Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[Kjaska]

correction on the trial prophecy: it CAN trigger in a white map

too bad this method is going to be unavailable in a month

You say skitterbots scale, but do they actually do damage? I thought their main purpose was for traps and mines.

They shock, which increases all damage. They also chill, which increases damage of skills which are linked to Hypothermia. If you convert to cold, you won't be using Brutality.

Animate Guardian sounds like a huge pain in the ass, if it dies the items are lost right?

Yes, items are lost. They are fairly common though. If your AG is dying before you, something is very wrong. You should be using Convocation periodically to reposition your minions and give them regen. The AG should be linked to defensive support (often together with Zombies and/or Carrion Golem)

I'm just kinda afraid of screwing up my body armor

You can safely corrupt it via Einhar's 30% quality beast craft. Most t1 and t2 krangles have a non-brick outcome as well. 6th link should be Ruthless or Impale + Dread Banner. Alternatively Melee Splash for more clear.

Can I get a Rumi's concoction by chancing granite flasks? That would be a straight upgrade to my current granite flask, and I do have a lot of currency.

You can, but the chances aren't very good. If you have a character below lvl71, I suggest equipping it with as much IIQ gear as you can and repeatedly farming Foothills for the Earth Drinker divination card instead.

I have a shitload of heists available. Also, I've barely touched delve stuff. Should I be prioritizing anything in particular? I think my number one priority at the moment is to obtain a convoking wand, which if I understand correctly can only drop on a few specific maps.

Both Heist and Delve are amazing reward pinatas. You'll be done with Delve much quicker though. Convoking Wands drop in all maps in the Valdo's Rest region.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

more good stuff

That's so odd on the trial. I have a question regarding map "color", because it seems to be used two different ways.
Sometimes, people talk about "yellow" and "red" maps as from the perspective of starting tier or something, because I see often things saying "To do the bonus objectives on yellow maps you must clear a rare version of that map" and that red maps need to be corrupted. However, after slotting in the watchstones, even the starting maps are yellow, however the bonus objective is still the same.

So in regards to lab trials, when they say "white maps" do they mean all the maps that you can get the bonus objective by clearing a magic version, or do those same maps get a chance to have lab trials after slotting enough watchstones? Also, am I correct to just immediately hit these watchstones with a sextant and slot them into the atlas? Or should I be putting all my watchstones into one region and focusing on one at a time?

I also have another problem, which is not of my character, but that my stash is full. Lol this is the worst part of these games for me, the loot sorting paralysis, all the items that I'm not using, but think maybe in the future I might? I dunno. But I'm running around with an inventory half full of maps and a stash full of random uniques and currency. Even got an exalt, I think the first or second one of my PoE career. Lol maybe I'll use it on a shitty rare instead of holding onto it forever...

So it sounds like the best bet for making my character stronger would be to run some delves and heists, with an eye toward corrupting and 6 linking a chest armor. I'll have to check if I have a 30 quality einhar beast craft available, I try to run Einhar maps as much as possible for the crafting options. I also prioritize zana missions, although I'm starting to wonder why... I guess the free map is good, but there's no maven on zana's maps so I dunno...

I guess I'm also moving the conquerer stuff along, every so often I get a boss fight with a conquerer so I guess I'm doing it mostly right. Eventually that'll unlock the elder and the shaper right?

 

[Lone Wolf]

Did you drop that Mirror? There are streamers with 20k+ hours in the game who've never dropped one in the wild...

 

[Kjaska]

Did you drop that Mirror? There are streamers with 20k+ hours in the game who've never dropped one in the wild...

Yes.

That's so odd on the trial. I have a question regarding map "color", because it seems to be used two different ways.
Sometimes, people talk about "yellow" and "red" maps as from the perspective of starting tier or something, because I see often things saying "To do the bonus objectives on yellow maps you must clear a rare version of that map" and that red maps need to be corrupted. However, after slotting in the watchstones, even the starting maps are yellow, however the bonus objective is still the same.

So in regards to lab trials, when they say "white maps" do they mean all the maps that you can get the bonus objective by clearing a magic version, or do those same maps get a chance to have lab trials after slotting enough watchstones? Also, am I correct to just immediately hit these watchstones with a sextant and slot them into the atlas? Or should I be putting all my watchstones into one region and focusing on one at a time?

Only the natural tier of the map is relevant for bonus objective conditions. As you slot in more and more watchstones, more and more maps become unlocked. Every tier has some maps that start there naturally, but eventually all of them are going to be t14+ with all of the watchstones slotted. The simple way of progressing your atlas this league is to just slot every region with 1 stone and go in a circle spawning the conquerors in each of them. Then doing the same process with 2 stones slotted. Doing each region one by one. So for example you have 5 stones -> slot 1 in each region and 2 in Valdo's -> spawn and kill the conqueror in Valdo's -> slot a 2nd stone in Haewark -> repeat process until you have spawned all 2stone conquerors in all the regions -> do the same for 3-stone and 4-stone configurations. Eventually you will spawn Sirus. You don't have to defeat him in order to keep progressing, it is enough to enter his domain once. IMO clear out as many objectives as you can in white and yellow maps before going into reds. You want to at least have lvl20 gems and a 6-link for reds. I would save up sextants for now and only start using them once you have decided on a strategy for farming. Combining the "juice" is the most effective use of it and you'll also want high bonus objective completion for that. But if you aren't planning on playing too much more, then by all means use the currency liberally.

I also have another problem, which is not of my character, but that my stash is full. Lol this is the worst part of these games for me, the loot sorting paralysis, all the items that I'm not using, but think maybe in the future I might? I dunno. But I'm running around with an inventory half full of maps and a stash full of random uniques and currency. Even got an exalt, I think the first or second one of my PoE career. Lol maybe I'll use it on a shitty rare instead of holding onto it forever...

Just do it like me and keep buying quad tabs when you need more space again! No seriously, you want to start investing into more stash tabs, if you plan on playing this game for more and mapping. For specialty tabs I recommend the Currency and the Map tab. All others are QoL, but before you buy those, get some quad tabs instead. I would save the exalts for now, you might want to use them for meta-mods once you get a decent item.

So it sounds like the best bet for making my character stronger would be to run some delves and heists, with an eye toward corrupting and 6 linking a chest armor. I'll have to check if I have a 30 quality einhar beast craft available, I try to run Einhar maps as much as possible for the crafting options. I also prioritize zana missions, although I'm starting to wonder why... I guess the free map is good, but there's no maven on zana's maps so I dunno...

Zana is best used to fill out your atlas completion and for the extra jump at t5 and t10, because she can offer you a t6 or a t11 respectively. Other than that, I would maybe save her missions until you unlock the hidden passive tree or until you have a decent completion bonus. She starts offering better stuff in her shop on occasion and you might get lucky and find a shaper guardian map or even a Cortex.

Eventually that'll unlock the elder and the shaper right?

Elder and Shaper are still locked behind the fragments which are dropped by their guardians. On rare occasions a red map boss will drop a guardian map. I wouldn't worry about those too much until you're comfortably doing t16s.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Ah, good to know on the map tier business. I actually ran into a trail on a yellow map yesterday, cleared the lab again, no good enchants or loot.

I've unlocked a number of passive points with the maven, that just sort of happens naturally as I run maps and get the maven challenges. So far they haven't been bad at all.

I've got 2 watchstones in 2 areas and 3 in the other 2. I've touched a couple of red maps, they didn't seem too bad, just more of the same. My gems are level 19 at the moment, close to 20. However, I plan to vendor my vaal summon skeleton for a 20% quality version so that'll take a little bit to come back up. Seems like I should do that as early as possible, no point putting it off.

I ended up selling a bunch of low level uniques and freed up a tab in my stash. It's still just the 4 tabs. But that got my inventory emptied and a nice place to put my maps. I've got to get over the idea that I'm going to roll 20 alts in a league and equip them with all the weird random uniques I found on my starter character. At most I do that once in a league, and generally only when my starter stalls out.

A 6 link would a big power boost, monsters currently die pretty fast but it could be faster. Also, should I do Atzari whenever I have the 4 sacrifice fragments? I beat her once and got a crappy unique flask, didn't seem worth the rather large map, but maybe I just got unlucky. The atzari fight itself wasn't too bad, just had to resummon my minions a lot as I think the reflect was killing them.

I've just been kinda randomly krangling maps, some of the mods end up dropping a lot of currency and such, so I can see the value of pursuing that. Some of the mods are rough though, health and ES degen can get excessive. The "Take 3000 damage on shifting" actually isn't bad, I guess it's mitigated by armor or something.

So it sounds like I'm still a ways off from the true endgame stuff, which is good because my character has a lot of room to improve.

 

[Sharpedge]

However, I plan to vendor my vaal summon skeleton for a 20% quality version so that'll take a little bit to come back up. Seems like I should do that as early as possible, no point putting it off.

You cannot vendor corrupted versions of gems for 20% quality versions, you can only do that if the gem is uncorrupted. Your best bet would be putting 6x summon skeletons on a weapon swap and leveling them all up at once, then flipping them all for 20% quality once they get to level 20, alternatively, if you are playing on trade, just purchase 1 and skip the hassle. Leveling gems takes quite a while unless you are fairly endgame and doing content like simulacrum, 5 ways or super juiced maps.

I ended up selling a bunch of low level uniques and freed up a tab in my stash. It's still just the 4 tabs. But that got my inventory emptied and a nice place to put my maps. I've got to get over the idea that I'm going to roll 20 alts in a league and equip them with all the weird random uniques I found on my starter character. At most I do that once in a league, and generally only when my starter stalls out.

Unless you are playing on SSF AND you have a uniques tab, I wouldn't bother picking up most unique items, since most of them are just a waste of inventory space and the less time you spend having to do inventory management, the more time you actually have to play. My recommendation is to get a loot filter that eliminates most of the bad bases, then only bother checking whatever is remaining.

A 6 link would a big power boost, monsters currently die pretty fast but it could be faster.

This league it is actually exceedingly easy to acquire a 6 link due to the addition of tainted fusings. You can corrupt an item with 6 sockets and 4 or 5 links, then use tainted fusings to try force the 6th link (the chance is high that it hits). If it drops to 3 links, you then use the bench to set the item back to 4 links again. Once again, if you are not trade averse, its also exceedingly easy to just buy one for cheap unless you need something ultra specific.

Also, should I do Atzari whenever I have the 4 sacrifice fragments? I beat her once and got a crappy unique flask, didn't seem worth the rather large map, but maybe I just got unlucky. The atzari fight itself wasn't too bad, just had to resummon my minions a lot as I think the reflect was killing them.

There is no particular reason to run Atziri unless you want to fight her, no. At endgame you will eventually want maven to witness uber atziri for the feared, but that isn't something you need to worry about currently.

I've just been kinda randomly krangling maps, some of the mods end up dropping a lot of currency and such, so I can see the value of pursuing that. Some of the mods are rough though, health and ES degen can get excessive. The "Take 3000 damage on shifting" actually isn't bad, I guess it's mitigated by armor or something.

It is mitigated, yes. Scourged maps are a pretty decent way to make some currency with minimal investment.

So it sounds like I'm still a ways off from the true endgame stuff, which is good because my character has a lot of room to improve.

There is still a lot of content to explore, yep.

 

[Kjaska]

I plan to vendor my vaal summon skeleton for a 20% quality version

Doesn't work for corrupted gems. When flipping gems, I would recommend flipping only the main skill gem or the supports, not both. This way you can still continue mapping at decent pace and won't have to go down back to blood aqueducts.

I've got to get over the idea that I'm going to roll 20 alts in a league and equip them with all the weird random uniques I found on my starter character.

You can roll mules and use their inventory as more storage space.

Also, should I do Atzari whenever I have the 4 sacrifice fragments?

Only if you like the content or need some t4 maps or need one of her uniques. Most people save the frags for juicing maps (5%additional quantity per fragment).

I've just been kinda randomly krangling maps, some of the mods end up dropping a lot of currency and such, so I can see the value of pursuing that. Some of the mods are rough though, health and ES degen can get excessive. The "Take 3000 damage on shifting" actually isn't bad, I guess it's mitigated by armor or something.

This is the big money this league. If you only scourge a specific base map, preferrably one that has a high mob base count, already rolled with Nemesis mod and only keep ones that krangle into "Gain exposure stacks twice as frequently" or "Lose blood 25% slower" and only with good reward types (currency, incubators, scarabs, stacked decks, maybe gems), you will be swimming in loot. I would only krangle white tier maps and only right up until they become too difficult.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

I am playing SSF, and I just don't have any interest in the trading stuff. I did that back in my D2 days and that was enough... But I do use a loot filter, I can't imagine how you could play half the content without one.

So regarding summon skeletons, should I just make some 20 quality summon skeleton gems and hit them with Vaal orbs? Or is the increased damage from quality not worth the trouble?

As far as uniques, it's just a mental thing. They have that fancy colored text and those cool sounding special effects.... But yeah I ended up dumping a bunch to make room.

That's my plan for a 6 link, yeah. I'm afraid to corrupt my current 5 link chest because it's good. I'm currently using Ambu's Charge, all the mods on it are helpful to my build.

I do have a Kingsguard in my stash, but that doesn't have resists on it. It also only has 2 sockets but that's a minor issue.

Right now I"m feeling kind of locked into my equipment as almost everything I have has +life and +resists, and decent armor/es. However, I am considering maybe respeccing my final ascendancy. Currently, it's the one that gives ES and Mana regen for nearby corpses, plus more regen on offering a corpse. This complements my build by letting me drop clarity for mana regen and giving more ES regen. However, it may be better to drop that and instead get commander of darkness, which frees me up on resistances a bit. However in that case I'd lose about 100 ES regen per sec which is significant. Also the mana regen loss would be painful.

I've also got the option of spending a passive on reservation mastery, and using some of the extra mana for clarity...


I've got something like 25 orbs of regret, so I can afford to respec a bit. Or maybe I should just hold out until a better chest armor drops.

I'm not having much trouble clearing content, per se, but my character has a few areas that could use improvement. I have about a 30% block chance and 27% spell block, so pretty low there, I've got 1200 ES with discipline running, that could certainly be better. I've got 5200 health, which is the highest I've ever had I think. Still can vanish in a moment in a bad situation though... capped resists, with 80% fire due to my shield. ~50% phys reduction.

My gloves suck, just some rare gloves with a couple resists and a little health. But I haven't had much luck trying to replace them.

 

[Sharpedge]

I am playing SSF, and I just don't have any interest in the trading stuff. I

Fair enough, I figured, that was why I added the [if you are on trade league] bit at the end, since I wasn't 100% sure if it was relevant advice.

So regarding summon skeletons, should I just make some 20 quality summon skeleton gems and hit them with Vaal orbs? Or is the increased damage from quality not worth the trouble?

Quality gives increased damage on summon skeletons, but whether or not it is worth it depends entirely on how much you are planning to play and how efficient your gameplay is in terms of generating XP for gems. I would lean towards it probably being worthwhile though.

That's my plan for a 6 link, yeah. I'm afraid to corrupt my current 5 link chest because it's good. I'm currently using Ambu's Charge, all the mods on it are helpful to my build.

It is highly likely that you can obtain a better chest than ambu's charge. You probably want a fleshcrafter, which is a fairly common unique item. You could probably drop it through gameplay (although it may take a while), alternatively you could try chancing it. Once you are dead set on using a specific chest, there is a way to corrupt it without changing the modifiers on it. What you need to do is to obtain the beasts specified on this page which corrupt an item to have 30% quality. Just Ctrl F for corrupt and you should find it.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

I actually have a fleshcrafter in my stash. But it doesn't seem terribly useful for my build, my skeletons do physical damage currently. I can see how it fits with anything that converts minion damage to elemental, but it doesn't actually do much for the player character. Is sticking with physical damage skeletons not a good idea long term?

I should prioritize capped resists and +life over anything else, right?

Also, at this point in the game, what vendor recipes should I be doing? I don't bother with chromatic recipe anymore, I have a shitload of chromatic orbs. I haven't really been bothering to pick up 6 slot items for the 7 jewelers orbs, again I just have so many, but of course I could go through them all fast trying to 6 slot and/or 6 link an armor. I stopped collecting rare sets of equipment, just takes a lot of looting for one chance/chaos. Mostly I just pick up currency and rare/unique items with good bases. Well actually I pick up every unique, but I usually throw them back on the ground after ID.

What is a good resource for these sorts of things? I'm aware of the wiki, which is helpful, and the various build sites, but I guess I'm looking for more generalized advice for this stage of the game. It's great to have people answer my specific questions but I'm sure there's lots of stuff I"m not even thinking of.

 

[lukaszek]

So regarding summon skeletons, should I just make some 20 quality summon skeleton gems and hit them with Vaal orbs? Or is the increased damage from quality not worth the trouble?

summon skelly will have 25% chance to turn into vaal skelly

 

[Kjaska]

I actually have a fleshcrafter in my stash. But it doesn't seem terribly useful for my build, my skeletons do physical damage currently.

Fleshcrafter is meta at the moment, because everybody is playing Mage Skellies, but finding that jewel in SSF is going to be completely dependant on luck unless you plan on doing magic finding (which I would recommend, since it won't survive this league)

I should prioritize capped resists and +life over anything else, right?

Yes, but you also want to expand into other areas of defence, like reduced effect of curses on you (ring craft, mastery, pantheon), taunt from minions, reduced effect of shock or immunity (pantheon, tempest shield, boot craft), max block (nodes on tree, tempest shield, Rumi's, Mistress of Sacrifice + Bone Offering, spell block roll on shield)

What is a good resource for these sorts of things? I'm aware of the wiki, which is helpful, and the various build sites, but I guess I'm looking for more generalized advice for this stage of the game. It's great to have people answer my specific questions but I'm sure there's lots of stuff I"m not even thinking of.

Usually it comes down to 6s items only for vendor recipes. This league it's sorta obsolete, because 6s and 6l are easier to obtain via tainted currency. This will change next league. One good SSF recipe early on is 1 divine orb + 5 flasks = 5 Divine Vessels. I would do it once, just to get the important pantheons upgraded.
Gems with a total of 40% quality = Gemcutter Prism. I tend to pick up gems with at least 14% so I can vendor 3 for 1 gcp at the start of the league. Other than that there aren't any really useful Vendor Recipes to filter your loot for specifically. There is the new recipe for +1 wands, but that won't help you as a summoner.

In general what I would recommend is to keep the Filterblade page open on your filter and whenever you notice something on the ground which you no longer wish to pick up, to modify the filter on the fly and press auto-update. It's pretty sweaty, but it yields good returns for your actual play time, which in turn yields higher returns on finding something that is rare.

 

[Sharpedge]

Kjaska addressed most of your points so I will just expand on 1 of them.

What is a good resource for these sorts of things? I'm aware of the wiki, which is helpful, and the various build sites, but I guess I'm looking for more generalized advice for this stage of the game. It's great to have people answer my specific questions but I'm sure there's lots of stuff I"m not even thinking of.

Theres a couple of good resources. For crafting, refer to craft of exile. For general information, either refer to PoEDB or the Wiki, with PoEDB being the better source. If you are curious what other players are doing, you can snoop them on the ladder using PoE Ninja. There are plenty of filters, so you can narrow it down to pretty much whatever suits your needs. For planning builds, Path of Building is an excellent tool. These are more general tools/sources of information however, for more specific information it would either require following one of the (many) content creators this game has, or just asking other people questions (like you are now).

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

OK yeah, I'm aware of those sites and use them to check things out. I haven't done much with craft of exile, I should check that out a bit more.

I just read about the thing with making divine vessels, I was wondering how I was supposed to capture the souls to upgrade pantheon powers. I've completely ignored that, I don't even know which powers I have selected at the moment. I have a couple divine gems so I might as well do that.

I do generally pick up gems and flasks with quality for the 40% recipes.

Like I said, I used to play diablo 2 a lot, and I've played a fair number of hours in Path of exile, so I get the overall idea, but I usually end up taking a few leagues off now and then, and all the new mechanics stacked on top of each other, plus the fact that I don't have much experience with the post-endgame content... I start to feel like the guy who made that Krangled reddit post way back when. Stuff like enchantments where it doesn't tell you what the hell it does, or some properties on uniques sometimes. "Oh cool, my minions will have unholy strength... that sounds good... but wtf is unholy strength?" (I think the game actually does explain it now, but some stuff is still like that).

Or I have a set of gloves that support equipped gems with a bunch of level 1 ice stuff. It just says the names of the skills, not what they do.

We finally got our krangle league, but no bigass thundercubes yet.

 

[Kjaska]

Most side content you can actually ignore and you will still be able to achieve Atlas and Maven endgame. Part of the trade-off for a deep and content rich game like PoE is that you'll be overwhelmed at times. I'm sad that they are starting to cull content and I am 100% certain the retards on reddit will now start calling for removal of every individual mechanic based on their own preference. I'd much rather PoE became even more dense and archaic.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Most side content you can actually ignore and you will still be able to achieve Atlas and Maven endgame. Part of the trade-off for a deep and content rich game like PoE is that you'll be overwhelmed at times. I'm sad that they are starting to cull content and I am 100% certain the retards on reddit will now start calling for removal of every individual mechanic based on their own preference. I'd much rather PoE became even more dense and archaic.

I agree to a point, lost of different options is usually a good thing. Where culling makes sense is when a certain option is just obviously better than the rest, such that there's no point in engaging with 95% of the rest of the content. In a sense, more options can actually reduce the number of reasonable choices. Like if they added 10,000 more skills, but one of them did 10X the damage of every other skill in the game, everyone who is trying to make a good build will just use this obvious best skill, so they'll have reduced build variety by adding content, in such a theoretical situation.

I'm not saying anything in game is in that situation, at least, if there is I don't know what it is, just that removal of content can sometimes increase variety of gameplay.

I like having the options to go do Delve, or some heists, or maps, or I guess running labs. I like the prophecy system going on in the background, although I totally get why they want to remove it next patch, in that it adds work to any new content you add.

Speaking of prophesy, I like most of it, but the specific "Kill X enemy with Y unique equipped" missions are stupid. Also, the rewards are often unclear/nonexistent. Like, I get a prophecy that there will be some certain enemies, they show up, I kill them, prophecy complete... but I don't get any special loot.

I played some more last night, did a few more red maps, got the achievement for clearing all yellow maps.

I am running tier 11-13 maps now, and while survivability is still ok, my skeletons aren't chopping through the enemies quite as quickly anymore. I could probably force my way through the rest of the content as-is but I should probably look toward improving their damage. A 6 link is the obvious first step, so I guess I should be trying to make a good rare chest armor with resists and life. Or, I could swap to fleshcrafter but in that case I will need to rethink some other stuff as my resists will be messed up and I'll have to come up with some sources of elemental minion damage.

Most of my other characters that got to endgame were using tabula rasa, now I'm spoiled with a chest armor that actually does useful stuff and I don't want to give it up. It's like resist tetris, if I change one thing everything else has to change to make up for it.

I guess unless I hit a wall I'll probably just continue as is, and keep my fingers crossed that some amazing rare or unique drops that solves all my problems, lol. I'm sure a rare chest with +life, +es, all resists, and 6 links is just about to drop.

 

[Peachcurl]

I agree to a point, lost of different options is usually a good thing. Where culling makes sense is when a certain option is just obviously better than the rest, such that there's no point in engaging with 95% of the rest of the content. In a sense, more options can actually reduce the number of reasonable choices. Like if they added 10,000 more skills, but one of them did 10X the damage of every other skill in the game, everyone who is trying to make a good build will just use this obvious best skill, so they'll have reduced build variety by adding content, in such a theoretical situation.

I'm not saying anything in game is in that situation, at least, if there is I don't know what it is, just that removal of content can sometimes increase variety of gameplay.

I like having the options to go do Delve, or some heists, or maps, or I guess running labs. I like the prophecy system going on in the background, although I totally get why they want to remove it next patch, in that it adds work to any new content you add.

Good and valid points.

It's kind of what they did with delve, though, for a good long while. Delve was pretty much mandatory, especially if you played SSF, because it was the only option to get certain crafting recipes. And at least for myself, they placed them way beyond what I'm comfortable about in terms of grinding delve.

 

[Kjaska]

Speaking of prophesy, I like most of it, but the specific "Kill X enemy with Y unique equipped" missions are stupid.

It's enough to have the item in your inventory, you don't have to equip it anymore. Anyways, it's getting removed in a month, so who cares. GGG is removing it not because it's made obsolete by other content, but because it's old, most people don't engage with it and it has an upkeep cost for them. Which is why Ghosts are still in the game and will probably stay for a while.

A 6 link is the obvious first step

Just throw a life essence on a 5s or 6s chest, until you roll 2 good resists and stick it in the krangler for 1 pass. It will most likely roll something benign as a downside and you can make it a 6-link from there.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Speaking of prophesy, I like most of it, but the specific "Kill X enemy with Y unique equipped" missions are stupid.

It's enough to have the item in your inventory, you don't have to equip it anymore. Anyways, it's getting removed in a month, so who cares. GGG is removing it not because it's made obsolete by other content, but because it's old, most people don't engage with it and it has an upkeep cost for them. Which is why Ghosts are still in the game and will probably stay for a while.

A 6 link is the obvious first step

Just throw a life essence on a 5s or 6s chest, until you roll 2 good resists and stick it in the krangler for 1 pass. It will most likely roll something benign as a downside and you can make it a 6-link from there.

Is that the general strategy for a good chest this league? I do have a fair few essences stacked up, so it's a good excuse to clear some space in my stash and hopefully upgrade my character in the process.

I suppose stuff like this is what craft of exile is good for, I have to mess around with that a bit. It's kind of overwhelming.

 

[abija]

The biggest strength for a game with such a huge amount of content would be to let everyone play and progress in whatever content they like. So get rid of campaign requirement, buff the underwhelming parts and let everyone enjoy whatever the fuck they feel like + the new league mechanics each reset.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

The biggest strength for a game with such a huge amount of content would be to let everyone play and progress in whatever content they like. So get rid of campaign requirement, buff the underwhelming parts and let everyone enjoy whatever the fuck they feel like + the new league mechanics each reset.

Yeah, it'd be nice if it let you choose not to do the campaign, but what would that look like? You just get all the quest rewards at once? It's not like you could go right to the atlas.

Still, why not, right? And clearly people don't like to play through the campaign 5 times per league. Lol remember when you had to do the ascendancy trials on each and every character? Or when it was 3 "difficulties" and you just repeated the 4 acts 3 times? I realize Diablo 2 was that way, but still, that was rough.

 

[Kjaska]

Removing the campaign would be a colossal cop out. It would cheapen the whole experience for both the players and the developers. It's much better for everyone involved if the developer tries hard to make the campaign more enjoyable for repeat playthroughs. Which is what they are doing with like 50% of their workforce. I can't see GGG letting you opt-out of the campaign in any way for a looooong ass time after putting so much effort into the new campaign.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Removing the campaign would be a colossal cop out. It would cheapen the whole experience for both the players and the developers. It's much better for everyone involved if the developer tries hard to make the campaign more enjoyable for repeat playthroughs. Which is what they are doing with like 50% of their workforce. I can't see GGG letting you opt-out of the campaign in any way for a looooong ass time after putting so much effort into the new campaign.

It's not entirely without precedent, they did have the PVP only characters that didn't do story content, although of course they since removed that option.

I know it is something people who create lots of characters every league complain about. I'd rather play through the story because usually it's been long enough since I played that a gentle easing into the endgame is nice. I agree though, it does seem unlikely to happen. Maybe they'll make a microtransaction for it, win win.

 

[Kjaska]

I AM FREEEEEE. They are finally letting me out of the Tower

 

[Deflowerer]

I think 1 required campaign playthrough per league would be fine, any additional characters in league should give you the option to bypass if you so wish.