So far I have enjoyed it more then I thought. When it came out it did so alongside the expansion of War for the Atlas. I lowered my expectations of the league because I am only a ladder player and the only way I would experience the expansion as well would be from playing in Abyss League.
So the league did not have to be that great since I would be enjoying the expansion at some point as well. I have centrally gathered a few Abyss drops so far.
I’m not usually one to chase after league rewards. However, this season I want that portal which can be found here (takes you off-site) along with challenges and showcase of the rewards by Grinding Gear Games. It looks like an extremely memorable reward and something I could see myself using for quite some time.
For achieving my goal I went super casual. No going fast and grinding myself into boredom. December a busy month for me always, I did not want burn out early after a couple weeks and not reached my goal. With the mindset of spreading it out over a couple of months, I feel it will make it more enjoyable.
Started off with playing in Solo Self Found as a way to no feel like I had to “go faster” as it’s just me competing against myself at this point. The wonderful thing about Abyss Challenge the drops really allow me to handle short-term gaps in my gear. Which otherwise forced me into playing the economics side of the game of trading and grinding currencies to buy off a third party market site what I needed to progress. Which for me happened to be resistance for a while and this belt and jewel combo stop me from being linchpinned into wearing certain pieces just for resistance only
I finished the main story this morning. With me going slower than I normally do. I stop almost at every Abyss I found. Just about every zone that I ventured into I naturally came across one to three of them. Some of them rather easy, and others extremely death prone with things burying self-regenerating creatures that make me have to reevaluate my approaches.
It starts off rather simple. Cracks in the ground open spawning some trash mob that leads you to an encounter or multiple encounters as you follow them.
On this Abyss I got to the end and –nothing! No extra reward other then what had dropped which was nothing special.
At end of this one was an Abyssal Trove chest that drops Abyssal jewels, a chance at an abyssal belt and a very low chance at some random Unique.
Third kind of encounter when getting to the above-ground portion is the Abyssal Depths. This is the main reason I wanted to play this league in the first place. I ended up getting three of these towards the end portion of the storyline as I worked my way toward unlocking maps.
I’ve always been a fan of dungeon crawling games. Having me go down into a hole that opened up complete breaks whatever tempo I had going on while working toward my next quest is great. That to me is what Leagues should be about. Changing your normal gameplay in a way it takes you away from whatever you were doing.
Along the way of clearing and gaining some decent XP, you find Hoard chests that can drop Abyss stuff. So far I’ve only seen belts and jewels along with normal stuff.
End of an Abyssal Depths you are greeted with a timed event. You can sit around and farm the mobs that spawn for some extra drops. Eventually racing the timer to finish.
Loot potential for finishing one of these looks rewarding enough for me to keep searching them out. Looking forward to seeing how they play out in maps. Something I have not reached yet but I’m expecting them to be enjoyable.
Information
Everything was written is my own expressed opinion of the game Path of Exile in accordance terms of use.
All screenshots were taken in-game by @enjar from the game Path of Exile created by Grinding Gear Games.
