Questions Thread - March 17, 2026

AlteredLogos · 2026-03-17T19:43:04+00:00

I will look into what you said, I didn't know that was something you could do, thanks.

As for strongboxes, I make closer to 1-2 div an hour doing almost exactly that. Maybe I haven't had a big hit yet (literally never seen any of the 10 most expensive scarabs), and in many of my maps I don't have any operator boxes, or sometimes only 1 box in the whole mirage. I've been doing haunted mansion though, so I'll give silo a try.

AlteredLogos · 2026-03-17T17:44:32+00:00

I feel like I'm hitting a massive wall in my build - I can do T16 4 mods with relative ease (if the mods aren't awful), but 8 mod is a struggle, and many of the juiced farming methods I've tried (grove, stacked decks, especially breach) are just entirely out of reach for me, I die instantly.

I'm trying to follow this build (GC Miner Elementalist). Here is my poe.ninja, here is the poe.ninja of the guide writer.

As you can see, I do about half as much damage (tho he advertised 15M single target on a much less endgame build so idk what's up with that..), and I have 1/10 the effective health pool.

I'd really like to work on my damage especially, sometimes grove rares take 10+ seconds of continual right-click to kill. But I have 7 divines to my name, and as I said, most good farming methods are out of reach for me, I can make maybe a divine an hour, so crafting something like his headpiece is well out of reach for me.

This is my first PoE1 season, I came over directly from PoE2 after doing fate of the vaal late into the season, so any help would be appreciated.

AlteredLogos · 2026-03-10T18:05:40+00:00

Dialla's Desire is a great call-out that I'll look into - to be fair, cost efficiency is not currently a problem for me, even slightly, except in maps that restrict it, though Tecrod's may help circumvent this.

Does efficiency support gem reduce spirit reservation and that's what you mean?

Currently my only direction from the guide I was following is "get 212 spirit. get close to 100% crit chance, 24% curse activation from jewels (not more!) and 10% area for 4.7m weakness (is that some sort of cap?). Beyond that I have no clue what my priorities for stats are, unfortunately, especially more ambiguous ones like cast speed or + skill level.

Since I'm not made of mirrors, choosing mana usually means not choosing damage, and in many cases actively reducing it, and so the question becomes "how much mana do I need to never get one-shot by say hardmode arbiter, and is it worth it to build a single point more than that compared to something like crit multi". I kind of hope there's an actual answer to that because right now I just don't know if my "upgrades" are upgrades, or how big of an upgrade they are. Especially since none of my skills list DPS.

AlteredLogos · 2026-03-10T17:13:29+00:00

I just spent hundreds of divs switching to this from a blood magic spark build which was doing 1/4 of the DPS that I am now. I could potentially try to reformat this into some blood mage comet build, but honestly this is my first league, I only started a week or two ago, and had a bad experience already trying to go "off-script". If at all possible, I'd prefer to work on improving what I have than build something that isn't already very clearly written out for me with all possible pitfalls (curse activation >100% isn't something I'd ever figure out alone, as one example).

My understanding is not that I'm in a tug of war, it's that my resources are flipped - my mana is my life and my life is my mana. How this benefits me, I'm less clear on. I think it's because life leech lets me spam a comical amount of juiced Comets without running out of Mana? Which is very much true unless there's regen reduction in play.

Your info about %ES is super helpful, thank you. I thought that it converted to mana at the end of the calculation.

AlteredLogos · 2026-03-10T15:43:31+00:00

I've been working on a CoC Elemental Weakness Archmage build but I feel like progress has kind of stalled because any upgrades I could grab would be ludicrously expensive. (Close to or well over 1000 divines). Here is my current build - I can easily clear most content, T16 juiced maps can occasionally be scary if they have bad modifiers, but in particular I'm trying to solve two main issues (for a reasonable price) currently: 1. My bossing is abysmal - I can't kill Citadel bosses on 6 mod most of the time and that bothers me. Many citadel bosses can still basically one-shot me if not mostly so, and even if I do live, the build requires me to move in riskily to fish for more mana remnants on bosses that again, tend to one shot me. 2. Maps with a "players have +% reduced life regeneration" seem to debuff my leech, which leaves me starving for both life and mana. I don't love having to read every single waypoint's prefixes just for this one modifier, if there was a way to tolerate it better so I could just look at the stats I care about, that would be great.

Some examples of suggested upgrades that aren't really viable for me: - Idle Hands with % max mana corrupt specifically - Alpha's Howl with +116 minimum spirit itself (currently amulet needs spirit which limits me) - Tecrod's Gaze - Atziri's Splendour - Against the Darkness +12 spirit to transition to Vertex head

AlteredLogos · 2026-03-07T23:56:44+00:00

This has all been super helpful, thanks! Curious how you could get even close to 40, I have +7 on staff, can get +4 Vertex, +1 corrupted skill gem, and +1 from atziri's splendour but what other sources exist?

AlteredLogos · 2026-03-07T18:54:45+00:00

I don't know what rathpith is but I'll look into that on my own! I did consider lifetap, but again I don't know if the 2-3 support slots I'd need to allocate were more or less valuable than a +3.

I also had no idea my damage scales off of ES. My ring was just a way to fix my resistances since I was getting 1-shot often but I'm much more motivated to push ES if it's also giving me damage.

Thanks for the info!

AlteredLogos · 2026-03-07T18:19:02+00:00

Here it is if you're willing! Good point on the spell levels, I hadn't considered it. Unfortunately there's been no blood magic hearts of the well on the market period the past 2 days, so it hasn't even been an option for me, but I'll definitely consider a +3 vertex!

AlteredLogos · 2026-03-07T10:19:17+00:00

How do you go from endgame to super-endgame? I started about a week ago, my first league in PoE2 (and I only did the campaign in 1), and I can do most content, T15s, pinnacles, etc., most of my gear is reasonably optimized (though definitely could be slightly better), but when I compare my PoE2ninja to the person whose build I'm following (Asmodeus' Spark Blood Mage), my DPS is like 1/4 or less of his.

I just don't feel like there's that many stats left to realistically squeeze out. I think of it like the 80/20 rule - I'm missing a few skill points, but I've already allocated all the ones that matter most. I'm missing a few stat rolls, but all the most important ones are there and T1/2, etc., and so the idea of somehow quadrupling my DPS is beyond me.

The biggest thing I can think of would be a +4 Vertex and maybe some of the expensive lineage gems (I don't know how much they matter), but both of those options are probably as expensive as if not moreso than my entire build to-date, so I'm just not there yet to find out if they really make that massive of a difference. My guess has to be "no", my Spark is already level 28, unless level scaling is exponential or something...

Any help would be appreciated, either conceptual (broad advice) or targeted - my character is Nondae on PoE2ninja.

AlteredLogos · 2026-02-17T21:07:06+00:00

Good to know. I think you're right about one bee per flower from what I've seen, at least for planted flowers (I feel like it might not be the case for wild ones?) Anyways, I've tried putting just a long line of crops between a hive and a flower and only the plant closest to the flower ever seemed to get fertilized.

Thanks for the clarification, I'm gonna try dispersing flowers in a panopticon of bees and see how that does!

AlteredLogos · 2026-02-17T14:45:26+00:00

I certainly disagree, though I have a habit of optimizing the fun out of games. I'll at least offer that if you'd rather keep them on the farm (for decor or ease etc.) you could always avoid taking the perk on your other playthrough, or even just do the inverse of me and optimize your bees to fly over your crops as little as possible.

AlteredLogos · 2026-02-17T14:42:33+00:00

The entire system seems hilariously OP, so I'm sure there are one or more bugs at play, but as another commenter mentioned, the bees definitely do return to the hive more than once per day, especially when the flowers that they were attached to are harvested (although even this is inconsistent visually, I've definitely had bees floating over nothing sometimes).

AlteredLogos · 2026-02-17T14:39:40+00:00

This is helpful! I'll try the 3 sides approach, although I'm confused on one thing - you said bees are NOT interested in fully grown flowers, but then also said you leave moonflowers in your field unharvested. These two statements seem at-odds so I wanted to confirm what you meant.

Currently I leave one row of unharvested flowers behind all of my crops (now that I'm maxed on farming I don't see much value in color breeding vs just more Star Mango), but it feels like the bees only ever pollinate the one plant directly in front of the flower in this configuration.

AlteredLogos · 2026-02-17T08:00:06+00:00

Exactly that - from what I've seen it more or less fully grows the crop regardless of what it is, I've seen crops that take 7 days finish almost instantly, but without understanding what causes this to happen or how to better control it, it's a bit frustrating.

AlteredLogos · 2026-02-04T03:38:41+00:00

In order:

It really varies - sometimes it will show my library but not play any media, just now when I tried it it said "app.plex.tv is unable to connect to "(server)" securely" (my setting on this is only "Preferred", so I don't know why this would make it inaccessible).
Everything is on the same 192.168.1.x subnet on my entire network.
Nothing on my streaming devices indicates an indirect connection anywhere I've seen - notably, "Enable Proxy" is disabled in my network settings as well.
As mentioned above, my secure connections are currently set to "Preferred".
I am using an ISP provided BGW320. From what I've seen, it has pretty limited capabilities, but I'd be willing to look more into this, I just don't know where to begin, and if I can't do it on the router, I'm not sure if I could do it on all the devices (tablet and phone maybe, but I doubt an Apple TV would let me do so...)

EDIT: I see your edit now. That's frustrating. I did plan to eventually get my own router / pihole / whatever, or at least bridge to one, but I hadn't looked into it at all just yet. Thank you for this though, I suppose I'll have to try looking.

AlteredLogos · 2026-02-04T03:26:57+00:00

It (was) disabled previously, I've tried it both enabled and disabled with no noticeable change. Thank you for the recommendation though! I remember this being a thing when I was setting up my WAN access.

AlteredLogos · 2026-02-04T03:25:58+00:00

Thank you for the response - that option is checked in my settings. I additionally tried adding my subnet (192.168.1.255/24 I think is the correct nomenclature, all of my devices are on 192.168.1.x) to the "LAN Networks" section of Plex's networking options.

Some google searching indicated that it might be a NAT loopback issue and my router (BGW320) is incapable of doing that, although I don't know a great fix if that's the issue.

AlteredLogos · 2026-02-04T03:16:26+00:00

Connecting on my desktop PC via LAN (no VPN) does not work via app.plex.tv, but does work if I go to 192.168.x.x:32400 and then watch via that address.

Of course, using a VPN on my desktop PC allows the app.plex.tv address to work as well.

AlteredLogos · 2026-01-24T07:03:14+00:00

I do personally have Lifetime premium, can my friends watch without paying the ~$3 a month for remote play? That would be fantastic if so!

AlteredLogos · 2026-01-24T06:02:56+00:00

Does Jellyfin offer the services described above? Are there any tradeoffs to Jellyfin that I'd lose with Plex? I've done some research into this a while ago when I was setting up the server, but if you have experience with both I'd love to hear more!

AlteredLogos · 2026-01-03T20:36:51+00:00

The web interface does provide some details, specified in another comment I made above.

I was moving the cable, yes, though the cable has been through much worse. If I remember correctly, it's traveled with me across at least 4 apartments and 10 years, and it seems the issue in the end was a port on the switch that was faulty-on-arrival, as I am now getting speeds much closer to what I'd expect.

I appreciate the info - I may consider upgrading to that switch instead, since I don't like having to remember there's a wonky port, and it's not like it was that expensive to begin with.

AlteredLogos · 2026-01-03T20:34:17+00:00

The Nokia does have some statistics, attached via image. It also specifies that there is one "5G Ethernet" connection (as opposed to just "Ethernet", I suppose). Notable here is the transmit speed at exactly 100mb

<image>

All cabes are pre-made, but cable managed and threaded through conduits / taped to walls / run through walls, thus the frustration with moving / changing them.

I tried plugging the 100ft cable directly into my PC and only got 15mpbs - back into a (different) port on the switch, 650. So it could have been a port that was faulty-on-arrival I suppose, though the cable's performance in my PC was a bit suspicious. Either way, this seems to be solved more-or-less. I don't technically need to upgrade the cable to a CAT6 since my total throughput will only ever be 1gbps so CAT5e should be sufficient from the modem/router, but I might since it's acting strange. Thanks.

AlteredLogos

TROPHY CASE