f13.net

- You can tell people that you are in the Beta. Your account is marked as "Beta Member" on the forums.
- You can discuss any publicly available information that you would normally have discussed before you were in the Beta test.
- You're welcome to post your general opinions on the game. Please do not go into detail about unannounced specifics or unfinished systems.
- Please do not reveal unannounced information or comment on how things in the Beta work. For example, you should not post about some skill that hasn't been announced yet, or some unannounced looting system we are testing out.
- Please do not post balance values from the game or update public websites or wikis with this information. For example, if someone is gathering a list of item names in the Beta, you should not tell them new names. This information will change very frequently and we don't want to confuse people.
- You may stream gameplay or post screenshots and videos without permission. If recording video or streaming gameplay, please disable global chat and remind viewers that the game is in Closed Beta and that much is changing with every patch.
- Please do not share your account. In the future, we'll periodically allow you to invite some friends to play with.
If you abuse these rules we reserve the right to remove your access.

I just got into beta today, so at least I can "neener neener" about that instead of swtor.   :oh_i_see:
I was expecting a spare key but all I got was beta admittance.  Not sure if they're giving out extra keys anymore.

Installing to check it out during the open beta weekend.  Anyone have keys, should this prove to be fun? ^^

EDIT: I'm having fun doing some hacking and slashing and leveling up and such. 

I messed around with it a bit last night. Got to the first encampment and logged out. It seems fun but I kept getting disconnected every few minutes. Not sure if it was the server or my elderly machine that couldn't handle the stress. I'm thinking it was my box.

Just logged into my beta account, can't even find a way to invite people :(

I just couldn't get into it, not sure why.  Although a lot may have to do with the blandness of the starter zone.  Does it get better later on?

I just couldn't get into it, not sure why.  Although a lot may have to do with the blandness of the starter zone.  Does it get better later on?

Full respecs need to be buyable though.  

Gender locked classes are a deal breaker, main reason i could never get into d2.

Gender locked classes are a deal breaker, main reason i could never get into d2.

I like how you level up absolutely everything up to and including your potions. That skill tree is pretty :ye_gods: though.

Gender locked classes are a deal breaker, main reason i could never get into d2.

Do all "classes" start at the same place on the sphere grid?

Thus far I've seen 3 gems drop halfway through act 2. Drops for your skills is not a primary method of play.

The rate of drops is not modified for different leagues - we constantly have people saying that something is higher or lower in hardcore or default or races, but it's just randomness :)

The art is a bit drab at times, but there's potential here.

I liked the look of the lower/upper prison levels, and the ship graveyard is nicely creepy.  The beeches and caves are a little meh at times.

I feel like it could use a bit more variety in monster AI and/or combat.  Things get a little repetitive at times.

Interesting that there's no currency -- instead there's barter around scrolls of wisdom, scroll fragments, etc.


I do really like the socketing, customization, upgrading, etc.  Some really fun ideas here.

Do all "classes" start at the same place on the sphere grid?  Do they have any difference at all in base stats?  It's somewhat amazing how open-ended the customization seems.

The build from last weekend didn't have random level generation, did it?  I'm pretty certain the 10+ levels I explored (most multiple times) were always identical.

Hmm!  I wonder if a given character always gets the same random seed for levels or if they eventually change.

Areas definitely persist for a while (you can walk back and the drops you haven't picked up are there, etc).  So it is possible I just never waited long enough or traveled far enough away that it generated a new version.

Hmm!  I wonder if a given character always gets the same random seed for levels or if they eventually change.

We’re looking to kickstart Path of Exile and we need your help.

We’re a small game studio in New Zealand composed entirely of Action RPG fans. For the last five years our focus has been on designing an online game with maximum player choice and strategic freedom. Following the public stress test weekend, we received hundreds of requests for the ability to donate for permanent access to the Closed Beta.

Path of Exile is completely free to download and play. We never intend to charge for content or access to the released game, but we are happy to offer early Beta access for those who support us during this important time. In order to fund the development and continued expansion of Path of Exile, we offer a range of ethical microtransactions that allow you to distinguish yourself in the world of Wraeclast without receiving any gameplay advantage. We are completely opposed to the concept of “pay2win”.

On this page, you can pre-purchase Points used to buy cosmetic microtransactions. Every purchase comes with a Closed Beta key so that you (or a friend) can start playing immediately. In addition to the Points, we offer a wide selection of exclusive rewards such as in-game pets, shipped copies of the game, its soundtrack, posters and even the chance to help design a Unique item that will be added to the game.

Thank you very much for your support!

Our first pack grants you access to the Closed Beta and like all our other tiers, you receive microtransaction store credit for the entire total value. It’s also a great option for existing players who want to invite a friend!
Package Image

    100 Points
    1 Closed Beta Key


$10.00USD


Supporter Pack

Want to get in the mood for some item hunting? This tier includes access to a digital download of our soundtrack, composed by Adgio Hutchings. You’ll also get a special title on the forum indicating that you’ve supported us with more than the minimum amount.

The soundtrack download will be available when the Open Beta starts (estimated at June 2012).


    150 Points
    1 Closed Beta Key
    Supporter Forum Title
    Digital Soundtrack Download


$15.00USD


Kiwi Pack

Wraeclast is a lonely place. Let New Zealand’s national icon, the flightless Kiwi bird, accompany you on your travels. This in-game Kiwi Pet can be used by any characters on your account and is purely cosmetic.

Kiwi Pets are exclusive and can only be purchased during the Closed Beta. You will receive your pet immediately! It will not be wiped at the end of Closed Beta.


    250 Points
    1 Closed Beta Key
    Supporter Forum Title
    Digital Soundtrack Download
    In-Game Kiwi Pet


$25.00USD


Bronze Pack

Want to make your friends jealous? Gift them one of these additional friend keys and show off your exclusive Bronze Kiwi Pet! Like all tiers from this point on, we also upgrade your forum title to reflect your generous support.


    500 Points
    3 Closed Beta Keys
    Bronze Supporter Forum Title
    Digital Soundtrack Download
    In-Game Bronze Kiwi pet


$50.00USD


Silver Pack

Not only will you receive the exclusive Silver Kiwi Pet, but we’ll stuff your mailbox with goodies. You’ll get a large Map of Wraeclast Poster, a copy of the game on DVD and a CD of the haunting soundtrack. Allow a few weeks for postal delivery from New Zealand.

We'll post the above physical items when the Open Beta starts (estimated at June 2012).


    1000 Points
    3 Closed Beta Keys
    Silver Supporter Forum Title
    Digital Soundtrack Download
    In-Game Silver Kiwi Pet
    Map of Wraeclast Poster
    Path of Exile DVD
    Soundtrack CD


$100.00USD


Gold Pack

Show your support in style with a Path of Exile T-Shirt! At this tier, we’ll offer the choice of having the development team sign anything that we’re posting to you. You’ll also receive the exclusive Gold Kiwi Pet and have your name included in a special section of the game’s credits.

We'll post the above physical items when the Open Beta starts (estimated at June 2012).


    2500 Points
    5 Closed Beta Keys
    Gold Supporter Forum Title
    Digital Soundtrack Download
    In-Game Gold Kiwi Pet
    Path of Exile DVD
    Soundtrack CD
    Map of Wraeclast Poster
    Path of Exile T-Shirt
    All posted items signed on request
    Your name in the Path of Exile credits


$250.00USD


Diamond Pack

For the hardcore fan who wants to contribute to making Path of Exile as good as it can be. Not only do you get the highest tier of Kiwi Pet (so rare that players will be lining up for you to show it off), but you can immortalise yourself in the game by working with us to create a Unique Item inspired by your design! We’ll also draw you a custom larger-size forum avatar that no one else will ever receive. The developers and community sincerely thank you for this generous level of support.

We'll post the above physical items when the Open Beta starts (estimated at June 2012).

    10000 Points
    5 Closed Beta Keys
    Diamond Supporter Forum Title
    Digital Soundtrack Download
    In-Game Diamond Kiwi Pet
    Path of Exile DVD and Soundtrack CD
    Map of Wraeclast Poster
    Path of Exile T-Shirt
    All posted items signed on request
    Your name in the Path of Exile credits
    A custom forum account avatar designed to your request
    Collaborate with us designing a Unique Item based on your design!

$1000.00USD
 

If you CTRL Click an instance on the map, there are full instance tools: enter/join others/reset. Instances Close after 15 min of inactivity in that area. Sometimes shorter in some cases. This also aplies to groups.

There is talk some "leagues" will have different rule sets, including "public" instances ( Extreme reset time ) and open PvP.

I will likely have to get the Kiwi for the lady.

(http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/7500/sdfsdfd.png)

Does the kiwi do damage or is it merely a cosmetic pet?

Huh, seems to add by account. Handy.

Likewise... though hopefully release is not too far away as it sounds like the game is quite playable.

Tried to get into this, but I cant help shake the feeling that the endgame is nothing more than looking at excel spreadsheets trying to figure out the best order to sell items in, and the best order to upgrade items in. Seems just ridiculously complex...

What the hell.   :awesome_for_real:  I'll take one, if you have an extra. 

There's also going to be a patch (and wipe to Legacy) tomorrow, and the new class (Shadow) will be playable this weekend.

Link to Patch notes (http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/30667)

Version 0.9.10
Notes:

    We've wiped all the passive skills again. Please take care reallocating your passives so that you can use your equipment and gems.



Features:

    In multiplayer instances, certain items (magic, rare, unique, currency and gems) are now allocated to a random nearby player for a short duration, during which time only that player may pick them up. This duration is increased by the time it would take the player to run to the item. Note that the allocation time is short enough that players must still pay close attention to what items drop in combat and to pick them up immediately if they want them.
    You can now make your party public by giving it a name on the party screen. Players can browse public parties associated with a town by clicking the new Noticeboard in town or by using the social screen. For example, if you need help with Merveil, you might name your party "Help with Merveil". Players then see it on the list and join it to help you out. You can make it private again or rename it if your situation changes.
    When hovering over an item, your equipped item in that slot is now shown for comparison alongside it while you hold the Alt key.
    Increased stereo separation of sound effects.
    Sand Spitters that deal elemental damage now fire projectiles with the appropriate elemental effects. This may also result in your effects sound settings being a little too loud - adjust them on the options screen if needed. Our new default setting is 50% volume for sound effects.
    Added /squelch and /unsquelch commands as synonyms for /ignore and /unignore.
    Path of Exile has now been tested and found to work on Windows 8. If you have any problems with the game in this operating system, please let us know.
    Updated the icon of the client to a more readable one.



Content:

    Added five new player-designed Unique items.
    Added a new item progression for Life, Mana and Hybrid flasks.
    Fire Hellions in the Rocky Climb and Prisoner's Gate now drop a patch of ground fire when they die.
    Zombies in the Coves now drop a patch of tar when they die. Running through it slows you down.
    Some Scavengers now have fire torches that they can throw at you once for increased damage.
    Improved the 3d art for many of the boots in the game.
    Updated the blood and critical strike effects on most monsters.
    Made the Fetid Pool somewhat more fetid.
    Ghosts that wield wands or bows now have ghostly weapons.
    Continued to incrementally improve the art, effects, environments and sound.



General Balance Changes:

    The challenge of later game areas (both monster life and damage) has been increased, and the first difficulty reduced slightly.
    Decreased the rate of encountering rare monster packs in the first act of the first difficulty.
    Monster pack sizes have been re-evaluated, with packs in the second act receiving a lot of changes.
    Monster pack sizes now increase as the player progresses through difficulty levels again.
    Rare/magic monsters with a lot of life (like Moss Monsters and Beasts) now have far less chance to receive mods that make them nearly impossible to kill.
    Quivers can now be purchased from NPCs.
    Elemental damage mods have been reduced by 20%.
    Damage of two-handed melee weapons has been increased by 10%.
    Reduced the life of player Totems.
    Fire Trap: Added a 5% critical strike chance. Increased its mana cost. Increased its damage progression over levels.
    Bear Trap: Added a 5% critical strike chance. Increased its mana cost. Increased the effect that support gems have on this skill. Reduced damage at lower levels but increased it at higher levels.
    Decoy Totem: Increased mana cost.
    Shockwave Totem: Removed its critical strike chance. Reduced its radius of effect, damage, cast speed and frequency of pulses. Increased its mana cost.
    Sweep: Removed knockback distance increase. Changed quality bonus to attack speed.
    Knockback support gem: Changed quality bonus to additional knockback chance.
    Shield Charge: removed increase to knockback distance based on charge distance.
    There's now a limit of 3 traps, 5 mines and 1 totem by default, regardless of which skill it is. Previously the skills varied in maximum, which caused unexpected results.
    Moved defensive passives around to allow an evasion-only path through the tree, for Acrobatics characters.
    Passive skills for increasing your maximum number of totems have been added.
    Improved passive skills that increase the area of effect of auras.
    Increased the damage of Shield Crabs and the Sea Witch wave attack.



Specific Monster Balance Changes:

    Reduced damage of Flicker Strike when used by monsters.
    Reduced damage of Spark when used by Goat Shamans and Amarissa, Daughter of Merveil.
    Reduced damage of Cold Snap when used by monsters.
    Reduced Chatters' chill duration and damage a little.
    Merveil's Attendants now inflict the Temporal Chains curse when they hit.
    Life leech on monsters has been reduced significantly.
    Increased the damage of small apes.
    Increased the damage of minor bandit bosses.
    Reduced the damage of skeleton bosses.
    Increased the movement speed of Fidelitas, the Mourning.
    The Burning Menace now deals more damage and has more life. He now drops ground fire on death.



Bug Fixes:

    Fixed a bug where the client would display an infinite loading screen if you joined an instance where a player on your friends list was currently located, if you had just been in a party with them.
    Fixed a bug where a portal would not update its description when the owner recast it from another area.
    Fixed two problems that prevented Whirling Blades from hitting its targets correctly.
    Items now always hit the ground when dropped by player death in Cut-throat leagues, rather than being occasionally deleted due to lack of room. The same is now also true for items dropped from chests.
    The limits on minions, traps and totems now come from the player's limits. This means you can't violate your maximum number of these by summoning them through traps.
    Fixed the ability for traps to trigger on friendly NPCs.
    Fixed a client crash that could occur when using Lightning Strike while standing on a patch of fire.
    Fixed a bug with the diminishing returns calculation of Increased Item Quantity and Increased Item Rarity so that they are now additive with the player bonus rather than the monster bonus.
    The damage reduction estimation for level 60 onwards is now done using Maelstrom of Chaos monsters rather than the normal progression.
    Finally fixed the exploding Spawns that could generate as magic or rare.
    Fixed some problems with shields having the wrong graphics.
    Fixed a bug with the damage dealt by Ice Nova while in trap form.
    Fixed a server crash that could occur if a monster used Lightning Strike on a target that had damage reflection such as Tempest Shield.
    Fixed a rare bug that would cause you to take damage from Puncture indefinitely until you left the instance.
    Changed how the minimap works so that less memory fragmentation problems occur.
    Prevented some stuttering when items were seen for the first time in a session.
    Fixed a bug where the game has trouble running from a directory that contains non-English characters.
    Fixed a bug that could cause the patcher to misreport the size of the data to download.
    Fixed all bugs where summoned monsters could yield experience.
    Fixed a bug where being punctured multiple times would cause incorrect behaviour.
    Totems using percentage reserve skills with blood magic now correctly base the cost as a percentage of their life rather than yours.
    When a player dies in a hardcore league, they no longer have an invalid portal open.
    Removed sunbeams from the church ruin, now that it's raining there.

In the upcoming 0.9.11 patch, we’re revamping Path of Exile’s end-game to introduce a new system known as Maps. Players in high level areas can find Map items that allow them to travel to random end-game areas featuring bosses, awesome equipment and more Maps.

Maps can drop as normal, magic, rare or unique with higher rarity Maps yielding more items. Using a Map item opens six portals to the area, which can each only be used once. Like most other items in Path of Exile, Maps have mods that change their risks and rewards. Map mods can affect the size or complexity of the level, monster packs, monster properties or even alter characters while in the level. Players can modify Maps themselves using their currency items. For example, you can use an Orb of Transmutation to turn a normal Map into a magic Map, or use an Orb of Alteration to reroll its mods.

We’re sure the result is a highly replayable, challenging and varied end-game that will make Path of Exile fun for a long time to come. This development diary describes the design process of this system and how it works.

Path of Exile 0.9.11 has been Deployed!

After seven weeks of hard work, we've finally deployed the 0.9.11 patch to the Path of Exile Beta servers. This patch introduces a new Singaporean gateway (ideal for Australian players), the Act Two boss fight, weapon swapping, the end-game Maps system and a new layout for the passive skill tree. Full patch notes are here! (http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/39492/page/1)

Public Stress Test Weekend #3 is this Weekend!

This weekend (July 27-29) the Path of Exile Beta servers will be available for public access! We've put up a page with answers to common questions about the event here. The last two public stress test weekends were a huge success, so we look forward to hopefully breaking some records this weekend!

I think you've got the wrong video linked, there.  That's just that obnoxious tit crying about Valve/Steam for 16 minutes.

We're opening up the Path of Exile Beta to everyone this weekend, July 27-29, so that we can stress-test our servers in preparation for entering Open Beta later this year.  This Open Weekend is the ideal time to invite your friends to play the game with you.

We've just deployed the 0.9.11 Beta patch, which adds the Act Two boss fight, our new end-game Maps system, weapon swap functionality and an entirely new passive skill tree layout.

Check out the FAQ about the open weekend at www.pathofexile.com/publicweekend/.

We will make the game servers public from 5pm on Friday 27 July Pacific Daylight Time until 11:59pm on Sunday.  Over 48,000 people played during our last Open Weekend in May.

Oh hrm, didn't think to try pressing alt.

And yeah, the server crashed several times while I was playing.

I haven't played this is months but... do I still need a spreadsheet open on another monitor so I can understand the horribly confusing merchant system?

but my melee guy felt just...off. My cleave skill would miss enemies right in my face and hit enemies that were pretty clearly out of its range, planting with shift and trying to normal attack enemies usually resulted in 90% miss rates for some reason, I shield charged through geometry sometimes, etc.

That and the armor is all clownsuit shit so far, and the environments while I'm sure achieving the "Shithole Medieval Fantasy Prison Colony" motif in their eyes all looked a lot a like with vaguely differing levels of vegetation.

Better to have a game with good mechanics that is in need of polish than a polished game with bad mechanics I guess. I'm hopeful that the PoE guys can fix the game's issues, which feel mostly cosmetic, before it launches.

I don't know if these gripes were really related to the game as much as to the Stress Test, because the only one of those I've ever had happen that wasn't lag related was the Cleave hitting enemies that were out of range.

How far exactly did you get? This doesn't sound like you actually got that far, because the levels are anything but look alike, especially once you leave Act 1. The armors looking "clownsuit" also has me wondering whether we were playing the same game, because I actually think the different models look pretty good, and had no garish colors or disturbing looks from my perspective.

Yeah, I just made a witch and a ranger (which is always my second fav character) and looked at the skills and it'll be a piece of piss to make a thief out of either of them, especially the ranger. 

It's pretty good fun, in that sort of mindless DB3/Torchlight way where you don't have to think too hard or fiddle with things too much.  The things that sort of frustrate me a bit is my wobbly connection to the Euro server and targeting.  I mostly run around in silly circles when I'm killing stuff.  I get embarrassed for me.

Thanks!  

By the way, what is corpse targeting for?  There's nothing in them, I can't eat them or wear their bits... it seems useless although somewhat satisfyingly creepy.

It's going into open beta jan 28 I believe. It will be like world of tanks in that there will be no difference or wipe between open beta and release.

At the time of writing, there are 24 hours to go until we enter Open Beta. This post briefly explains how that transition works and what to expect. Please click through to read the whole post.

The countdown timer on the game login screen and on the website news page is counting down towards the time when the deploy will be finished and the game will be playable. It is not counting down towards the start of downtime.

We will bring the game servers down for deployment of the 0.10.0 patch two hours before the start of Open Beta. The website may be down for approximately 10-20 minutes while we perform database migrations. At this point, access to the game servers will be disabled until the countdown hits zero and the patch will be available to download. Just run your existing Closed Beta client to update to the open beta version. We're sorry that this doesn't give much time to download the 1.5gb or so, but we'd rather have some people playing than leave the servers off while giving people on slow internet connections a chance to patch fully.

Once you're patched, if you try to log in, you'll be put in a queue. At the point the servers open, you should then be logged in.

All characters will be reverted to level 1 and moved to new Default and Hardcore leagues. Their items will be destroyed, other than Demigod's Presences and pets. This is the final wipe the game will ever have.

Note that due to a bug in the current version of Beta where it's possible to create more characters on your account than you are allowed, any additional characters over your allowance (which defaults to 24 unless you purchase more) will be deleted. If you are over this limit and have special names that you want to keep, you should manually delete characters to get under the limit. If you are truly paranoid, please move your Demigod's Presences to your stash so that they're not accidentally stored on characters that are deleted.

There will be a further news post today with full Patch Notes, explanations of our reasoning behind balance changes and information on how the new cosmetic microtransactions work.

Traffic to the site has been absolutely insane over the last few days. We've been aggressively ordering more servers, but it's quite possible that we'll have long queues and general server unstability on launch day. We may be operating under player load levels far above what we've tested to. Needless to say, there are a team of dedicated people here who will try to make sure you have the best possible experience.

Kiwi packs become unavailable two hours before the countdown hits zero (i.e. when the servers go down). If you want to upgrade yours while it's still possible, you should consider doing that as soon as possible. Thanks again for your continued support!

Was very interested until I heard there are no respecs.  Fuck being locked into bad choices you made while learning the game or post nerfs.

Was very interested until I heard there are no respecs.  Fuck being locked into bad choices you made while learning the game or post nerfs.

Was very interested until I heard there are no respecs.  Fuck being locked into bad choices you made while learning the game or post nerfs.

Was very interested until I heard there are no respecs.

there are no respecs

no respecs

UPDATE: Due to extensive feedback in this thread, we have changed the implementation so that effects can be reclaimed at no cost. Microtransaction effects can be freely moved between items. This will affect their initial pricing somewhat, but we'll investigate adding cheaper one-use "demo" versions of them in the near future.

So after a lag-death and a idiotic death by burning and not noticing my health, I'm on the third iteration of Triaz.   Level 21 and in an awesome groove now.  Love this game.  Shield Charge + Cleave + lots of life regen/leech is working very well for me at this point.

Excellent beginner's guide from Curse:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWs7vAR-WzA

Some other general advice:  Make sure your build has a specific defense (armor, evasion, energy shield).  Make sure you buff that defense, along with picking up life and resists in the passive tree.  You don't need a ton of offensive skills to be effective, although you do need some key ones for certain builds.  Try to avoid picking up a lot of +10 stat nodes:  These are crap.

Don't identify most items before you sell them.  If you know you can't use it, just directly sell it.  Scrolls of Wisdom are currency, and you will become poor very quickly if you identify everything.

Keep some resist gear in the stash.  Do your best to not get frozen, shocked, or burned against elemental-wielding enemies.  If you do, get out of the battle ASAP until these conditions fade.  Shock especially is a nasty one, because it's easy to not notice since it doesn't do damage directly.  You'll notice when you take double damage from all sources however, and that might be too late.  Burning can sneak up on you too.

Pick up all items that have a linked red, blue, and green socket.  They sell for a chromatic orb.  Just found this out today!

First of all, they refund all your points if they make significant changes to the passive tree.

Second, by the time I was level 50 (not too far) I had used about 15 refund points from quest rewards and orbs of regret (that I came about naturally while playing the game).  So as long as your build isn't absolutely horrible, it's fairly easy to correct small mistakes.  No, you won't be able to totally change your character at a whim, but you aren't locked into every point you've spent. 

I love that any common item can eventually become the best item in the game.

It's very odd to play this game and realize that you aren't supposed to ID or pick up every magic item you find. Doing so means running out of ID scrolls (one of the main currencies in the game) quickly, and doesn't seem to change how much the item is worth to a vendor.

I have to say I love the skill web thingy.  The options available are all neat and give you lots of shit to look forward to.  I've liked this kind of thing since Final Fantasy did it back in 10?  I think it was. 

I built this sight of game unseen based on the theme of dual wielding sword lightning mage

derrrrrrrrrrr (http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgYAAAYDAAPbDY0OrREPEiATnhR1FSAV9hjbG8gc3B4aHwIhYCL0Kk0shSycLOktHy1HNDU2xTrtPL09X0GWQzFDnEPSRKtQQlJTVK5VS1WuVytaGluvXfJei2J5Y3BmT2e9axdsC20ZbXtvnnBScNV08XYRfdJ-M36afq-BSYIQjDaNGY6-j0aPppLBkyeboaSRpwiop6zqrgyuz7I4tAy0OLVItkHBB8GLwbTB2MS4z_jQ0NDu0_zVT9X4137YJNlf3Q3djN5337DgEuTs5RnlxeZM647ub_ej-_X_kw==)

someone tell me how terrible it is.

1) Most of your passive nodes need to be spent on defense if you want to survive beyond normal difficulty. Either lots of life or lots of energy shield is a must.
2) "Spells" and "Attacks" are mutually exclusive, and all abilities associated with weapon damage are attacks. So to keep your concept of hitting things with swords, you'll want to drop any nodes that say "spell" on them.
3) There is one weapon attack (Lightning Strike) that does lightning damage at range, but based on your melee weapon. It's a good fit for your concept and being at range would ameliorate some of your survivability issues, however Lightning Strike requires some Strength to use. Without any strength passives you'd have to get it all from gear, which would be extremely limiting.
4) You'll never get 110 passive points. Playing through all three difficulties you'll end up with 85-90. Those last 20 levels are quite the grind.
5) Crit nodes aren't very good unless you invest a LOT into them. However, going high crit actually helps with survivability because you can get flasks that refill themselves every time you crit something. Plus the effect for critting with lightning damage is fucking terrifying, so it's something you might consider.
6) You don't have any accuracy bonuses except for what you're getting from your dexterity. However you can offset this somewhat with the "Improved Accuracy" support gem, and if you invest into strength you can use str/dex swords which have an inherent acc bonus and would work fine.

Basically I would rework it into either a glassy crit/energy shield build with dex swords and Dual Strike that gets its lightning from gear, auras, and support skills; or a more balanced build with str/dex swords and Lightning strike to do good damage at range or in melee.

how dis

duooop (http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMBBUIFWw5IEHsRLxGWE54W8xpsHwImPClPKwosnC0fLggucC-dNsU74TwFPV8_c0GWRKtG10cGTC1SU1WuVytdxl3yX2pgbWNDZ71tGXYReM5-M36vf8aCEIIegpuH24hCiGuLjIw2jRmOZI-mk_yZmp2jna6f36IupJGnCKcrrrOuz7Q4tMW1BLWFtve2-r46wQDBtMHFwfPC7MNtzLfTG9VP1XXYJNlf2wLbGt2M3fPed9-w4BLhc-L344TkIuTs5RnmTOtj7BjtIO5v73zyHfLO8uH06fVL96b79fyr)

I can adjust that further if shock time increases can be slotted out.

Hot damn, I'm really liking this game.  The business model seems a little naive, especially given they actually have servers to support, but if it works, hey, that's pretty great.  I like having great games for free.

I'm doing a full on minion build, and I don't give any fucks about late game survivability. If it sucks so bad I cant stay alive then I will load it up with as much +item rarity i can find and make it a dedicated early game farmer for my alt obsession.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYUm0qM_R0g (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYUm0qM_R0g)

Yea, fuck those things. I didn't mind them so much on my Witch but on my melee toons they are awful. The only thing worse are Necros; I literally can't clear the Sin dungeon in Act 2 Cruel on my Witch because they rez casters/archers faster than I can kill them.

Keep a spare unleveled Zombie, Spectre, or Detonate Dead gem around just to dispose of corpses in necromancer dungeons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYUm0qM_R0g (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYUm0qM_R0g)

Can someone who plays explain in layman's terms what happened to him?

I thought there was a loot rule system in place since beta, i think it was in the instance rules on the map. Then again, Ii only grouped with friends in locked instances personally.

So I got a few more levels under my belt and some more gems (Raise Spectre, Arc, Clarity, Minion Damage, and Conductivity) from a combination of quests, drops, and a kind soul who took pity on me. I also decided to say "fuck it" to conventional forum wisdom and started focusing heavier on my minion-boosting passives.

It's like night and fucking day. My zombies now hit like trucks and each one has more life than I do, the skeletons die a little quicker but not obnoxiously so, and between Conductivity and Arc, I lay down some decent damage, apply some killer Shock debuffs, and contribute to killing while not feeling like I'm doing all the work.

This (http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMAB2MQlxEtFm8qmEjnVcZXK2Ksa9tzU3yDhWCOvo9GksGboaFtpwi4k8y8zfrPZdDQ1p3ZC9-w99f6gGe9) is what my tree looks like at 28 now.

IIRC there's actually a build of the week video on the official youtube channel where someone uses that staff.

‏@pathofexile: LOL - we didn't expect this combo! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MZdwQMagkk

Just picked up my first unique. Seen 2 or 3 others drop but other people got them... one was ninja'd from me.

Whoa, back up... this game doesn't have personal drops?

A fair way into Act III now on my summoner. It's gotten a lot harder. The chaos-spitting snakes wreck my face, and fire golems slaughter my minions. It's not frustrating, just sightly annoying.

What was frustrating, though, was miniboss Piety. Jesus fuck that was dumb as shit. She could just one-shot all my minion at any time, and then start blasting at me. Further fights against her will be done in parties.

I've got minion life for you.

Just picked up my first unique. Seen 2 or 3 others drop but other people got them... one was ninja'd from me. Not sure what kind of character this will be useful for though, who uses staves? Oh and it's level req 13, but it dropped in a level 45 area.

Heh, after reading your post I got a unique drop too. A leather cap, Heatshiver. Had some evasion, + lvl for cold and fire gems, and -15% cold, fire resists. Sold it to the merchant for a couple of alchemy shards. Why even put garbage like that in there?

Kole hurt me.  From the inside.

I whispered you a couple of times last night Yegolev (probably, er, early afternoon your time) but you ignored me so I gave up.

Just had all of my orbs removed from my stash in a 1 hour period when I was logged off from the game.  This was quite a bit of wealth.  Very sad.

Make sure your shit is secure, your password is secure, etc, etc.  Never been hacked before.  Feels bad :(

Does anyone have an opinion on "Iron Reflexes" (converts all evasion rating to armor) as something to build around.
I did a quick build on a duel wielder that would be at +140% evasion at 47 points. Does this seem feasible?

My biggest problems with this at the moment are the messy graphics in a full party and the fucking impossible to see cursor in those situations.

Playing multiplayer is retarded with random people and not because people suck, but rather because you can't not get like 2-3 fucking summon-based witches.

Hey, I just hit 60 with my dual totem Ice Spear witch, I'm hardly blameless when it comes to screen-filling.

Soon as I get hold of a GMP gem it'll be even worse  :awesome_for_real:

My Ice witch, is in her 30s and is currently a Single LMP+Ice Spear + Totem , and LMP+ Ice Spear. I don't have enough points i think to make it to dual totems. I can't wait till i find a piece of gear that lets me add fork to my ice spear totem. I've been playing around with LMP+Freezing Pulse, which is like a shotgun blast, but its too short range for my comfort.

I'm not sure I can fgorgive this game of the duck punch that happens after beating Piety.  My reaction: "........seriously?"

It's a beta.

I like to research the endings of all the games I play before I play them...

I can't even tell you what the story, if there is even one, is about.

As far as I can telll, the story goes something like this: white, white, white, white, blue, white, white, white, white, white, Blue, Yellow, white, white, <BLING>, white, white, white, oooh Orange, white, etc.

I'm really enjoying the concept of character building more that the actual character building... put me in the camp that thinks full respecs should be somewhere in the game (either a reward for beating every other act, or something) and that orbs of regret should come in six-packs, at least.  There's a simple disconnect between getting skills one at a time that makes the game better and more fun as you claw your way to where you eventually want to be vs. spending 15-30 points to get a skill to build around.  I recognize that that is kinda what D2 was all about, but then I quit D2 because I thought it was stupid when they did it originally.

I've just reached Act 3 Merciless and you literally never see anything except casters, bow users and Lightning Strike/Ground Slam melee chars in parties any more. I would also guess that 75% of the witches are dual totem (either frost or lightning) and that 75% of the rangers are Lightning Arrow.

I don't get why melee seems to be so hard to make endgame viable in games like this, D3 had similar problems.  In a game with so many stats and items I just don't see why high strength can't grant you access to armors that would keep you safe at the endgame.

I don't get why melee seems to be so hard to make endgame viable in games like this, D3 had similar problems.  In a game with so many stats and items I just don't see why high strength can't grant you access to armors that would keep you safe at the endgame.

K, I'm level 13 so i assume i am not running into any of that.

Version 0.10.3c (Current Version)

• Magic items are no longer allocated to specific players when they drop. The only items allocated are: Uniques, Rares, Gems, Currency and Maps.
• Increased the base duration of the item allocation timer from 1.6 seconds to 2.6 seconds. There is still a bonus allocation time for characters that are a distance away (travel time +5%).
• Allocated items no longer show a countdown timer or player name. They are still dimmed out while they are allocated to someone else.
• These changes were made to reduce the number of allocated items (for readability), increase their allocation duration (for fairness) and to reduce the visual chaos associated with the timer and allocation name appearing and disappearing (for readability). In our testing it is now much easier to see what items bosses drop and to click the items that are allocated to you.

What's wrong with melee? fuck i just started and i already screwed up my shadow? I knew I was going to regret playing something with no respec.

I gave this another 20-30 hours of play.

This is not a good game. I don't get it. What is attracting people to it?

You left click on mass quantities of things, which explode into piles of new pants gems that make your left click explode things with greater adroitness. What separates it from Diablo II for you?

I gave this another 20-30 hours of play.

This is not a good game. I don't get it. What is attracting people to it?

Problem is as has been stated - the tree looks impressive, but when you actually look into it, it is mostly filler +5 to this, or +10 to that.

I gave this another 20-30 hours of play.

This is not a good game. I don't get it. What is attracting people to it?

I never get the good feeling of wading through mobs massacring them in PoE. Smart builds are very plodding and deliberate killing machines instead of buzzsaws that bathe in blood like the more fun Diablo builds.

The economy has become centered around orbs that are so rare they may as well not exist,

You can thank the "make it harder, challenge me" crowd that you find in most betas nowadays for that. It was more like Diablo 2 until a patch that gave mobs spells which was hugely overpowered. Since then it's been slowly reduced in difficulty but never back to how easy it was.

Have you ever used the PoE shield charge skill? Its sooooo slow and ponderous seeming, that's just the way the game is.

and I never get the good feeling of wading through mobs massacring them in PoE

You can thank the "make it harder, challenge me" crowd that you find in most betas nowadays for that. It was more like Diablo 2 until a patch that gave mobs spells which was hugely overpowered. Since then it's been slowly reduced in difficulty but never back to how easy it was.

coldsnapcoldsnapcoldsnapcoldsnapcoldsnapcoldsnapcoldsnapcoldsnapcoldsnapcoldsnapcoldsnap

There were definitely both good and bad things about PoE.

The skill tree has been discussed a lot already here, but I'm firmly in the "it's shite" camp. It could *easily* have been trimmed to 10% of its size and made the options much clearer in the process. The vast majority of people seem to follow cookie-cutter builds with minor variations anyway, which makes the huge diversity possible a total illusion. If you don't spec into high survivability you won't survive in end-game, end of story.

The loot was incredibly lack-lustre. Economy completely screwed and only any use to the grindiest of grinders. Seeing the public groups noticeboard composed *entirely* of trading groups points out the value of the AH in D3, although I don't think D3 got that right either, but that was more to do with poor itemisation and stats.

PoE strikes me as the game you get if you listen to those who complained the most loudly about D3. Neither is a good game but they're at opposite ends of the shit spectrum. Different shades of brown if you will. Somewhere inbetween the two is a great game, but what we've got instead is two mediocre games.

The skill tree has been discussed a lot already here, but I'm firmly in the "it's shite" camp. It could *easily* have been trimmed to 10% of its size and made the options much clearer in the process. The vast majority of people seem to follow cookie-cutter builds with minor variations anyway, which makes the huge diversity possible a total illusion. If you don't spec into high survivability you won't survive in end-game, end of story.

I dunno, at least on normal difficulty my lightning arrow ranger (one of the cookie-cutter builds) feels pretty stompy. I throw fire traps, fire a couple of poison arrows, then fire Lesser Multiple Projectile'd lightning arrows into hordes of mobs and they explode in showers of particle effects and gore. Feels good man.

I dont want to be a dick or anything but normal diff means jack shit.  A blind retarded monkey with starting wand can finish normal diff without breaking sweat Even merci diff is not that hard.  Build check happens once you hit lvl70+ maps with some nasty modifiers.  And even there its purely  a build/gear check, all mechanics of the gameplay is spam a single AOE skill

if you are not impressed by their skill tree -stay away from  this game because its really  the only jewel in it.

But I really don't get this. It's not like anyone thought it was a 'jewel' ten years ago when they used it for Final Fantasy X. Actually it annoyed more than one person. What makes it so cool now? I don't understand.

But I really don't get this. It's not like anyone thought it was a 'jewel' ten years ago when they used it for Final Fantasy X. Actually it annoyed more than one person. What makes it so cool now? I don't understand.

Wow and I thought POE devs were original. Never knew FFX  had basically  same tree lol. All in all I personally like this  approach a lot  as it allows for great build diversity (even though in case of POE poor overall balancing really limits the viable build pool). I just love making builds and theorycrafting them

I still play this occasionally and I like to dream that it is a proof of concept for a well-funded PoE 2

One route? I wish my skill tree options were that unambiguous.

For anyone who hasn't played the game, this post is almost entirely wrong.

It could *easily* have been trimmed to 10% of its size and made the options much clearer in the process

The vast majority of people seem to follow cookie-cutter builds with minor variations anyway, which makes the huge diversity possible a total illusion.

If you don't spec into high survivability you won't survive in end-game, end of story

The loot was incredibly lack-lustre

Economy completely screwed and only any use to the grindiest of grinders

Somewhere inbetween the two is a great game, but what we've got instead is two mediocre games.

Since you didnt mention it by name are we really talking about this skill tree? http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100227155641/finalfantasy/images/9/94/Final_Fantasy_10_Sphere_Grid.svg

Pretty sure he was talking about PoE.

I still play this occasionally and I like to dream that it is a proof of concept for a well-funded PoE 2

Except what you really have is a game that is just easy none of the content is hard and the min/max builds can clear it with their eyes closed. Which I bet is boring again, there's no endgame! This game is too trivially easy its boring!

At the point where "melee" characters become unviable, maybe you need to look into how you built your fucking game.  Look I understand not everyone can have every throwaway skill and expect to do well but you are taking things to extremes and that is not the point at all.  Saying "that's just how it is" is a huge cop out to making an end game viable for I dunno, HALF YOUR FUCKING CLASSES.

Games that at high difficulty are about high survivability builds or pre-defined roles of tank/healer/dps are fucking boring.

The end.

I'm glad that the developers are at least aware (http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/322594)  of the Melee Problem and seem to have some sort of roadmap for addressing it.

Whether that'll come in time for anyone to care is another thing.

How many of you are running maps? Okay. That's how many of you should be complaining about what is and isn't viable at endgame. If you have a 114-point build it fucking better be able to do what ever you want, you're 20+ levels over the content. It's like complaining that WoW is shit because rogues have poorly-itemized 25-man hardmode Pandacrown Citadel gear.

There are plenty of reasons to dislike the game without going onto the official forum to find more. Although I must say, "you have to plan out your character" is, uh, a new one on me. Is the complaint about the magnitude of
the power gap between well-built and poorly-built characters? The amount of time it takes? That the planning phase isn't as fun as in other ARPGs?

Started my first real character since early in Beta, so I had never been outside of Act 1.  Rolled on the new Onslaught league an made it up to level 50 on a Freeze Pulser.  Went to go do Cruel Vaal and got 1 shot smashed because my single target dps is really bad and I was getting impatient after 5 minutes of playing it safe.  I had 1500 health and over 1k armor and 40ish fire resist so thought I'd be ok.  Next time guess I'll cap my fire resist or do it in a party or something.  RIP.

Anyways, I think having been through the game once now I will level much faster this time.  Hopefully I can actually make it to merciless the second time around =)

Is 1.0 going to include Act IV?

I really love this game, and can see myself playing it off and on for years.

Features - Guilds:

We've added Guilds! To create one, use the Social screen. Guilds can initially hold 30 members, but more slots can be purchased.

- There are three membership tiers - Leader, Office and Member. Leaders can change permissions. Officers can invite people to the guild.
- There's a guild chat channel (bound to the & symbol). It spans across leagues.
- Powerful guilds can obtain tags that appear next to their members' names in chat. This requires sacrificing a set of end-game Maps, each of which corresponds to a letter or symbol in the tag. Tags are unique and some symbols are much rarer than others.
- You can purchase Premium Guild Stash Tabs which allow you to store your guild's wealth. You can set permissions for different tiers of members to view, add items and remove items.
- Guild purchases are handled by the guild leader. Players can visit their guild page on pathofexile.com to donate points to their guild.
- Guild Challenges are coming very soon!

There's arena-style PVP, it's grindy as shit in the higher difficulties since you need gear/levels to advance but skill gems tend to drop more than consistently enough (also you get them from quests) that you'll have what you likely want, and you're largely stuck with your spec because you get a smattering of respec points (1 per node you roll back) and more require random drops/vendor trading (vendors kinda operate like horadric cubes)/trading with other players.

Read the class forums and look at what people are doing and popular builds to kinda get what works and what doesn't.

I made the mistake of trying to rebuild my blood magic+lightning arrow ranger the best I could and she's fucking worthless now. They really, really fucked my old build up.

Looks like another uninstall. Its 2013.... 7 years of game design says hello.

I get where you are coming from. However, one thing to keep in mind is that these guys have been pretty open about only wanting to make a classically styled, complex ARPG, so if you don't like that sort of thing you shouldn't waste the bandwidth.

Anyone have any links to a decent guide/character builder?

I mean the fuck do I have to go a forum to find a build before I even play the game in 2013?

Its not limitations. Its practical. The only reason I play league of legends is because I get to experiment over and over again with champ builds, masteries, runes, and champions. Over and over. I pride myself in going over every detail of the game and finding new decks to play with, that aspect despite the fact that I'll never be in diamond league is the only reason I log on. If LoL made it painful to keep up a stable of champions, added a cost to resetting runes, added a cost to resetting masteries, locked you in with the recommended item build, than I would have quite in a month. I mean all this stuff is great if your little timmy just happy to see the xplosions and the ding gratzs, but mean death nails to someone who wants to be serious with a game that gives you so many options to play and has competitive potential.

To show the other side of that though - free respecs was one of my biggest turnoffs in D3. It felt like there was no investment in character build at all, since I could just redo it willy nilly, any time I wanted. Mind you, I'm not really the target audience here (for respecs), as I never play "end game" in these types of games. I enjoy rerolling.

I've been messing with Spectral Throw on a Duelist.

I'd say that you could drop the Life Leech off to equipment and equip Faster Attacks, not Faster Projectiles as you want the mobs to be attacked by the throw as many times as possible.

Edit: Here's what my 2h Duelist Spectral Throw (http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgQBAecFLRcdGlUppTJ-Nug6UkCgTipW-luvYEthIWSjapNuaXRBdO1674TZhO-Hao1-kGybLZ65n8ukwqmUtkG3tr6nwA_EuM2Y0k3V7dX43Q3exupi_MU=) looks like around 40 as well. Using whatever fat 2h I can find with Spectral + LMP + Faster Projectiles (mistake) + Added Lit damage.  Hoping to find GMP+Faster Attacks.

Hopefully.  I have very low survivability, so I think this experiment will start to fail soon.

Good news is I've got a few items that I want to try out with different builds.

So dead hardcore characters become normal characters... isn't that just completely missing the point? HC is just a different server people who haven't died yet play on.

All the items/gems on your character get converted to normal on death. Your hardcore stash remains your hardcore stash. Its effectively the same as diablo II, if your interested in playing hardcore. You just have the option of playing that character in normal (or at least dumping anything good into your normal stash) before you delete him.

That's still just a minor inconvenience and doesn't seem like there is any reason to not start every character as hardcore.

Has someone started a F13/Bat Country guild?

That's still just a minor inconvenience and doesn't seem like there is any reason to not start every character as hardcore.

I just made F13 by accident, then invited you...but you logged out.  :oh_i_see:

I was kinda disappointed in the ending. Lady Dibella literally just pops into existence there and is like, "hey, good job."

Not expecting much but still kinda weak.

I'm playing this until I die again. It does look nicer but the performance on steam seems even worse than I remember. Even solo and without that many mobs on screen I'm seeing tons of noticeable instances of desync. The game takes like 1 hour to start up and load for some reason which is obnoxious.

That said overall it looks much better than I remember and I'm going to try very hard to not die.

I'm retarded at this game, apparently.  I go from kicking ass with a character to raped all the time in one zone.  

Dumped into the Standard league.  The league stash tabs and all of your shit show up in your Standard stash as read-only.

I also notice a large delay when starting up. I do not recall it being that bad when I played previously (last spring?) on the same machine.

One thing they need to implement is the ability to turn off exp for a short time to facilitate easier farming of low to mid level stuff. All too often you are left with terrible gear early game and not enough currency/luck to change that easily.

One thing they need to implement is the ability to turn off exp for a short time to facilitate easier farming of low to mid level stuff. All too often you are left with terrible gear early game and not enough currency/luck to change that easily.

Unannounced in patch 1.0.1 was a bug that made Carrion Queens deal several times as much damage as they were supposed to. Several hours later they fixed the bug and restored 732 dead hardcore characters (https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/610307) back to their original leagues. It's cool that they went out of their way to ameliorate the losses - they didn't have to; hardcore player culture generally dictates that when you die, you suck it up and reroll with a minimum of bitching no matter how bullshitty the circumstances - but extra cool that they have all the infrastructure in place to identify the affected characters, roll back their deaths (characters not hit by queens weren't brought back), and patch out the bug with, like, five minutes of downtime. Try as I might to stay cynical, I'm finding myself with a lot of faith in this dev team.

Abandoned melee templar who is at the end of normal @ L40 since cast on damage taken just got obliterated. Not sure what to roll anymore. Templars seem to be a in a really bad place right now their best uses are as tri curse support types but that isn't something one should role when you are solo/pub I would think.

Holy fuck. I just died at level 53 AGAIN right after spending a bunch of currency on gear AGAIN. Fuck. This. Game. How am I so goddamn bad.

I don't even have access to scion, so no more ST characters til I power through act 3. Speaking of which, if I beat the game in Standard League do I get access to scion in Nemesis?

Anybody know if the a guild invitation applies at the account level or just the character level?

I've got a blue ceremonial mace with R-R-G linked that has a the best possible phys affix for its level (wicked) @ +81% and the worst possible strength str affix @ +12. So if it fit just what you needed you could alch it and cross your fingers.

Its 51-65, 1.1/s requires 95str to wield and level 28.

So is there a nemesis guild?

I've logged 100+ hours in by myself. Currently, a lvl 37 shadow. Name: Zumux.

Back up to 51 and getting that now-familiar "everything deals slightly more damage than I'm comfortable with for farming" feeling. Hrm.

Sometimes I think I'm doing this game all wrong.

Sometimes I think I'm doing this game all wrong.

Did you forget it's a multiplayer game?

It warms my heart to see this thread going in the same direction as Diablo 3 with regards to single player/multiplayer.

Apparently in this game, if a piece of loot drops, it's assigned to someone.  If that someone isn't you, you can't touch it.  Given "People go to fast", no one's going to loop back to pick up a piece of loot just so they can hand it to you.

Have you played multiplayer RPGs before?

People go too fast, meaning you can't hardly pause to pick up your loot.

Apparently in this game, if a piece of loot drops, it's assigned to someone.  If that someone isn't you, you can't touch it.  Given "People go to fast", no one's going to loop back to pick up a piece of loot just so they can hand it to you.

If I could play with friends, that would be one thing.  But as we all know, leveling up together never works out.

I really hate feeling like a fifth wheel in a group.

No interest in farming until some random gem drops.  Back to the shelf with this one.

I made a barbarian

Managed to graveyard zerg Dom to death on Merciless with my ST Scion; Cast on Death + Portal was instrumental. His first phase was much more difficult than his second; two Staunching flasks let me face-tank phase 2 easily.

Now it's on to maps, I guess...and I have no idea how they work. I got a rare one as a quest reward for killing Dom and I've found a few whites. I'm not sure if I should go into a white or just jump into the rare.

Might want to act fast since they will be removing the Item Quantity mod in the next update.  I assume that means for maps as well as items, but I might be wrong.

After we'd discussed the new features, the guys took me on a two-person jaunt through the Mayan-ish dungeon (working title “Apex of Sacrifice) at the center of which lurks the terrifying Queen Atziri. Rogers admitted that the dungeon was designed to be impassable for all but the best players and said that the first hundred to get through it would get a special micro-transaction reward.

Found two masters, passed the test of one.  Naturally, neither were aligned with the class I was playing.

More interesting in the short term are the strongboxes, which some might remember from the last league.  I found a yellow one (hooray for "just one more area" instead of bed) and it puked out more gems than I have ever seen in one place.  At least ten, maybe fifteen, one or two of which I already plan to put to use.

I went with the crypt, but I haven't bothered decorating it yet.

If anyone wants into the f13 guild let me know. Or at least add me to friends so we can maybe play together.

...I'm at 68 on my freeze pulse shadow and his dps is great even with terrible gear (~6800 with lmp) but his defense is horrid...

I also have an old ST scion that I'm trying to dig up but the character has serious mana issues.  I think I need to rework the tree a bit to see if I can pickup some mana regen somewhere.

That scion of yours has some serious run speed though. It was tough to keep up with while on my slow marauder.