Eventually, you will get your own private hub. It won’t eliminate the need to go to the others, but it’s something.
Yeah, you generally get access to your hideout somewheres in act 2-3, depending on your luck finding masters.
I like all the ridiculous characters I see in town! A lot of the mtx armor sets look cool as hell, and I appreciate all the money those other people are spending on POE so that I don’t have to ;)
I’m sure that hubs sell microtransactions. I know that I saw someone one day and exclaimed, “where the heck did they get THAT” and immediately bought it once I figured it out. It was the Inua totem pet. I loved those little guys from the first time I saw them on the way to Kaom (think that’s where they are).
The long, long fiery and repetitive path to Kaom, yes ;)
One of the things I do legit love about PoE is that the art and story beats aren’t all pulled from the north/west European folklore that 90-plus percent of US/EU-produced games are. They pull heavily from Maori and other Pacific cultures (being Kiwis and all, makes sense) and it’s quite refreshing.
Very true. So much of what we think of as fantasy has its roots in Western Europe. And the thing is, when you tap into those cultures that are less familiar to many of us, they help create that sense of mystery and wonder precisely because they are less familiar.
Agreed. It’s definitely a feeling of a fresh setting and atmosphere for me. I’m not completely sold on it after 4-5 hours, but it may be because little quality-of-life things (like better inventory management) are missing (to be purchased?). I feel sometimes that just picking up four or five items suddenly fills my inventory, which makes it a tad annoying. My hoarding nature is not fitting well. Ha!
You simply can’t hoard that way in this game. They throw far too much stuff at you.
Yep, filters FTW! At the start of a league I’ll do a little bit of the old portal-jerk to build a little base currency (scrolls, transmutes, alts and what-not) and I have to fight my inner hoarder as well, but I am getting a handle on it. Whites are easy to ignore now unless they are 5-linked, 6 socketed/linked, or a particularly desirable base for the build I am playing. I still pick up a fair few yellows and the occasional blue if the implicits roll well and for chaos vendoring.
But, it is very hard starting out in this game to figure out what can be ignored. You have to come to terms with sockets, colours and links and get your head around armour/evasion/energy shield and the combination of item types that fall out of their combos. It’s a lot to take in initially.
When I started, I spent a lot of effort picking up superior weapons and armor to trade for blacksmith stones and what not. Totally not worth the time. I do still pick up superior flasks, though (and skill gems and maps, of course).
Yeah I did the same, had tabs and tabs of superior armour and weapons!!
No PoE for me tonight, Steam had a conniption on reboot and decided it was not installed and can’t find the game files that I can see right there in the install directory!!
Finally found the last map trial I needed and Uber lab is now down for the first time. Pretty nice because the points ended up giving me another 1200 or so energy shield.
also realized I’ve been running around with my lightning resist uncapped for quite some time. going to be a bit of a pain to correct. might have to think about finding a new helmet
I started fiddling with a dark pact totem build (not last week’s build of the week, but something similar), and it’s crazy strong. I’ve barely broken a sweat getting into the mid 50’s. It’s a fun change of pace to throw down totems and run in circles.
Must admit, after 13 hours, level 26, with my Witch, I’m pretty much sold on the game. I’m certainly not one to optimize builds or spend a lot of time worrying over specs, so I’m just enjoying the gameplay and seeing where it takes me. I’ll likely toss some money their way just for making a game I can sink into for a bit so some stash upgrades may be the way to go to support them. Anyone have a fave microtransaction that you’d recommend? Not looking for big spending, just something I could get that says thanks but has some utility.
Micro transactions I recommend:
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Upgrade to premium stash tab : upgrades one regular stash tab to premium. Premium tabs can be renamed and colorized.
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Premium stash tabs : if you need more tabs, only buy premium tabs!
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Premium stash tab bundle: sometimes they sell 5 or 6 tabs at a discounted price.
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Currency tab : tab for all those orbs and currency crap you pick up. A must!
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Essence tab: tab for the essences you get from beating up those frozen guys you find now and then
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Divination card tab: for storing your divination cards.
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Specialty tab bundle: every now and then they sell the specialty tabs in a discounted bundle. That includes the 3 above specialty tabs and the ‘quad’ tab, which has 16x more space than a regular tab.
I have around 20 tabs, organized in the permanent league more or less like this: currency, jewelry, flasks, divination cards, essences, miscellaneous, about 6 tabs of uniques, leveling gear, 2 tabs for gear I collect to sell for chaos orbs, and … 5 free tabs!
I don’t even use dark pact, just contagion, blight totems, and essence drain (plus wither totems on occasion) and it’s quite strong.
@equisilius they have been doing stash tab sales every few weeks. I’d wait for one of those. Currency tab, divination card tab, essence tab plus whatever extra tabs you like.
Excellent tips on the stash tabs and watching for sales. Thanks, will do.
Currency tab is SUCH a massive QoL upgrade.
Additional stash tabs are great, but don’t let them enable any latent hoarding tendencies. When in doubt, clear it out!
That’s a terrible mnemonic. But you get the idea.
Downed Atziri. Glad I knew about a couple of reflect mechanics going in. Aside from that, no sweat. I did get swatted once, not sure by what.
Level 42, my Witch is now an Elementalist, 30 hours of playtime. Have to say, this game has loads more depth (for this style of game) than the Diablos ever had, and I’d play this over more D3 any day. Still haven’t gotten any of the quality of life improvements for my stash, so there’s still a bit of a struggle with inventory/stash management but I’m watching for those sales.
Also, I’ve never died this much in all my other hack’n’slash games combined. Ha! The tiny arena type areas where I got swarmed (at bosses, or on the way to a boss) were my downfall, but several tries got me through. It’s certainly a lot tougher than I expected, with the difficulty being very up and down, even in the same area.
How far is it to end-game in terms of story? I’m likely to play the story all the way through before doing another character, but is that hundreds of hours away?
Level 42? You’ve seen about 5% of what the game has to offer :).
It’s really mind boggling that this game is free. Even the best of the best f2p games (or paid in the same genre for that matter) can’t match what PoE offers.
I mean right now I’m playing Warframe again and there are so many little things that bother me but PoE on the other hand is just so fantastic in almost every way imaginable.