[Megathread] Path of Exile

[Lysah]

So I acquired a whispering ice staff, and damn this is sexy!
By far one of the more enjoyable builds i played, very cheap to pickup - prices are kinda retarded now as everyone wants to test it out, but you can farm the cards in not to much time - and i dunno, it really reminds me of d2 blizzard sorc, which i loved.

Now, maybe its me, and i cannot imagine it really being so, but since you don't have to link the staff, and just need 6 sockets... did they make it harder on this specific item to get 6 sockets? after around 200 jewellers i was like screw this and kept a 5 socket :P

Where'd you farm? Western forest?

[cudomix]

The stash tab is almost needed though if you are going to play a lot.

In all fairness to devs, if you're at point you need 6 extra tabs 15$ is a pittance compared to amount of gameplay you already got.

[Fencers]

I've been playing this game on and off since beta. Way less than some people, but still, seeing the same place not 3 times, but 80ish times (25ish chars, yes I suck at hardcore :P) gets a bit stale.

Marvel Heroes 2015 has a brilliant structure for an ARPG. Once you unlock waypoints in the story mode on one character, the waypoints remain unlocked account wide but the quests per character remain.

You can also choose to not do the story mode at all in MH2015 and join MMO-like zerg zones called Patrols or run solo-to-five-player instances.

A very nice system indeed.

Gona try out Path of exile. I like that its free however are any micro transactions mandatory? Or are they vanity items.

Nope. 100% free.

Even stash tabs are not even close to necessary. You don't have to keep all your stuff in POE- a lot of it is junk used for crafting/recipes. So there isn't a lot of need to have many tabs unless one plans to play the market. And if you are playing the market, buying stash tabs is seriously the least of one's concerns. Like the least.

[Deleted]

Ok, just beat Malachai Cruel with a 1hand/Shield Ice Crash Marauder. I wanted to see if a full node shield build was viable or not. Turns out that it isnt, you gimp yourself try to travel around the passive tree just to get the block % nodes.

Guess I will refund a lot of the block nodes and get some life instead.

[Kelimbror]

Well I downed Malachai last night and thought it was a much fairer fight than the others I was having problems with. The space to move in is hella small, perhaps a bigger room would have been a tad better, but overall very cool. Glad I didn't try that before it was nerfed or whatever happened.

I'm glad I finally pushed through to see what the whole scope of gameplay related to story had going for it. Good stuff. I love that this genre has 3 really solid, constantly updated games.

[falagar112]

Where'd you farm? Western forest?

Western Forest, that is correct (cruel & merciless, couple of levels each) - would say an average of around 1 card an hour, which seems really bad, but then you see the price @ 8ex for staff, and you'll be happy you did.

Individual cards sell for quite a bit too.

Just remember not to turn the cards in @ cruel, as it won't be high enough itemlevel to 6 socket

edit:
anyone knows the odds of vaaling bad stuff? I am terrified to vaal the staff, but if i ever want it to have GGGGBB I probably need to vaal white sockets. Even area dmg implicit would be kinda amazing.

Whats your tactic on vaaling? just yolo? farm a 2nd to have backup incase rng decides to make it yellow?

[Lysah]

Western Forest, that is correct (cruel & merciless, couple of levels each) - would say an average of around 1 card an hour, which seems really bad, but then you see the price @ 8ex for staff, and you'll be happy you did.

It's also possible you got really lucky. Though, I don't really expect the staff to be worth more than an exalt once the hype around it dies down. There were more than 15 of them for sale last weekend, and I heavily suspect the only reason the supply has dropped is because someone is buying them out to create an artificial market.

I farmed for rise of the phoenix on the beta, went from level 61 to 74 on nothing but solaris before I got the set, with the help of 2 cards from friends.

As far as vaaling goes, getting 6 white sockets is going to be a lottery win. It's only a 59/59 item, and you only want 4 off colors, so it won't be that bad. It'll still take 1200 chromes but that could be a lot worse.

[Gumboy]

In all fairness to devs, if you're at point you need 6 extra tabs 15$ is a pittance compared to amount of gameplay you already got.

I agree 100%, just saying they are essentially mandatory if you play the game a lot.

[Fencers]

I agree 100%, just saying they are essentially mandatory if you play the game a lot.

I really don't feel it is essential for those that play a "a lot".

Tab 1. Currency
Tab 2. Chaos Recipe
Tab 3. Maps & Chisels
Tab 4. Sell
Tab 5. Gems
Tab 6. Qual. Gear

There is not much that those 6 tabs can cover with shrewd use of your stash.

I can only think that long term legacy players need more than six.

[Deleted]

Wow, hadn't had much time to play, so just arrived in act 1 Merc.
Within half an hour I had 5 unique items, 2 unique jewels and a 5-link 2h sword.

Don't think I've ever had that much drop for me in a short time.

[Lysah]

58-62 tonight entirely off western forest and 0 cards so far. Pretty much what I expected

[falagar112]

58-62 tonight entirely off western forest and 0 cards so far. Pretty much what I expected

Having farmed some more while leveling today and not getting any either, i suppose i was lucky earlier

Prices dropped quite a bit though, seems some people have been farming, went from 3~4 up to around 15 earlier today.

[Lysah]

Still not paying a single orb above an exalt for one in my life.

[Fencers]

Tried my hand in Tempest league. RIP'd in Act II Cruel. Did not enjoy.

[Lysah]

I like tempest, its a risk you can actually avoid. Most of the time I forget about it, I was even leveling up last night in a crushing tempest on my pure evasion ranger (physical spells hurt a lot). Much better than invasion and beyond (for leveling). Slightly more interesting than bloodlines. And, considering bloodlines killed my main THIS league already, I already like it that much less. My only problem with tempest is that it's TOO avoidable - the buff duration doesn't last long enough to matter and most of them aren't that scary on mobs. The bad ones (abyssal) you just nope the fuck out of and wait an hour and otherwise you forget it's even a thing. I just wish they'd increase the reward, 10 free IIQ is nice but not really that significant.

In my opinion, hardcore leagues should try to foster the ultimate competitive environment. It is truly a race in multiple ways. There are the people who want to actually win the ladder racing. There are people who want to win the economy racing. And there are people who just want to feel good about themselves, but rely on overcoming a challenge to do so. Invasion was bad for this because it made a lot of "skill" aspect actually somewhat RNG is what boss came to ruin your day, the real skill was in being able to flat out avoid and dodge the mechanic of the league. Tempest does it well because the "good" players can muscle through modified maps as they level and get to the end game faster. They can also tackle tempest maps that other players can't, and will get ahead there as well. Slower players can take their time and still reach their goals eventually. You are rewarded for being able to play through the league mods, but not forced into deal with them all the time.

[Deleted]

Finished Act 4 last night. The act itself was really fun and had some pretty nice places. I loved the arena fightings.
Last boss itself tho was a bit stupid with so much AoE on such a tight place. I get that PoE wants to be all about "You will die. A lot" but sometimes i can be too much tbh

[Ashnazg]

I started a melee character as the first character for the league, and hoooly jesus was that a mistake. I should've known better, since I played POE from back when it had two acts, but I really wanted to test out frost blades.

I probably died upwards of 60 times in Cruel Harvest due to having lackluster resists and being practically one-shot by everything that those guys do. Now I am 75 though, with a substantially beefed up defense lineup and about 10 times the dps (60k vs 6k), so I expect that Merc harvest will be significantly simpler.

In other news, I was disappointed to find out that card drop rates suffer from currency drop penalties, meaning that unless you farm some of those cruel-only drops at appropriate level, you'll have an uphill battle for ever getting those cards.

[Deleted]

Finished Act 4 last night. The act itself was really fun and had some pretty nice places. I loved the arena fightings.

I thought the first part was really nice, lots of cool places etc. However, I felt the last part was really rushed.
'oh here's a couple of people we pulled from the lore, go kill them'. Could have been so much more.

[Slaughty8]

Any idea on the percentage split of playerbase between Tempest and Warbands leagues? I just wonder which market is bigger.

[Fencers]

I think those players responding to the recent div card nerf with dumb memes is a bit immature. However, despite the method such players chose to express their disagreement, I think there is merit in the sentiment that the nerf kinda makes div cards what-fucking-ever. It furthers stratifies the game into the lottery winners and the non-lottery winners; undermining the very premise deterministic crafting via cards seemed to promise.

Edit: I am aware that my commentary might sound a bit old hat here. I often bemoan the economy of POE, but this is seriously the worst aspect of the game bar none. Players are not smart enough to manage the economy themselves in a way that creates a fair and merit based system of progression in a game genre that lives & dies by such a system.

Inflation is simply outrageous in legacy leagues. Temp leagues are highly volatile markets where getting "lucky" creates tiny islands of wealth among the player base. There are poor tools for trading. Ignorance further widens the the rich/poor gap among those that are aware/willing to maintain forum shops, use third party tools, create scripts, etc.

All the worst things are in POE's economy. This is the major flaw of POE.