While there is still time left in both the Bestiary League and May Flashback Event we are just a week out from Incursion. As such, I pack my bags, reflect on the past fun, take note of accomplishments, and look into next league.

Bestiary League

While I’m happy to see this league go and not be included least for now into the main core of the game. I also had an amazing time. I entered a hardcore race, I progressed furthest I have ever on maps, I also acquired the best gear I have in a league to date.

Hardcore Race In Bestiary

We had here on steemit a week-long hardcore race at the start the league. I started with a little prep work before it even started. I’ve never been a hardcore player myself. As well I do die a lot in this game. So I gave it a try just as a test and I died quite a few times. I at least learned some things about how hard I wanted to push and relearned some basics as well. After all when you are a softcore player and the death consequence is much lower you developed a different kind of play style.

I ended up writing almost a daily blog about my experience and struggles during this race we had. I ended up dying four times between the levels of 9 (killed by spikes of all things how embarrassing), to level 49. Last few days I pushed a little to fast trying to catch up and ended up not even scoring on the board.

I learned quite a few things from this 7-day race that I took part in. One thing I often overlook is gear upgrades when leveling up. In hardcore that is not something, you can just easily skip over. As a single death and you are starts a new character. This meant focusing more on getting to resistance cap, getting gems sooner to do more damage or increase my defense. This also made me want to pick up my trails sooner and do the labyrinth before I normally would.

It was fun at the very least. In fact so much fun I’ll be doing a 3-day hardcore race for the Incursion league. More on that later in this blog.

Softcore Bestiary

After admitting defeat in hardcore I started over again in softcore this time looking to catch up and go further than I ever have in the past. My intention was to keep making many more update style of blogs here on steemit. This gave me a reason and time to play a game I don’t always make time for. Meanwhile, allowing me to put out content here as well.

I ended up going a slightly different route. For a few days I gave dlive a try and it also meant I was no longer spend hours a day stopping to get screenshots, written content, and go back to get a screenshot I felt added to what I was presenting of my experience.

I ended up leaving some content in many of these live streams of what I did while offline (the stuff I thought would be boring to watch.) In the end, I went back to my more traditional format of just writing a blog as I enjoyed that such as My Progress In Bestiary.

From there I still played in the league but I switch to other gaming content for a while afterward.

Achievements In Softcore Bestiary

With the league being close to being over with and me not playing anymore in Bestiary I thought I would have a look back at what I did. Since some of it was not included in my last update on it. I also wanted to do one final review myself of how far I got to gauge what I would like to accomplish in in Incursion.

Maps

One of the big parts of playing Path of Exile is getting up to a level where you can start to run maps. Each of those nodes on that map is a single map and the ones that are not grayed or yet to be uncovered are ones I completed the objectives on. Maps come in different tiers from tier I up to XVI with a special tier called U for unique maps. Each of these maps outside of U can be normal up to rare and most people run rare maps.

The rarity of the map affects the mods on a map and influence the drop rates inside. The higher the tier map the more mods and the harder those mods can be. As we can see in this rare tier 8 map it has a nice bonus to item quantity 72% which a normal map would not have. It also has quite a few nasty mods on it such as decrease effected for curses, and monsters dealing heavy lightning damage among other things.

This league the highest map I made it up to that I was able to clear was a Tier XII and it was called Torture Chamber Map. I died a few times in it but managed to kill the end boss. There were a couple other high tier maps but I was not able to finish them off. This is the highest map I’ve ever made it to in Path of Exile and the fullest I’ve ever had my Atlas be.

In the end, I have 86 maps sitting in my stash that I have not run yet. A decent little pool that will be transferred over to standard league when Bestiary ends. While I almost never play over there it is nice to have many options if I ever decided I want to push and see the end game without the constraint of time that playing in other leagues presents.

Blade Vortex Trickster

I ended up making my league starter (the character you start with that has a low cost of gear requirements to get into maps) as a Blade Vortex shadow that I ascended into being a Trickster after I ran his labyrinth trail. I also kept him as my main as I wanted to further explore how deep I could run this guy. I ended up getting him to level 89 which is also my highest character to date.

He also has with him the best gear I’ve gotten in the game. Why when looking back at many of my older toons I’m somewhat shocked by how bad there gear is! Part of this is due to the fact I didn’t have much time each league and also the game has changed so much over my time playing. In addition, my wealth of knowledge in the game has grown to such a degree I’m afforded in understanding and building a better character. It also helps to know when something could be worth a fair amount as you don’t accent vendor it in your rush to clear inventory and move on to another map.

My Menagerie

Bestiary itself was all about catching beasts with nets and sacrificing them to the blood alter to get items. Since this is going away and will not be carried over I thought I would take a few screenshots of whatever was left of all beasts I still had. I did consume a lot of them a while back as I was not certain if I would be returning.

I also did showcase my Hardcore Menagerie a while back while also discussing it. I don’t think I ever did showcase much of my softcore one so here. At least what remains before I use them all up since it would go to waste otherwise!

The top section is Shielded Crabs that are classified as Crustaceans and I have a total of 6 ranging from level 62 up to level 68. The bottom section is Parasitic Cephalopods classified as the same as the name. I have two a level 71 and a rare level 75.

The top section is Giant Crabs classified as crustaceans and I have 3 of those. Ranging from level 2 up to a rare level 78. The bottom section is Siren Spawn classified as Cephalopods. I have 8 of those ranging from level 6 up to a rare level 73. Some of these have been with me for almost the start of the league!

Cages and cages of Arachnids how disgusting! On the left, I have 19 and I really should do something about that of those things being label as “Giant.” I’ll be needing to get a bigger newspaper to squash those ranging from level 68 to 77. Most of them are even rare as well! On the right is a single disease-bearing one called a Gloommaul and it is level 74. I better take care of that one as well I would hate for the disease to spread to my other beats.

I also just have quite a few of empty or almost empty cages such as this. I have remaining 4 Garggantuans classified as Ursae. I don’t have the slightest clue what that even is. I was always told to not bring home strange things I had no clue what they are. I guess I should follow that rule more carefully. Who knows what those things could do to my Menagerie.

I’ll have to put off writing rest of this till I deal with all these problems remaining! Can’t have them escaping into the world and causing even more trouble now, can I?

Closing Out Of Bestiary

Since I’m always playing in the latest leagues my standard league tends to get rather cluttered. While I could just leave it and have 100’s of Stash tabs all sitting with a “remove only.” As I have no clue if there some kind of limit. I feel it’s my own duty to clean up and be respectful of their database by getting rid of my junk. Even more so if I may never use any of the goodies I plan on keeping again.

Some of these items I could have might become worth a fair amount also later down the road in the standard league. As items get nerfed the old ones tend to stay the same unless an item is being removed from the game. Which makes some older stuff worth a fair amount. With that said there just some very common junk that people will have so much off I rather not hold onto it.

As such I will spend today trying clean up and remove the junk while also converting what currency I can up into Exalted Orbs. This sometimes can be a rather time-consuming process since most people are taking a break. The standard league has some inflation issue as well. Since its just the dumping grounds for league players and endless years of buildup of items and currency. For instance, one Exalted Orb is worth at this time 100 Chaos Orbs in May Flashback Event (massive jump over past two days it was in the 80’s), 128 Chaos Orbs in Bestiary, and 130 in Standard. As we can see players are starting to trade more like its standard as we get closer and closer to everything being moved over. I should have done this sooner and gotten better deals.

There was one goal I came into Bestiary wanting to reach and it just ended up not being worth it. I only have the standard looking portal for this game never bought or earned a different looking one. The reward for finishing 36 challenges was Bestiary Portal Effect. I only managed to 12 and on top of that, I noticed many other players did not progress very far. While not my lowest ever completed in a league it sure ranks down there if I recall correctly.

May Flashback Event

Is it even fair to say I could not kick Bestiary league to the curb fast enough when I heard what this was going be? Most time Path of Exile has some downtime between leagues. That tends to be filled with short races and another type of events. This time around Bestiary is going run more closely to starting of Incursion. On top of that, they did not do a bunch of smaller events. Instead, we got a very warm welcomed month-long event called Flashback.

One of the first things I did was to try and recall from memory what all the different league mechanics that would be included in this event was about. In total there was 12 leagues all rolled up into this event. Each zone would have 4 going on in each. They included Bestiary and 3 random ones from the total pool in each zone that changed every hour.

While this was much shorter than a normal league and thus just an event. The currency drop rates among other things were expected to be high due to all the different leagues that were going on. As such, I made a league starter and then I switch over to a ranger that was focused on running Windripper with a bunch of magic find gear (quantity and rarity.) He had some decent luck such as getting a Bisco’s collar and just an amazing amount of currency.

While I did not get that build all the gear I wanted as the final most sought-after piece for something like that is a headhunter running over 57 Exalted Orbs right now which is not a bad deal at all. Which as you can see from the screenshot lets you gain for a short time the mods of rare creatures. One day I hope to have one of these. I did, however, get him a few needed items like the Windripper bow, 6-linked Queen of the Forst body armor for his main skill Tornado Shot, and a Bisco’s Collar that I looted myself,

In the end, I got the ranger to level 77 and my league starter shadow to 86. I do think I spent a little too much time on my league starter. I really did not need to get him a nice 6-link body armor or weapon. With that said my main objective here was to try a magic find set up and see how it went. I did expect them to be hard to play as they lack defensive and killing power as they sacrifice that to acquire amazing magic find.

I was not very focused this time on pushing maps as I knew the Ranger was not going be a high tier clearing character. I did compete one tier IX map called Arena. While the ranger could do up tier V maps. I ended up with clear speed and less death running a bunch of tier II to III’s. For his gear level, it was just best.

Up Coming League: Incursion

Incursion starts on June first in about a week. From what we have seen so far with information out there this could be one fun ride! Basics of it are you get to go back in time and change a temple’s loadout by running different rooms in it and decide which boss in each room lives or dies. After so many runs in the past, you hope to unlock the Apex of the temple where you can fight the end boss. If not you still get run all the rooms you unlocked and upgraded along the way.

With that said I’ve been thinking about what I want to do in this league. Since most of this seems to be contained in a special zone called Temple of Atzoatl. I’m hoping there will not too much when running maps other than finding the NPC to open a portal to the past. If that is the case this could be one where league mechanics are not holding you back from reaching higher tier maps and should be a fun league to push on. If I could make it up to a tier XVI map that would be amazing. For now, I at least want the goal of surpassing my last highest of XII.

I’ve also not gotten a different kind of portal skin other than the standard. While they have not announced the next challenges and the rewards for completing them they tend to have a portal in there higher up. If it looks cool enough I’ll try and complete challenges to get it.

There are also a few classes I’ve never played much on before. Such as Templar, Marauder, and Scion. While I’m still split in trying to decide which one I want to try out this time around I might go for the Marauder or Templar or both. It has also been a while since I’ve played a Witch. It was one of my first ever classes to play and as such, I never took it very far in terms of earning gear and mapping.

Plans

I am planning to start the league off in a 3-day hardcore race and more information can be found about it here. After that I’ll be switching over to softcore and leveling up a shadow or maybe a new league starter depending on how the meta is looking closer to release.

After that, I would love to make another Windripper this time to enjoy having a longer period of time for farming. I’m not quite sure how well he will do in the temple. I know they are not the best boss killers if you mostly just want focuses on having magic find gear. They are also not fast clears most of the time so that could be an issue inside the temple as well.

finally, I want to spend a lot of my time inside the temple learning about it and all of its different rooms. Playing around with different league mechanic like the impact it will have on corrupting items. That is after all the point of playing in a new league is getting to see something new and interesting. If I also can get my hands on new uniques that are going drop and play around with those even better.

I wish everyone great times ahead for anyone that will be joining in on the Incursion league. It shall be an amazing adventure filled with loot, death, and glory!

Information

Screenshots were taken and content written by @enjar. Screenshots are from a game called Path of Exile.