Voidstones

Onslaught with Friends

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Good Morning Folks! Last night I had quite a lot of fun running around in Destiny Rising with Ace and Ammo. Since we had last grouped Ammo had managed to finish up the main storyline which opened access to a whole slew of new activities. She had not experienced Gauntlet Onslaught, aka the raid at all and after taking down the Stronghold we had uncovered for the pack, we queued one by one through all of the parts of it. We also did all of the new Gauntlet Blitz modes that are being previewed right now, and have guaranteed weapon drops associated with them. It was a heck of a lot of fun, and while we struggled a bit with Issakkis, in finding a group that could do the mechanic… we cleared everything without much issue. We did fail once at breakin, but shifted our strategy to make sure that I was on the first bridge crew, and Ace was on the last bridge crew… because we had someone take a key on that last round and just mill around killing random stuff.

The big highlight of the night is that I finally pulled the Renegade ghost shell on my main account, which drops from the raid. I also pulled a second copy of Izanagi’s Burden, which will allow me to progress that weapon at some point for Tan-2 and Umeko. Though to be honest, if I am going to play a precision character I am almost always going to be bringing Helhest. I really love Maru the new champion and am working on leveling her up so that she can become one of my mains for progressing content. I needed someone that I really liked that could handle spread shinkas and she does so masterfully. I think Ace and I are going to hang out tonight and do some of the weekly reset content, and maybe tomorrow during the day a bit since I am off due to the holiday. I have business to take care of in the morning but should be home by noon and ready to roll.

Over in Path of Exile, it was a weekend of finishing things up. I ended the weekend with 115 of 115 maps completed, my four voidstones, and all of the map favorites unlocked except Sirius and the Feared. At some point I will run Sirius, but I have not done enough maps to gain the fragments yet. I just bought fragments for the other ones, and I guess I could do the same for Sirius but it did not feel that pressing. I’ve also completed a t17 which unlocked my six socket map device, and have started running proper maps loaded with scarabs and everything. Right now I am alternating between Shipyard and Toxic Sewer, because both are fairly decent maps for the type of gameplay I play… and not too bad honestly for the breach mechanic. They both offer at least some modicum of bottlenecking for the times when you have to defend Ailith.

When I dinged 96, I devoted some time to running through a bunch of boss encounters and I completed the pinnacle fight for Breach, where you fight both Not-Tul and Not-Esh together. I am not sure if it is always Tul and Esh or if you sometimes get the other combinations of the Breachlords that are not Chayula. The story of this Breach league is really interesting and I love how it is essentially setting up the events that ultimately lead to the coming of Xesht in Path of Exile II. I would love it if we got more of these betweener leagues that move the story forward for each league’s content. For example I would love an updated version of Abyss that brings us closer to what it is like in Path of Exile II, because it is SO MUCH better than defacto Abyss that we currently have. The only league I am scared about them changing is Delve, but that is mostly because I love it so much that I do not want them to fuck it up and make it no longer fun for me.

I’ve been slowly working on my build while leveling my character towards 100, and I picked up a Foulborn Red Dream jewel, which is helpful this league for stacking life. As a result I have almost 8000 life, and there are some other things that I could do to push it higher. Pohx showcased a version of his build running 10k life, and I effectively need to swap from Immortal Flesh to a well crafted Stygian Vise to get there. This was a rather costly swap because the jewel itself was 2 divines, and then each of the five tattoos needed was around 70 chaos. That said… I’ve never run Righteous Fire with this much health so it is at least worth doing for the time being. I feel a bit squishier than I have in previous incarnations of RF, and I am not entirely certain what is going on there. It might be that I currently only have 30% reduced crit damage. I am contemplating swapping in a Taste of Hate to also get more phys to elemental conversion.

I am also still working on getting some better gear upgrades. On the Tree Tree I am working on crafting a new pair of gloves, because while my current ones are pretty solid and I have yet been unable to replace them… I could also have way more life on them. I am still fairly proud of the Archedemon Crown and Shaper Shield that I crafted. I bought a new sceptre which I picked up fairly cheaply, and recently swapped over to a Cloak of Flame with more ignite duration, more fire resistance, and 5% reduced fire damage taken which is super useful. At some point I would love to get a good corruption for Annihilation’s Approach boots, but the best one is super expensive thanks to Pohx’s video about them. My amulet and rings are all sort of trash and could be improved greatly, but it really depends upon how much currency I want to pour into them. Now that I am delving around 200 depth reliably and running t16s easily, I can start generating way more currency.

The other thing that I added was a Light of Meaning, buffing fire damage. I lost some damage in the swap to the Red Dream jewel because I had to give up a jewel with fire multi on it. This single jewel swap pushed me well past where I was originally with the damage and took the entire build up into the 1.5 million-ish range, making the boss fights way more comfortable and the general mapping and delving way faster. Right now I have a jewel with Fire Multi and Max Fire Res on it, and swapping that for one with max life would be helpful… but those are running around 10 div at the moment and I do not have that. I tried the Sir Gog method of crafting Jewels with the Tree Tree for a bit, and didn’t have much luck. I have way more luck printing gloves, so I am back on that path for now. Essentially I am looking for gloves with 21% regen, 100+ flat life, 45+ fire res, 58+ dex… and then anything else that is useful life. I’ve gotten close a few times and have sold the failures. If I get a 21% regen fractured roll I might try either fossil crafting or harvest crafting to get the rest of the way there.

I am basically at the point in the league where I need to start chipping away at achievements so I can get my totem pole. The build is stable and reliable, and I can pretty much do any content on it. I am fishing for an Aul in Delve, but have not had much luck. One thing that I have noticed is that I think they have killed the curse on hit rings from Delve, either that or made them extremely uncommon. I’ve cleared a bunch of the elemental nodes down there and not seen a single one yet. I always beeline for these because they also reward elemental fossils, which I find way more useful than any of the loot other than the curse rings. According to the trade site, they still exist… but have either had their rarity cranked or my luck has just been shit. The death of Hexblast Mines though, pretty much decimated the market for these so it is not like they were selling well anyways. I used to throw 20c on each of them in the hopes that maybe one of them would move, but given the deflation of this league it seems like they are all around 1c each.

In other unrelated news… I have been watching Frieren for the last few weeks and finished up season one on Saturday. This show is extremely delightful and I highly suggest giving it a watch if you like that D&D party vibe. I would say it has thematic notes aligned with Delicious in Dungeon/Dungeon Meshi except it is effectively the tale in reverse. Frieren was the Mage for a party that defeated the Demon King, and a huge part of the show is going on another adventure to somewhat retrace the steps that the first party made. Elves are effectively immortal in this universe, so the march of time just works differently for her… and the decade spent partying together… felt like a brief interaction for her. Through retracing the steps she is effectively realizing what she missed. You would think this would make the show deeply melancholy but it isn’t really, and through retracing the steps… she realizes how special the first journey was. Super charming honestly, and well worth a watch of the first 28 episodes. I will be anxiously awaiting the drop for season 2.

Two Voidstones Down

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Good Morning Friends! It is another morning and another post about assorted Path of Exile nonsense. Last night I managed to get up to the point of fighting the Searing Exarch and the Eater of Worlds, which means I am effectively at the same point I closed out the last league with two void stones collected. I made attempts at Uber Elder but failed miserably in the last league. Effectively to get the next two void stones I will need to beat Uber Elder and then take down Maven with her memory game. I remember limping across the finish line in both Searing Exarch and Eater of Worlds last league, but I defeated both without taking any deaths this time around.

I think the key difference is that my defenses are just much stronger this league than they were last. I am sitting at 90% fire resistance which combined with the rest of my defensive layers allowed me to just stand in most of the mechanics during the Searing Exarch. There is a phase in the fight where you have to dodge a bunch of incoming fireballs. I was too busy paying attention to the fight to take a screenshot, but here is one that I found online. In my current defensive posture… I could just stand there and ignore the fireballs entirely letting them hit me and explode without taking anywhere close to fatal damage. I figure if enough of them had hit me directly at the same time it might have knocked me out, but I at least dodged around enough to make sure I was only getting hit by one or two at a time.

The best-laid plans sometimes fail miserably… and for me, it was the fact that I thought I would be able to use the “no life modifiers” passive with my Brass Dome. It turns out that the negative life modifier of losing health from strength… knocks that chest piece out of the running. This means in order to use it… I am just going to lose some regeneration and total life. Here is what my defenses look like after the swap of some gear around losing some overcap fire res, some raw regeneration, and some raw health… but gaining permanent 90% physical damage reduction and crit immunity. In truth it isn’t really something that I notice so long as I am not eating some sort of degeneration effect, and across the board I just feel like my health bar almost never moves.

While making some gear swaps, I decided to get myself a budget pseudo-six-link helm. Traditionally for this play, you want level 20 Burning Damage and Concentrated Effect, but those helms are a bit out of my price range with the worst options sitting around 2 Divine Orbs and the best option available at 50. What I did instead is go for the arguably worse but still valid Less Duration, and I was able to pick up the helm shown above for 5 Chaos Orbs. I had to adjust sockets, chrome, and link it but I did so easily with the bench craft socket recipe. This gear swap takes the damage calculation in POB for my Fire Trap from just under 500 DPS to right at 1 million DPS. This was immediately noticeable and since I only really use Fire Trap during burn phases or while circle-strafing a boss… the spammy nature of less duration doesn’t really bother me.

One of the things I do each league is set aside the first white socketed weapons that I get for the purpose of “muling” gems in my secondary weapon slots. Last league I found a six-socketed white staff which was nice, and this time around I happened upon a pair of 3 socketed one-handed maces. It doesn’t really matter what you use, but I find white sockets handy for swapping up whatever gems I happen to want to level. Yesterday I finished my first project which was leveling 6 Righteous Fire gems to 20… doing the vendor recipe to swap them for 20% quality level 1 gems… and then level them again and corrupt them. I lucked out and managed to get 2 of the level 21 20% quality gems that I was seeking, and now have started “muling” some Fire Trap gems to hopefully do the same. I could in theory just buy the damned things, but this is simple enough and I kill more than enough mobs to level the gems pretty efficiently.

I think the next big project for me is to try and find a Sceptre base with a good Crucible tree… and then attempt to craft myself something with +1 gems and all of the assorted fire stats that I care about. Before then I might be shopping for some slightly better resist rings and attempting to use those to gain some more health and regeneration. Now that I understand the basics of a build, I am finding I enjoy the little project aspect of the game as I try and improve various weaknesses of my build. Right now I am trying to figure out how to deal more damage without giving up the tanky nature that I crave so much.