Video Games

Ahuatotli the Blind

by

Good Morning Friends! I hope you all had a most excellent weekend. I spent my time doing stuff around the house and playing Path of Exile. I’ve continued doing Delve and Heist with my Righteous Fire Juggernaut and mostly doing Maps and Bossing with my Summon Raging Spirits Necromancer. After spending quite a bit more currency to resolve some outstanding issues with the Necromancer, both characters feel in a pretty solid place. I would likely be doing better had I gone with the Poison variant of Summon Raging Spirits which seems to be all the rage right now, but it would have also cost me a heck of a lot more. I have concerns that Poison SRS is going to eat a big nerf bat when the next league rolls out because it seems like Grinding Gear Games loves to beat down the most popular classes. Admittedly I am also somewhat concerned about Righteous Fire Juggernaut, but considering the prices of gear is dropping I would assume that means that a lot of folks have abandoned it.

Continuing my descent into the darkness I finally located Ahuatotli, the Blind the Vaal City boss. The first screenshot is of me fighting that encounter, and the above screenshot shows the marker on the map in a Vaal city. All in all, I thought it was an easier fight than the Lich, which I guess makes sense given that you can supposedly start encountering it at a much lower level. Right now I am spending most of my time in the 125-150 range going out to the right side trying to find the only Delve boss that I have not faced yet. According to the fan-run Wiki, Aul the Crystal King can begin spawning in around depth 171 but I’ve also seen reports of folks encountering him as early as depth 125. So I figure staying around the 150 depth and going sideways will probably let me see Abyssal Cities that I should investigate and hopefully find a boss node in one of them.

On Friday I started leveling another character and gave it the dumb name of “BelMakeQuake” indicating that it is going to be a Seismic Trap build. Right now I am leveling using Poisonous Concoction which is a really weird skill to use. Essentially you cannot use it with a weapon equipped, which means you are giving up at least three sockets. Your damage scales off whatever life flask is in your left-most slot on the potion bar and you really want a slow healing potion that recovers lots of life in the process for maximum damage. The end result however means that you are just sort of deleting packs of mobs mad bomber style. Once I threw Greater Multiple Projectiles and Greater Volley on the skill, I essentially began throwing this giant wall of death at packs of mobs eating everything in my wake.

Once I have done the first and second Labyrinth I can supposedly switch over to the final combo of Seismic Trap and Exsanguinate for bossing and clearing respectively. I made an attempt to switch over a little bit early because the POB that I am following is not exactly what I would consider “good”. The end result is that I happily murdered myself by dropping way too many exsanguinates, each of which dealt significant damage to me in the process. I’ve not touched it since that fatal mistake, but when I do make my way back to the character I will essentially undo everything that I did and go back to my poisonous concoction nonsense. I started off leveling in a bunch of random uniques and then really needed to switch over to some proper rare gear, which I did not have laying around. I might go back to the uniques however because they seemed to be “good enough”.

On the market front, I am still selling a lot of random stuff. As I upgrade gear I tend to put up the item that I was using previously for a significant profit. For example, the boots I had crafted on my SRS necromancer were pretty good but did not contribute significantly enough to my survival in the manner that I needed. So I picked up a new pair of boots for about 80 chaos, and yesterday I sold my previous boots for 80 chaos making that upgrade net neutral. I’ve done similar things on Righteous Fire as well where I took an item that I bought for 20 chaos originally and used for quite a while and then ultimately sold it for 50 chaos. It isn’t a massive volume and I am not exactly swimming in divines, but it is enough to keep funding upgrades as I find them for a reasonable price. Metamorph continues to pay off significantly, so if you have a character that can handle killing those tanky monsters then you might spec your Atlas into that.

I also managed to finally get my Betrayal map in a state that allowed me to assault the mastermind. That was an interesting fight and was significantly more challenging than I expected. All of the other safehouse bosses have been massive pushovers, but I did this on my necro and for whatever reason, she could deal massive amounts of damage to me in short periods of time. Essentially I would run out of flask charges and then take a death. I persevered however and got achievement of killing the boss. I’ve not got my Betrayal map almost to the point where I can do a few more safehouses. Mostly I have been running Jun missions because I have a lot of them saved up for red maps, and when I run out of Niko missions I need to do something to regenerate them.

We are right at a month into the new league and it feels like I am not slowing down yet. There is so much that I still want to do and I finally feel like I have the characters to be able to do them. At some point, I will get enough guardian maps to drop so that I can keep moving the atlas bar forward as well. I still need to do Elder and Maven in order to get my next void stones. Having an absolute blast and wondering how long the contact high with this league will last.

Kurgal the Blackblooded

by

Good Morning Friends! I have to admit that I am somewhat shocked that I am still as engaged with the Forbidden Sanctum league in Path of Exile as I am. Like I have said before this is effectively my third league and with each league, it seems like I slip further into madness. Path of Exile was one of those games that looked deeply interesting from the outside but that I struggled to actually find purchase on its sheer rock face of complexity. This game is not friendly to new players and even more so neither is its community. That is not to say that they are rude or cruel or anything of the sort, but more that they don’t realize how far they have come in the evolution of understanding the systems within systems that is the game they are playing. “Noob” friendly guides are very much not, because they all require a level of understanding that I am just now arriving at some 600 hours into playing the game.

Take Zizaran for example, who is probably the most community-friendly streamer, and youtuber for Path of Exile. He releases copious guide videos in each league, and it is only now that I am beginning to fully understand them. For example yesterday he released this guide video on how to craft a perfect bow for Explosive Arrow. While for me it does seem pretty straightforward, it would not have when I started. Firstly it assumes you know how to get essences or even what they are as well as how to get divine orbs and exalted orbs, and the dumb things like what it means to “annul a suffix”. It is a beginner guide for someone who is already indoctrinated into the game and all of its concepts. The thing is… playing through the campaign teaches you none of this information and it is only gleaned by reaching a point where you have the items in your inventory and understand what exactly the tooltip means.

I think this obtuse complexity is what makes the experience so damned compelling for me because the more I dive into it… the deeper the well seems to get. I am not specifically trying to pick on the community but if you approach this game the one thing that I would love everyone to understand is just how much of a struggle it is going to be to really engage with it. The game has been adding new roughly every three months over the last decade. I had no understanding of just how many of the systems I engage with regularly… we reworked over 2022 until I watched this year in review video. I also now fully understand why folks were so enraged by the ArchNemesis changes because they were extremely “fresh” in their minds. I love this game but also it saddens me that it is ultimately going to be an uphill struggle to get people to engage with it.

As far as my gaming time goes I have once again swapped up my Atlas tree and have removed everything involving Ritual Altars and instead packed on Metamorph nodes. In Lake of Kalandra encountering a Metamorph was more than likely a death sentence because they all had upwards of eight ArchNemesis mods tacked onto them. Now they are still a bit of a struggle but one that is more winnable and the rewards for doing them seem to be extremely solid. Since I have largely divided up my two characters into Bossing and Maps on my Fire Summon Raging Spirits Necromancer and Delve and Heist on my Righteous Fire Juggernaut… Metamorph is way more feasible.

When I say Metamorph is very rewarding as mechanics go, I’ve seen multiple divines at once drop from a single monster. I’ve seen many exalts drop and stacks of chaos along with all sorts of other useful resources. This is not every single time mind you, but the way I am specced into the tree gives me a bunch of organ drops as well that I can then take to Tane and summon additional monsters with. I also have the trait that allows Rogue Metamorphs to show up in my maps, and when I finish a map with Tane in it I can summon a second Metamorph. Of note when I got that double divine drop, I was running a low red tier map that was magic quality with very little in the way of quantity or quality modifiers on it. In fact most of the time lately I am not even bothering to “Alch and Go” but instead just dropping a Transmutation and maybe a few Alterations on it to reroll to something like extra magic creatures.

Right now I tend to alternate between mapping and delving, and I have my atlas configured so that even if I don’t have Niko on the map I am going to get a little bit of Sulphite from defeating the boss. When I fill up my Sulphite from the Necromancer I dive down into the depths and burn through nodes looking for interesting things. I’ve now fought Kurgal, The Blackblooded twice aka the Lich’s Tomb encounter in an Abyssal Sanctum. In the grand scheme of things the fight is completely doable but there are a few mechanics that I need to at least be somewhat aware of. There is a beam attack that you need to line of sight behind some pillars because it seems to increase in damage the longer it is on you. There are two phases but the second phase seemed to largely be a pushover. It seems like you are guaranteed one of the uniques from Kurgal’s loot table as well as other assorted rewards. His thing seems to be armor pieces aka gloves and helm that have abyssal sockets on them.

I am continuing to plumb the depths looking for Aul the Crystal King, because I want to be able to start farming that encounter. There is a nice necklace that can drop from it that seems to be useful for a great number of builds. Other than that I am slowly acquiring items to make a run at a seismic traps build. I’m also pouring little bits of resources into upgrading both Righteous Fire and Summon Raging Spirits builds as well. On the trade front, I am still doing fairly brisk business in small trades and had replenished everything that I had spent chaos-wise before doing some shopping for Thalen last night. He paid me in divines for my effort, which means I still have the resources but have slightly less liquid chaos than I did before. Profit is a means to an end however and for me, it is all about unlocking easier access to nice things.

I’ve had more fun in this league than in any of my previous attempts combined. I am not sure if it is that I am understanding the interplay of the systems better, or if I simply chose better builds to play. Whatever the case I have a feeling that my life will be dominated by this game for awhile now.

The Abyss Stares Back

by

Good Morning Friends! I am going to apologize ahead of time, but you are going to get another post completely full of Path of Exile nonsense. We are continuing my descent into madness… literally as I keep going deeper into Delve game mode systems. Last night I discovered Abyssal Cities and I am now on the lookout for as many of these as I can find. Since I missed the launch of the Delve league some four years ago, it floors me just how complete this game mode really is. While you do have to keep running maps periodically to build up a stockpile of Voltaxic Suphite to power your crawler friend and light the way, other than that you can pretty much get anything you could in almost any other game mode down in the darkness. I’ve gotten roughly a dozen Divine Vessels and a couple of dozen Offering to the Goddess that just drop randomly from stuff down in the depths rather than having to hope and pray you to see any of them above ground.

From what I understand there are three kinds of cities that can be found underground. The first is the Vaal ruins that I had been exploring previously and these supposedly start showing up somewhere around a depth of 30. I found my first Vaal city in the 70s, so your mileage may vary of course. Abyssal cities that I found last night and that are highlighted on my Subterranean Chart above in a yellowish outline start showing up in the low 100s. Primeval Ruins are the third kind that I have not seen yet, and those appear around 170 depth. Each City type can have a boss node, and I’ve yet to encounter any of those… and ultimately that is really what I have been searching for. I have a tunnel system around 70-80 depth that has produced five or six Vaal Cities, and last night I opted to dive down deeper and start expanding out around 100ish and almost immediately stumbled onto this first Abyssal City.

Because I got distracted by doing other things… I did not get nearly as much time underground. However, in my limited time, I managed to pull out all of those resonators sitting in my bank. Pending those resonators sell at least as quickly as my previous batches and for the same prices that is roughly 110 chaos worth of items that I pulled out, not counting a few nice pieces of gear that I am selling individually. I tend to price my items just high enough that I am not going to get instant sales which would interrupt the flow of my evening. Instead, I expect to throw items up cheaper when I am more in the mood to field trade requests. If someone wants to pay my inflated prices though, I am willing to stop what I am doing… waste a portal, and go make the trade. I will never be an auction house oligarch but I am making more than enough currency to keep fielding my nonsense plans.

Speaking of currency, I saw my first raw divine orb drop in the depths. This is only the second Divine Orb that I have seen in this league. I’ve seen an Exalted Orb or two in the dark below which keeps building onto my theory that almost anything can drop off node encounters. So far I’ve yet to see anything that is influenced by Elder, Eater, or Exarch so I am guessing that those items are probably limited to bossing or bossing adjacent activities. I have however seen a number of Synthesized and Fractured items below as well as more than a fair number of delve-specific explicit modifiers on items. I only know this because I continue to keep using Awakened POE Trade to price-check anything that looks like it might hold value, which tells me how good the rolls are on a given item and will call out league-specific mechanics.

I am absolutely certain that from this point forward… I want to go into Delve earlier than I did in this league. I am having a freaking ball with my time down there and getting enough currency to be able to fund upgrades to my builds. This is far from a high-yield currency strategy, but it seems reliable and also something that I already enjoy doing. The wide variety of items that I can see is honestly what keeps pushing me forward. I love seeing things that I have yet to see drop, and that happens way more often in Path of Exile than it does in a game like Diablo III. By midseason in D3 I have seen literally everything but Primal Ancient versions of things, and it all sort of blurs into this giant haze of orange text. Sure most of everything that drops is ignorable, but in every round, there is at least one thing that is worth hovering over to check the roll.

The last big thing that I did yesterday was spent some time respeccing my Atlas tree. I was already leaning into Delve a bit, but I removed “Wandering Path” and took all of the notable nodes associated with Niko as well. Basically, in Path of Exile the “trees” are comprised of small nodes often referred to as travel nodes, and big nodes which are referred to as “notables”. Wandering Path is a specific strategy for the Atlas tree which the effectiveness of all of your small travel nodes, but makes it so you get zero benefits from any of the notable nodes. This is great for when you are finishing your Atlas because every map you run will shower you with new maps to fuel your further exploration. However I am getting more than enough “map sustain” through Delve, and I no longer really need it from mapping as such I opted to focus on Strongboxes, Smuggler’s Caches, Ritual Altars, and Delve. I might whittle further into the atlas tree to try and pick back up Essences but for now, I am happy enough.

So essentially I am maining Righteous Fire and focused with it on progression in Delve. I have no clue what I am doing with Summon Raging Spirits in the least, or what I can really do to that build other than shift it to poison. I just am not sure if I care enough about it to fix the problems I am currently having with it. I am getting that old familiar itch of wanting to start something else to play with. I really want to see what the Seismic Trap life is all about, so I might be going down that path at some point soon. I am still periodically playing “BelginnersLuck” as I attempt to get Hillock to drop a unique and am to the point where if I am fast enough I can kill him before he can do the regeneration phase. I am so completely consumed with Path of Exile and all of its deep systems. I have no clue when I will climb back out of this chasm I have dug for myself, but for the moment I am happy.

Digging Too Deep

by

Well, my friends, it is far from the morning, and I am finally doing my first proper blog post of the year. Technically, I could have just called this a loss because of the holiday, as this is the day I actually got off officially in lieu of New Year’s day. I guess I should start things off by wishing you all a Happy New Year. My morning was less than fun because I spent it dealing with technical difficulties in my main machine. I finally sorted it out and it was thoroughly dumb, but not before I uninstalled Steam… without remembering to back up all of my games that were on my C drive. This isn’t the end of the world because most of my games were actually on another drive, but it will require me to reinstall a few things. I went completely down the wrong path because the Xbox Game Pass app apparently mounts a bunch of virtual drives and I got super confused sifting through event viewer thinking it was a hard drive failure.

I am still deeply enthralled in Path of Exile and more specifically the Delve mechanic. In past leagues, I had spent a few minutes exploring the dark depths, but never really engaged with it fully. I knew enough that I liked it, but was largely focused on mapping as my key progression path. Instead, I poured my heart and soul this weekend into Delve and made pretty solid currency for me at least. More than enough to fund several key set pieces to improve problems with my Righteous Fire Juggernaut. All told since diving into Delve I have produced somewhere in the neighborhood of five divines worth of currency. Granted I have also spent about two divines worth of that same currency righting the ship on my build as well as funding a few upgrades for one of my friends. Suffice it to say I am shocked at just how well it has worked, and I have a feeling in future leagues I will dig down into the ground well before this point if for no reason other than it seems to be a stable source of funds.

For those who have no clue what I am talking about, Delve was a league mechanic from roughly four years ago which involves exploring the depths under Wraeclast for fun and profit. Essentially the cycle involves running maps for Niko to collect Voltaxic Sulphite which you then use to power The Crawler which is essentially an automated tractor-like thing that plods along fixed courses stringing lighting along behind it. Each “camp” presents you with a series of monster spawns and gives you some sort of rewards like gear, divination cards, raw currency, and azurite that is used to upgrade how far you can delve safely and the radius of your light. The light is key because the monsters in the depths take no damage if they are not in some light source, and you eventually take significant damage yourself if you stay in the darkness too long.

Sometimes the rewards are significant, like this node that dropped a who slew of maps including one that was unique and a unique hybrid flask. Other times it might be a few dozen chromatic orbs, but the sheer volume of “bubble gum” currency is large enough that it is very likely you would never run out. Thanks to my adventures in the deep I have recolored several items for folks and even managed to six-link a few things. While it isn’t always going to be exalted orbs or divine orbs… you end up getting enough raw chaos to make the entire journey feel worthwhile. Where the real money that can be made however is selling the delve-specific items like resonators and fossils, though the later you really need to find someone wanting to purchase them in bulk.

Deep down veiled in darkness are a number of interesting things. The only ones that I have really found yet are Vaal Cities, and I have found I think five of them so far. Each node in a Vaal City involves opening up a chamber filled with corrupted monsters and a dozen or so chests full of loot. The above example is from my completing a single Vaal Chamber. All of the mechanics that can spawn in maps, seem to have nodes down in delve as well and I have taken down a number of Harbingers, Beyond spawns, and even some Breach and Abyss nodes. From what I understand as long as I keep expanding the network of tunnels it will keep spawning new nodes to explore off to either the right or left of the central column. In the second screenshot of this blog post, I did some cut/paste work and pieced together a ton of individual screenshots to show how far I have explored one side so far.

All of the currency that I am generating is allowing me to resolve some of the problems I had with my resists and survivability. At this point, I have upgraded most pieces of gear so my next target is likely to go find better quality versions of each unique that I am using. When I cobbled together the build in the first place I bought the cheapest versions of each that I could afford, and now that currency is a little freer and that Poison SRS is the flavor of the week taking some of the pressure of RF Juggernaut prices I might be able to pick up some deals. I had some moments with the build where I doubted if it was my jam, which is ultimately what led me to roll my own SRS-flavored build. Now that I have invested some more currency in the build I am enjoying myself again.

The real question I have though is if I am going to spend any more time investing in the SRS build that I currently have. There are some significant survival problems with my current build-out. My resists are not in a horrible state, so really I think the problem is that I either don’t have enough spell suppression/block or really need some more regeneration and armor. I could pivot my build into the Poison SRS variant, but that would involve a pretty significant investment at this point. I am just not sure if it is worth it considering that I would probably rather be spending currency on Righteous Fire. Summon Raging Spirits however is a much better bossing build, so if I could solve my mapping survival I could probably use it to catapult progress into finishing the major bosses. I guess I need to make a concerted effort to explore my POB and compare it to what I would need to change to pivot over into the Poison variation.

There are other games that I am interested in… but right now Path of Exile is tweaking all of the dopamine centers in my brain. I am going to stay with this ride until it eventually drops me off somewhere a spent husk of a human.