Still Burning

Good Morning Folks. Yesterday I released a bit of propaganda for the upcoming Last Epoch Tombs of the Erased season. I’ve been asked a few times what I plan on starting for the league. I’ve kicked around a few ideas, namely checking out the Forge Guard updates and running something with a Two-hander and Shield to see how that plays. However I think at least in the short term I am going to revisit some familiar territory. Warpath is without a doubt my favorite skill in Last Epoch. I’ve always loved whirlwind builds as a concept and I do love to spin and win. Over the course of various leagues I have played so many different versions of this build.

Each time I have played this build I have tweaked it a bit and improved upon the previous iterations. This video is recorded of that last version of the build and from what I can tell based on the patch notes and updates… it maybe got buffed a little bit. So unless something drastic changes between now and tomorrow when the league starts, I am going to essentially follow the template of this character. There are a few changes in the passive tree that I will navigate in the moment, but I have a pretty good idea of how I am going to path. I will very likely wing it, because having effectively built five versions of this character… I more or less know what I like. Do I suggest you follow this build? Fuck no. It works for me, but I’ve never done any of the pinnacle content on it, and it still requires you to be in melee range making it more challenging than probably literally any ranged build is going to be.

At some point I am probably going to run up some sort of a bow character and play with the brand new Heartseeker ability. I think this is what my friend Ace is going to start, so I will likely lean on their experiences. I have a feeling I am going to be playing Last Epoch for a few months and as a result I will probably run up multiple characters like I did at the 1.0 release. I probably want to lean into cold damage, because I like the crowd control aspect of that element. I think maybe the fire damage version is going to be more powerful though, but given that I am leaning into fire with my “Spin to Win” character I am not certain that I want to do that on multiple characters.

Another build that I have played a lot in the past that is pretty fun is some sort of Necromancer. For those builds I have tended to follow some of the builds from Aaron Action RPG. This is going to be one of those things that I only build if I get one of two uniques. Aaron’s Will is pretty freaking rare, but if I get one as a drop I will very likely go into the Golem build that uses it. More common is the build designed by actor David Harbor called Wraithlord’s Harbor which goes all in on summoning Wraiths. I’ve never actually made this build but I have always been curious about it. The only problem with minions is that you end up mostly just running around avoiding taking any damage while your swarm of minions overwhelm things. Its relatively comfortable but you also tend to not have much survival.

So right now that is my plan, to stick with the familiar and maybe at some point respec into something Forge Guard to play with some of those new abilities. I know that Warpath Ignite is going to give me a solid start to the league and allow me to build up some resources without much issue. Once I start getting some Circle of Fortune rep going and filling my bank with uniques, I might pivot into some other builds for funsies. I know I am going to at the very least play some sort of bow build, so I might add to my item filter some things to support that so I can begin banking useful gear for leveling purposes. There are some really good leveling uniques that you can lean on pretty heavily. The first thing that I am hoping to find is my old friend the Firestarter’s Torch which really trivializes a lot of the early content with my build.

In non-Last-Epoch news, we got another banger of a patch in Path of Exile II with 0.2.0f landing yesterday evening around 8pm. It includes a bunch of quality of life changes, including some stash tab affinities for various items that were annoying the shit out of me and belts being modified to have additional charm charges by default. I still think the charm system as a whole is complete garbage… but at least we might be able to use more than one of them at a time. Flask automation from Path of Exile was just better. The patch however apparently caused some unintended consequences for users with AMD cards so I suppose that sucked. Being able to bookmark nodes on the Atlas is pretty cool so you can mark those unique maps that you cannot quite run yet, or at least that has been my use of them so far.

Are you going to be firing up Last Epoch for the upcoming season? If so what are you playing? Are you planning on just sticking it out with what I have personally dubbed “Sad League” in Path of Exile II? Drop me a line below.

AggroChat #518 – One Hundred Pages

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

Hey Folks! We were out last week but, as such, came back with a stacked list of topics to discuss.  We start off talking about Path of Exile II and the bad launch patch for Dawn of the Hunt.  We also talk about the interview between Zizaran and the Devs and the resulting updates.  We then dive into some discussion about an amazing-looking season for Tombs of the Erased in Last Epoch coming next week and all of the new features.  Kodra and Tam share their experiences with Blue Prince, which is a puzzle exploration game that highly suggests you keep track of some real-world notes.  Bel discusses his thoughts on the Minecraft Movie and how it splits the line between brilliance and trash and ends up providing a pretty great time. Ash has restarted Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX, and Thalen talks about the Hugo Award Nominations.  Sudokucon has happened, and Kodra shares how the event went.  We also have a brief revisiting of Xenoblade Chronicles X, which Ammo and Ash are still playing through.

Topics Discussed:

  • Path of Exile II League Issues
  • Last Epoch Tombs of the Erased
  • Blue Prince
  • Minecraft Movie
  • Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX
  • Hugo Award Nominations
  • Sudokucon
  • Xenoblade Chronicles X

Last Epoch Season 2 Delayed

Good Morning Folks. Yesterday we got a bit of news from Eleventh Hour Games that they would be delaying the launch of Last Epoch Season 2 from April 2nd to April 17th. This is to create some distance between their launch date and that of Path of Exile 2 and its first league on the 4th. This whole situation is frustrating because multiple sources have stated that Eleventh Hour Games was in communication with Grinding Gear Games regarding their choice of April 2nd making it an extreme dick move to schedule their own start two days later. I entirely feel like GGG is in the wrong here… but there also may be some external forces at work that we do not know about.

Whatever the case this is probably the right decision for Eleventh Hour Games. As stated in a Zizaran video talking about this situation, it is rare that people go back to a game after the launch… so that would likely mean folks would play Last Epoch for a day or two… if they even gave it a shot at all, and then would flip to Path of Exile II and never look back. I am disappointed mostly because right now I care far more about Last Epoch than I do Path of Exile II. I do not think that there is going to be enough in the upcoming patch to really shift the trajectory of POE2 enough for me to truly enjoy it more than the first game. I might be shocked on the 27th when they announce all of the content, but in truth I mostly just want to get my hands on the redesigned endgame for Last Epoch.

In the meantime I am still playing quite a bit of the Legacy of Phrecia event. In theory I should hit level 99 tonight and I am starting to pick back up and work on some of the challenges that I never completed from Settlers of Kalguur. I’m cycling between Delve and mapping and still only have two of the four voidstones unlocked. I should probably work on that, but I hate the process of grinding for the fragments required to attempt Maven and Uber Elder. The whole bossing system in Path of Exile feels bad to me. I feel like there should be quest support for all four voidstones like there are the first two so that you can knock these out in a relatively straightforward fashion. At some point I should probably try out a T17 again to see if I can complete that, but my build is not exactly great at bossing. Generally speaking I just do not enjoy that side of the game and the whole process of getting access to the fights.

I have burned through a good chunk of my reserves of gold and dust in order to start up a bunch of mappers. One of the league challenges from Settlers that I never knocked out was running 200 t14 or better maps at 100% success rate with mappers, and I figured I might as well start chipping away at that since I am still playing. If I can push to level 100 and complete the rest of those maps that will knock out one more of the challenges and potentially give me a bigger totem pole for my hideout. In truth Path of Exile is just a comfortable activity for me to spend chill evenings listening to an audiobook, and has kind of become my default gaming activity. I hate that among the AggroChat folks, I am the only one who seems to have really reached that point with the game.

I am also still pushing forward with Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon because I hate having a “did not complete” in my list. I swapped over to the Soundbooth Theater version of the audiobook and it is infinitely better than the one I was listening to earlier. There is a significant difference between being read a book out loud, and having someone act out a book… and at this point I have become spoiled by the later. This is a brutal story… in content… and in just how much graphic detail is put into it. I am not sure I would ever suggest this to someone else, but it has enough of a hook into me that I am going to see it to its conclusion. Effectively this is Hostel style torture porn, and my kink does not run in that direction.

AggroChat #515 – Guild Authorizes This Hunt

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

Hey Folks! We are down an Ash this week and start the show down a Kodra who slips in while we record.  This week we talk about the press tour for Last Epoch Season 2 and some of the new information that came out on a podcast with Raxxanterax and Zizaran.  From there we talk about the fatal wound that is the upcoming Season 8 in Diablo IV because Season 7 was apparently too fun and Blizzard cannot stomach that.  Tam shares his experiences with Megamek an archaic way of playing Battletech Tabletop online.  From there we dive into our further experiences with Monster Hunter Wilds as Bel has finished all of the story content and the majority of folks have hit the credit roll that transitions to High Rank play.  Kodra shares some thoughts about Finspan and also engaging with Chess.com as a way to learn better chess play.

Topics Discussed:

  • Last Epoch is Cooking
    • More Season 2 Reveals
  • Diablo IV Enshitification
    • Incoming Bad Season
  • Megamek
    • Oldest School Battletech
  • Monster Hunter Wilds
  • Finspan
  • Chess.com