poe

Jellies and Palicoes

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Hey Folks. Yesterday I wrapped up the fifth book of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series and made quite a bit of progress in Path of Exile. Originally I was planning on spending the night playing Monster Hunter Wilds… then realized that it was not releasing until 11 pm my time… when I would absolutely very much be largely comatose. In fact I did not even make it to 9 pm before the siren song of the bed called my name. The above screenshot is mostly so I can show off the fact that I picked up the adorable jellyfish portal mtx, which is something I wanted when it was in a loot box… but now that it is up on the store and on sale… I could not resist. Generally speaking I do not mind spending money on Path of Exile because I get so much joy out of the damned game.

Right now there is a farming method that is likely going to get nerfed… that can cause 36+ Rogue Exiles to spawn on a single map… and then get resummoned forth again via the Ritual mechanic for even more loot. I did however take advantage of the fact that the idols associated with this method are going for upwards of 13 div… and sold the one I had for a quick infusion of currency. I then used this to purchase two banger rings which helped me cap chaos resistance, and gain enough other resistances to be able to drop Purity of Elements. I am now instead running Tempest Shield which allows me to cap my Attack and Spell Block meaning that I am recovering life constantly and generally feel quite a bit more tanky in game. As soon as I can get my hands on an Enlighten Support I should be able to add back in Skitterbots and be effectively in my final configuration. The next big purchases would be an Unnatural Instinct and a Light of Meaning with Fire Damage on it… so I can do a big dumb combo.

Truth be told, if I made no forward momentum from this point in the league I will be happy with where I am. As of yesterday I have unlocked all of the non-unique maps and picked up my first two voidstones. This is pretty much the point where I try and get every league and event and consider this the basic “done” point. Anything I accomplish on top of this is just gravy. I will probably unlock some more of the easy favorite map slots like doing the various guardian maps. I doubt I am in a state where I can do a T17 unless it is rolled EXTREMELY easily. It feels like my single target dps is in a really bad state, but I have a decent base that I am going to try and craft a new sceptre with at some point. All in all though I am pretty happy with the state of where I got in both the Phrecia and Pohx League events.

The extremely keen eyed may have noticed some additions to my blog’s masthead. These are palicos that I commissioned Ammo to create for me which represent Gracie and Josie two of my current cats. She has been doing Palico portraits in the lead up to Monster Hunter Wilds and they have all been delightful. I already had a Palico that represents Kenzie in my masthead, and she will eternally be my Monster Hunting buddy of legend… but it is time to bring a few new cats into the fold. Ammo did an excellent job of capturing the essence of these two with Gracie being the chaos goblin that she is chasing the heal bug, and Josie giving some serious side eye as she carefully places a barrel.

I got in very briefly this morning to create my Hunter and primary Palico, and played long enough to get to the first temporary camp that allows you to choose your weapon. I am going to try and main Sword and Shield this time around, and we will see how long that lasts. I chose to model my Palico after Gracie and named her Graciebutt since that is what I actually call her 99.9% of the time. It is going to take a bit to get used to the controls of a Monster Hunter game again but I fully expect to spend most of the weekend playing this game and giving it a go. I will probably pause my sojourn through the Dungeon Crawler Carl series until I get through at least most of the initial storyline. Monster Hunter Wilds will probably be a perfectly fine audiobook game, but it is going to take churning through some story before I get there.

Are you going to be playing Monster Hunter Wilds? What weapon are you going to main? What did you name your Palico? Drop me a line below.

The Idol Based Atlas

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Good Morning Folks. As of this afternoon we will have had access to the Legacy of Phrecia event for a week. At this point I am level 94 and have mostly reached a point of stability with my build. Sure I would like to craft a new sceptre and am on the look out for a few specific jewels, but all in all Scavenger RF works pretty well. However I am not going to talk about any of that this morning, and am instead going to share my thoughts about the new Idol Based Atlas system. This entire event was touted as ideas that were left on the cutting room floor, and this idol concept was originally something that was abandoned in favor of the current Atlas tree system… which admittedly is damned near perfection. The first few days I was pretty hype for the idols, but now I have reached a point where I absolutely see the limitations and understand why this did not see the light of day.

The good about this system though, is that early maps feel amazing. You get a large number of Idols which allows you to cobble together something that mostly works. During White and Yellow progression I was essentially getting Delirium, Harvest, Niko, Essences, and Strongboxes every map… and Ritual, Expedition, and Betrayal pretty freaking often. This is way more content than you would normally have access to during early maps when you don’t really have that many Atlas points to spend. This makes the early game feel amazing… but you eventually reach a point where it starts to taper off.

By the time you are in yellow or red maps, you have quite a few points to spend on the tree which means that you have pretty much every node available for at least one league mechanic, making that single mechanic extremely juicy. In truth I tend to build trees that synergize with different abilities that are all on the same side of the tree. For example I might have a Ritual, Einhar, and Beyond tree as they all exist within a few nodes of each other so that by the time you near the end of your Atlas you have 100% chance for all of those mechanics and have a bunch of nodes that buff them so that they produce better stuff. I tend to be an “Alch and Go Andy” when it comes to mapping strategies, and I juice to extreme levels with the most expensive scarabs and most carefully rolled maps. I drop a map in the atlas, hit go, and then run with whatever content the device gives me.

For the heaviest juicers however… the Idol system is probably much better. For example Life Without Pants is a YouTuber that I enjoy watching content from, and he talks a bit about his strategy that centers around Harbingers. Essentially through the use of the Idols he can force something like six harbingers on a single map, always convert them to harbinger bosses, cause them to drop whole currency instead of shards, and then cause their cool down to be much shorter so you can complete each individual harbinger encounter much faster. Similarly Fubgun is running a strategy where he forces 36 Rogue Exiles onto his map and then uses Scarabs to juice that up considerably so that he can produce Affliction league levels of drops when you combine that with Ritual.

The problem that I have with the Idol system however is that it essentially forces you to go “all in” on a single strategy. Either you can cobble together something like I am running where it ups the chances of a bunch of different league mechanics to spawn, or you carefully craft a single mechanic and then juice it to levels that have never been possible before. The existing Atlas Tree lets you do a handful of of complementary mechanics really well, and I think makes the entire experience feel a bit better as a result. As someone who cannot bring themselves to skip mechanics when they appear on the map… it feels bad to do a bunch of mechanics with zero investment in them. Nodes that I thought might be good on their own like Crop Rotation, actually feel awful when you don’t have the rest of the points in the tree to buff it.

I think part of what makes the Idol system feel extremely bad is the fact that you are almost required to deal with massive amounts of very small specific trades in order to get an individual strategy working. Everything I am running I have cobbled together from the dregs of my bank. If you were wanting to run a hyper specific strategy though, you would need to trade for a bunch of specific rolls on idols… and then deal with the frustration of not getting answers from most of the traders because 1 Chaos trades are not worth stopping mapping for. If you want to bump things up to the next level, you are also probably going to be spending time deleting idols through the recombinator as you try and get a single item with four usable stats on it. This is graveyard crafting levels of tedium… which is again why I am mostly just yoloing my way through the system and trying to make something that feels halfway decent. This is yet another league that proves Path of Exile needs a fucking auction house already.

As glad as I am that the Idol system was left on the cutting room floor and we have our beloved Atlas tree instead… I have to admit that given the choice I would take this immediately over the systems in Path of Exile II. Everything about the Atlas tree in that game is awful, and it is entirely too focused on bossing. Bossing is just a subset of the Path of Exile 1 endgame, and most people… are not really focusing on it. Idols would go a long way towards patching the problems with that game’s system and forcing specific mechanics onto every map instead of the poorly designed precursor tablet system. Conceptually I like the exploration system because I enjoy it in Delve, but it just does not really work as a replacement for mapping. Part of the payoff of leveling and fully unlocking your atlas tree… is the agency to focus on only the mechanics that you want to focus on. You never really reach any of that payoff or any of that agency in Path of Exile II… which feels like the team missed that core tenet of the first game.

Phrecia has been a really interesting experimental league, and it was announced today that it is being extended by a month. I really like chaos pop righteous fire, and I would absolutely play something like this again in the future. Which admittedly makes me wonder what it would be like to play one of the witch based righteous fire builds at some point in the future. I do think that a lot of the ideas behind the Idol system in this league event could benefit Path of Exile II. Right now the endgame does not really work and feels way too far removed from the near perfect loop of game play that exists within Path of Exile’s endgame. All of POE’s problems center around on-boarding the player and gear acquisition for non-traders and non-crafters but the virtuous loop of the endgame was not something that should have been abandoned. Path of Exile II feels a lot like Destiny 2 did at launch… where it feels like they forgot all of the lessons that the previous game had learned. I am onboard for trying out quirky ideas in event leagues until they figure out how to make Path of Exile II feel a bit better though.

AggroChat #513 – Morrowindish

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

Hey Folks! We have the entire crew this week.  We start off the show with Bel explaining to Kodra the weird faction war currently happening in the Path of Exile Reddit. Bel also talks about his experiences so far with the Legacy of Phrecia event. From there we talk a bit more about Avowed now that Tam has had a chance to play it. Kodra shares his experiences with Civilization VII talking about how wildly different of a Civ game it is.  From there he also talks a bit about Pigment and his ambitions to speedrun it.  Ash shares his thoughts about Dynasty Warriors Origins and Tam discusses a Steam recommendation find, Deliver At All Costs.

Topics Discussed:

  • Path of Exile
    • Reddit Faction Wars
    • Legacy of Phrecia
  • Avowed
  • Civilization VII
  • Pigment
  • Dynasty Warriors Origins
  • Deliver At All Costs

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Starting Scavenger

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Hey Folks! The Legacy of Phrecia event is live in Path of Exile and yesterday I followed the Path of Pohx and rolled a Scion. I’ve only ever played one Scion in the entirety of all of my time playing this game, and it was only to unlock the handful of achievements that are associated with that class. The general idea behind rolling this as Scavenger which is the krangled version of Scion’s Ascendant is that it will give me access to 80% of physical damage taken as fire damage once I actually get my hands on a Cloak of Flames. Sadly because I was not super fast… I did not manage to snag one before they started to get expensive. In the first moments of the league they were going for 3 Chaos… which I now have, but the price has unfortunately gone up to around 20-30 Chaos for a non-corrupted version.

It’s been a pretty smooth run so far, and I’ve only taken a single death and that was before I was able to switch over to Righteous Fire. I just got completely swarmed in the cavern of rage and could not potion my way through it. Once I swapped to RF it was a cakewalk. I attempted to follow the whole Cobra Lash path that was suggested by Pohx but I think in future attempts I might just do with flame wall and rolling magma. I had a lot of weird early problems getting the right links, and for the first five areas I was struggling to find any wisdom scrolls at all to identify anything that might have been viable. I still don’t have the right links for anything, but I am rolling with it because I do at least have a 2 link Fire Trap and 4 link Righteous Fire.

The build has a somewhat annoying respec that I am going to have to deal with at some point. He suggested starting down the projectile path because of Cobra Lash and then swapping over to the resistance path for those first four nodes… which is fine but since Path of Exile does not have a “respec mode” you can’t just swap those points directly and will instead need to spend a total of 8 respec points to get those 4 swapped over. I should probably deal with that now rather than later so that the gold costs are not onerous. Overall the pathing is not terrible for this one and you get to the fire regeneration node about the same time you do as with the Marauder path.

Now we get to the point that I hated about Scion in general. The first labyrinth does not really get you anything. Instead you do not gain any new powers until you finish the second labyrinth. So I have ascended to Scavenger but the only thing I have to show for it is two passive points. I mean that is still a decent reward and I am fine with it… but it makes the entire process of leveling as Scion feel a little lackluster. Pohx suggests going for Bluderbore for the second lab and then later respeccing for Cloak of Flames once you get into maps. I am not sure if I will follow that path or not, because I am honestly hoping to be able to get a Cloak of Flames and four link it before we get to that point. Regardless of what I take for my second choice, I am absolutely taking Obliteration for chaos pops when I get to third lab, and then later picking up the bit that allows chaos to ignite as my fourth.

I did find a pretty reasonable weapon. It has an open suffix, so once I get access to the damage over time crafts I will probably slap that on it. Plus one to fire spells is not necessarily the major win that it once was, but it does help a bit since I just added burning damage support to both my fire trap and righteous fire links. I will drop this like a hot potato however if I manage to get any damage over time multi weapons to drop. I have been farming the kingsmarch shipments trying to get some decent gear, and I am hoping I end up getting a hat with the right links to expand Firetrap beyond two links. I basically need better items for almost every slot except my chest, and I am basically running minimum shipments hoping to get something good.

I have no clue what strategy I am going to end up leaning on for mapping… because that entirely depends upon which idols I get first. I do plan on dabbling in Delve so now that I am in Act 4 I will probably spend a bit of time getting the early unlocks set up there. My hope is that I can find delve idols soon enough, and I also really want endless delirium for farming cluster jewels. It is going to be wild playing with a mishmash of krangled atlas passives. They verified that you are going to be able to recombinate idols, which is likely going to be required to try and make any coherent mapping strategy. I will worry about that when I get there however.

For now I am just going to focus on leveling up and getting to maps. Did you end up rolling something for the Legacy of Phrecia event? What are you playing? Drop me a line below.