed and I will save 75% of the loss, making it a bit less painful. I got mine as a drop but given that they are only around 50 Chaos, I would absolutely buy another one if I take a death because the savings is well worth it at this point. Once I ding 100 I will go back to doing some dangerous content again. Honestly the XP penalty is the piece of Path of Exile that I like the least. It feels like I have to play super safe if I want to make any progress at all. I’ve only ever hit level 100 on one other character, because while I will happily pay for voidstones… I refuse to pay for power levelling services.
Good Morning Folks! I don’t have a heck of a lot to talk about this morning, but I thought I would share something that I realized yesterday. I spend a lot of time in Delve and it is quite possibly my favorite game mode in Path of Exile. I would not be shocked if I had spent over a thousand hours running delve nodes. The thing is… the structure of Delve is something that has confused me a bit. Namely, I seemed to be missing the inherent understanding of how to find hidden nodes. There are a lot of things in this game that are based on rules, but for whatever reason I had yet to grasp something fundamental about the way Delve was laid out. Now I have to admit that I had heard this information before, but never fully grasped what it meant.
Veteran Path of Exile players speak like you understand what they are saying. I remember specifically Zizaran talking about this in a video here he was explaining that you could tell where hidden nodes were based on the connections that they were making. A node cannot have only two connection points. It can have one, it can have three, and in rare cases, it can have four… but no node can have only two connections. To illustrate this point I took a screenshot of an area down in Delve where there were two hidden nodes side by side… one azerite and one fossil. I’ve applied some labels to count the connections and you can see there are two places where there are only two visible connections. So I sketched an estimate of where I thought the connections might break off and labeled the expected node path in each case with a “3?” indicating a hidden third connection.
Last night I farmed each of these areas out so that I could take a follow up screenshot showing what the actual connections ended up looking like. I have highlighted the paths in green and in both cases I was more or less right. In the case of the Fossil node, the path broke off to the north instead of to the west, but it was in the same region. In any case looking for nodes that only had two paths connected to it, gave me a place where I knew for certain there would be some sort of path breaking out that I could bomb to get access to the tunnel.
Sometimes there are going to be places on the map where there is a hidden node, but there are two nodes around it that only have two connections. In these cases, you need to look for places where there might be a phantom fourth connection. If I were going to try and get to this currency node then I would start looking at the armor node and azerite nodes that I have highlighted. There is not enough room for a path to break off the Cartography node above the highlighted area, and while technically the singleton Lightning node could break north, that seems to happen really infrequently. Again you can have a single point of connection, three points of connection, or four points of connection but never two.
This is not my image, but it represents a concept that took me a bit to grasp. Delve is aligned to a strict grid of nodes. So when thinking of the way things connect up… there has to be enough room for a path to travel through without interrupting nodes you have already revealed. The way the biomes are laid out gives you a hint for where the edges of the individual blocks are. if you were to start drawing along those boundaries, you would eventually end up with a grid similar to the one above showing you where your hidden node has to be connected to. In the above example, we are going back to the rule of two again making it very clear where the connection is going to be. However in my example, if I follow the biome boundary lines, I cannot rule out either the two four connections that I have highlighted or the potential of that singleton going north.
Delve has long been something that was largely instinctual for me. I would get a feel of which tunnels I could dive down into the darkness and find riches, and which I should skip. However, I knew there had to be a method to the madness, and understanding the rules… makes it so much more straightforward to find those hidden nodes. Again this is something that EVERYONE might already know and I am just slow on the uptake… but I am going to take the risk to look like an idiot and explain it clearly regardless. That has been the problem I have had with most Path of Exile knowledge transfer, is that there is a general assumption that folks already understand core concepts. I’ve played roughly 2500 hours of the game and there are still core concepts that I am finally grasping all the time. It is my hope that this will help someone out there because I am too old for posturing that I know everything.
Good Morning Folks! Sorry for never actually getting around to writing anything yesterday… I am going through a bit of a thing. Later today will mark us having the new Affliction League in Path of Exile for a week, and I thought I would spend some time this morning giving my thoughts as a whole on the changes. As of writing this, I am level 93 and can easily do T16 maps and am around the 100 to 150 range in delve farming content there. First I have to say I am very pleased with Boneshatter and this has been one of my most part one of my smoothest transitions from leveling to mapping and to the proper endgame. I still have some relatively scuffed gear, but I feel completely viable and while I am sure I would be stronger in a trade league environment it has been perfect cromulent for “solo-self-found” gameplay.
For those who care about such things, here are screenshots of my offensive and defensive screens inside of POE. I would dump a POB… but it seems like Boneshatter of Complex Trauma is not recognized yet and comes across as complete nonsense. This is one of the challenges of having such a major shift in the meta… all of the tools that we use to help us make better sense of the game are all lagging behind. What matters more than anything is that it feels good to play, but I just noticed this morning that I am inching precariously close to the accuracy cap health-wise, which means my free 40% damage multiplier will break if I cross that line by even one point. I might need to see if I can find a single point on the tree that gives me some more accuracy because I really do not want to go back to running precision if I can help it.
As far as the bit meta shake-up and changes in all of the active skill gems go… I think there is more positive here than negative. Sure it killed my favorite character archetype… the Righteous Fire Juggernaut, but RF still is alive and kicking in the form of an Inquisitor Energy Shield/Life Stacking build and the new weird Mana RF build that is starting to spring up on Hierophant. Neither is really what I want, but I am happy that mechanically the playstyle still lives on even though it no longer does for me. What we gained in return is a bunch of really interesting-looking abilities that I want to try building around like Volcanic Fisure of Snaking which sort of casts a line of snaking explosions on the ground that look something vaguely similar to an Abyss tunnel. While I don’t think most of the community has really had a chance to test out all of the new playstyles, I think we are going to see some extremely interesting builds emerge as a result.
The big mechanic for Affliction League is the Viridian Wildwoods which is a delve-like exploration mechanic where you venture forth into the mists while wisps burn away the taint of evil. Out in the mists are all manner of encounters including NPCs that will teach you one of three new ascendancy classes that you can gain on top of your normal one. Essentially they boil down to “Fun with Flasks”, “Fun with Corpses”, and “DIY Scion” each with their own chase-perfected versions of items that you can equip that are gained through completing Viridian Wildwoods in various tiers of content. The Wildwoods themselves are extremely enjoyable and when you exit them, they give you a Sentinel-like mechanic that randomly juices content in the map making them drop massive amounts of loot while also scaling the difficulty significantly.
There are videos showing the sheer nonsense that can happen when you combine the Wildwoods with existing 100% Delirium juicing strategies… but you don’t even need to really do that to feel the impact. The above screenshot was taken from a white map, after having completed the wildwoods and them doing a SINGLE ritual altar after having defeated an Essence Beast that was in range of it. This is not even showing the real scope of how much loot there was… because there were strings of loot popups that expanded past the borders of the map. This league has forced me to crank up the strictness of my loot filter because it produces way more loot than I could ever sort through. Legitimately it might be one of my favorite league mechanics they have come up with but also feel it might be a bit too strong to go into standard.
The three ascendancies are each strong in their own way but somewhat suffer from the “only three good picks” problem that Chieftain does currently. Since I am melee class, it felt like the natural synergy of tinctures was perfect for me to go with. Essentially due to my ascendancy, I have nearly 100% uptime on the flasks on either side of the tincture. It has also made me shift up my playstyle a bit for example I am using Warlord’s Mark instead of Vulnerability because it synergizes with Detect Evil which makes it so that my hits against marked targets cannot be blocked or suppressed. The problem is I am not exactly sure what I want for my 4th choice. I will likely go Wildwood Blessing as it gives me Barkskin a powerful 25% reservation defensive layer and I really don’t want to give up additional flask slots or remove gems from my gear to benefit from the other two options. What is awesome is I could shift things up and go for the Primalist ascendancy and have equally compelling options. I am definitely calling this system a massive win.
So that is essentially three wins in a row… so let’s talk about a massive “L”. Let’s start off first by stating… that I did not play the Ultimatum league and as a result, I had no nostalgia for it… and that I also enjoyed Metamorph quite a bit and regularly mixed it into my Altas tree. So far Ultimatum seems like a shitty replacement for Metamorph. The rewards are just not great and feel like a greatest hits collection of the shittiest loot you ever got from the corrupted strongbox atlas node with the occasional small stack of currency of catalysts. The thing is… the negative effects can be rather rippy and you can see in the above screenshot what it looks like when you complete all 10 rounds and get a stack of your loot. Nothing in that pile was really worth the time it took me to complete the encounter. I would like to see some data collected from folks who went all in on the Ultimatum atlas tree options, but with zero investment it really isn’t even worth my time.
The other big change for me personally has been the advent of “Bel League” where I gathered together with some close friends and started a private Path of Exile trade league. This has given us a mostly SSF gameplay experience with the ability to share some really good items when we find them. I would say this has been a massive win because it allowed us to bypass a lot of the day-one weirdness as we were limiting ourselves to a very small pool of players. It has also been a lot of fun as random loot we might not be interested in, could be useful for someone else out there playing a wildly different build. I’ve had a lot of fun earmarking assorted loot for my friends and also churning out raw currency for crafting. It is making me realize just how much of the “wealth” I generated last league came from the trade economy because I have rather anemic stacks of chaos and only a single divine orb thus far.
This has also caused me to shift up my Atlas strategy a bit and am actually mixing in Essence and Harvest for the raw crafting potential that each provides. I’ve also just picked up some assorted nodes to increase the drop chance of adjacent maps since I cannot buy my way out of issues when it comes to mapping. I am going to have to find all of my maps the old-fashioned way… which is running maps that connect to the empty slot and hoping for some good luck. I am more than over-sustaining the total number of maps that I am getting and have filled the guild bank with fodder for those coming up the rungs and just starting to enter the endgame. So in total, this has given me a bit different looking Atlas than I normally would have at this point but I am enjoying myself. Once I complete all of the normal maps I will be popping back through and pruning some of the branches a bit to most likely go into either a Red or Blue Altar strategy.
As far as Atlas progress goes I have slowed down considerably because the nodes that I need are a bit harder to find as drops. I need most of the unique maps and quite a few of the higher tier red maps to complete out my 115 of 115 as I currently sit at 95. I did complete my first two “easy” voidstones yesterday, and I am not sure if I will mess around too much with going beyond that. I don’t really like bossing in Path of Exile and it does not bring me the joy that it seems to for Kodra, so I am not sure if I will feel like the grind that is required to get even an attempt at Maven or Uber Elder. Were I in the trade environment I would probably just buy a carry. Honestly, I am not even sure how much I care about getting all maps dropping at t16 for the purpose of this league. It has been pretty chill to grab a yellow map and run the league mechanic on it, without it really escalating the difficulty too highly.
I think that is my rundown of Affliction League so far. I would say that overwhelmingly this is a good league. I will forever miss my Righteous Fire Juggernaut shenanigans but I am pretty happy with where I am in Boneshatter land. It isn’t anywhere near as immortal, but also kills things much faster…. without feeling like a squishy mess so I will call that a net positive. I am certain it could feel much better if I were able to upgrade some of my gear to add spell suppressions as a more reliable defensive layer. Similarly, I would probably try and slide in some “damage taken as X” mechanics to smooth things out a bit. I would also really like to have way more health but for being sub 4000, it still feels pretty great.
So essentially… I am really pleased with both the experiment of “Bel League” and the Affliction league as a whole and especially how much progress I have made in a little less than a week.
Good Morning Folks! I think I have arrived at the point with Boneshatter where I am really starting to love it. I mean it kinda feels amazing to swing a big axe and watch things explode around me. I absolutely get why this build has been so popular for as long as it has. That somewhat concerns me however given how stable Righteous Fire was for years… and then was suddenly changed fairly drastically. Yesterday I swapped over to Boneshatter of Complex Trauma and got it raised to 20% quality through the Labyrinth. Essentially this is a Boneshatter that ramps much faster but resets when you hit 10 stacks. So this is probably a DPS loss for bossing, but seems to be a massive boost for mapping as most engagements do not last terribly long. I would imagine it is probably also good for boss fights where you need to move around constantly as you won’t hit the reset point quite as quickly.
I saw a noticeable spike in damage when I swapped gems, so at least for me… it seems to be the right call. I am not sure if that will be the case for everyone, however. I still could use a much better axe and my gear is still quite a bit scuffed. I am not running a six-link and would ultimately like to find a chest so that I can put all of my utility stuff in a six-red-socket axe. There are a lot of gems that I am just not using right now. For example, I have Purity of Elements, Grace, and Pride all vying for my last reservation aura slot. Grace is just silly because it allows me to arrive at some extremely high armor levels. Purity of Elements I was using for a bit when I was not capped, and then Pride seems to be what I use most of the time. Thing is… I’ve never unsocketed the gems I am not using which means there is a lot of room to grow my build. At some point, I will shift Blood Rage to a Cast when Damage Taken setup along with Vaal Molten Shell if I can ever find one.
As far as progress goes, I completed my white and yellow maps yesterday which only leaves some red and unique maps to hit my 115. I am sitting at 84 bonus objectives completed which means between yesterday morning and today I managed to pick up 19 new ones. Something new that I learned is that apparently, Delve can drop maps that you do not have access to otherwise. I always thought the maps form Delve followed the logic of needing to drop connecting to some other map that you had already completed. However yesterday I picked up several red maps that were disconnected from everything else. So I guess maybe that is a point for rushing down into Delve earlier than I would have thought. The rest were picked up through the three to one vendor map crafting recipe especially to fill out the remaining yellow maps that I had not seen.
Another thing that I did not realize… is that apparently you can get Awakened gems while Maven is witnessing a fight. I always knew that you could get them from Maven’s Crucible encounters where you fight things that she had witnessed, but I did not know that the sheer act of her witnessing a fight could drop them. I feel like even then, this is probably a unicorn moment and I will likely never see another one of these. It was already pretty rare to get them from the 8 ways, and I am sure it is even rarer still to get them from a map. I do wonder if the atlas keystone that makes extra bosses show up when doing a witnessed map causes the drop rate to increase. Admittedly I am also running with WAY MORE rarity support than I normally do due to those wild rings I showed off yesterday. I might be seeing things on the drop table that I would not normally see without running a specific Magic Find character.
Speaking of unicorn moments, I also got a Voidborn Reliquary Key to drop down in Delve. Normally speaking I would sell this because I can use the 3 divines that they often are way more than I can the crap unique that is sure to drop. Ace had not seen one of these so I streamed briefly over Discord opening it. Shocking to no one I got a crap unique, but it was at least a reasonably well-rolled Ventor’s Gamble. Were it not for the slight amount of reduced quantity I would probably use it or suggest someone else use it. It would have been hilarious though if I had gotten something like a mageblood given that I am in a private league. Currency and expensive item drops don’t mean quite as much as they normally do since what matters most is the crafting value of an item.
I am legitimately having way more fun than I thought I might playing Boneshatter. I was in pretty heavy mourning for Righteous Fire and while the build is still technically viable it is a bit of a shadow compared to its former self at least for Juggernaut. I spent some time playing around with my well-geared RF Jugg from last league and it is still absolutely viable for mapping and honestly most content… but I kill things noticeably slower. I could probably shift up my build a bit to stack more life, which would then give me much more Righteous Fire damage but would probably mean I would be losing Fire Trap damage in the process. I assume at some point we will let our characters go into Trade League and when that happens I plan on devoting some effort into tweaking my Boneshatter build to see just how good an optimally geared one feels. In the meantime though I am having a freaking blast bashing things and making them explode.
