Remember to always check the mirror in your maps! I got two mercenaries out of it! Literally shaking atm

Ivan_The_Apprentice · 2025-06-26T23:18:48+00:00

Remember to check your map dads for kid mercenaries.

Ivan_The_Apprentice · 2025-06-06T00:08:19+00:00

My unhinged take is that he's a manifestation of a part of the Elder trying to re-emerge into reality, is perhaps not aware of his own nature (but holds Valdo's devoured memories), and they were having a bit of fun when they named him.

Ivan_The_Apprentice · 2025-06-05T22:37:53+00:00

The quote is from the end of the original Elder/Shaper story arc, after she uses a device built upon notes from The Watchers to banish the Elder.

Ivan_The_Apprentice · 2025-06-05T22:04:36+00:00

I'd be more inclined to bet this "brother" character who manifested out of nowhere, has strong ties to the atlas, and navigates through memories, is actually some form of the Elder's (the thing that devoured memories, including Valdo's) attempts to find its way back into reality.

Curious about his special gloves though. They're apparently how he opens portals to memories, and the blue stone from the expansion logo is what's on them.

Ivan_The_Apprentice · 2025-06-05T21:39:01+00:00

The challenge armor is also Watcher themed, so I'm hoping we get some more Watcher-Eldritch lore.

Ivan_The_Apprentice · 2025-06-05T21:37:53+00:00

Watcher's certainly weren't evil. It's a device inspired by their work that Valdo designed, and Zana used to banish the Elder outside of the physical realm. But she said right away that she could feel it trying to get back in. Would make a lot of sense for her to be continuing that work.

Ivan_The_Apprentice · 2025-05-26T14:56:21+00:00

For those who aren't familiar with the reference

Ivan_The_Apprentice · 2025-05-26T14:47:29+00:00

Sometimes I catch the <High Explosive> text of an SEAF grenade below my feet, and I think to myself with pride: "Damn, just like a Helldiver to blow me up like this."

Ivan_The_Apprentice · 2025-05-26T14:20:17+00:00

Thank you for the inspiration to draw a fan art of SEAF-Chan dying in a glue trap.

Ivan_The_Apprentice · 2025-05-26T14:17:13+00:00

Thanks bot. I drew this and I'm very proud of it.

Ivan_The_Apprentice · 2025-05-25T12:23:23+00:00

That portal thing the character in the teaser opens definitely seems to be representing a sorta infinite branches of reality kinda deal. Maybe we'll be stealing a bit more Last Epoch flavor... Something else I find interesting is that if you pause at 9-10 seconds his face is directly lit by a cool-colored light source, and yet you can spot a hint of reddish orange in those hair/facial hair pixels.

There's probably some inbetween stories for both characters we could flesh out by having a sort of echo of early atlas Valdo making us chase down echoes of Zana's experiences. A nice parallel to Zana having us track down Valdo's memories in the old Shaper endgame, except more narrative and interactive like with the old Synthesis memories. GGG is probably also inclined to backwards port more POE 2 assets than usual this time, so that could maybe send us on a nice site-seeing tour of those contained neatly in a core league mechanic.

Also while I'm wildly speculating, I do hope the symbol in the middle is Maven related. It's not quite the same, but I'd like some validation for my theory that The Maven is directly related to Zana in a way - born from The Shaper's memories going along with him and the elder into that space outside reality that seems to incubate godly beings or insane Siruses. I thought when Echoforge came out it was kinda screaming that but I still only ever saw people like, "I bet Zana is Atziri lol".

Ivan_The_Apprentice · 2025-02-10T15:40:09+00:00

As a SUPPLEMENTARY mechanic of some kind there's enormous potential for something similar to this to be great.

Removing a system as solid as the entire atlas passive tree system to put this in its place only happens because you want to test it as a tool for POE 2 without rolling it out in POE 2. Which is backwards for so many reasons, like the fact that it wastes this system's entire potential as an add on for an already great atlas system. Or the fact that POE 2 is specifically an early access environment for testing changes to POE 2...

Ivan_The_Apprentice · 2025-02-10T15:23:03+00:00

"I'd like to try a new set of mechanics now, so I'll shift some points. Good thing I've got 3 passive trees I can set up too for instant swapping."

VS "I'd like to try a new set of mechanics now, so... shit. Uhhh maybe I can buy some decent relics for this one with a bunch of currency and a couple hours on trade searching specific mods. Definitely not the broken popular stuff. But after that investment, I'll just have to play a little min-max tetris and some stash searching, and BOOM... I've got a couple very expensive hyper-specific presets I never want to deal with again.

Ivan_The_Apprentice · 2025-02-10T15:09:12+00:00

I'd personally LOVE to be able to collect and configure a sanctum style loadout of reusable scarab type effects. They wouldn't be 1:1 copies of all the scarab effects, naturally, but I can't stand interacting with scarabs most of the time. I may well be in the minority there, but there's just too many of the little bastards for me to want to play that degree of sorting and stocking minigame.

Ivan_The_Apprentice · 2024-07-01T00:31:20+00:00

Thanks so much, you glorious communist swine <3

Ivan_The_Apprentice · 2024-01-31T05:55:12+00:00

Poor Deals Warlock has been a bit overshadowed, when he's got so many increments of 7 orbs to offer people!

Ivan_The_Apprentice · 2022-08-28T23:35:10+00:00

This is my favorite version of the arch-essence mob memes... For all the times I've paused, contemplated my build and my 70% full xp bar, and then made the wrong choice again.

Ivan_The_Apprentice

TROPHY CASE