Path of Exile?

[Magnate]

Yeah, after tinkering with some of my settings and maybe some help from patches from GGG, I've been able to play a lot these last few weeks with no problems. I'm currently clvl 49, and am starting act3 also, but on cruel difficulty. I have to agree about the difficulty spike at the end of act2. Vaal Oversoul was the first thing to kill me (twice). The same spike occurred for me at the end of act 2 cruel... I cruised act 1 and 2 cruel, but I was able to kill Vaal without dying this time at least.

I'm really enjoying my character a lot more now, he utilizes a lot more skills. (Heavy strike, cleave, warlords curse?, endurance cry?, rejuv. totem, blood magic, leap slam, occasionally flicker strike) He regularly dishes out 3000dps, which makes me very happy. I'm also looking for a 4L r,r,r,g! Haha. I have a really good 5 socket armor that I have burned perhaps 12 fusing gems on, and I've yet to get 4L, much less 5. It is r,r,r,r,g. I need the green for faster physical attacks. I now understand the insanity of the trade chat... getting the crafting side of POE to work has a low chance of working satisfactorily.

Have you managed any artifact drops yet? I have found 2. Hrimsorrow... and Hrimsorrow.

Yeah this is definitely not a Derakon game - unique drops are insanely rare. I must have logged a couple of hundred hours at least, and I've found precisely one unique: the crude bow. It dropped from my ranger's first kill, which was pretty sweet, but she's outgrown it now.

One thing I do find odd is how few different attacks I use. It's basically dual strike for everything (way more DPS than any other single-target attack), and cleave for crowd control. I also have double strike, heavy strike, frenzy and a whole load of other stuff, but they just don't compete. I'm trying to practice a frenzy-dual strike combo so that I can maintain maxed frenzy charges, but it's irritatingly difficult unless I put frenzy on right click, which means cleave gets relegated to a key. (I can't really use middle click because it's my scroll wheel, so I end up zooming all over the place.)

I find I have way more skill gems than my characters need - is there a trade market for them?

[HallucinationMushroom]

Unless you have gems with increased quality, I don't think so. A 15% increased quality faster physical attacks went for a boatload the other day on the trade forums. If I could ever find something worth bartering I might do more trading, but I've yet to really find anything excellent that I also didn't need.

[HallucinationMushroom]

Just curious, are you playing hardcore?

Oh, and if you haven't seen act 3 yet, you're in for a treat. I didn't care much for the first half of act 3... perhaps my least favorite part of the whole game... but the last half of act 3 is awesome, it left me wanting an act 4. I read somewhere they are planning on releasing more acts in the future, so I hope that's true.

[Magnate]

Just curious, are you playing hardcore?

Oh, and if you haven't seen act 3 yet, you're in for a treat. I didn't care much for the first half of act 3... perhaps my least favorite part of the whole game... but the last half of act 3 is awesome, it left me wanting an act 4. I read somewhere they are planning on releasing more acts in the future, so I hope that's true.

Well I've now completed Act 3, up to and including having my butt handed to me on a plate within seconds by the final boss. Man I need to get used to leaving portals open.

I too hope there are more acts - though I confess I'm quite keen to check out nightmare mode (or whatever it's called).

No I generally don't play HC. Not because I don't like dying, but because I don't like losing items.

[HallucinationMushroom]

Oh, that is good to know. I was considering playing a hc next, but I didn't realize you lost your items... that puts an extra sting in being demoted to default league. I don't play hc because I never really get a chance to focus on playing, and half the time I'm playing with one hand since I'm bouncing a baby, or a glass of scotch, or something like that.

[Magnate]

Oh, that is good to know. I was considering playing a hc next, but I didn't realize you lost your items... that puts an extra sting in being demoted to default league. I don't play hc because I never really get a chance to focus on playing, and half the time I'm playing with one hand since I'm bouncing a baby, or a glass of scotch, or something like that.

Yeah likewise. JFTR I don't actually know for certain that you lose the items from an HC corpse, but I've not heard of any "corpse popping" mechanism to recover them, such as existed in D2.

[HallucinationMushroom]

I decided to play a hc templar, and naturally the game decided to immediately thwart me. Some random zombie on the beachhead drops an exalted orb, which immediately gets me interested in my regular Marauder again. So, after some suicidal experimentation, if you die in hc, you get booted to default, but retain all the stuff on your person and in your inventory. However, hc has its own brand new stash. Edit: Poor wording. hc simply has its own *permanent* stash, it doesn't change and acts just like the default league stash.

That being said, I was playing solo... so I don't know what happens if you are in a team, or pvp... I watched a few videos on youtube the other day and when their hc characters died all their junk got scattered on the ground.

Now that I've got a decent pile of currency, I find myself staring at the trade chat more than I do the regular game. This disturbs me. I never got hooked on multiplayer aspects to rpg's before... the only other multiplayer game I play with any regularity is Mohaa, where all I have to worry about is killing people, which seems much more natural than trading with them.

[Magnate]

I decided to play a hc templar, and naturally the game decided to immediately thwart me. Some random zombie on the beachhead drops an exalted orb, which immediately gets me interested in my regular Marauder again. So, after some suicidal experimentation, if you die in hc, you get booted to default, but retain all the stuff on your person and in your inventory. However, hc has its own brand new stash. Edit: Poor wording. hc simply has its own *permanent* stash, it doesn't change and acts just like the default league stash.

That being said, I was playing solo... so I don't know what happens if you are in a team, or pvp... I watched a few videos on youtube the other day and when their hc characters died all their junk got scattered on the ground.

Now that I've got a decent pile of currency, I find myself staring at the trade chat more than I do the regular game. This disturbs me. I never got hooked on multiplayer aspects to rpg's before... the only other multiplayer game I play with any regularity is Mohaa, where all I have to worry about is killing people, which seems much more natural than trading with them.

Yeah I have to say, much as I vastly prefer this game over D3, I do miss the auction house. Being able to just browse what I want and pay for it (or not) was kinda neat. Trade chat feels pretty backward by comparison.

I can't get past Kole in Act 3 Normal. I mean I can, but not without dying repeatedly, so I'm not allowing myself to continue until I can kill him without dying. I think it's because I've gone for Iron Reflexes + Unwavering Stance - so I have about 50% DR but no evasion, and he one-shots me (I have about 450hp+es so he must be doing >900dmg per hit). I'm sure there's a strategy, just not sure what it is yet.

[MadeOfBees]

As a longtime Moria/Angband player and an avid Path Of Exile player, I have to say, this game rocks. Also if any of you need tips on builds or help progressing through stages feel free to add me. Ingame name is tramshed.

As for the game itself, you shouldnt bother speccing into any kind of damage boosting abilities at first, you can get them later. You will REALLY need the survivability once you hit the second half of cruel and later, especially as melee classes. They are adding some new melee support gems too which should make melee much more destructive soon.

Area of Effect - Gives melee attacks AOE
Multistrike - Makes a melee attack strick quickly three times, choosing a different target each time if possible.

[Magnate]

As a longtime Moria/Angband player and an avid Path Of Exile player, I have to say, this game rocks. Also if any of you need tips on builds or help progressing through stages feel free to add me. Ingame name is tramshed.

As for the game itself, you shouldnt bother speccing into any kind of damage boosting abilities at first, you can get them later. You will REALLY need the survivability once you hit the second half of cruel and later, especially as melee classes. They are adding some new melee support gems too which should make melee much more destructive soon.

Area of Effect - Gives melee attacks AOE
Multistrike - Makes a melee attack strick quickly three times, choosing a different target each time if possible.

Hi - I'll definitely be in touch if I see you in-game (I'm magnate there too). All my melee builds are indeed suffering in late Cruel, so I have respec'd into lots of life and armour (though I hear that armour is vastly inferior to evasion, which seems a little unbalanced). Anyway, still loving the game.

[HallucinationMushroom]

I still play, but I'm really starting to question why. I've gone from soloing the entire campaign to partying up and farming ledge/fellshrine/sarn/docks with new characters, and skipping all that icky campaign content. To what end? I guess I play for that super rare good drop that makes me want to start over again, but more often than not I just save up my currency and buy what I want from all the grinding. Maybe I just need a super character... my marauder got very stale (if solid and survivable) once I completely respecced him after the skill tree update, and my pure physical bow user isn't nearly as good as the zappy zappy lightning arrow users I'm grinding next to.

I'm hoping the new skill gems are cool. Zeal and melee splash sound fun.

[Starhawk]

I still play, but I'm really starting to question why.

Yeah - I enjoyed it and beat the current content, but didn't feel the need to keep grinding away at higher difficulties. Probably will come back to it later this year to see what changes have been made (and start a new character).

[Magnate]

Yeah - I enjoyed it and beat the current content, but didn't feel the need to keep grinding away at higher difficulties. Probably will come back to it later this year to see what changes have been made (and start a new character).

It's funny, it's never about the content for me. I'm happy to play the same content ten or twenty times over if the builds are different enough. So far I have a STR/armour dual-wielding duelist, a STR/armour two-handed marauder, a necro (minion witch) and a bow ranger. I have about ten more builds I want to try. In D2 I ran about 25 builds before I got bored; in Titan Quest I only ran about a dozen because the maps were fixed. Random maps make a huge difference to replayability, but repeating the content doesn't as much. In D3 I ran only two builds to the end because I hated hated hated the lack of stash and muling space - the content wasn't stale.

So far PoE is looking much more like D2's longevity than TQ's or D3's.

[MadeOfBees]

Much like angband, there isnt really an endgame, the fun is in making interesting builds and finding the occassional crazy piece of loot. Im currently working on a shield/damage reflect duelist.

EDIT: I just realized I cant remember if you can add people from thier account name or if you need to use the char name. Either way, the chars I play most are HAILSATAN, MadeOfBees, PokeYourEyeOut, and Meattrucker

[Narvius]

I often wonder whether I'm the only one who keeps on thinking up in-character names for characters. (well, obviously I'm not, seeing as how many of them are taken...)