Path of Exile

In case anyone doesn’t know, in Harvest league at least it’s a lot easier to change colors and roll off-color using the socket color crafts. The craft to “change a non-blue socket to a blue socket” is most reliable for finishing, but it’s rare. However, it’s not that rare, worth farming a little for it or saving it if you’ve gotten up to the horticrafting benches. Even 5 of 6 sockets off-color hasn’t been hard for me this league by first spamming the common random 2S recolor options, then finishing with the 1S guaranteed one.

Yeah, I haven’t unlocked that one yet, as my garden isn’t exactly booming. I organized it according to a pretty neat diagram from online somewhere, but I just haven’t been playing enough to scoop up enough seeds since I uprooted everything and started over. Twice.

It’s actually just T1 Wild Thornwolf Seed. You should see the 2S random pair recolors much of the time, with 1S “non-blue to blue” being rare except at low levels, but not locked to T2-4. (It also can give white sockets, but I’ve never had that come up.)

A lot of the best crafts are T1, but many are rare except at low levels.

Ah, gotcha. POE is so damn complex, bloated even. I do like it, but it has a bit of the kitchen sink complex. Both my wife and I play, and we frequently find ourselves asking each other “what does X do?”

New league starting Sept 18: Heist

Plan elaborate operations to steal cool stuff…

I burned out on Harvest largely due to my carpal tunnel. The game is wrist-hostile. I am having surgery this month though so maybe I can get back in to this league.

ZiggyD has a video on the new league. He goes into a bit more detail about some of the new mechanics and the usual additions and changes.

I recommend ZiggyD’s Q&A with Chris Wilson as well. Lot of crying on reddit (lol), but some important takeaways from all of the information so far are:

  1. The key to heists is managing the danger level (I can’t remember what they called it). Killing mobs along the way has a small impact. What treasures/rooms/whatever you decide to open has a major impact.

  2. Loot 2.0, which Wilson repeatedly referrs to as “decluttering”, is getting a small trial balloon in this league. The idea for loot 2.0 is that intead of rolling, say, 5 drops from something they would roll 1 drop but roll in a bunch and then select the “best” result from the simulated rolls. How many rolls was not discussed. In this league there’s going to be a “flavor” of item, tied to the heists I believe, which will drop “as if it’s already had currency rolled on it a number of times”. This means better chance at desirable/higher tire rolls/# of sockets/links.

  3. Since another new thing in this league is both unique variants and gem quality variants (called experimentals), the team is looking into ways to change the quality display on gems to make it stand out more, and be obvious when it’s a variant quality.

  4. The “push buttom to dump all relevant items into currency/map/etc special tabs” isn’t coming at launch but it’s “on the horizon” and they’re hard at work on it.

Heist league starts today, September 18, at 5 PM EDT. I will probably be playing some sort of Summoner. Anyone else in?

I’ve been debating. Took the last league off. If I do, I’ll probably start zombies. That’s become my go-to league starter (and often finisher).

Thinking of trying a bleed bow gladiator, before I inevitably get overwhelmed by 20 different league mechanics and loot again.

I’m temped by some sort of toxic rain shooty guy but whenever I do a ranged archer guy, I usually get frustrated by my lack of survivability before all the mechanics kick in. So then I roll a summoner.

QFT. Love the idea of bow characters. Always die with them.

Ever tried a bow “summoner” such as Herald of Agony or ballistas?

So regarding Heists…

My usual technique is to kill stuff when required loot a couple of chests on the way to the objective. I then grab the objective, fight a little bit and then just run as fast as my little feet can take me to the exit, only stopping when I have to.

Once I tried to ‘overpower’ it - and by that I mean just stand at the objective and fight until all the baddies were dead. And then calmly exit, killing everything as I go. Because once you’ve got the item there’s no real pressure to move fast if you don’t have to (right?). However, when I tried this I gave up after about 30 seconds, because it felt like I was starting to take too much damage (and the mobs were getting harder and harder to kill). Has anyone tried to exit like this? Without running as fast as possible?

Is it even possible to do it this way I wonder.

They spawn infinitely but give a limited amount of XP and item drops (to prevent farming).

OK well if they spawn forever then it seems like standing there until they’re all dead is a bad idea! Thanks for the info.

Another buggy league with fundamental aspects that should have been, but clearly were not, properly thought out (the fucking harbor stash, unkillable mobs in heist packs, etc) has me now starting to doubt GGG as a company. And it makes me sad.

I can’t even tell if Bane is supposed to work with Vixen’s entrapment anymore but I am not seeing it right now. Impossible to say if this is a bug, on purpose, or something else.

OH, LOL. Stealth nerf. Bane is a hex now, not a curse.

I only did one Heist, but man, GGG has to be the leading offender in creating bloated, over-complex mechanics and cramming as many of them as possible into one game. That the game has been so solid in most respects is I think in spite of their tendency to over-do everything.

I mean, you pretty much have to use a build guide or you will end up with a mish-mash of barely functional skills and get stuck somewhere around Act 8 or something, or maybe barely get into maps. And even the guides are getting so complex that you need a guide for the guides!

Bane is neither. From the patch notes: