legacy of phrecia

A New Sceptre

by

Morning Folks. Essentially each night I am progressing a bit in Monster Hunter Wilds, and then wind up back in Path of Exile for super chill mapping and delve time. There is only so much directed combat that I can take in a single evening. Monster Hunter Wilds is cool but also feels like it has zero chill right now because every quest leads to another big boss fight. I did spend some time last night roaming around and picking up materials so that I could upgrade a few things. It is probably weird that Path of Exile is known for being this obtuse nut to crack… but that I also find it my super chill happy place. I’ve been slowly working my way through unlocking all of the Heist quests, which given that I tend to find two to three rogue caches in each map… it is going pretty quickly.

Over the weekend I recorded another one of my dumb little videos where I effectively documented the state of my Righteous Fire Scavenger build. I personally find these useful because as I look back on various builds it helps me remember exactly what the state of the build was when I stopped playing it. This one was especially important I thought because we will not be getting Scavenger for very long, and the whole chaos explosions thing is really fun to experience. Essentially I zoom into a pack and it more or less explodes and then proliferates out to everything else in the area causing them to either explode or at least get whittled down in health so that my Righteous Fire can finish them off. I still prefer RF Chieftain because it is way more sturdy, but this is pretty damned fun.

Yesterday I bankrupted myself and bought a Putrid Cloister which unlocked the 3 Crafted mods benchcraft. Then I liquidated all of my available chaos to buy two Divine Orbs so that I could take the Sceptre I had been sitting on and turn it into a Damage Multi/Fire Multi setup. When Righteous Fire lost its flat damage the whole gem levels thing became way less important in the long run, and you are generally better off just trying for as much damage multi on your weapon as you can get. The other stats are largely just useless but I had a few exalted orbs sitting on my bank and figured might as well slam something on it. I even used an imprint beast on this just in case the regal orb bricked the item, so that I had one more shot at it. I now have an imprint that is mostly useless, but I would rather use it and not need it than need it and not have used it given that I captured the beast on my own.

While I was in a video recording mood I also took a bit of time and documented the final state of my Pohx League build, which was Ice Trap of Hollowness Trickster. I really do want to revisit this build during a proper league to see how far I can take it. Right now I just lack the evasion to make this feel more comfortable. I would really like to be able to hit 90% evasion chance and the limited trade environment made that difficult… or at least unaffordable. During a proper trade league there would be way more gear available, and I would probably be able to find an Ice Trap Dragonfang amulet. I had a search running for a few days and none of them showed up on the market. If this says viable, I may legitimately start it during 3.26 just to see how far I can take it, given that I already know I can run up a RF character as a backup in a few days without much issue if it crashes and burns.

This morning I got the first Tabula Rasa that I have gotten in a few league events. I think Crucible was the last league when I was getting these constantly. I had a bank full of various corrupted versions because I kept getting them, and kept rolling the dice with Vaal orbs. Not that I plan on leveling anything else during Legacy of Phrecia, but a Tabula is always a good way to start out a build. Though over the last few leagues I think I prefer some of the other starter chests if you can throw enough currency on it to get it up to four links. It is really hard to beat Thousand Ribbons for starter gear.

Last night I took out the Black Flame and then continued on and took out a corrupted Doshaguma and then a corrupted Rathalos. At that point I wandered around for awhile until the itch to play some Path of Exile caught me. I seem to only be able to take about three or four boss fights before needing to do something else for a bit. I looked at a quest guide and it does not appear that I am even halfway through the main story quest yet. I am not exactly in a massive rush, but I do prefer the endgame loop of Monster Hunter games to the story driven leveling process. Mostly I don’t love the whole fiddling around with temporary gear sets and would prefer to invest my time in a final build. It is what it is… and I find it bizarre the games that I enjoy the leveling process in like Path of Exile and the games that I just want a skip button to zoom straight to endgame goodness like Monster Hunter.

Anyways! I figure I will be flipping back and forth between these two games at least until April 2nd when the new Last Epoch Cycle lands. Depending on how engaged I get with Monster Hunter I might swap from Path of Exile to Last Epoch and then alternate between LE and MHWilds.

AggroChat #514 – Seeking Tribooty

by
Featuring: Ammosart, Belghast, Grace, and Thalen

Hey Folks! We are down our West Coast contingent this week but carried forth with a relatively short show.  Bel talks a bit about the Anti Sanctum Alliance and how it seems to have actually made an impact at least in the pricing of Sanctum Tomes in the Legacy of Phrecia event. From there Thalen shares his experiences with The Roottrees Are Dead, which is a logic puzzle spiritual successor to games like Return of the Obra Dinn.  We move on to talking a bit about Monster Hunter Wilds and our early experiences so far.  We’ve needed some Palico shenanigans to help us cope with our present dystopia. Last week we got a new feature trailer for the upcoming Last Epoch Cycle 2 coming April 2nd.  We spend a bit of time talking about what has been revealed for the new features and how it appears like the long wait has been worth it.

Topics Discussed:

  • Path of Exile
    • Legacy of Phrecia
    • Impact of the Anti-Sanctum Alliance
  • The Roottrees Are Dead
  • Monster Hunter Wilds
  • Last Epoch Cycle 2 Trailer

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Scuffed Scavenger

by

Hey Folks! Things are starting to come together. Yesterday I made a number of changes to my build that have incrementally moved me towards the indestructible nonsense that is the pinnacle form of Righteous Fire. The next map that I run I will ding level 92 but this morning I dumped a fresh POB to show the state of things. The biggest change is that I managed to pick up a Shaper shield and after running a bunch of Harvest I managed to craft one with 5% life gain on block, which allowed me to shift to the block version of the build. What confuses me however is I have no clue how Pohx is hitting 75% spell block with his build, so I am going to have to pay considerably closer attention to his POB to understand it.

Right now I have 4687 life, but that will improve as I continue to shift things around in the build and pile on additional levels. I have 83% Fire Resistance and 80% Cold and Lightning which when combined with 75% attack block and 30% spell block feels pretty comfortable. Most of the time I can just stand still in a pack of mobs and my health barely moves. I really need more regeneration at this point because I am not super comfortable with only 1100 ish. I would really prefer to be sitting somewhere around 2000, but had to give up some nodes on the tree as well as the regen % on my helmet. I’m essentially playing a juggling act right now since I am not able to focus ONLY on Fire Resistance since I am not playing a Chieftain.

I made a number of gear swaps. First up I rolled a much better temporary sceptre using alts and then threw some ignite and additional fire damage on it. Sadly I could not craft the big betrayal Fire/Ignite on it, but I have a few more sceptres that I am working on rolling T1 damage over time multi on so I can try and recombinate something with both generic multi and fire multi on it. I picked up a somewhat scuffed Elder helm and got 20 Burning Damage/20 Concentrated Effect on it giving me a psuedo-six-link Fire Trap. I rolled a life recovery shield like I talked about earlier and also improved the Immortal Flesh I was running for a minimum negative resistance while gaining a bit of life and regen over my existing one.

My current Idol set up gives me a bunch of Delirium and I have managed to gather up raw cluster jewels and rolled a new Large cluster with Prismatic Heart, Widespread Destruction, and the throwaway Smoking Remains. I am combining it with one Medium that has Fan the Flames and Flow of Life, and another that has Flow of Life and Smoking Remains. As I find more minimum passive skill medium and large clusters I will probably try and craft slightly better versions of these cluster jewels. Smoking Remains is not exactly a great hit, but I also did not want to spend forever rolling over things and needed something I could use. I bought the cheapest two jewels I could find on the market with max Fire Multi and percentage life on them, but again those could be massively improved over time.

That is honestly the broad theme of this character… everything is more than a little scuffed. I’m trying to learn to give up on perfect items, because quite honestly I am not making enough currency to be able to afford them. Instead I am trying to find or craft items that are good enough for my purposes. I’ve played RF enough to know what I actually need, versus what the perfect textbook example of an item looks like. At this point I should be fine to get all the way through the rest of maps, and considerably deeper into delve. Right now I am sitting at 62 of 115 and have a few more maps that are ready to run. I’ve been holding off on running any Red maps because I know Kirac will almost exclusively start giving me those once I have passed that boundary. I am a weirdo that likes completing each individual tier in order if I can help it. I really need to find more cities down on delve, because they produce random map tiers rather than ones that I would natively have access to.

I’m recycling an image from yesterday of the pops, but really… I think this build is starting to feel stronger than the Chieftain build normally is at this point. The explosions feel like they spread so much further than the Hinekora explosions do. If I can get an Oriath’s End it will feel even better because effectively I will have three sources of explode combined with ignite proliferation… which should basically allow me to just charge through maps. The big goals going forward are to get another Cloak of Flame that is either better rolled than my current one, or has a useful corruption on it… and then figure out how best to six-link it. After that once I get back down into Delve I am going to start banking more 40% Elemental Damage sceptres in an attempt to recombinate a phenomenal one.

It feels like each league I play… I get more comfortable with understanding what I can do with gear and how I can acquire it on my own. If I can get a rudimentary understanding of recombination under my belt, I think it will improve gear acquisition considerably.

Better Early Maps

by

Good Morning Folks. At this point I am several days into the Legacy of Phrecia event in Path of Exile. I decided to follow the path of Pohx and am playing Righteous Fire on the new Scion Scavenger. This effectively gives me Obliteration pops, Chaos Ignite, and a free Cloak of Flames that can then be stacked with a real cloak of flames to convert 80% of all physical damage taken as fire. Initially… this does not feel nearly as effective at killing as the Chieftain variant I usually play, nor does it feel as tanky yet. However I am still very much wearing scuffed gear. I hit maps half of the way through Saturday and have been juggling between map progression and Delve progression as best I can. I am definitely intrigued enough to want to see this build to its completion. You can see the current state of my build here as I dumped a POB this morning.

What I find most interesting about this event is how mapping feels with the Idol system replacing the Atlas Passive Tree. Essentially the early maps, namely the white and early yellow maps feel like they are way more juicy than they ever would be at this point. However they also feel deeply random, because most of the idols that you end up getting… are not really focused on a single league mechanic. I took the time to screenshot everything that I am currently using and it is a bit of a mess. I’ve specifically targeted at trying to get Niko on my maps so that I can gain Sulphite, but am also not really gaining any of the additional benefits from the passive nodes on the tree.

This is really starting to be felt as by 41 nodes into the Atlas of Worlds, I would start to have a coherent strategy going… that reinforces itself by buffing one specific league mechanic. I would probably have the buffs applied when I collect sulphite nodes, or have them spawn golems which increase my sulphite gain and give me additional density. Instead it is a struggle to get Niko consistently on my maps, and I am gaining almost no other benefits from him being there… and as such I have to run way more maps to fill up on Delve juice before going back down into the mines. Similarly when I get Jun… without the nodes supporting him the Betrayal mobs don’t drop veiled items nearly as often… and as such I am struggling to build out my crafting bench. It feels like running maps that are generically juiced with somewhat random abilities…. but not really being able to focus on anything.

I am not making a ton of currency yet, but have managed to gather enough to get most of the uniques I need for the build. I picked up a Cloak of Flames and five linked it, and hope to maybe pick up a second and begin working on trying to six link that one. I snagged an Immortal Flesh pretty early, but it is not what I would consider a well rolled one. At some point I want to replace it for one with similar life stats on it but the minimum negative elemental resistance. I am running a Rise of the Phoenix shield, but at some point I will drop this to go with a Shaper Shield as I transition into the life gain on block build variant. I just spent most of my available currency on a well rolled pair of Legacy of Fury boots, which help with the clear considerably. Probably the item that I need to upgrade the most is my Sceptre which is a complete trash item that I picked up off the ground and threw a few things on it. My goal once I get deep enough into delve is to start picking up Sceptre bases with the purpose of trying to craft something with the recombinator.

All told though it is quite a bit of fun, and it has been ages since I ran a build that uses Legacy of Fury. I have the blackstar mtx from several leagues ago that makes the pops turn pink, which goes nicely with the purple righteous fire aura mtx that I am running. I’ve crafted a couple of cluster jewels so that I have Fan the Flames giving me elemental proliferation and Flow of Life then the combo of Prismatic Heart/Widespread Destruction on a large cluster. I have another medium cluster that I am working on crafting and my hope is to get another Flow of Life and maybe Burning Bright but I would probably roll with anything halfway decent. At some point I want a +Fire% Light of Meaning and an Unnatural Instinct but that is way beyond my price range. Similarly I would love to add on an Oriath’s End for more pops but I am not sure I will be able to hit that price point. I wish Scavenger was going to Standard so I could attempt to build the penultimate version there at some point.

All told though I am having a heck of a lot of fun. This event is pretty great and honestly… I would not have minded if this were turned into a three month long league. The absence of the Atlas Tree is a bit of a pain, but I would honestly love to see these idols worked into the game in some form in the future. There are some nodes that I really like having… but are just too cumbersome to path over to for various Atlas strategies. I would love to see a much smaller version of the Idol inventory that maybe only lets you slot only a few idols. For example I always run the node that turns every strongbox into a corrupted rare, because I like the way it feels… and if I could simply equip an idol to give every build that… or endless delirium… I probably would.

Anyways. Have you been playing the Legacy of Phrecia event? What are your thoughts so far? Drop me a line below, or of course respond to either Mastodon or Bluesky.