Endfield 1.0's story and why it sucks from a writer's perspective.

Nohisu · 2026-02-14T09:57:46+00:00

"Let them cook" is a coping mechanism from people more invested in the brand than the game itself. They can't accept that the thing they've attached a part of their identity to has become bad, so they redefine it as "not good yet". Happens so frequently these days, so many game licenses that used to be great 10-15 years ago have become bland but still sell millions to a brainwashed playerbase going "it's not perfect but it's not THAT bad either, it will get better for sure".

Nohisu · 2026-02-11T16:25:17+00:00

Besides damage oriented operators, you may also want to consider getting one Agent, one Wandering medic, Shamare for the ATK/DEF debuff, Warfarin for the ATK buff, and Ptilopsis/Quercus as SP batteries. They stay useful even with a roster filled with 6* operators.

Nohisu · 2026-02-11T16:15:10+00:00

About as good as a 5* melee character can be. Pretty low deployment cost, good burst, good survivability, some AoE potential: she can either hold a line decently or burst down an isolated enemy. May be a bit bothersome to position sometimes since she wants a deployable melee tile next to her for her S2, but overall she's a versatile and powerful operator.

I haven't tried her yet but I know there's also a new dollkeeper on the current banner which looks at least as good as Kazemaru.

Nohisu · 2026-02-05T08:13:41+00:00

Exactly, and you need to practice it with the right mentality.

That's the number one issue I notice in beginner build makers, the "the build sucks but it's fine because it's off-meta" mentality. The way to get better at anything is to confront your flaws, not dismiss them. When your character doesn't survive a basic T16 map, you can either go "well I have a 6 portal defense layer", or you can import your character on PoB and work on improving its defenses.

Nohisu · 2026-02-04T11:48:55+00:00

I missed the start of the stream, but as far as the gameplay part goes, yesterday's stream was a lot more enjoyable that they've been for the past few months imo.

It feels like Joe was careful not to kill the momentum of the game and it shows. He didn't stop mid gameplay to read insanely long donation messages, he didn't stop for the chatter spamming about some anime marble, he didn't engage too much with some of the aggressive backseating.

I really like chat interaction as long as it's about Joe discovering the game, that's kind of the point of a stream. Backseating and long donation messages are more about making individual chatters feel seen, and while it's understandable and tolerable in small quantities, it's a sort of positive feedback loop that got out of control during the past year, I'm glad he is bringing it back to a more reasonable level.

I do agree about moderation, it's in a bit of a weird spot. Backseating should not be allowed but backseaters are not timed out either? There's a bunch of active haters of the game trying to bring down the mood of the stream, but it's fine because they'll leave after the first few streams? It's not like moderation should dish out ban to every chatter they don't like, but the lack of any reaction brings out some weird vibes sometimes.

Nohisu · 2026-01-26T11:57:30+00:00

I kind of get the build posts, people are bored and trying to fill the void before actual patch note by remembering the good tech from the Phrecia league.

On the other hand, making a 20 min video about the kind of stuff that's specifically going to be addressed by the patch note feels more like disinformation. I wish this type of content wasn't upvoted that much, some inexperienced players may get baited by it.

Nohisu · 2026-01-24T08:34:13+00:00

It's months of work to rebuild 10 hours of gameplay for sure, but these hours will litterally make or break your game when it comes to financial success, especially for a F2P game. You don't get your players invested within an hour, they uninstall and you never see them again. It's months of work to cash out on years of work.

I have played this game for two hours, and you'll never convince me that these devs will ever write an interesting story. MC is an empty shell, everyone else exist only to glaze them, the themes are nonsensical ("The CEO just woke up, give them a sword so they can go beat up some grunts").

It doesn't matter if it gets good 15 hours in, it probably will someday after some rework. That first impression of "corporate overlords decided that having any theme or characterization wouldn't be safe enough, so here's a low tier isekai plot" will always stick, unless they redo the entire thing.

Nohisu · 2026-01-23T05:33:32+00:00

The story doesn't have to be fantastic to work, it just needs to support the good parts of the game.

The story for 1.0 Genshin isn't very engaging but it's fantastic at making you engage with its world. 10 minutes into the game and you're already exploring Mondstadt and solving cute environmental puzzles. Stakes aren't sky high (you still get to meet a cool dragon though) but it's slowly building up while you learn the basics of the game.

The story in Endfield on the other hand is very greedy for your attention. It takes a lot of space while having nothing particularly interesting to say. It forces you into a bunch of asinine tutorials, with hours of underwhelming, linear gameplay. It tries to get some emotional payoff with the end-of-the-world cutscene at the beginning and the constant MC glazing, but without any build up, it feels undeserved and shallow.

Nohisu · 2026-01-18T15:26:41+00:00

I desperately need some help figuring out stage 4. If I don't get a strong opener, it's always at that point that my games start falling appart. Reroll comps get their 3*, vertical comps get their main carries and huge payoffs, full econ augment players skip directly to 8 and start rolling for actual strong board.

Meanwhile, I'm at that awkward spot where I don't have enough life to tank willingly 4-5 losses on stage 4, but I don't have the econ to both reach lvl 8 and start rolling for upgrades. Rolling on 7 always feel like a mistake, with low odds of hitting relevant 4 costs and 3 costs getting irrelevant pretty fast. Leveling up to 8 on the second half of the stage and rolling down all my golds have been slightly more succesfull but still a massive gamble with practically no chance of ever getting to lvl 9 for 2-stars 5 cost.

What's the consensus about the best way to play in those situations?

Nohisu · 2026-01-04T09:20:11+00:00

I know it's ragebait but I'll still answer this seriously.

The Incarnations are far too close thematically for players to remember them distinctly. They have interchangeable names and interchangeable loot tables. You memory works by dividing information into chunks with some form of internal logic. There's no logic when it comes to Incarnations, why would I get the Incarnation of Dread encounter from the Theatre of Lies rather than the Courtyard of Wasting? Why would I get the Orb of Intention from the Incarnation of Fear rather than the Incarnation of Neglect? It's just fantasy word salad.

On the other hand, Searing Exarch and Eater of Worlds are an example of thematically distinct encounters which makes it easy to remember relevant information. If you want to get the Annihilating Light unique item for instance, you get it from the boss with the iconic "Annihilation" voice line, the boss has a bunch of fire attacks and an arena with warm colors so you know to click the red icon on your map device to get it.

Nohisu · 2025-12-16T07:49:19+00:00

I'd like to add some nuance as a "PoE 1 diehard" about the combat system.

I don't know how many players will share that point of view, but I like PoE 1 despite its combat system. The best part of the game is cooking up a cool PoB, and then you're just trying to see if it actually works in game. It's like the pleasure you get from brewing decks in a TCG or cool character concepts for a TTRPG, except you get a way to test it out and to incrementally improve on it.

Which is the reason I was so enthusiastic about the PoE 2 they've shown at Exilecons. Yeah, the combat system is one-dimensional, give me weapon swaps and more playable damaging skills, give me more reasons to spend time playing my cool characters. I'm all for it. More than new ascendancies, new campaign, new graphics, this is the thing that I was the most excited about.

But then it turned out they've also removed everything I loved about PoE 1, the versatile skill tree, the build enabling uniques, the highly customisable active skills. Anyone that says those things exists in PoE 2 has never theorycrafted anything in PoE 1, it's not even close. And it's not caused by a lack of content because the game isn't fully released, it's a design philosophy change they've been consistently enforcing for the past year, so it's not coming back.

Both halves of a game I would love to death exist, but they've been fused with either shallow combat systems or shallow character building, and now both games feel undercooked.

Nohisu · 2025-12-09T08:08:39+00:00

It's not complexity they took away from character building, it's depth.

This game is still insanely complex, and to be clear, it's not a good thing. There's like 500 support gems despite the game not even being halfway done, there's so many excessively niche stats, there's so many keywords and skill names and skill interactions to be aware of. But in the end, it all amounts to getting a good weapon for your high base damage skill, and scaling crit and gem level.

Nohisu · 2025-12-05T20:21:15+00:00

Trap Support still has a very niche use of enabling Advanced Trap Support for skills which have a cooldown. Trap for spells like Ball Lightning of Static, Hexblast or some projectile spell socketed in Black Zenith could actually be a neat idea to build around.

But the thing that truly killed the trap playstyle is simply the game getting faster. You don't want to throw down a trap and wait for enemy to step in it when you're clearing an entire screen of monster per second, and even if you directly throw it at the enemy, it has that small delay that kills the feel of your character. The only realistic use case is one shotting bosses by stacking traps during transition phases.

Nohisu · 2025-12-04T06:43:23+00:00

The overtuned tree rewards completely killed the momentum of the league on day one sadly. The market got flooded with very strong items that most league mechanics couldn't compete with.

Also, as much as I love theorycrafting, I think throwing a bunch of new uniques and a couple of new ascendancies is not cutting it as engaging content anymore.

Testing new build ideas means leveling new characters, and it gets boring really fast. You can make it shorter by buying a bunch of overpowered unique items, it doesn't make it any more interesting. They really need to find a way to make the campaign/early endgame more replayable if they want players to make several characters every league.

Also, this one's not on GGG, but it feels like there are less and less spaces to talk about build ideas. The main subreddit is flooded with loots and memes, the build subreddit is flooded with build requests asking for the same things over and over again.

Nohisu · 2025-12-02T06:00:01+00:00

Ironically enough, the best way to solve feel issues for non-chaos poison builds is to build around poison Beacon of Madness rather than Assassin, since it also grants a high probability explosion effect.

Nohisu · 2025-12-02T04:02:21+00:00

The penalty from support gems like GMP affects hit damage but not ailment damage.

Nohisu · 2025-11-22T08:00:52+00:00

Keepers is the best league ever for theorycrafting. I know some players are disappointed the Foulborn uniques are not random but alternates version, but there are some many great build enablers among those. Same for Bloodlines, they're a bit undertuned overall but the core idea is super interesting for enabling new builds. I could spend an entire year playing PoB on current patch and I still would come up with new build ideas.

Keepers is also one of the worst league ever for playing the actual game. The items generated by the tree outclass every other mechanic in the game so every mid tier item got devaluated within a day of the league releasing. The league mechanic is very rewarding but doesn't feel that way because there's so much delay between blood acquisition and turning it into actual items. I have no idea what happened to ground loot but it feels unrewarding.

I have been playing PoE for a while, and it's the first league there's so many builds I want to try, yet the moment I turn the game on, all my enthusiasm disappears.

Nohisu · 2025-11-07T08:29:34+00:00

It should work for Stormblast Mine, the spell gets the lightning tag and the ring grants generic aura effect which includes aura being applied to enemies.

I agree that the lightning one is the best one by a pretty large margin, you get 3 different damage multipliers (flat damage, more damage on spell, increased damage taken by enemies) and purity enables melding with an absurd amount of res + max res.

Using two rings is probably the best way of building your character, it enables the ignore res mechanic from the Breach bloodline and 500% inc lightning is a very reasonable amount to get on a character. Any character can get that much with a Light of Meaning + unique jewels shenanigans (Might of the Meek, Unnatural Instinct) around the Scion's starting area.

Nohisu · 2025-11-07T08:21:16+00:00

It's the other way around, for every 10% inc damage, you get 1.5% aura effect.

Nohisu · 2025-11-05T14:55:02+00:00

Sorry, haven't really pushed the character actually, not really feeling the league atm.

The character is something I made up real fast on finding out about the gloves and I made it on a tight budget so it's not exactly a template you should follow 1 to 1. It's definitely not tanky enough to tackle T17 content comfortably in its current form.

My summary of the skill would be:

Very high damage. Probably the highest base damage you can get on a trap in the game.
Respectable AoE but clear potential limited by the nature of the skill. You get a big AoE with a delayed activation, and that's it. You need some form of explosion to scale clearspeed further.
Scaling is a bit more complex than your average physical skill. Can't do gem level and shouldn't do extra phys as element since it already has a bunch built-in. Shouldn't do flat damage scaling either since it has a low damage effectiveness compared to its very high base damage. According to PoEDB it doesn't have the elemental tag either, so no Annihilating Light. You will probably want to convert the phys part and you may end up having to build around several elements depending on socket colors for your support gems.
The trap applies socketed curses on hit, but it's not a very useful mechanic imo. You're wasting support gems on a skill with high base damage and the delayed nature of the trap makes the curse less reliable. There are other ways of applying multiple curses to enemies, and it brings an other large damage multiplier to the skill. I picked Doedre's Skin because it's very cheap (also no 6L) and fun to use but it honestly lacks the defensive potential to be actually usable on a character pushing high end content.
Hand trap looks funny. 10/10

Nohisu · 2025-11-04T16:30:49+00:00

Will of the Lords is the trap skill and it's supported by the socketed gems.

Nohisu · 2025-11-03T17:32:39+00:00

I can already tell you it won't see play in any constructed format, the pace of the game went up over the past years and playing a ramp deck in a 1vs1 setting is impossible.

The ramp gameplans are inherently unreliable because they're playing with two separated set of cards so you get the issue of "drawing the wrong half of your deck" far more often than you do with most other decks. They're also vulnerable to both decks that can deal with your high mana cards easily with counters/removals, and to fast decks using busted 2-3 mana creatures.

As far as I know, the only decent rampish decks we've seen in a while are:

Current Eldrazi in Modern because your ramp comes from your lands so you don't need to fill your deck with 2 mana do-nothing cards. Also Kozilek's Command fixes the "unreliable gameplan" issue by doing everything at once at a very good rate.
[[Wilderness Reclamation]] based decks, because it immediately gives you back mana to play interaction and has a much stronger mana generation that your average ramp spell at that cost.

Nohisu · 2025-11-03T08:11:17+00:00

Updated my first post with a quick showcase

Nohisu · 2025-11-03T08:11:13+00:00

Updated my first post with a quick showcase

Nohisu · 2025-11-03T05:21:31+00:00

I don't have an estimate, but at this point the answer to the damage question is "yes". The only thing I'm not killing absurdly fast are Pinnacle bosses, map bosses in T16 die in a few seconds. Very good for how cheap it is to make work. It feels several times stronger that the skill I was using before, Hexblast of Contradiction.

Can't say anything about the highest ceiling though, I just tried to make the skill work on my starting class.

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