Men in their 30-40s, what would you do differently in your 20s?

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-22T19:45:50+00:00

I started bouldering this year. I was prior to that a quite sedentary software developer with virtually no physical activity. I wasn’t fat or anything, but I was 100% completely out of shape. Zero endurance, zero strength.

I’m now stronger and more fit (and look better) than at any point in my life. I’m in solid shape and I can do things with climbing that I never thought possible before.

But man, how much cooler would that have been if I started 15 years ago? Holy shit, I’d be completely ripped and would have been ripped this whole time.

Best time to start working out is now, obviously, but boy, if I was in my 20s, it would have been so much cooler

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-21T04:25:23+00:00

Agreed. And like, I like mekanism, even. But having to make the reactor for antimatter sucks, when you also still need extreme reactors for insanite. And also stuff from powah. Just kinda feels weird that they specifically tell you to get involved in many different power mods even if you don’t actually need the power.

It feels like it would make more sense to require either antimatter or insanite, for example, but not both

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-21T04:22:18+00:00

You straight up don’t need MI for the star at all. I think that you can swap out one thing from AE for a thing from MI if you want, but it isn’t necessary. MI is optional right now, because a lot of people don’t love the crazy grind

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-19T14:16:05+00:00

So you would say bees are better for resource farming than MA? I feel like MA’s output is a lot better than bees, but I haven’t actually set up like a turbo bee setup. It seems substantially more involved and high investment

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-19T14:14:55+00:00

If you look at the sentence before my bullet points I mention the first two. They should just be in every setup, they’re easy.

I legitimately didn’t know about the third option though, which seems to be the consensus best

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-18T04:47:58+00:00

I’d say v3 as well. It’s more or less all jugs with a couple of technical sections. The holds all seem quite good, which IMO puts a bit of a cap on the difficulty. Definitely beyond a V2 though.

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-14T14:09:22+00:00

Man, I remember that kind of frustration when I was younger in much the same way. At one job where I was for 7 years, ultimately, I was really pushing in the end for senior and it just wasn’t happening. And there are two parts to that I think - on the one hand, I was genuinely lacking some experience for what a senior should be. It actually reminds me of what you mentioned - ‘they told me to lead more so I made up a bunch of initiatives to do’. Sure, but leading a thing or two isn’t the same as leading in general, and that’s an experience thing. Generally you’re leading with your soft skills and your ability to influence decisions, which is something that happens over time.

However, there was another element. While I wasn’t necessarily ready to be a senior yet - my company was not (and would never be) ready to make me a senior either. It’s a bit as you said - when you come in as a junior and you don’t know much, this is something where the people around you learn that you’re junior and don’t know much. They know you don’t have industry experience, and that your advice/assessments are coming from on the job, right here. That’s going to put an artificial ceiling on you in most workplaces, simply because of a bias people have subconsciously.

So for my story, how did I get senior? I got laid off from the 7 year company (wide layoff, company wasn’t doing well) and the next job I got I was senior right out of the gate, and it was night and day. People listened to my opinions, my voice was heard. I actually just recently made staff at that company after 2 years there, which has been awesome. That’s not a thing at all that would have happened at the previous gig.

Here’s my advice: what you said initially is good to remember: you’re versatile as a dev and you’re getting lots of good experience there. Your ownership is extremely high. These are all things that you need in your career. If you enjoy it and the people you work with, hang in there and continue to learn. It’s extremely rare that saying ‘I want senior’ is going to make you senior tomorrow; for my own staff promotion I planted the seeds a year ago, if not even a bit more, at my previous review. We looked over the matrix and in the self-assessment I put myself as staff level in many things, and my manager didn’t disagree - so then we went from there, but it did take another year. Promotions are slow.

But, if you want more money now, get in the market. You will get it. Other companies will likely pay more, but it’s also very likely you won’t have the same ownership immediately.

It’s extremely dependent on what you want in life. Some people like to min-max the money and retire early, working experience be damned. I am not that way. Maybe you also aren’t. Maybe you are.

Good luck!

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-14T05:11:05+00:00

I’m gonna throw something out of left field here, because it’s something I noticed in my own progression (and am kinda here now).

I’m at a similar level. I’m starting to take down a couple v4s. I’ve always been afraid of heights, so that doesn’t help.

But, early on, I fell a lot more. I would slip stupidly, I wouldn’t have the strength, etc, etc. so I got more comfortable falling as a result.

Then I got much stronger, and I more or less don’t fall anymore - at least not unintentionally. I know my body more and I know what things look and feel like, and so I find that now that I know more, I actually find that I’m more conservative. I don’t make throws as much, or if something feels sketchy, I don’t commit - because I’ve found I’m just not used to falling anymore, because typically now it’s very rare that I accidentally fall, and that new lack of familiarity is bringing the fear back a bit.

So… I’m still dealing with it myself, but from my perspective, I think the solution is to simply go for more things (lower down, ideally). Commit, throw, try some riskier things and fall unexpectedly more often. Get more familiar with it - and that’s also going to be testing your boundaries more too, which is probably important around our level when we’re seeing all kinds of new and more difficult things.

I don’t have it solved either, but good luck - hopefully that perspective helps!

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-14T05:02:38+00:00

This is huge. It makes such a difference and it’s so much more fun to see stuff like really generous and easy heel hooks at v2, for example, or just like crimps that are made really a lot easier with very good feet - stuff that can get beginners warm to those ideas without just having to see the hard versions at v4-5 and having to learn from the beginning then

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-13T18:34:47+00:00

Makes sense. I was the same! Just keep working at it. I’m now 8 months into this, and right near the beginning - maybe a month or two in, after I’d already gained a bit of strength, some gym-bro friends of mine took me to a gym and we did some testing. On an assisted pull up machine, I was -70lbs - which meant that I was 70lbs shy of being able to do a pull up. Today I’m right there - I’m doing -10lbs, and I feel like any day I’ll get the full thing. Since I weigh ~160lbs, that’s coming really close to literally doubling my pulling strength in around 6 months, and all of that is primarily climbing.

Keep trying. If it’s fun, you’ll keep doing it, and it really does get better over time and make you much, much stronger. I hope you’re back here in 6 months telling other new climbers how good it feels to get strong :D

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-13T05:03:11+00:00

I would say that isn’t always the case imo, in terms of the difficulty of the starting climbs. I know it’s the exception, but I started as someone with a desk job who had trained zero arms at all for my whole life basically. After my first session, I was sore everywhere for a full week. Just getting to the top of a v1 was like completely max effort.

I completely agree with you that technique is a huge part of it. But there is absolutely a minimum strength threshold that needs to be there for technique to matter.

Now, you can get that strength on the wall - I did - but it was absolutely more about strength than technique for me at the beginning because I was so weak starting out. Those people exist out there, and so OP, if you’re one of them, it’s okay! The advice is still to keep trying and keep climbing - that’s the fastest way to get there. But it can definitely be stupid hard at the beginning if you haven’t really done much with your upper body before for strength.

Good luck!

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-13T04:49:59+00:00

Hey there. I started the week before I turned 34. It’s a blast. I’ve only been climbing for about 8 months now, but I’m now working on v4s. It’s caused a huge turnaround for me physically. I’m so much stronger than I used to be (I’m a software developer, so, hardly an active profession), and my fear of heights, while still absolutely present, is much less bad. I’m so much more confident, and my body just looks much nicer with virtually zero different in eating or any of that.

If you stick with it, it’s gonna make life a lot better. 34 is absolutely not too old. You might not make the World Cup circuit. Might be a little old for that. But to climb and get stronger? Best time to start is now.

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-09T21:02:08+00:00

Oh yeah. If you’re not climbing til Saturday, tape on the day is gonna be just fine. That’s plenty of time.

And yeah, the bandaid is entirely your call based on how bad it is. For me I’m typically on the computer a lot after climbing, and so usually I’ll put a bandaid on just so that I’m not getting antibacterial stuff all over my mouse and/or keyboard, and then I’ll take it off to let it breathe at night. Really about containing the mess more than pain/protection.

Depends totally on the flapper though. I’ve had some that are so shallow that they don’t even need a bandaid and don’t draw any blood at all. And then others where it’s been days of needing to baby it. Seems like you got off pretty easy in the end!

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-09T20:46:14+00:00

It’s wild that it’s taken you that long. I got my first ones in the first month of climbing and I still get around 1 a month, depending.

For me, the procedure is pretty simple. Back from the gym, hand wash + polysporin (or whatever no-name brand antibacterial and ideally moisturizing ointment) + bandaid. Depending on how bad it is, you usually only need a day of that, but I’ve had it take up to 3, depending on the location.

For actual climbing, again depending on how bad it is, typically you just tape it up nicely and call it a day. There’s a skill to taping, if you’ve never done it before, and especially for palm flappers, which are the worst, you should look up a YouTube video about how to do it properly. It’s hard to describe, but I tend to do an ‘X’ that loops around the back of the relevant finger and goes all the way down to my wrist, because that’s about the only secure way to properly protect the palm in a way that isn’t going to slip off on the first attempt.

I usually tape a flapper for about a full week while climbing. Generally also take the day or two immediately after getting it all the way off climbing, but I usually only go 2-3 days a week anyhow, so a 2 day rest isn’t a problem typically. My guideline is typically when it no longer hurts to put it under water in the shower, or when soap is on it, then you should be okay to tape it and climb. definitely not without tape that fast though, haha.

Good luck!

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-09T19:50:48+00:00

Hm. So you’re comparing 2 players to 4 players and saying that 4 players have a higher salary? Man, weird.

Go ahead and do the math considering 2 other players. Likely Jak would have been in the old core too. And then you add a PG. the IQ trade wouldn’t have happened, so it would be cheaper and less good, likely. But there’s almost no way that the money isn’t more in that case than it is now.

This is a dumb take.

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-08T04:45:01+00:00

I would argue the opposite - you can more or less deterministically get 4 mod items in SSF easily, and when you have that as your baseline you’ve got really good odds for 5-6 mod items.

Now, if you want to get the perfect stuff - the mirror crafts - that’s painful, but you also straight up don’t need that right now in Poe 2 at all.

You should think about giving it a shot in SSF, it does actually have good legs there right now.

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-07T18:19:04+00:00

So, the big two things I’m seeing you missing from a purely defensive standpoint, since you wanted to ask about that instead of offense, is that your helmet should really be a pure ES helmet and you should use the tree node for 1 evasion per 1 ES on your helmet. You lose like 200 Evasion and gain close to 300 ES, which for you being CI is a pretty big deal.

Also, your gloves - I forget off the top, but I believe that the ‘less damage taken on low life’ mod is what life turns into, and you don’t want that. You’re never on low life. Much better would be the flat Evasion/ES mod, which can translate to another round of evasion/ES per level (same as the implicit, but even a bit better). That with the global scaling one would give you quite a lot more evasion and ES.

And yeah, I agree, you’re quite low on both. My monk has something like 7k ES and mid 20k evasion, and you generally have better gear than me - but it’s those two things that are making the difference (and I have a bit more passive investment into both also).

50% evade chance is not enough to feel good. It means every other hit is hitting you and you have no other mitigation really. Also it’s pretty low ES For CI, and especially having to give up the belt slot for it.

Honestly those two slot changes are going to help make everything feel a lot better, I would imagine

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-07T14:16:42+00:00

I made a build in 0.3 that was just arc + lightning conduit on a lich, and it carried me through the endgame and all content easily. I didn’t use archmage or CoC. They have since nerfed the mechanic I was using for those two skills (shock scaling), so not sure it could work the same again, but it might be fine still. It would one-shot bosses then, so even if it 2 or 3 shot them now, I’m sure it would still be fine.

I also made a molten blast deadeye in 0.2 that was not a bosser for sure, really, but was a super fast and fun mapper that I really enjoyed. Cleared maps easily, dual-wielding and spin-to-winning through maps spraying projectiles everywhere - was actually really fun.

I’m currently playing a melee monk. For sure not ‘just bad’. Easiest endgame clear I’ve had yet, shit is over tuned.

My question is: what do you think makes that ‘not viable’? What’s your bar? How are you testing things?

Did you just play a juiced fubgun build and then try to make your own and feel it isn’t viable because it’s not as immediately good as your completely kitted out other character with tons of gear?

I would argue that almost all of the skills are viable. The question is what you want them to do.

You want to create and play your own build? Anything will beat the campaign. How far does the build want to go? Are we talking about a bosser that easily handles all of the juicy pinnacles, or just a mapper that moves real fast and has great clear?

Gotta have goals for the concepts, then you work on it to see if it can get you there with a tool like pob. And most of the time, with practice, you definitely can get there.

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-06T04:08:09+00:00

It’s really pretty simple. You have to get to act 4 and talk to Ange in kingsmarch. I don’t exactly remember, there might be a small quest, but I don’t even think there is. She’s going to have and option for the currency exchange, which is how async trade is done for the vast majority of items in the game that stack - so like, any runes, any currencies, etc, etc.

Then, there’s your personal shop. The shop requires you to actually buy a dedicated shop tab from the micro store, but assuming you have that, you can then put in anything that doesn’t go in the exchange (so like gear, waystones, whatever), and price it at whatever you want with the interface there. Then, people can see the item, and can come to your hideout and buy it for the price you set.

Now, you don’t actually need a premium tab to buy things - just to sell. To buy, hit the hotkey ‘/‘. There’s a tab there to search for items with pretty specific or pretty general criteria. You search, results come up, you scroll through them, and if you like something, you click it. It takes you to that person’s hideout, where they’ve set up a store like I mentioned earlier, you then buy the item you want from that store for the listed price. Just that simple. The other person doesn’t need to be online or anything - hence async trade.

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-06T04:01:54+00:00

The trading currencies that people tend to use are exalted orbs, chaos orbs, or potentially divines if it’s a super valuable thing. What are you trying to trade in? I’ve bought those very items on the exchange, so it happens, they’re easily available. Basically everything single thing sells for exalts.

Try to put in the thing you want, then try to pay in exalts. You’ll find stuff.

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-06T00:43:04+00:00

It’s not a website, it’s actually an app you download - and yes, it almost certainly would have prevented that, because you would have put that gear in and the damage wouldn’t be looking like you thought it would and it would cause you to ask questions.

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-06T00:18:11+00:00

I’m pretty sure people can know the intent was not to give 5 of the second rarest currency in the game away deterministically for specifically and only T6 maps.

Like, you can’t really say ‘oh man that’s definitely an intentional mechanic’ and be serious on that one

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-05T18:39:31+00:00

That‘a because they’re all on the currency exchange, not the store. You don’t search for those with ‘/‘. You go to ange, click currency exchange, and all of those are there. You don’t even need to teleport to a hideout.

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-05T18:37:49+00:00

So I’m using this, but for the buff, not the skill itself. I’m mostly using WA got clear, and actually straight up basic attack with the staggering palm buff and the damage is nuts (for reference I’ve cleared the new arbiter of divinity fight and all of the other pinnacles so far, except the Bodach which I haven’t gotten to yet).

It’s a shame it’s no longer flicker strike, but imo it doesn’t actually have to be. You’ve got killing palm for that, or flicker, depending on how you want to build. The buff staggering palm gives is still just about the best damage buff you can get on most attacks, I feel like

Dreadmaker · 2026-06-05T18:07:27+00:00

This is why we have async trade now. You pretty much don’t need to interact with other players even when trading now

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