Time to take a look back on how things went and take a break from Path of Exile before Synthesis comes out in under two weeks! I enjoyed a couple of different characters, had many milestone accomplishments, and lots of fun!!
Characters
I ended up leveling three characters this time around. A league starter, one for fun, and another that I went very far on.
Duelist Champion
I started the league off with this guy. He did not require anything special to help level up and was my cheaper of the three characters I played.
His main skill was Reave which provides some of the killing spread and some AoE range but not the greatest. It was linked with things like chance to bleed, melee physical damage, maim multistrike and some other skills.
I used Whirling Blade as the movement skill which has to be my new favorite. I could just speed across zones with easy and I wish I could have gotten him further then I did.
In the end, I stop at around red maps with him. He just could no longer out heal the damage he was taking in and it started to become rip city.
He had life gain on hit on his weapons which were The Wasp Nest, the skill Blood Rage for increased life leech. For a while Blood Of The Karui flask which you can get at level 50 was amazing. He relied very healthily on fortifying with perks from Champion such as Unstoppable Hero.
The higher level syndicate themselves where always an issue for him. He was a very cheap build that I mostly used for farming different things. He was amazing for farming low-level syndicate with how fast he moved in and out of zones.
I also used him as my darkness diver in Delve with how amazing Whirling Blade was. At around 120-150 depth or so it started to become too much for him. So I stop using him for that purpose. Which in part allowed me to fund other characters further.
I spent around four Exalts on him in total. The main chunk of that was three on 6-link Belley Of the Best. I mostly picked this for the armor and life. It was cheaper at the time than many other options. That other builds were fighting over. Many also to this day stay away from the Extra Gore modifier on it. I did not have any lag issues due to it.
For a cheap helmet, I have always been a fan of Lightpoacher for Spirit Burst in the early map game. Very thing else since he was a league started was just filling stat and resistant holes. With a focus on Armor since that was what my chest piece was.
On all my league starters I always go with Alira for the 15% to all elemental resistance. Since I’m not going take it to end game that just nice to have while leaving and not paying for it to be on gear.
Early game he had a lot of life due to that large cluster of life passives on the skill tree.
Since his main weapon was clawed I ended up going for the cluster with Soul Raker and Claws of the Magpie in it. Not sure If I would again go with this type of weapon. They felt kind of weak.
I was shocked I got to level 90 on him. Was not my plan to stick around on him that long I just really loved how fast he could move in delve and maps.
Witch Necromancer
While I have played a witch before not so much into a Necromancer build. I ended up not playing this character for too long as it was just not my play style and I kept getting killed by some rather easy stuff. I was a really amazing screen clear to see.
Since I had money to burn I went all out and had a very easy time leveling this charter up. Dual Lifespring, Goldrim, bones of Ullr and of course Tabula Rasa. Along with a bunch of whatever random unique I had laying around
His main damage ended up being four raised Frost Sentinel Specters that I picked up the base for in Part 2 Act 8 in The Lunaris Temple level 2. From there I would just go into high-level zones and use Desecrate till I got higher ones to summon. Which made leveling quite easy since I already had some high-level maps for him to go into and just get a decent one.
Since had the money to spend on gear, a bunch of maps it did not take too long to get him to level 85 and that was where I ended things. I wanted something a bit crazier. I also help myself to his gear for my other toon hence a few missing slots! Since everything had some fat high resistance and other stuff on them!
Sadly this one was just too squishy for me. Since you also want to keep the Specters alive it comes down to do you want to focus on just yourself or give up a shield via Necromantic Aegis for them. I was loosely following Angry_roleplayer’s guide just to see how others were building them and what kind of items they had found. There where a number of other similar attempts around this kind of build.
When it comes to this kind of thing jewel sockets where quite important for things like Unending Hunger, From Dust and ghastly eye jewels. It really helps to have taunt, blind, and minion damage. Sadly it was just not enough to keep me interesting in playing further.
The amazing screen cleans this guy had was amazing.
Witch Occultist
It was tempting to just reroll all of the Summoner passive skills but I ended up making another character just in case I was not a fan of what ended up being my most expensive and further pushing character I’ve had in a league.
While running maps on the Champion I ended up having Poet’s Pen drop. It was worth at the time One Exalt and was my biggest item sale up to that point. The questions that kept popping into my mind over and over where “how does that work?” Along with “why do people spend that much on it?”
After looking into it a found a number of builds such as Cyriix’s Occult Arcpoet Turn out people don’t just use one or even two of them. They use four! They take advantage of swamping weapons.
While I have played Path of Exile for a long time I’ve also always played as a league player with not too much time to spare. Most time I’m happy to get up to red maps and my kind of call it there. Getting a 6-link socket chest is about where my budget on one or two characters is and that’s it.
I think I sunk around 20 Exalts into this beast and I was just shocked at the power I was wielding around.
One thing I never bothered with before is getting a bunch of Enlighten Support gems. They take forever to level up and cost a small fortune. I ended up getting 3 Leve 4 of them for 3 Exalts each or higher. Thankfully Betrayal had a syndicate member that gave gems XP so people were farming, corrupting and trying to get Level 4 Enlighten. Most of the time they would end up with a level 3 corrupted instead of 4 so that is how the price becomes so high on them.
If you use Enlighten Support gems with skills that require mana reserved or life reserved it lowers how much they require. In the end, I was able to run Wrath, Discipline, Arctic, Aspect of the spider, and Purity of Elements. Leaving me quite low on life and mana. Which leads you being reliant on energy shield instead of life.
I ended up learning quite a lot about synergy and just gear I never looked into before playing this build. While it’s fun to make things your own and create something unique yourself. Dam, I had an amazing rest of the season with this character.
I had a lot of luck on gear drops and some fun grinding it out to make this happen.
I had one poet’s pen drop that I talk about early that I sold for one exalt. The ones I ended up buying later on where 20% or more cheaper so I made some profit off that.
It was really amazing to play. I will be sad to see this one go.
Item Drops And Trading
I think this ended up being one of my longest played leagues I’ve engaged in for quite some time if ever. Part of it came down to having some fun ways to make the currency I needed.
While Chaos orb recipe can get you by early on getting 2 Chaos Orbs for turning in a complete rare set of items only gets you so far.
I also farmed the daylights out of Delve by going into the darkness and making a lot doing that. That ended up being the bulk of where I earned currency. Including a ring that I found a buyer for and made two exalt!
Most of the time I’m lucky to get one Exalted Orb to drop. This time I had two! One of them was while running a map and another was down in the delve mine.
A couple of Exalts from upgrading breach stones and other stuff from Betrayal such as selling Scarabs. I go over a bunch of that stuff in the post linked.
I made sure to make it a point of upscaling my currency throughout so I would not be taking heavy losses due to expecting inflation. In a fresh economy, there is a lack of currency to put pressure on prices. Even if you got something crazy rare no one can afford it if you don’t want to wait around. Towards the end, everything starts to head towards standard pricing you see outside of the league.
It also just helped to be around on when players were willing to make trades the most. I had a few weekends where I just spent the time to start offloading loot and clearing out stash tabs. Such as the one talks about in Market Friday.
All in all, I had an amazing league just for raking in the Chaos and Exalt orbs. I’m left with very little left and that how it should be. I have not played in the normal game for quite some time.
Atlas
This time around I was hoping to 100% complete the Atlas but that did not happen. There some end game stuff that really owned me good. My reaction time is quite bad and add in some bad timing on my part equals certain death!
This was the first time I attempted tier 16 maps and I just could not beat them. In fact, I ran into a lot of maps I never have done before even below that. Red maps tend to be where I end up stopping during a league.
I ended up completing 142 of 159 Bonus Objectives on the map. Some maps whereas simple as just killing the boss. While the higher end stuff had you creating a rare map, corrupting it, and then defeating the end boss. Hoping you did not land reflecting or any other modifiers you would struggle with. When maps start costing 5, 10, or even 30 Chaos it starts becoming expensive if out don’t luck out or find a way to recover the costs.
While I struggled with map sustaining for a few weeks in even having a couple of red maps to run. Now that I have a 42% chance for a map to drop two tiers higher that went a long way.
There are some Unique maps that I also did not do because they can cost 100 Chaos or even an Exalt. The plan was if I had a bunch currency at the end to just buy and try them out. Since I’m a bit broke and many players are not around as they are resting up for the next league. I’m not going sink more time into trying to get enough to buy some of those.
I am so thrilled with how far I made it in the atlas this league. Perhaps next time I’ll finish Zana’s quest line and see where that takes me!
Delve
In case you did not somehow know I love Delve. It is where is spent every free moment I had. Even more so on weekends when I could. If you did not need Sulphite to keep going down there I would never have done anything else this league in the game!
My final depth, in the end, was 255. Just short of making it to 270 for a challenge point. I knew around 200 that I was reaching near the end. You really need a character that just focuses on going down there.
The bitter end was filled with spending 1k’s of Sulphite and getting killed to only have to try again. Lots of wrong ways and trying to get around areas I knew I could not clear. I spent a small fortune on buying Gilded Sulphite Scarabs which let you get 150% Sulphite in a single map run.
For some crazy players out there this is not very deep. For me, it was so far past anything I’ve done before I just loved it even when I was getting killed.
Hideout
One big thing during Betrayal where new hideouts. While I’ve never had such an eye for decoration I at least explored many of the different options we now have in Hideouts In Betrayal
My main hideout for almost this entire league was in Stately. It gave me the room where I could set everything up and not feel to spread out. While I also enjoyed the look of the place. I did not spend time decorating it. I’m more of a function over beauty kind of person.
League Challenges
I was just not really into this betrayal itself. While every league I set out plans to get a lot of these challenges done. The reality is I never make it very far. I completed 17 out of 40.
While many of these are close to being finished. I would rather take a break from this game then run around trying to get up to the next reward unlock of the first totem piece decoration(I’ve never had any of them before.)
Good Bye Betrayal League
There is just so much to do these days in Path of Exile you really can spend most of a league doing everything but the new stuff and still have a blast.
A final goodbye to a few of the fun and amazing experiences I had.
24 Hour Hardcore Race I end up starting most leagues these days in some sort of hardcore race being going over to softcore. They really are a blast.
Completing Merciless labyrinth while it’s not the hardest thing ever to do its important to get the passive skills you pick up from it.
Eternal Labyrinth I’ve had so many leagues where I would never find all the challenges to even unlock this. Taking it down for the second league in a row I hope means I’ll never have trouble again with it. This is quite an early and big goal in making further progression.
Exploring The Darkness In Delve a shame I never made time for Delve when it was a league I’m just glad it made it into the core game.
Games You Played Over The Weekend #9 one of my many countless short updates of some fun I had during the weekend playing.
I had an amazing time and I hope you did as well. Synthesis League could be amazing time cheers to all of us progressing further than ever before in it!
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Screenshots and content are written by @enjar. Screenshots are from the game Path of Exile.
