4446

So how are you guys liking the league mechanic? I’ve been more or less skipping the whole thing - not a fan of having to interrupt my mapping to go into a separate area to run some convoluted shit. I swear one of these days PhD courses for Path of Exile will appear and people will sign up for them just to be able to decipher the game’s mechanics.

And between incursions, syndicates and even delve there are too many distractions already.

4447

When I first leveled I stared going into the memory fragments. And then over the weekend I spent about an hour in the Nexus trying to get to some memories that had special chests in them. Even though I had maybe a dozen memories to use as building blocks, I still couldn’t quite get to the ones I was interested in (needed a left and an up not a right and an up!). Plus then when you revisit the memories you’ve placed you’re slowly using them up, so if you fiddle around too much (like I did) you start having to replace memories along the way, etc. So I’ve started skipping them in my leveling.

I also am a bit confused about loot. When you go into a memory “in the wild” you get all the good loot you found at the end - it’s dumped at your feet. When you go into a memory in the Nexus that sometimes happens but it sometimes doesn’t happen. I got used to just blasting by look, accepting that at the end it’d show up, but that wasn’t true in the Nexus.

Also, synthesizing seems like a lot of work for not great returns (you have to have the same base type item for all 3 spots, right?)

As for all the other mechanics

  • I spent a little bit doing a Delve when it first opened, because I’d never really done it before.
  • Ran the only Breach I saw (triggered it by accident)
  • Kill beasts whenever I’m in a zone for it

have not seen anything else

4448

I’m just getting started, but so far the synthesis stuff is mildly interesting. I was complete trash in the first 20 levels, but not that I’m mid 20’s I can usually clear them without a hitch. Question: Are the pyramids completely gone then, or will they unlock again later? And I skipped Delve, so when do I start seeing that mechanic?

4449

It’s mediocre. It requires a lot of work as well as (with everything in PoE) a bunch of luck. If you really like the build-a-path-puzzle mini-game then you might like it a lot. I find it annoying, largely because the limited number of pieces makes it really difficult to get to where you’re going. If they make it simpler to get to where you’re going in the Nexus, it might be decent.

I was confused by this too. What I’ve learned is that you get the loot dropped at the end only if the memory fragment dissolves. When you look at the map, there’s a little number at the bottom of each one. A number more than one means the fragment won’t dissolve this time, so you have to pick up the loot. When you enter a fragment in the Nexus, there’s a warning when you hit the first stabiliser if the fragment is going to dissolve.

Both the Temple and Delve show up later on. Act 4 for Delve, Act 7 (I think) for Alva and the Temple.

I don’t mind the extras that you’re able to ignore, such as Alva and the Temple. (Although I do those anyway because it’s the most fun IMHO.) But I dislike that basic recipes like sockets are gated behind Delve, and that Syndicate jumps you in the middle of maps.

4450

Alva is around, you will run into her. Likewise Niko (delve).

Memories are trash. I started having way more fun with the league once I began ignoring it entirely.

4451

I kind of like the new mechanics, but I agree that the dissolving paths are a pain. I wish they all had at least 5 charges. The thing I don’t like is that these types of mechanics dictate that you have a fast clearing build. I never get to make a slow tanky build anymore because you need super-sonic clear speed to be successful in these things.

4452

ZiggyD has a good video about mechanics up on YouTube. The gist is to not run a path to a modifier node without having pieces to repair behind you so that you keep spreading modifiers down the line. Still a pain, but do have a few nodes now with 10+ modifiers on them that I am saving.

Bane and soulrend seem to be scaling really well as I hit maps. Squishy feeling went away after CI transition and switching flasks. Although I forgot how annoying self cast builds are after not playing one in ages.

4453

What was the damage in currency to make the transition? Seems like everyone is playing CI. I sold a 250es shield with like 30 resist (no open craft slot) for 20c yesterday.

4454

I did have a hard time getting gear yesterday. More no replies than usual and people lowballing to get on top of list. I spent about 20c and am sitting at about 6.5k ES.

4455

Is that with or without discipline?

4456

Absolutely true, but not new to Synthesis league. Delve and Incursion mechanics are just as bad, if not worse, in terms of being friendly to high DPS and terrible to high defense. Same with pretty much any boss from red maps on up. POE may provide the tools to make just about any kind of build, but it does not give you the opportunity to advance past a certain point with a lot of those builds. Nature of the beast.

And the fact that the mechanic is set up to allow that is a good thing. If only there was an alternative to Delve to get socket recipes, or a way to tell Jun to just stay the hell out of my maps so the Syndicate won’t gank me randomly.

That’s really good advice. I’d figured out on my own that it was a good idea to make chains of memories, but hadn’t quite made the leap to “and fill in your gaps behind you”.

Question: Anyone know if there’s a way to just trash a memory fragment without placing it? I’d like to get rid of a couple terrible 2-connection ones but don’t have a good place to put them. Far as I can tell, the only way to trash one is to place it, enter it to lock it in, leave, then remove it from the map.

4457

That’s the only way afaik. Banked junctions are also overwritten if you keep getting new ones.

4458

True that. I did like Betrayal actually, but if you didn’t like the mechanics (or, God help you, were playing hc or ssf) I imagine it was quite obnoxious.

4459

With discipline. Tried to keep it around 5c for each of the big items, but prices do go up pretty quickly.

4460

They’ve been overly fond of ‘beat the clock’ mechanics for a while now. I find it stressful and annoying, and never really much fun. I appreciate that they keep coming up with new ideas, and it must be tough to do so, but at some point just adding something for the sake of it may just make your product cumbersome.

I usually find all of these mechanics and special areas to be disruptive of game flow. I personally wish they would concentrate on adding more spells and abilities, and making those fun and interesting, over another zone transition with a gimmick.

4461

To be fair, they’ve been adding and rebalancing skills with every patch too.

4462

I’m coming to really not like the new leagues, especially stacked up on one another. All of them have too much staring at screens deciphering wtf I’m trying to do cross-referencing multiple reference pages to keep track of basically a shitty minigame.

They’ve toned down Bestiary from its original incarnation of insane cross-reference tracking, so that’s mostly OK now.

Incursion is OK since it’s rewards are somewhat limited and its clear what you’re getting from what, though I still get annoyed at figuring what door I need to open / which dude to kill.

Delve is segregated but to really take advantage of it you need to keep track of potential hidden paths and spend lots of time staring at the damn map.

Betrayal is enormously painful with so many rewards that are different depending who’s where, and you need to make decisions on who to promote/kill/interrogate every time, again with the big cross-reference table.

And now Synthesis is also a damn pita with its decaying paths and blocked paths and holy shit why the fuck is the blue blob so fucking annoying.

4463

I generally don’t read much about the new leagues before they start, and one reason is because I actually like the story in the game. I know, PoE is all about murdering all the things with speed, but the story part is really pretty decent…we just tend to gloss over it since we’ve seen it so many times.

So when I got far enough along that Cavas’ identity was revealed and his story hooked into other storylines, that was really awesome. I’m looking forward to seeing how it all works out (and of course, struggling not to go look at the wiki to find out). None of this makes the mechanical shortcomings any better, but at least the lore side of Synthesis seems to be pretty cool.

4464

I blasted through without paying ANY attention to the story AT ALL, so when we got to the inside of the Beast (I guess?) I was like, uhhhhhhh

4465

Does anyone else have this login problem? Try and enter world with character, get kicked to character select with some “instance transfer not valid” or somesuch. Try and enter again, kicked to login, try and enter again, probably will get in, but may be kicked to login again. This happens to me every single time I try and log in with an existing character if the game is just first started up. This has been happening for at least 2 leagues now.