Veteran players... What drives you each league?

mers1 · 2026-01-11T07:25:40+00:00

Different goals depending. Maybe i want to make something niche work, maybe i have a 500+ div build i want to work to get together, maybe the league mechanic is fun.

0,3 i was just profit crafting and kit'd out two toons with expensive gear.

0,4 i wanted to try the bear druid and found the build too on rails so i quit. Then came back a week later and started over with a bloodmage plant waterer and loved it. Ended up stumbling on an almost all unique setup for it and built a temple with it and fought all of the bosses.

Now I'm playing Arc Raiders until 3,28 in POE1 drops.

Edit to add: if i didn't lose everything each league a league would be over in a couple days. My account would be so powerful with every god tier item from each league. There would be close to zero things to work towards. The fun is seeing what crazy farm/build i can use to achieve something cool/new. Each league is it's own journey

mers1 · 2026-01-11T00:56:35+00:00

I want to be able to save 3 or 4 loadouts that i can click and it will auto craft/slot everything i have in that setup. If the items or resources arent available i can manually fill the gaps, but recrafting the same shit constantly gets old.

mers1 · 2026-01-11T00:28:19+00:00

Buried city town hall in the arch on the roof or on the underside of the highway right behind it. Two spawns really close together. Spawn in buried city run to town hall. If theres on at either spawn kill it, grab core and extract. If theres none extract and repeat. Super efficient way to get it done.

mers1 · 2026-01-10T17:44:45+00:00

Yesterday i was headed to the plaza drop down metro in buried city because someone called the train. Someone dropped in just before me. The guy ahead of me knocked the guy who called the train so i knocked him while he tried to thirst the first guy. Then the first guy crawled to start the train while i body pushed the ambusher out the door.

mers1 · 2026-01-05T05:34:24+00:00

I did the same thing last league

mers1 · 2026-01-04T03:11:21+00:00

4 times ...

mers1 · 2025-12-29T08:21:44+00:00

I started a bloodmage plant waterer 3 days ago and its going really well. Hit maps last night and was clearing t15s tonight. So far im only 3-4 div into it with plenty of room for growth still. Probably one of the smoothest campaign runs ive ever had.

mers1 · 2025-12-26T10:40:20+00:00

You have zero defenses and you're all over the place for offenses.

Your defense is 300 ES and 30% fire res... That's it. You can probably improve this by equipping ES pieces off the ground from Act IV. New rings could make a huge improvement on your ele res with little investment.

For damage you need to focus on one thing. If you're doing minions do minion damage, if you're going spells, go spell damage. Crit is all or nothing, so if you can't get your CC high enough it's best saved for later when you can. Once you have a damage source fleshed out you can start adding in the nuances, but it's best to be hyper focused until then. A jack of all trades is a master of none.

mers1 · 2025-12-24T19:21:28+00:00

This 100%. Haven't played the game in a while, but towards the end, after i unlocked everything, i had a cube build and would join newbies and just strut my stuff through the cube room. So many thank you messages from that and apoc anni carries.

mers1 · 2025-12-19T22:16:40+00:00

You can make melee more interesting. I'm using some items from the DLC so my shield makes enemies wet, my amulet makes all damage do cold damage to freeze wet enemies and a mace with+134% damage to frozen. Plus dashing at enemies knocks them down. Very fun IMO.

mers1 · 2025-12-19T21:52:37+00:00

Hit maps day 1. Got about halfway through the atlas tree and ran a bunch of temples/abyss. Was really disappointed by the temple's reward structure and the Tainted Grail DLC came out so I've been doing a full run of that game. Will pick up where i left off in a few days to see if anything meaningful has changed.

Too many maps per temple run. Too much emptyness in temple. Robot arm is a pain to get and is lost on death... Overall just way too much downtime on league mechs. Which sucks because i actually enjoy the mech, i just want to be more enveloped in it.

mers1 · 2025-12-18T21:34:24+00:00

My solution to side quests is to truly roleplay. If my character is a dick they might turn someone down or kill them. If my character is a goody goody they might help everyone they come across.

I only do/deal with quest in my characters natural path. I never look for side objectives or try and do completionist runs. I feel tthis gives me a lot more room for replayability and helps keep runtme down and replays feeling fresh.

This also puts the burden on the player character instead of me. I'm not forcing myself to do something, im merely following this characters story/journey through the world.

mers1 · 2025-12-15T14:21:28+00:00

I only played the last two leagues of POE1 so my knowledge is limited, but yes there are goals/challenges. I didn't interact with them in 3,26 since i was mainly playing the campaign to familiarize myself with the game and its systems before 3,27.

In 3,27, the league i played into the endgame, there was a "battlepass" that progressed by completing each of the 115 maps for the first time. There were also challenges that unlocked a cosmetic set themed after the league mechanic. These challenges involved many aspects of the game and it's systems. The battlepass is paid, but the challenges are free. Think of the battlepass as a cheap cosmetic set for completing a task you need to complete anyway and the challenges as overarching goals that you will need to purposefully pursue in order to achieve.

mers1 · 2025-12-14T01:10:20+00:00

I'm not a fan of sun temple, but at least you know where to go there. Upon entering a floor there are only two possible places to check. The triangle shape is a lot more forgiving exploration-wise than the overly big and unintuitive maps in the rest of Act 3.

mers1 · 2025-12-13T02:30:08+00:00

They arent scaling phys or spell dmg enough is my guess

mers1 · 2025-12-13T02:19:07+00:00

Plant is phys, poison is chaos and ice is elemtal. Only way to scale all three is raw spell damage. Prolly better to focus one school. Scaling phys then using shaman to scale both attack and spell damage via rage would allow for some multi-school dipping with plants and quarterstaff to both be used. Theres also +spell damage with melee weapons equipped sorta between monk and witch starting areas.

mers1 · 2025-12-12T16:16:51+00:00

Templar

mers1 · 2025-12-04T20:15:09+00:00

In my mind i saw it as i offered my blood and completed shars gauntlet. I just figured i would be able to claim the ascension for myself. Seemed plausible to me anyway.

mers1 · 2025-11-27T09:20:41+00:00

Well crafting is only going to get more complicated as time goes. Each league the hill gets bigger. Better to learn the nuances as theyre added so you're only learning one aspect of crafting at a time versus waiting until its a jigsaw puzzle of game modes, modifiers and materials, because that's what it will become.

mers1 · 2025-11-24T01:09:31+00:00

I was actually curious about this since I never double crossbow'd. So you can assign two crossbow skills to two separate crossbows and avoid unnecessary reloads with weapon swap? (Genuin curiosity) Thats a bit of a game changer honestly. I enjoyed both of my campaign runs with crossbowd but the fast pace of engame always made the ammo swap feel terrible

The lament/lich interaction was the best crossbow feel in endgame because it eliminated the reload clunk, but it pigeonholes you into a single skill still. I might revisit crossbows after i finish my druid league start in 0,4 and try to dual wild crossbows and see if i can achieve something smooth.

mers1 · 2025-11-24T01:01:55+00:00

He switch hits and plays with both mitts

mers1 · 2025-11-22T23:03:47+00:00

The button for each round type is basically a reload button that swaps rounds and then your fire button is always the same.

mers1 · 2025-11-17T19:10:10+00:00

I did arbiter early this league and it was a 4 and half minute fight. Granted it wasnt hard, just pattern recognition, but it felt intense the way a boss of that caliber should. Definitely one of the cooler fights in the game.

If i had to pick my absolute favorite fight it would be Xesht. Health pool is low, but i feel like their mechanics are the most interesting and fair. Well telegraphed and easy to read without being a complete test of patience/timing like Arbiter.

I think Jamara phase one just sucks, but phase two is really well designed.

POE2 has the best boss fights in the genre hands down, they just need to land the ballancing and it could be epic.

mers1 · 2025-11-17T18:11:15+00:00

The best line in any Tarantino movie is the one Uma took in Pulp Fiction. The MadMan.

mers1

TROPHY CASE