necropolis

Pinchy Pal

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Good Morning Folks! I don’t have a massive blog post this morning as I am sort of just trucking along in the league and grinding things out on my Righteous Fire Chieftain. I hit 90% to all resistances by leveling my Purity of Fire the rest of the way to 20 and have been slowly upgrading things as I get currency. This morning I upgraded Burning Damage and Elemental Focus to Level 21/20% Quality gems for a bit of a damage boost. Since I am still running on a 4-Link chest, my Righteous Fire is starting to finally be noticeable how little damage it is doing. I have the final chest piece that I am trying to link but have not won the RNG game against Fusings. I bought some of the loot boxes from this league and picked up this amazing crab backpack, which was the item I was hoping to get. I had to hide my defiance banner so I could see the beady little eyes.

As far as Atlas progress goes, I am sitting at 87 out of 115 but largely because I am not entirely pushing maps. When I fill up on Sulphite I shift gears and work on Delve a bit and have cleared out a few more cities as well as taken out my first Vaal Delve boss. I’ve also taken down the Blackstar and “Shrek” and am now working towards unlocking Eater of Worlds and Searing Exarch for my first two voidstones. In theory I should be able to finish up both of those today, at which point I will shift gears back to finishing out the Maven unlocks. I tend to stall out on Maven because they give me less than unlocking the two altars end up doing for mapping. I need a lot of Eldritch currency in order to finish out the implicits on my gear. I am not exactly swimming in currency and everything seems wildly overpriced as I think there was a big loss of players when the league turned up not being that great.

That said I am hoping the patch that dropped over night is enough to bring folks back. While it greatly upgraded the crafting and lowered the difficulty of the negative mods, it did nothing for the existing corpses that we had clogging our morgue. As a result this morning I tried crafting a new Sceptre and simply by being able to choose my base of choice it was already an improved experience. I threw almost all of the corpses that I had sitting around at this and wound up with something that was actually an upgrade over what I had been using. Essentially I stacked a bunch of corpses for improved chance of Fire Modifiers and Elemental Modifiers, and then stacked corpses that reduced my chance of pretty much everything else. The final result is a sceptre with five mods that are “workable” and two that are actually pretty solid… one of which is the 30% Fire Multi which was actually damned good.

Yesterday I got my first Exalted drop. I have no clue why I take screenshots of these “firsts” but I find it interesting. Other than linking my chest, my other active crafting project is attempting to throw “reforge fire” juice from harvest at a sceptre that I got with 38% burning damage as a fractured mod. I am hoping to get +1 all fire gems on it and maybe a few other useful mods. However, it is going to be hard to compete with that 30% fire multi that I just crafted this morning. I also plan on saving up a bunch of the “better” versions of corpses from Necropolis to make another run at an upgraded sceptre if I don’t hit something soon on the fractured base. I do hope folks come back because right now trade feels a bit dead. The only thing that has not been fixed… is the ability to just nope out of the league content. We will see if Kripparian ends up trying it again given that he was probably the most public person to quit the league.

Necropolis Changes Coming

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Good Morning Folks! Well… that was a rapid turnaround. Yesterday GGG released a post on their forums indicating what they were planning on doing to resolve the dissatisfaction with the Necropolis league mechanic. When a league has reportedly the largest drop-off in player numbers I am guessing Klaxxons start firing and the teams rush into action. We probably would have had action sooner had the league not launched over a holiday weekend. Anyway, it seems like every complaint about the league is being addressed in one form or another save for the most requested feature… aka the ability to just not do it. I think everything in the post is largely a positive step forward, but I still think players are going to want the ability to simply not engage with the mechanic in any form. The ability to itemize corpses immediately is a huge win however and even if I have to loot something to clear a loot pile… I can throw it right back on the ground easily.

I have continued to do some shifting of gear around and am now up to 88% max elemental resistance and have squeaked past the Chaos Resistance cap as well. I’ve also managed to bump my Armor up to 25k which is a bit lower than I would like it to be, but still a good place to be. Combine this with the fact that I am shifting 50% damage to fire, and will in theory soon be adding another 10% of that to chaos damage it should make me pretty freaking tanky. Now I am simply in the place where I need a bunch more levels. I am contemplating trying to get the ignite proliferation glove implicit and then shifting up my Berek’s Respite for something either with more survival or more damage potential. Truth be told I have zero of the desired eldritch implicits so that will come as I farm more content and get more eldritch currency.

I’ve made a bit more progress into my Atlas, but have largely been holding off on doing all of the red maps that I have been collecting. Kirac bumps up the difficulty of his missions when you start running higher-tier maps, and I was trying to use him to help me finish out the yellow maps. That said I have reached a point where I am just going to have to deal with it if I want to keep making forward momentum. When I hit 50 Atlas Passive points I unlocked my second passive tree, and it appears that the third unlocks when I hit 100 passives. I ran betrayal until I had farmed up most of the enchants that I wanted and have now shifted to a strategy with Niko, Scarabs, and Harvest. This morning I cobbled together a second tree with Einhar and Ritual since they both live on the same side of the tree. As I get more passives I will probably splash in Beyond to add more spawns.

Because of the changes to the Niko nodes, it feels like I am filling up on Sulphite so much faster than I normally would have because I need to run fewer maps to get all the missions completed. As a result, I have reached a point occasionally where I would rather be pushing maps than pushing depth, and the Einhar tree will be good for flipping over to when that happens. As far as Delve goes I have farmed out three Vaal cities and have my first Abyssal city in sight. I am still just slightly below the 100-depth mark because the abundance of cities has caused me to go lateral rather than vertical. I feel WAY tankier than I normally would at this point and have been surprised at how fast my RF Chieftain has come online this league. I guess it makes sense because having built this before, I knew going into it the way I needed to build it as compared to the RF Juggernaut.

Delve and Mapping combined have created a virtuous cycle as the cities usually have several map lootboxes in each. This one for example had three different map-themed boxes in the same area, and the thing I have learned over the years is that Delve does not respect your atlas progress. This means you can easily see maps in Delve that cannot drop based on the Atlas nodes that you have already cleared. The only negative of this however is that once you get your four voidstones… these maps will continue to drop at their face value rather than upgrading to T16. This is why I have so many red maps that I have been sitting on and trying not to run, as these loot boxes drop a mix of white, yellow, and red regularly.

The thing I was not expecting is just how prolific the scarab drops are in Delve. Essentially every single node usually drops at least one scarab. This one happened to drop three at once, which is an outlier but not outrageously uncommon. I feel like this is related to Scarabs being put on the general drop-anywhere loot pool instead of being tied to specific mechanics. All in all I think this is a really solid change and my scarab coffers are filling rather quickly. It is going to reach the point where I am almost always running some sort of additional content being added from scarabs. The only thing I wish is that we would get some sort of UI element that allows us to pick scarabs out of our bank from the map device itself. It becomes tedious picking out the scarabs you want to run and then going over to the map device to run them. When I was regularly farming the same content over and over I would just leave a stack of scarabs in the map device.

My big “project” at the moment is attempting to get a six-link Cloak of Flame. I bought a two-link that was really well rolled and then proceeded to get it up to six sockets and color those sockets for Righteous Fire. Now comes the tedious process of pouring every fusing that I get into the chest and praying. With my Niko mapping setup I noticed that I seemed to get Niko Scarabs dropping more often than others. I am hoping there is some hidden affinity and that by shifting over to an Einhar tree I might happen upon the Black Morrigan scarab and link the item that way. Similarly, my shift over to Ritual I hope may see me finding an Omen of Connections which would also be a faster method for linking it.

All in all for a league where I do not care one bit about the mechanic… I am having a shockingly good time. I am definitely looking forward to the changes that are likely to be coming in this week and will probably try and do a bit more crafting as a result. I am not sure it will benefit this character, but it might let me get some good gear for alts. I think my very first alt is going to be an attempt at creating Kitava’s Thirst DD Blaster because it looks hilarious. I made a Witch mule to get Rolling Magma at league start and I figured I would turn that character into that build. It may be a bit before I stray from the fold however because I still have a lot of things to unlock and some voidstones to get.

Necropolis League Start Plans

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Good Morning Folks! At the time if writing this, the Necropolis League for Path of Exile is roughly six hours away. The start will happen at roughly 2 pm CDT and since I have the day off I plan on being there attempting to get in at the very beginning. The only question is whether or not I go through the hassle of trying to download the standalone client which always updates faster than Steam. I’ve not actually run the standalone client in previous leagues but this is the only true way to be in the queue before most of the folks are there. That said I honestly don’t care quite so much about starting exactly when the servers open as I am not planning on racing through the campaign. I thought I would talk a bit this morning about my plans for starting the league.

Shocking to no one who has read this blog for any length of time… I will be starting a Righteous Fire character, more specifically the chieftain variant that I played last league. Truth be told the leagues where I start Righteous Fire… are better experiences for me personally. I like the predictable nature of this build how it comes online, and how well it does at farming lower-level content and working my way through the Atlas of Worlds. Boneshatter last league was great, but it never felt quite as comfortable in Delve as Righteous Fire does. Lightning Arrow saw me zipping through the early maps super well, but struggling a bit when it came to the first two voidstone bosses. Ultimately even in its nerfed state, Righteous Fire feels reliable and stable and that is what I mostly crave for my first character of the league.

The first chaos that I spend in the league is likely going to be on acquiring these four uniques. Immortal Flesh is pretty much irreplaceable given how much value you get on a single belt. I will likely see one drop but what I am looking for specifically is one with high regeneration and -15% to all resistances which is the best roll you can get on that item. Rise of the Phoenix is equally important as it will give me +5 to maximum resistances, so I will be attempting to snipe one of those pretty early if I don’t see one drop. Berek’s Respite worked out extremely well last league and allows me to get some pseudo-proliferation before I can get a Fan the Flames cluster. Truth be told I just kept using the ring long after I replaced other items. For my chestpiece I am going to drop the Lightning Coil and try the more suggested Cloak of Flame this go around. I hate the idea of running an item without armor but the lack of the negative resistance penalty is pretty great as well as the lack of a life roll allowing me to use the 15% life mastery.

As far as later game items… I would love to figure out a way to work in a Defiance of Destiny amulet but I always wind up so dexterity-starved that I can never seem to make that happen. We will have to see if I can figure out a way to make it work. The one I took a screenshot of was the one I was using on my Boneshatter Juggernaut from last league and it added a ton of survival. I would also love to try and work in Legacy of Fury boots but I already have quite a few uniques which will make it a bit hard to make sure I am hitting maximum chaos resistance. I could see maybe swapping to these when I switch over to a Fan the Flames cluster. We also have no clue if these are going to be on the normal Maven drop pool or the Uber Maven drop pool… which will greatly impact their price.

Affliction League did some really screwball things with pricing on items making a number of previously really expensive things… dirt cheap. One of these was the Taste of Hate flask and depending upon the price this is going to be something that I pick up as one of my later acquisitions. It adds more defensive layers as I am converting additional physical damage to elemental where I will have 90% resistance. Last league I got to play with a Headhunter and a Mageblood and both were fine… but the chase item that I want to play with this time is Oriath’s End. This is going to be something that I stockpile divines in order to pick up this league, and I am hoping the changes in uber bosses make me hope the drop rates for this went up a bit. I would also love to pick up a Vaal Breach gem for bossing but that is probably unrealistic given how rare they are.

If you are wanting to follow in my footsteps with Righteous Fire Chieftain, I cannot recommend the guide from Pohx enough. He does a great service to the community by making sure there are viable versions of RF for Chieftain, Juggernaut, and Templar. In truth, ALL Marauder-based RF builds have essentially the same base tree with some tweaks here or there. I plan on mostly following what I did last league with some subtle changes from what Pohx suggests. Mostly Pohx does not go after Explosive Impact and I tend to path down into that area to pick it up. The more area of effect you can have with Righteous Fire, the more comfortable it feels but I tend to play a much slower RF than Pohx does. If you are just starting out though I would absolutely say follow his guide to the letter until you develop your own preferences for the build.

I look forward to getting my “burny boi” up and running today and starting the league back in trade. I think for the moment it looks like it is just going to be me and Kodra from the AggroChat podcast that are going to be playing. So I will like always be looking for things to make Hexblast work for him. I think most of the folks are going to give this league a skip which is a bit of a bummer, but won’t directly impact my enjoyment. I think I was pretty much the only person who really played much Crucible and that is maybe the league that I had the most fun with. I have a few other friends who are going to be either trying the game for the first time or coming back after a long absence, so it will be interesting to see how that all shakes out. As always there is a Path of Exile channel on my Super Dungeon Friends discord that we will likely be hanging out in.

Lettuce Fairies

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Air Conditioning Saga

The last several day have been interesting to say the least, but in ways I have not really talked about in my blog.  We moved into our house in 1999 and at that time the air conditioning unit was original to the house circa 1980.  So the fact that our unit would fail has been this weight hanging over us for well over a decade.  For at least a decade it has had a slow leak which meant that roughly once a season it would freeze up solid, and the service folks would come out and top off the Freon and get us up and going again.  Each and every service guy has said essentially the same thing… keep the unit going as long as we can because “they don’t build them like this anymore”.  A few weeks ago we finally reached the endgame with our unit as something rattled loose and started trying to vibrate it to death.  The actual fix was going to cost over $1000 and that was simply something I could not in good conscious do given that the unit as a whole would still eventually fail sooner rather than later regardless of said fix.  I did however come up with a hedge fix that held us until them… which was essentially placing a huge sandstone rock on top of the unit which dampened the rattling enough to keep things going for a bit while we sorted out options for a replacement unit.

Old Unit vs New Unit
Old Unit vs New Unit

Now in some parts of the country air conditioning might be an optional thing… but in Oklahoma with our regular over one hundred degree fahrenheit days it is an absolute necessity.  So Monday and Tuesday we had workers in the house installing the new unit, and the last several days we have been trying to get used to the way it works.  Traditionally AC units are either on or off, meaning you either get 100% power or nothing at all.  This new one has a stepper motor that goes from 35% to 100% in 1% increments, which is really odd to get used to because it rarely ever shuts off completely.  It just sort of cycles down to next to nothing at times, but essentially tries to maintain a stable temperature at all times.  The other thing this unit has is a built in dehumidifier, which means we have been going through this adjustment period when we are trying to figure out what the new norm is.  Previously we kept the house around 73 degrees, but that is honestly way too cold now… so for the last bit we’ve landed somewhere around 75 degrees and that seems to be working out okay.  Finally the unit has a built in hospital filtration system, which means all of the air in the house is almost completely allergen free…. which was almost immediately noticeable the first time I stepped foot outside of the house after sleeping a night under the new system.  I was like walking out and hitting a wall of pollen and humidity.

Goobbue Rider

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Chompy Teeth Monster FTW!

Needless to say the last several days this has taken most of my energy, and as a result my gaming has been extremely scattered consisting of some Pokemon Go and a bunch of logging into various things and doing maintenance type tasks and then logging out again.  One of those tasks that I have been trying to do religiously however is the Sylph quests in Final Fantasy XIV… or as we usually call them the “Lettuce Fairies”.  Since the moment I saw that there was a Goobbue mount I have wanted one, but the Slyphlands in general and the daily quests they offer are probably the most annoying set to grind.  So during the 2.0 content I nibbled away at them but never really made a concerted effort to work on them.  However at level 60 they are insanely easy and actually when everything is not aggroing out… the Sylphlands are rather charming.  So over the last bit I have been focused on pushing through the reputation grind so that I could be a tiny Lalafell on a giant monster.  Last night I managed to complete the last of the quests and now I am riding tall on my big buddy.  Next up I am working on the Sahagin quests for no particular reason other than the fact that they were the next highest.  I really did not know how much faster the quests go when you hit the rank three quests and can start doing nine a day.  If nothing else this gives me a solid purpose to be in game and see folks every night even if I am not necessarily running complicated content.

Descending Further

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Last night I also played quite a bit more Necropolis, and I think I finally get the comparison to Dark Souls.  Both are games that when you encounter a completely new type of monster, you are likely going to die a lot.  A number of my deaths have been caused by me learning how to properly battle a specific type of critter, and since my attacks are rather slow and deliberate it is not like I can simply spam my attack key and pray for the best.  I’ve also found myself needing to bait monsters to keep them from swarming me at the same time.  So those Everquest/DAoC body pulling skills are coming in handy.  All of this said I am still not terribly far into the game.  Last night I made it through the first floor and managed to transition to the second floor… where the mocked me for this achievement.  Then moments later I encountered a brand new type of monster and died horribly within moments.  I think the worst thing about restarting each time is going back to the original crappy starter weapon.  I wish I could somehow carry my loadout into the next life, but I guess scavenging usable equipment is a large part of the game play.  I think this is very much going to be one of those “play a bit each night” type of games for me, because I cannot really see grinding my face against it.