I’m not officially playing SSF but I haven’t traded for anything yet (so in effect I’m playing SSF so far) and have had varying success with incursions on 3 different characters.
A lot of it I think is how strong your build starts out - many (like my SRS witch) start a bit slowly, so until you get enough points under your belt, it’s tough to complete incursions. At level 24 it’s iffy for her to kill a guy in the incursion and open a door in the same trip. Others (a guy I’m playing who is currently using sunder) are good out of the gate, and has had no issues killing a boss and opening a door. Still others (like my trapper) start slow but ramp up fast so he went from struggling a little to having few issues.
It’s possible that there are simply builds that won’t do well in an incursion until they get enough skillpoints… but I think everyone will eventually get there. People who have played a lot have a bit of an advantage, since they are much more used to min-maxing - and while I think the min-maxing helps, I don’t think it’s required.
I know this was an aside, but it so perfectly describes my own experience that I wanted to comment. I almost never try to create a build any more, rather just find one that looks close to what I was considering and modify it for my own style. I suspect folks who think the game is too difficult to understand…and I’ve talked to a fair few…are trying to do everything on their own without leaning on the community. I get the desire to go it alone…I’ve played SSF myself, and I love the idea of making a build from scratch…but the game forces you to put in a lot of work to do those things, and punishes you for mistakes (i.e. not giving you full respecs). I enjoy the game a lot more when I take advantage of the good work of others to save myself later grief because I chose the wrong gem or went the wrong way on the passive tree. Lets me focus on the important things, like murdering every animate object that crosses my path.
And in news of my Incursion experience, because I know you’re all waiting with bated breath, my Neromancer CharmingOssifier beat up Act 10 Kitava and just started maps. I’m following a skeleton focus build this time, so no zombies, though I still have spectres/golem/guardian hanging around too. (Judging from the cost of To Dust jewels, which I have yet to obtain, skeletons are definitely flavor of the month in summoning.) I love the new Vaal gem operation, which lets me use one gem for my normal skeletons and also occasionally summon a Vaal skeleton army. She was 71 by the time I got to the Kitava fight, which is a good 2-3 levels higher than usual, and that’s all down to incursions and temple XP. All the Part 2 act bosses seemed easier than normal to me, and I think that’s largely the cause…more levels, more points, better gear coming from temple fighting.
Yeah, I spent some time poking around the forums PoE forums looking at suggested builds, I really don’t want to have to scrap a character and start all the way over. I understand there’s fun in figuring stuff out for yourself, but I’d rather just lark along and not end up gimped because of a few bad skill choices.
I do like looking at the builds and trying them, but I find it tedious to have to in effect have a cheat sheet/webpage open every time I spend a point…
Boy. My homebrew ranger thing barely functioned, and was struggling in act 5. Ignite is really not viable :/
This earthquake jugg, on the other hand, is full clearing every temple while facerolling at Mach speed through everything. Yeah I spent an alch on a Limbsplitter and 2c on the upgrade prophecy, but that’s not much - especially in Incursion. Spending to increase your clearspeed is even more worth it than ever.
Still haven’t gotten anything terribly exciting from the omnitect, but oh well. Level 3 rooms are very lucrative on their own.
This is probably obvious already to everyone, but if you can fully upgrade a breach room in the temple it’s pretty awesome. Three breaches in the lvl 3 room, which fortunately can only be triggered one at a time. (I tried to do more, just to make sure.) Loot absolutely everywhere, to the point of making it difficult to maneuver without your toon trying to pick up random crap. Make sure you clear it out before breaching, 'cause I have to imagine fighting temple mobs and the architect on top of all the breach crazies would be a life-limiting move.
OMG, enable the loot pickup key in UI options!! At those times, also get ready to hit the key that hides all on-screen loot so you can see the mobs (think it is ‘z’)!
Problem with that is it hides the Clasped Hand things too, and I can’t be missing those!
Doesn’t the other UI option to always highlight objects (chests/exits), alleviate that though?
I haven’t been playing, but is it possible to get beyond in there for more funtimes?
Apparently not, since I have that enabled and yet the clasped hands disappear if I toggle off highlighting. And I did a quick search in my item filter, nothing about clasped hands in there so it’s not being blocked there.
Not that I’ve found yet, but who knows, maybe I’ll run across something! Or they may add more room types in the future, seems likely.
I am bad at the story game (I take much longer to finish it than average, I would guess) but I’m currently five levels over the area levels right now because of Incursions/Temple (note: I hit up Alva every chance I get, probably 97% of the maps I have entered at this point). I’m 60 heading into A8. The Impact of Incursions on XP gains is crazy. I’m six levels from my build-mace (which I think will be cheap) and then I’ll be flying. I usually finish the story below level 68 but that seems unlikely at this point.
Already at 151% life to boot. I’ll probably top that off in the 175% range before shifting over to some offensive nodes. The Build is supposed to finish with 200%+ but that’s level 92 IIRC.
Maybe this is a function of having played the game for forever, but I frequently only need to check my build guide occasionally. It’s dependent on starting area and build (e.g. I haven’t done much dual wielding or mace-based builds so I don’t know those nodes as well, and this is my first melee Marauder in ages). I mostly just refer back to the leveling order as needed and I’m good to go.
I haven’t even opened the way to the Omnitect in my last 3 temples (I blew a chance in one of them and late converted an explosives room in another because Vault). Even some t2 rooms make the run worthwhile though.
Yeah. It’s still super worth it to pass on just about anything for a shot at the Omnitect because the possibilities are incredible if you roll a series of 20s, but it’s very much in the usual vein of Path of Exile’s many-layered RNG burrito.
Oh, yeah, I’m sure familiarity helps a ton. I play PoE very episodically, and never develop a critical mass of understanding. All on me, not the game.
If anyone doesn’t know, the rooms which power up the Omnitect give it a chance to drop very good leveling gear, I think even at T1/2. I’ve been running different +100% damage sceptres from it since maybe act 4 or 5. It’s not hard to defeat with a couple of powerups if your build is clicking and you’re doing well in the incursions (and probably overlevelled from running them as peacedog says.)
The downside of the passive tree. Contra some thoughts, I don’t think it’s bad UI. In fact, it’s well designed (as it should be, 7 years into iterating on it). But it takes time, and ideally frequent use, to “get gud at”.
I must be having my normal luck then (of course, only a couple attempts). I got a dagger I held on to, and a bow I dumped in the guild stash, since I never play bow characters. I also got some weird unique gem (that I also dumped) that converts unallocated dex to int (I think).
Yeah, there’s 3 different types of those gems, and they must be the most common things because I get them over and over. Or maybe it’s a function of the way I tend to build my temple for jewelry, gem, and vault rooms all the time. The one that converts Str to crit multi seems like it could be interesting but the numbers just don’t seem high enough to justify.
I do want to try vendoring all three and see if they turn into something. Unfortunately I vendored my strength one and haven’t had one drop since.
You’re supposed to be able to upgrade them with the Altar of Sacrifice. But you have to get the appropriate Vial also, in this case Vial of Transcendence. There’s a bunch of items and vials with various upgrade options, but as per normal with PoE, you gotta get lucky with the drops or trade until you have the right combos.
