poe

A Rough Start

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Good Morning Folks. Friday was the launch of the 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas/Mercenaries of Trarthus League in Path of Exile… and it was a bit rough. There was a pretty critical issue that seemed to plague folks randomly involving logging into any characters in the league. It was roughly an hour and a half before this got fixed, and it bit enough streamers that GGG essentially decided that they would be having a second league start race for anyone bit by the issue. I was impacted and essentially any time I waded through the queue I would bounce back to the login screen with the above “An unexpected disconnection occurred”. There were all manner of superstitions that sprung up about it being specific to individual regional servers, or requiring you to change your video drivers… but ultimately it was just something on the GGG side and they patched it allowing everyone to log in. There were still some pretty persistent issues on the European servers however, and Zizaran for example said that he lost 16 maps from getting disconnected in the middle and coming back in with no portals up.

The thing that likely slowed me down the most however was wanting to play with the league mechanic, and purposefully seeking Mercenaries out in every zone that I entered. I struggled with my very first merc, but once I got my hands on one of the bow mercs… they largely carried me through large chunks of content. The wiki is not terribly updated yet with mercenary types but they have quite a few of the strength based ones up now, so I can only assume they are working through the deluge of new data. I really feel like Mercenaries are a game changer for a bunch of reasons… but mostly because unlike other games with companions there is a heck of a lot of gameplay decisions involved. In Diablo III for example you just throw on specific items and they grant you permanent buffs for having one out. In this game there is an opportunity cost to hiring them, because you can’t then steal gear from them.

Most of the gear that I am wearing currently, I stole from Mercenaries. They seem to be mostly using gear with the well rolled gear tree, similar to how shipments did in Kingsmarch. This means that they are equipped with gear that makes sense for the specific type of Mercenary class that they are. A bow Mercenary for example… will probably have a pretty decent bow equipped or a Wand Mercenary a pair of well rolled wands that make sense for their elemental archetype. This also means though that as the player… we can snag pretty juicy items from the Mercenaries that we encounter in maps. Sure the big win items tend to be uniques and large stacks of currency… but I personally used them as a want to keep finding upgrades, and at this point I have not really needed to buy or craft much of anything. I am sure as I keep improving my build I will want to min-max items but for now… They have provided a really good source of gearing with everything in the above image being pulled from Mercs, including a 5-Link chest.

Right now the most impactful Mercs for me personally, seem to be the bow based ones that help with general clear speed. Right now I am running a Toxicologist which is kitted out to deal chaos damage with toxic rain and chaotic burst/shot and provides me the Malevolence aura which I do not need to run, and can focus on things that make me more tanky instead. As I keep moving up in level I will keep trying to find new copies of this same archetype which should be kitted out with pretty similar items. The Manyshots archetype is also pretty great because it is all centered around Ice damage which chills, slows, and freezes incoming packs of mobs. Thunderquiver is another pretty great Mercenary type because they are essentially the Lighting Arrow Deadeye that was so popular from a few leagues ago. Unfortunately the burning arrow Merc does not really seem to do that much damage, so while the alignment of fire damage would work since I am debuffing targets resistance due to my ascendancy… it never seem to do much and they were not providing any complimentary buffs to me.

At this point I have unlocked my fourth ascendancy because I got a goddess token down in Delve. I am slowly starting to break the mines but it is slow going. I am only about 10 maps into my Atlas because I did not actually make it to maps until yesterday evening. Between the rough start Friday, Father’s Day travel yesterday, and me just generally piddling around with the Mercenary mechanic I have been moving exceptionally slow. My hope is that tonight I will be able to make some real progress, but the changes to how Kirac missions work will probably slow that down a bit. You cannot unlock maps by running Kirac missions at lower tiers than the maps normally appear. This is going to greatly devalue putting points into Kirac on the atlas in order to speed through the 115 map unlocks.

As far as uniques go, I’ve pulled a couple of Immortal Flesh off Mercenaries, including the one that I show above. I have a Cloak of Flame that I am trying to five link, and after wasting so many fusings on it… I have a feeling I am just going to be better off waiting until I have the recipe to do it. I also picked up a Rise of the Phoenix which should be a good item until I make the switch over to a Shaper shield, and drop purity of elements. We are dealing with an inflation league so fair warning, because normally I can pick up all of these items for a few chaos… and I had to give 50c for both the Shield and the Chestpiece. Everything seems to be more expensive, because Mercenaries are a fairly reliably source of Chaos. More than that however I seem to be getting more currency drops than I would normally during a league. This could be just a side effect of the loot bonus of running with a Mercenary, or there could have been some fundamental changes in the way drops occur that were not well documented.

I’ve also unlocked Kingsmarch, but since you have to have 50,000 value to send a shipment… that means I am going to be sending WAY fewer shipments and not needing to micromanage it quite as much. The fully built out town is much nicer, and all of the hired hands seem to cap out at tier 5. So in theory it should be easier to fully kit out your town and get it up and running. I did notice that they seemed to have improved the gold drops down in Delve significantly so I am hoping that I will not be quite as starved for gold in this league. Mostly I am in that awkward phase where I just need a lot more time to progress my way through both Delve and Atlas and keep improving my character. Once I can equip the Cloak of Flames without giving up anything… it should wildly improve my survival. There are a few items that I am looking out for that would benefit equipping on the merc, but I am in no real rush.

How was your league start? Were you bit by the disconnection bug? How are you liking the Mercenaries so far? Drop me a line below and let me know.

AggroChat #527 – Worms, Dragons, and Mercs

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Featuring: AmmosArt, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

Hey Folks! We have the full crew this week, and Kodra and Thalen have made their way into Dune Awakening, so we talk a bit more about that game. Bel asks what the dumbest thing we have done in a video game to make currency. Ash is back in Guild Wars 2 and attempting to catch up on the story. Kodra and Tam share their thoughts about the Microsoft PuzzleHunt event and contrast it with the MIT Mystery Hunt. Bel shares his early experiences with the Mercenaries of Trarthus as the Secrets of the Atlas expansion kicks off in Path of Exile. Grace talks a bit about Be My Horde as it lets you play a Necromancer, raising an army in a Vampire-Survivors-like game. Finally, we talk a bit about Deltarune actually getting a proper release and Toby Fox accepting money for the game.

Topics Discussed:

  • Kodra and Thalen Join Dune
  • Dumb Things for Money
  • Guild Wars 2 Catch Up
  • Microsoft PuzzleHunt
  • Path of Exile: Secrets of the Atlas
    • Fun With Mercenaries
  • Be My Horde
  • Deltarune Purchasable

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

It’s Getting Better

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Good Morning Folks. Early yesterday evening, we had a 15 minute downtime for Path of Exile II which deployed patch 0.2.0e. The patch included a lot of pretty solid changes from shrinking some of the larger zones by cutting out dead ends, to slowing down specific mob types so that they could not just bum-rush you forever. There are still issues with the game, but most of those are design decisions not necessarily things that feel like they are bugs. I still feel like I am maybe not the intended target audience for this game, but given enough patches like that… it might actually get closer to that. I still feel like crafting is entirely missing from the experience and what we have instead is just praying for the RNG gods to smile upon you with a fortuitous drop. Generally speaking I can get pretty far into maps in Path of Exile 1 before I need to resort to trade… but I did not even make it through the campaign without buying a few items here.

Because of how miserable the campaign felt, I spent most of last night approaching it with fresh eyes to see how the recent round of changes impacted the experience of starting fresh. The only twink item that I threw on my character was Enfolding Dawn, which honestly causes more problems than it solves by taking away your mana gain from Intelligence for the benefit of having 100 Spirit. I mostly ended up yoloing my way through a build without following any guide, and essentially followed in the footsteps of my character from last league. All in all it was a MUCH better experience than when I had rolled this character last week and made it through the first zone. I was not necessarily exploding the entire world, but I managed to work my way through the entire first act without taking any deaths. Sure I had to dodge quite a few effects and work around when my minions died on me… but it was reasonable and I mostly found myself leaning on the combo of Raging Spirits and Arsonists like I did last time.

Mapping is also so much better now that Rares are highlighted on your map immediately. This gives you a clear direction that you should head up entering the map, and gives the entire experience a bit more purpose. The drops are still a bit on the low side, but I do have to say that their waystone changes are perfect. I’m never running into any issues where I am not getting waystone drops enough to sustain my mapping. In fact I am massively over-sustaining which is pretty nice. You get tier upgrades often enough that if you can JUST get through one map in the new tier… that you are probably going to have a bunch of waystones to run to keep progressing through that tier. I’ve yet to be in a position where I need to drop down a tier because I ran out of waystones to run.

Having fewer towers in the endgame mapping is a huge positive. I still do not love running these maps, and as such having to do fewer of them is a good thing. I feel like that does not necessarily make towers actually good though, because I don’t want to do them. I am also not super hyped on the progression system. Path of Exile 1 has this whole grid of maps where you mark them off one by one, which feels good with each new map giving you Atlas Passive points. Instead of running 10 Tier 1 maps, you now have to seek out a Nexus of Corruption and clear that… which in truth often means you are needing to run MORE than 10 maps to find the next one. I get what they are going for here… but it does not feel amazing. It still feels like I am running more maps and getting less benefit from them… which is especially bad when each individual map feels largely unrewarding.

There are however some payoff moments in the maps, and when you find one it feels good. I’ve you’ve been around the community at all you have probably seen screenshots of Ventor’s Contraption, which is a unique lockbox that takes gold to open. Each time you open it, the amount of gold goes up significantly. I only had enough on me to do three spins of the gacha box, and I feel like I got fairly decent outcomes. I know there are folks who have gotten 10 stacks of Divine Orbs from these things, or perfect jewelers orbs… so I did not get that lucky. The only problem is… not every map has anything even vaguely as exciting as the gacha box. A lot of maps are pretty boring still, and lack the chance of decent drops… so it kind of feels like you are just slogging through the objectives hoping it will improve at higher tiers.

After a major patch though, things are in a better state overall. Next week on this blog is likely going to be focused on talking about the Last Epoch Season 2 launch and trying to sell you on why you should be playing it. If anything dramatic happens in Path of Exile II however I will probably at least talk about some of that as well. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and get the loot drops you have been hoping for.

Atomfall, Hero Siege, and SurfBrand

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Good Morning Folks! This weekend I was all over the place when it came to gaming. First up I finished up leveling to 100, which completed the Gear Grinding Goals achievement. Hitting level 100 on a character is a weird place because you suddenly no longer care about taking deaths. Up until this point even when attempting to progress, there was always a subtle tension there in the background because losing experience feels bad in your late 90s. Getting to level 95 is trivial, and honestly it does not feel too terribly bad until level 98. However that level 98-100 stretch is pure tedium with you either needing a relatively immortal build, or a lot of luck to keep from taking a stray death. Weirdly Delve ends up being one of the safer players to level because there is a sweet spot in the 150-200 depth where the incoming damage is not too bad, but the experience gained is pretty stable. Dipping back into maps to fill back up your sulphite however… that is where the danger arrives.

I also completed the achievement for crafting using one of every Settlers of Kalguur rune allowing me to knock out 34 of 40 and matching what I got to last league. This means I have another tall totem pole in my hideout to go along with all of my stubby ones. Essentially I have been earning a Totem every league since Sanctum. I could probably push forward with trying to knock out 40 of 40… but I just have not had that level of drive. It also involves doing a lot of bossing content that I do not necessarily enjoy. I could in theory start running my mappers more often and if they get abducted there might be a chance of knocking out one of those objectives and getting achievement 35 for the league. I am pretty happy with where I am, and honestly… I was happy with 32 of 40 until I came back for the Phrecia event and thrived in it.

With no fear of death I did a few t17 maps, and a few other sundry things that I had been avoiding due to the danger of taking an experience loss. However I feel like I am probably “done” with my Righteous Fire Scavenger. Sure there are a lot of things I could tweak on it… and swap out various gear pieces for even better versions. However I feel like I am pretty happy with where I got and don’t have ton of drive to push it much further. That is the irony with dinging level 100… is that I also lose a lot of my drive to keep going. I am not enough of an “Economy Andy” to really appreciate trading for trades sake. For me it has always a means to an end, that I want to trade items to get currency to be able to do more things. However once I lose the push of levels… I just sort of lose my drive to keep playing that character.

Instead I spent a chunk of my weekend playing other games. On Saturday I dove into Atomfall, which is a Bethesda game by a company other than Bethesda. We saw this with Avowed where they created a perfectly cromulent Elder Scrolls game set in a different universe. However that made a lot of since given that it was from Obsidian, a company with a long history of working with Bethesda on games like Fallout New Vegas. Atomfall however comes from Rebellion games, the folks behind the Zombie Army and Sniper Elite series… and they do a shockingly good job of replicating the feel of a Fallout game. The setup is considerably different… instead of a Nuclear war decimating the planet, you are inside an exclusion zone where things are going haywire. However the trappings are much the same… roaming gangs of very British outlaws and spore infected Ghoul like Ferals both fill the roles of the normal antagonists of a Fallout title.

There are a lot of things that work differently. For example it is not nearly as “If you can see it, you can go there” as the Bethesda titles… but I also don’t necessarily think that is a bad thing. Everything that exists that you can travel to… exists for a reason, and as a result there are way fewer barren stretches with no reason for existing. There are similar crafting systems, but items break down into raw resources as soon as you loot them, rather than having to dump through the hoops of needing to salvage them as a separate step. Effectively… both Avowed and now Atomfall feel like Bethesda games that have been evolved past some of the busywork that some systems designer thought was really cool. The spirit of the game exists and it is close enough for me to effectively lump them into the broader Bethesda-like genre.

Sunday on a totally different whim I started playing Hero Siege, which feels very much like a spiritual successor to Diablo 2 more than anything else. It is doing some of the same things that Chronicon does, but feels much more polished. I started playing a Viking and have gone all in on this big earthquake smash thingy. So far it seems to be doing a good job of stunning enemies and also whitting down large groups because with a twohander I can hit everything at once. Large packs of purely ranged mobs though seem to be the bane of my existence, and as a result I have had to learn to dance around a bit in order to deal with them. I want to try this with a controller, because it seems like it would be the ideal game for SteamDeck. All in all though I am pretty pleased with what I have played of it.

However by the time Sunday evening rolled around… my brain worms had convinced me that rolling a brand new character in the Legacy of Phrecia event was a good idea. There is something about the fleeting nature of this event and having entirely new acendancy classes that we may never see again. As such I decided to roll a Shadow which I then turned into a Surfcaster and am going all in on Storm Brand of Indecision. For now I am largely patterning my build off this character that is sitting at level 99. Given that all of the brand nodes are nowhere near the Shadow starting position… most of my talents have just travelled across the tree to unlock the meat of what I needed. Now that I have all of those brand nodes and a few elemental nodes… I am now going back and fleshing out the build with what I pathed through previously. I have a six link Shavronne’s Wrapping sitting in my bank wanting on my 60s when I can actually equip it. The build I am loosely following uses Melding of the Flesh to achieve 90% elemental resistance to all, which is something I have never played with before and am interested in seeing it work.