Yesterday I made it through the campaign on my Righteous Fire Juggernaut and by the middle of the night I was back delving which makes me very happy. I burned through a lot of my available currency kitting out my character in gear in order to make my resists work. I purposefully tried to overcap resists by a bit because at some point I hope to swap out to a Brass Dome with +5 to maximum elemental resistances and that will mean losing the resistances that I currently have on my 5-link corrupted chest. Other than that I could probably due for a sceptre upgrade at some point, and then I definitely need to find a pseudo-six-link helm. Those however can wait because for now… I need to get my money printing machine up and running that will fund the rest of my adventures.
I’m very much in the early stages of breaking into Delve and getting my resistances up enough to go down further. I’ve been down to around depth 85 and have done just fine, but my resists are a bit puny for me to go diving down dark tunnels as I am used to doing. Once I get down to around 100 I will finally start seeing a lot of content in the side tunnels and hopefully some cities. There is one already on the map but I have to figure out how to approach it as there is no direct path that I can see. I think that is probably why I enjoy Delve the most, because it offers bite-sized adventures with promised loot at the end. It feels way more stable and reliable than mapping does in general.
When I last talked about my map progress I think I was around 73, and as of this morning, I am sitting at 88 of 115 maps completed. Essentially each time I shift over to run maps for sulphite I am trying to unlock something new. I’ve actually managed to get quite a number of the unique maps out of the way which feels really good. I did miserably fail one of them, but it was a T16 unique map which is always painful. Mapping still feels good on Lightning Arrow Raider, but she is way squishier than the Juggernaut which is to be expected because there is a massive difference in killing power.
Since I am spending way more time in Delve, I am starting to pivot away from Essences and towards Niko missions and Sulphite. I think I think once I finish picking up Niko nodes, I will shift towards picking more Legion on the tree or maybe Blight since the Raider can do those a lot better than my Juggernaut ever could. I think what I dig about having a proper map blaster is that if I decide to dive into mapping a bunch, I can pivot back without much issue. However what I have missed the most is the reliable currency generation of Delve, and the Raider just was not a Delve-friendly character. So much of what comes from Delve comes from careening down dark tunnels looking for treasure, and you really need something sturdy to be able to do that.
I am also still doing the occasional tournament for the league mechanic, and those mostly go smoothly. I’ve not won a tournament outright since crossing the 200 rating barrier, but I am also not really using a mechanic to cheese things. I do well enough to get several rewards though, but last night I saw my first six-link and missed winning it by losing the final match. I did pull a five-link earlier, so it seems like I am starting to get into better rewards territory in general. I feel in this weird place so far in that I have two highly functioning characters but am also mostly broke. Hopefully, a week of focusing on just doing some mechanics to get some stuff will help change that trajectory. Once I have more currency to play with, I will probably start rolling some more side projects.
All told though I am having a lot of fun. I feel much better now that I have my Tankyboi back in the repertoire of characters.
Good Morning Folks! I am losing track of how many days into the build it has been, but things are continuing to progress. I am starting to see the rough edges of this build, namely that it is not great at any sort of a boss encounter. I’ve found myself struggling with bosses that I’ve never struggled with before. For example, the pseudo-Fairgraves at the end of Frozen Cabins are something that I have steamrolled every single time on Righteous Fire, and on this character, I was completely out of potion charges when I downed it last night. Similarly, I struggled with the actual Fairgraves character on Mao Kun way more than I thought I would have because every so often my evasion would fail and he would just hit me for a ton.
By far the hardest encounter so far has been The Infinite Hunger aka “Shrek”. I absolutely got through it on the “six portal defense” and as you can see was down to my very last portal with my bell tower in flames. I’ve never had this much trouble with this boss, not even when I attempted him on my extremely sketchy Storm Brand Inquisitor back in Kalandra. We will see how Black Star goes when I get to that point with Searing Exarch, but I am deeply questioning if I will be able to drop the first two void stones with this character, at least not without significant investment. Like I know at some point I am running up a Righteous Fire Juggernaut, but that might be sooner rather than later.
Like there are some obvious weaknesses in the build, but it absolutely excels at just killing all the things on a map. I recorded a video yesterday of me running through a map just to show what the gameplay style feels like. Granted this is only a T5 map, but I’ve now done one red map and for the most part, it felt exactly the same. You just make the entire screen pop with returning projectiles… you end up hitting all sorts of stuff that you didn’t even realize. There was one point last night when I was doing a blight map, and I just stood still and killed two lanes worth of mobs at once because my projectiles would go out and pop the ones in front of me, and then bounce through me and get the ones behind me. It was nonsense honestly, and it makes me wish I had actually anointed Vengeant Cascade before it was nerfed.
As far as progression goes, I am 52 maps into the Atlas out of 115 and have already knocked out two of the unique maps. Neither of them is a particularly rare map, but when Kirac has one available I try and complete it. Essentially I can run all the map types except elemental/physical reflect and even then… I’ve already completed several of those by just not ever firing my bow. I simply run around the map dropping Artillery Ballista and letting it do all the work for me. No Leech maps would be a problem, mostly because a lot of my ability to keep killing revolves around leeching back health and mana. No Regen maps can be a bit of a bummer but once the leech kicks in they provide more than enough health to keep my lifetap going. I just have to be careful not to spam ballistas when I am not actually killing anything.
I’ve spent some more time with the league mechanic and I think I really like it. It definitely feels like playing League of Legends with bots, but I’ve landed on a technique that mostly works for me. Essentially I swoop into enemy territory and drop my Ballistas which keep the other team attacking those while I circle them while firing off lightning arrow. For the most part, this works very well… and the only thing I have struggled a bit with is when there is some mechanic that is just covering the field in bad stuff. I’ve won four tournaments though at this point and kinda have a reasonable strategy for how to build my team. The rewards are sorta meh, but I’ve sold several of the rare tattoos for some decent bank and used one that swapped a Dex node for 80 Evasion. I am so starved for Strength and Intelligence that I could never actually use those tattoos, but I do have some more wiggle room for swapping dex for something else.
All in all, I am exceptionally happy with how things are going. I knew I was not going to be playing an “all arounder” build and so long as I keep that in focus I am exceptionally happy with my progress. At some point, I am going to start leveling an RF Juggernaut so that I can start throwing gear on it as I get it. I’m also helping out Thalen gear his Jugg so I’m hoping I can get some “hand me downs” as he levels out of them. God I love this game… it really gets in your blood sometimes.
Good Morning Folks! We are on day four of the Trial of the Ancestors League. According to the /played command, I have put in 32 hours so far and that got me through the campaign and up to comfortably doing yellow maps. I dawdled a bit during the campaign but enjoyed the ride. I am on such a different trajectory than I am used to because I am playing what is commonly referred to as a “map blaster” character. This means that I am designed to decimate oncoming packs of mobs before they can touch me… but the trade-off is that I have very little in the way of proper defenses. This sort of flies in the face of everything that I know about building a comfortable character, but somehow it is working. I ran with a friend who needed credit for a map I was just about to run yesterday, and he was laughing at how much nonsense is flying around the screen when I get moving.
My big lucky drop of the weekend was picking up a corrupted six-link bow, that was in the right colors… or at least “right enough” colors. This is going to hold me until I get much deeper into my character and pick up something in the range of a 1000 dps bow. This bow would be awful for the more popular Toxic Rain/Explosive Arrow builds, but it works beautifully for my build as realistically I want flat damage against three elements, and this has two. The bleeding bits on the bow are a bit meh as is the accuracy because I am capped without needing it on my bow. I would have rather had some attack speed but in the realm of corrupted gear this is pretty solid. I need to get some beyond mobs and hopefully get some tainted currency to get some quality on it.
I know I had said that I was going to try and craft my own gear… but at this point, I am fully engaged in the trade economy and have made a few smaller sales. On Sunday night I started poking around looking at prices for six link chest pieces and managed to snatch this one up for 25 Chaos Orbs. This spent the largest chunk of my currency that I have gathered up so far but seemed like a good call. It has really good evasion and decent armor and while there are various elements of this that I would change, again it isn’t bad for a corrupted item. I wish it had more resistance on it, but that is sort of my general problem right now… the fact that I am pretty much capped in only one element.
Another really lucky drop was that I picked up a Poised Prism with some decent resistances on it. This is in theory the suggested quiver for this build and I had hoped that I would see one drop. Truth be told… apart from eventually replacing this with a perfect roll I think this is pretty damned good. I’ve seen all of the common quivers at this point, so it seems like they just drop more often than other uniques. I am hoping to see a Prismweave to replace the Wurm’s Molt that I am currently wearing. Unfortunately at the moment, I can’t really afford to get rid of the Molt, because it is helping to fix some of my attribute problems. I am pretty much starving for Strength and Intelligence, and having to use up a handful of significant suffixes to gain more.
The other purchase that I made was a pair of Shadows and Dust gloves. Namely, this is a way of getting rampage on the build, and it seems to really help my clear. I picked these up I believe for 2 Chaos and then threw some jewelers orbs to add some sockets. I need to recolor these in order to set up a cast when damage taken combo with Immortal Call, just to add another smaller layer of defense. I’ve got my auto snipers hit set up in my boots at the moment and all of my auras are in my helm. I am still running clarity because I still have mana problems. My ballista is at least now running off Lifetap which is fine given I have a decent chunk of life leech. Truth be told when I am killing things, I have no real mana problems… it is only when I am setting up for the next run.
I’ve never played a character before that was this much of a glass cannon and was always riding the edge of falling apart completely. At the moment I have 100% spell suppression which is good, and decent enough evasion though I would like to see that MUCH higher. My armor however is complete shit and my resists… are awful. I’ve contemplated trying to create a Taming ring, but so far I have not seen any of the component Berek rings drop. I could farm Heterochromia cards, but one of the problems I am running into as a mapper… is that without buying maps from the market, you can’t really reliably “Farm” anything over and over. I feel like all of the mapping strategies involve either buying specific maps or buying scarabs in order to set up ideal conditions. I would for example love to be trying to farm Legion, but that requires Legion Scarabs. Delve honestly was just more simple… and quite honestly more rewarding. I ran literally any map until I got Sulphite and then Delved until I ran out, and then repeated the virtuous cycle.
I can’t complain though, I am only one day into mapping and I already have 32 maps completed and have done one of the Maven Challenges. I need to find a zone connection diagram that I can reference because I need to be running connected maps in an attempt to get the maps I am missing. I am not super in a rush to get to red maps, because on my test version of this build… that is where things started to fall apart without being resist capped. What I really want to find is an Ancestral Vision, because it would solve my elemental ailments problem completely. I currently have 50% elemental avoidance and Ancestral Vision would get me the rest of the way to 100%.
As far as my Atlas tree goes… I am sorta all over the place at the moment. I rushed to get Shaping the Skies and Mountains to start getting some free map device unlocks. I’ve picked up a little here and a little there on the essences and picked up Stream of Consciousness since I won’t have a steady supply of scarabs for a while. I am slowly working my way up to the Einhar nodes that unlock access to the beasts that sell for quite a bit of currency. I figure at least until I have unlocked everything I will be doing essence/beasts to hopefully make a little currency. Essences mostly because I want to maybe be able to craft some gear at some point. Beasts mostly to hopefully sell some split beasts and mirror beasts.
I’ve done only the smallest amount of Delve, basically running down my Sulphite supply each time I fill it up. I know that this build is very much not designed for the rigors of the deep, but for the most part, so far it has been “fine”. I mostly just have to keep blowing things up in front of me for fear of anything actually touching me. Mostly I am working on the tedium of setting things up and getting some initial darkness resistance and light radius unlocked. I know at some point I will level another character that is more specifically designed for delving and then be running that in the deep. I will say though… the little bit of Delve that I have done… has felt generally more rewarding than most of the mapping I have done. Heist is still the mixed back it always is, but for the most part, the build has done excellently there.
All told though I am pretty happy with the build and pretty happy with where I am after 32 hours of play. I will continue to chip away at the Atlas, and I am hoping by the time I have unlocked all 115 maps, I will have enough currency to do a massive overhaul of my tree to something more enjoyable. I would really like to focus on Legion, and I have to say… Blight, Legion, and Breach are all awesome on this character. That was really my hope that I would be able to do some of the mechanics that I mostly ignored in the past because they were just not drift-compatible with the Righteous Fire lifestyle. I’ve seen my first Exalted Orb pictured above, but I have yet to see a Divine Orb drop. When I start getting some of those, and a bit more of a liquid position in the currency market… I will feel better about my decisions.
I realize I have not stayed true to the SSF-lite attempt that I originally planned. Truth be told though… I actually have arrived at a point where I enjoy the trade economy in this game. I’ve made several smaller sales and have already set up the infrastructure to be able to sell more stuff as I get access to better items. I am not sure what happened to the person who used to avoid the auction house like the plague. Right now I just don’t have much value that anyone would care about. I have a friend who will probably be willing to knock out the Void Stones for me because I sorta doubt this character is going to be able to do much more than the first two. I have a lot of mapping and farming though before that is even a real concern.
Anyways! I hope you all have a wonderful week. I will be over here in the corner chipping away at this nonsense and completely happy.
Good Morning Friends! I am taking a break from leveling in Path of Exile to bang out a blog post. Yesterday at 3 pm my time the servers launched for the Trial of the Ancestors league, and I did not hop in the queue nearly fast enough apparently. It took me about fifteen minutes to actually get in, but once I did things were fairly smooth. Granted I did not risk logging out to the character screen for a bit just to make sure. I did not manage to get as far as I would have liked, but I did make it to Act 5 before calling it a night. Originally I had headed to bed around halfway through Act 4, but it was hot and I couldn’t sleep so I got back up and punished into Oriath.
Something that I did that is a bit out of the ordinary, is that I streamed Act 1 on Youtube. This was my first time really managing a stream through YouTube and for the most part… I think it went pretty well. When I was setting up the stream I did not really understand some of the options, and I think I could have potentially made the chat delay a bit less had I chosen the lower latency option. I had a handful of folks pop in and hang out, which was really cool. I however am not used to streaming… and after an hour of narrating my actions, I needed a bit of a break for my voice. I might try this again later as I start maps.
I’ve not really had much of an opportunity to play with the league mechanic, but you end up getting a silver coin pretty much in every zone. These work much like the rogue tokens do in that you click on them and they teleport you to the Halls of the Dead. From there you can talk to all of the other Karui combatants and enter a tournament match. Essentially you place attackers and blockers on the field and then try and take out the other team’s totems by clicking on them and channeling a bar to take it down. In theory, the attackers can do this for you, but it seemed to go much faster when I took care of it. Essentially I would wipe out a wave of attackers and then channel a totem, and repeat this process until all the enemy totems were down. It seems like it would be a fun mode with a party of friends, so I will have to try that later.
There are a few metrics that I tend to keep track of when I am leveling a new character. For example, the first Chaos Orb drop of the league was in Fellshrine Ruins, and before I had seen my first Chance Orb. I’ve had some really weird luck in this league because I think I have seen seven Chaos drop already before beating Kitava for the first time. I’ve also had a drought of Scrolls of Wisdom forcing me to do the Portals to Wisdom vendor recipe a few times. I’ve also seen way more Orb of Bindings and Jewelers Orbs than I am used to by this point in the league. As far as Vaal side areas go… I’ve only seen one, so that seems a bit weird and is harmful to my needing a Vaal Lightning Arrow. I tried to yolo corrupt the Lightning Arrow I had been using when I saw my first Vaal Orb drop… which raised it by a level and made it so I could no longer equip it. I had to go buy another Lightning Arrow from the Act 1 vendor to keep moving forward.
Since then I have wised up and am now muling four Lightning Arrow gems in my secondary weapons. The first death of the league was in Act 4 in the Mines Level 2. I ended up being too close to a mob with an “on-death” effect that nuked me. So far I think I have taken a total two deaths so far which seems good overall. I’ve also made it through the first Labyrinth and I varied my path a bit. The build that I am loosely following really suggested going for the Perma Onslaught node first before taking the Phasing node in the Raider tree, and then later speccing out of Onslaught and into the Frenzy nodes. I did not do this while leveling originally, so I thought I would give it a shot. It isn’t like I am going to be using many regrets in total so I should have plenty to do the swap at the fourth Labyrinth.
All told things seem to be going fairly smoothly. I’ve had decent luck when it comes to picking up random bows with the right sockets along the way. I am hoping that before long I will be able to start finding some five-link bows and given that I have a decent stash of chromatics built up, I should be able to force it to the correct colors. I am hoping to start seeing some more Vaal orbs, because I would love to swap over to Vaal Lightning Arrow at some point soon just for the additional damage on bosses. I am hoping that by the end of the day I am starting to dip my toes into mapping.
Are you leveling in Trials of the Ancestors? How has your journey gone so far? Drop me a line below.
