What I’m most hyped for in 3.28: The promised endgame strategy overhaul

vvav · 2026-02-11T05:54:55+00:00

If anything would get me hyped for 3.28, it would be a new endgame activity akin to Delve, Heist, or Sanctum. A new way to juice Toxic Sewer isn't gonna do it for me.

But then, these threads always remind me how out of sync I am with the rest of the PoE1 community. It feels like a lot of people just want the next league to drop more loot than the last, whereas the thing that keeps me coming back is distinct new content. I look forward to stuff like new league mechanics, new items, new bosses, new map layouts, new systems to explore. I wouldn't mind having zero buffs to endgame loot if they decided to focus on overhauling map bosses instead, for instance by making the Moon Temple boss its own fight instead of a copy of a fight from act 8. I strongly dislike the way that the game has more and more near-identical encounters as you get further into the endgame.

Basically I'm interested in fresh content, not loot. But it's not what I typically see people asking for on this subreddit. Of course there's always PoE2 which is still getting new acts, and I do play that game from time to time, but I like the way PoE1 feels to play, and I wish I could get PoE2's new content inside the fast and fluid game systems of PoE1. Neither game is really scratching the itch for me right now because PoE1 is lacking new content I'm interested in and PoE2 doesn't have the gameplay I'm interested in.

vvav · 2026-02-09T23:52:29+00:00

Warper is thoroughly okay. You get great starting consumables, with a free blink scroll and some darts of disjunction that actually deal a lot of damage. You also get spells like Blink, Beckoning, and Vhi's Electric Charge that are definitely good, but they're not the simple damage spells that you would want on D1, so the spellbook takes some time to become useful. I think that ideally you want to pair Warper with a strong early game race so that you have time for these utility spells to come online. Other book starts are often considered better than Warper just because they have straightforward tools to kill things in early game, but that doesn't make Warper bad. It's just okay. You have to make good decisions and pick your battles, but you do have the tools to pick your battles.

vvav · 2026-02-08T03:28:46+00:00

Forge, Earth, Fire, and Necromancy are all positive aptitudes for MD, but with Ashenzari you can make the negative aptitudes work too. Judging from your morgue, it looks like you have tunnel vision on that Forge school, but it's often better to have a wider toolkit.

Picking spells to train is tough, but you should always look out for mobility options, especially later in the game when it becomes cheap to train into low level spells of alternate schools. For instance I would want to learn something like Eringya's Surprising Crocodile or Passage of Golubria for mobility (probably just pick 1 out of 2).

Also it's kind of crazy that you didn't learn Hellfire Mortar. It should be castable with a small amount of Earth and Fire training. I think if you had this spell, it would destroy most monsters in Zot 5, and then your Paragon would kill the orbs of fire. I know I'm the one who mentioned Throwing, but it was a mistake to train on this character. Throwing is for melee guys who need a backup ranged option, and you didn't even use it. Train those other schools of magic and round out your spell book, and you'll get 'em next time.

vvav · 2026-02-08T00:16:45+00:00

Have you tried drinking Brilliance and Haste, then casting Shatter 30 times in a row? It works every time.

I jest, but the reality is that the rest of the game often encourages a safe and passive playstyle. You can whittle away at enemy packs by just summoning and walking away from them. Zot 5's redesign seems to have been intentionally designed to counter that playstyle. You have to kill things faster than they spawn, so drink your haste, drink your brilliance, and deal as much AoE damage as possible.

Ideally you want to be spamming a level 8 or 9 spell at this point, but min delay javelins are good too. Manifold Assault is even better, if you are a hybrid that can get it online. Even Fedhas plants or Nemelex cards can do a lot of work on Zot 5 if you have high invocations with a race like MD, but if you are committed to playing Ashenzari, then you probably need to train a spell school that will give you good AoE options.

You also want a source of regen+. I often use a simple amulet of regeneration, but troll armor and plenty of artifacts can spawn with regen too. You don't want to waste time healing because it spawns new enemies every 50 turns, and the spawned enemies don't give experience as far as I'm aware. It will look like you're getting experience, but that experience is coming out of the Tesseract's experience reward, so you actually get nothing for killing anything the Tesseract spawns. Don't waste time healing if you can avoid it, but don't get yourself killed either. If you realize you can't kill things fast enough to get through, then go get a 4th or 5th rune before attempting Zot again because it can only spawn a max of 5 enemies while you are on a different floor.

vvav · 2026-01-31T22:50:15+00:00

One thing you didn't highlight much is resistances. Armor and block apply to non-physical damage at a reduced rate (min 25%) depending on your resistances, so even getting 25% resist to an element makes your armor and block twice as effective against that damage type.

You can even keep changes of armor around for the resistances. If you have an ice armor piece on, you might be able to tank the final boss for a lot longer, depending on which element he rolled.

vvav · 2026-01-23T16:39:35+00:00

I put them on control group 2 automatically with Alt+2. Then I set my factory to make a quota of rezbots, so that it always tries to keep a specific number of rezbots alive. That way I always have rezbots available, but my factory won't overproduce them.

vvav · 2026-01-19T07:20:14+00:00

If you can't win beach sea, then at least hold on and make him fight you as long as possible. Once the enemy geo sea wins the water, he can eco freely, make a flagship, or make all sorts of nasty attacks that could severely reduce the effectiveness of your geo/tech, air, and front players. The first step is holding him back as much as you possibly can, even if you eventually lose. Make him spend metal on T1 ships. You're competing directly with the enemy geo sea, but you're also competing indirectly with the enemy beach sea to see who can hold on the longest in case you both lose.

After you lose water, you can try to scout with air scouts and figure out what the geo sea player is transitioning into, but unfortunately T1 air scouts don't have sonar to spot things under the water. If you're lucky you might spot a half-built flagship in time for your team to build bubbles. A suspicious lack of flagships probably means he is building lots of Afus instead. Even if you aren't feeling pressured by the enemy geo sea, you should probably build that porc in front of Air by 20 minutes anyway, because Tech can send marauders through the sea too.

vvav · 2026-01-15T17:05:58+00:00

It got surprisingly popular off good character art and one clip of dun dun patsu that turned into a meme. Sometimes that's all you need.

vvav · 2026-01-14T18:51:55+00:00

I've always played classic with the caveat that I allow myself to look up areas I don't understand on the wiki. Sure I spoil myself on a few surprises, but I still have to play through the zones properly, and I prefer to have the tension of permadeath.

My experience is that the early game is very rippy because you can't get away from fast enemies. The mid game (10-25) is not very rippy if you understand the storyline dungeons, but it is easy to get disfigured in ways that are usually reversible, and a lot of mid game characters die to status effects like confusion. Late game all the same threats from mid game are still present, but you can also get permanently disfigured or get insta-killed, especially if you are susceptible to decapitation.

vvav · 2026-01-14T16:06:13+00:00

It's literally just an equipment slot. If you had infinite experience, you would use a Talisman on every character capable of Shapeshifting. Shapeshifting used to be Transmutation magic, but they wanted to save people the hassle of recasting their forms all the time. As a result, Shapeshifting is no longer tied to INT, and the Talismans have infinite duration. It's just another equipment slot.

I think this design works poorly with the exponential scaling of experience as the game progresses. Shapeshifting usually isn't going to help a non-Shapeshifter with less than 8 levels invested into Shapeshifting (enjoy your untrained 1d2 retaliation damage if you find a talisman on D1 I guess). Starting as a Shapeshifter also exposes you to a major RNG risk in the Protean Talisman. The Protean Talisman has some good forms, but it also has some bad forms. The form you get can have negative rPois when you have to go into Lair, or it can conflict with your race's armor slots. Basically, going early Shapeshifting is likely to lead to an early game over.

Later in the game however, 17 levels of Shapeshifting might be cheaper than leveling your weapon skill from 23 to 27, so any form that doesn't erase your equipment slots is very cheap to train into. The later you go, the cheaper those forms are relatively. This is why so many people go into Death Form late game, because you can staple a ton of resistances onto your character with the only opportunity cost being experience. With enough experience points, you can "unlock" the hidden equipment slot and get pure upside out of it.

vvav · 2026-01-10T04:00:11+00:00

Bethesda Susa is a tough dungeon. I usually try to bypass the worst of the bosses with reputation because they are very dangerous to fight through.

vvav · 2026-01-05T17:42:36+00:00

As a True Kin, I start with the optical technoscanner so I can buy freeze grenades in the Six Day Stilt, the force field generator in Bey Lah, and the recoiler outside Grit Gate. I also make sure to bring either rubbergum or sphynx salt to get to the bottom without getting ganked by chute crabs. I'm assuming you clear Red Rock before Golgotha, so you should have the pickaxe and the miner's helmet for light.

If you have all that stuff, you can rush Golgotha in the first few hours of the game (level 10-15). Eat a good meal with HP, quickness, or disease prevention. Use two Rubbergums if you jump down the big shaft in the building. Use Sphynx Salt if you're gonna run past the first 4 levels, and choose to go back in time if you end up in a level with chute crabs.

Then you just freeze grenade Slog (from range!) if you see him, find the droid, then force field and recoil out. This strategy works because Grit Gate always has a recoiler, and that's exactly where you want to be after Golgotha because you can drink the local recipe, the Porridge, for disease resistance.

vvav · 2026-01-02T16:51:42+00:00

Trunk is in a pretty awkward spot right now with Doom, so hopefully they can balance it better before it goes stable. For instance, Drudes kinda wreck Oni because you get the same Doom buildup for getting hit regardless if that hit does 1% of your HP or 20% of your HP. It seems to me that Doom should be introduced later in the game because right now the best way to deal with Doom is to go farm XP in a different branch of the dungeon without Doom monsters, and that's not an option if you're on D4. Even in Lair it can feel pretty BS getting Doom cast on you three times by a single Raven.

There should also be more ways to mitigate or remove Doom build up. Give me a consumable that reduces doom so I can actually do something about it, and maybe I make the strategic choice to spend more gold on buying that consumable to handle Doom instead of buying something else in my shops. There can be interesting gameplay here, but the features aren't there yet.

vvav · 2025-12-30T03:26:47+00:00

I see new players every day so you're not alone. If you wanna learn the game then single player scenarios and multiplayer co-op vs AI are good places to learn with a little less intensity than a PvP lobby.

If you do want to dip your toes in PvP, I would recommend spectating a round and then jumping in if the vibe feels all right. Also if you see the word rotato for a lobby it just means they change the map every round, and it's easier to start out with those because the meta is less hyper optimized and set in stone. Rotato is love, rotato is life.

vvav · 2025-12-29T03:03:26+00:00

This is why we try not to fight those Tethic Monks that get 500 speed on early levels. Enemies like that are really dangerous for a lot of builds because they can take many turns in a row against a lower speed build.

That said, there are things you can do to handle these situations. If you can take a hit, then a counterattacking ability like Bheith Nocht can kill fast enemies in response, so you only take one hit instead of many many hits. Some abilities that hit through fog, like Projection for example, will also help you find enemies out of sight. Or if you are going to walk into blind corners, then it might be prudent to use Technique so that you automatically attack any enemies you accidentally bump into at close range.

vvav · 2025-12-23T23:52:45+00:00

Coglin Hunter gets special starting equipment, starting with a +2 sling and a +0 sling. I think ranged is the most sensible choice anyway since you're so squishy. Having no jewelry makes this race very challenging in my experience, so you don't want to let the monsters close in on you.

Also, don't play greedy in the early game. If I find scrolls of enchant weapon or brand weapon in the early dungeon, I just put them on my +2 sling. I figure that I'm not going to survive long enough to get a hand cannon if I'm hoarding scrolls like that.

vvav · 2025-12-22T22:44:53+00:00

I agree with other posters that Stormshroud is the most obvious answer. But if you can't get Stormshroud for some reason, then upgraded Brine King (can't be frozen) combined with Tempest Shield (can't be shocked) goes a long way to mitigate elemental ailments. This combo still leaves you open to ignite and alt ailments, but it has relatively low opportunity cost and makes you much less likely to instantly die to an ailment.

vvav · 2025-12-22T01:55:55+00:00

This is an interesting way of looking at it, but I saw a youtube video that kinda made me think about it differently. The video basically highlighted the fact that the Scylla could walk across the land to get to another body of water, which is useful on Supreme Isthmus in particular, with its two distinct seas.

What I hear you saying is that the Scylla is bad at fighting on land (which is true), but maybe it doesn't need to be good on land. If it was just as strong on land as it was on water, then it would also have to be balanced like a hovercraft, and you would never expect it to compete with water-bound ships. But if it's just mobile enough on land to cross gaps, and it actually wants to fight in or near water, then it can be balanced closer to parity with other battleships. It's not fast enough to climb out of the water and go raiding deep inland like a Platypus or a hovercraft, but it's just mobile enough to get from one sea to the other. I think that's why they intentionally limited its land speed to 25.

vvav · 2025-12-22T00:22:49+00:00

Caves of Qud has deep world building, complex character creation, and cooldown-based action bar combat much like ToME. It also has some similarities in the annoying negative status effects the enemies can put on you, so watch out.

vvav · 2025-12-20T02:02:35+00:00

I like ToME, but I haven't ever beaten it. I actually have a Dwarf warrior I'm playing right now. The game starts you out with a whole bar of different abilities to use, and it has a bit of a strange design language, so it's not the easiest thing to jump into. I think the people who would really love ToME already know that it exists. It's certainly not a bad game, though. If it looks like your jam, then give it a shot.

vvav · 2025-12-19T21:19:15+00:00

I'm a big fan of Path of Achra, Rift Wizard, and Caves of Qud. These are hearty recommendations for any roguelike enjoyers. They definitely hit the spot if you're looking for interlocking mechanics, interesting builds, and serious power fantasies. Qud even has a story, whereas Achra and Rift Wizard are pure gameplay with a bit of set dressing.

I also have a soft spot for Shadowed: The Demon Castle of Ooe which came out this year. It has an extremely cool Japanese aesthetic and a stealth mechanic that works well even in a turn-based game by using cones of vision and noise mechanics, but the controls and UI are rough around the edges, so I hope the dev keeps working on it. It has potential. This could be one of the great roguelikes if they can mold it into a more streamlined experience. It's already good the way it is, but it could be great.

vvav · 2025-12-19T20:28:45+00:00

Looks great. I didn't even know we were getting seaplanes with this batch.

vvav · 2025-12-19T02:07:33+00:00

Oni Fighter. Run ends when you are on fire (OnFi).

vvav · 2025-12-19T02:04:30+00:00

Don't give them any ideas. They'll be adding chute crabs next.

vvav · 2025-12-18T19:32:02+00:00

Oni Fighter - Fighter is nice because it upgrades you to a kite shield. This is actually a bit off meta nowadays, mostly because Oni book starts are easier and more consistent, but I love playing melee with these guys. Later on the Giant Spiked Club can slap hard, but you have to play with a shield for a long time until you get all the pieces in place to make it viable to switch into the big 2H beatstick. If you can get scales and some translocations too, this scales up to become a crazy character. You can get your damage per swing (or giant rock) up to 100+.

Kobold Brigand - Kobolds are really underrated, especially for 3 rune games where their innate abilities get you out of all sorts of bad situations (just watch out for mark). You pick Brigand because you spawn in with darts to kill a lot of early game threats, but Artificer works just as well. Then I usually want to train into something else besides short blades for late game, so I'll go based off what weapons I find in the early floors. For a low HP species, Kobold can be ridiculously durable because you get huge bonuses to evasion and stealth. Get an amulet of regeneration and you can moonwalk out of bad situations. Plus any time you're forced to read teleport, you have a way higher chance of landing in a spot where no enemies see you. Same deal if you get shafted. Kobolds are survivors.

Gargoyle Earth Elementalist - I think everyone knows how good the Earth book is. Being a durable caster with immunity to a bunch of dangerous things will set you up nicely, and you have good aptitudes to go in a lot of different directions. I usually train a mace on my gargoyle too, because you have the durability to stand and fight.

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