Dammit.
That was my thought 3 times this league .
But before that a huge thanks to @mattclarke for hosting this race a second time. Looking at all the possible rewards you see it's not cheap at all for him :D Before #poecomp I did not do any HC runs simply because I like the chill way of life in softcore. But the dangling carrot of steem and a slightly smaller participant pool made try it.
Last time I won and I thought why not go for a second time?
Well then the story of 3 damnit's happened.
Damn it No. 1
On friday I got home late after getting quiiite drunk celebrating my birthday. Picked my ol' trusty duelist and went at it. Got to lvl 53 and then I decided to be real dumb and try and kill Abberath. Got to second phase and he just bursted me down like it's nothing even with 75% resists. Oh well, just when I was catching up to competition...
So I looked at the available classes and decided to go as a scion trapper. If not to win overall but to at be highest lvl of the class.
Damn it No. 2
So in the last day I finally caught up to @gamingchimp and even passed him. But then I got complacent and decided to try and level a ranger to take highest lvl ranger prize. I did some calculations and came to a conclusion that gamingchimp can't catch up to me in the time life.
How wrong I was... somehow he gained 2 levels I did not expect him to get and tied with me for the first place at lvl 83.
Which brings me to ...
Damn it No. 3
When I asked how gamingchimp gained those last few "quite impossible" levels at the last few hours - he told me his secret weapon - buying spots in unattained paradise map which at random is available from zana missions. That particular map drops no loot but gives ridiculous amount of experience. So my regret I that I didn't think of this as well... Could have been the sole winner :D
The good stuff
Oh how I learned. I learned how to advance super fast - got to lvl 44 in just under 3 hours with ranger. ( by skipping pretty much all optional quests). I learned that maybe If I build my character well I should not be afraid to advance to higher level maps sooner. I learned not to do Abberath and other skill point giving monster kills until Im way overleveled.
My scion was a lightning arc trapper and I found it to be the fastest map clearer I have ever made. It's just insane how it chains to every mob in visible distance and clears behind corners too! :D I am going to reroll one in softcore league as well! Feels super nice to play it!
Over all it was a pleasant experience. The competition this time was really good and challenging. It was also a bit more spread out so some people could get prizes by being highest lvl in their class. And I think it's a good thing as it encourages participation.
I also got an exalted orb and then THIS dropped :D
Preeety sweet!
Thanks again to @mattclarke for hosting this! I hope you had fun too and didn't go broke over this :D
See you all next league!
Best regards,
@beercake out!
I wish I could get to level 44 in under 3 hours! I actually wouldn't mind being able to just get to level 44! I failed to get there this comp, with my second character being my best, dying at level 40. Did end with a level 38 (or is it 36...) witch though
The trick was skipping all optional quests, and going frost blades. Also I bought tabula rasa on main character and used it to level the ranger. Honestly, if you had a high level character with some currency that gives a big advantage on starting a second character.
Also experience helped a bit, you somehow start to feel where you can push and where you have to stop and level.
I still don't get the buying part of the game, which is probably my biggest failure with it. Where can you buy something like a Tabula Rasa? I've only ever seen magic items at best when I've bothered looking at the purchase items of the NPCs.
I did however use some handy items from some on the latest character as bases for improving them because they had the right sockets already for what I wanted and were improvements on what I already had.
Most certainly, second and onwards characters always help, with stashed cast offs and/or saved currency. Even stashed gems are useful if you haven't leveled them up :)
From other players with currency orbs like chaos orbs. We use a site called http://poe.trade/ to find and contact players that are selling items we want. Then you message them and if they too want to do the trade they invite you to their hideout where you trade.
Ah, right. I have heard of that, but never used it. I wish they had a decent internal method for trading
Very nice, I been playing some arc totem on softcore and I’m having a blast with it. Traps looks to be rather powerful as well. I still want mess around with that new fire trap at some point.
It seems this league is a great one for just leveling things up and trying different builds. This item just makes things drop fast. It crazy just how cheap they are as well.
there going be quite a few amazing things coming out of the temple. I can’t wait to explore it more in softcore. My runs so far have not been fast enough. Leaving me without the apex unlocked with only a couple of rooms to run. Something I shall running faster. Some of the rooms like corrupting chamber sound amazing if things go well.
I did apex like 5 times, so far only 1 rare bow sold for like 2c :D Not a big loss if you haven't gotten there in early levels. The vault rooms however were a huge source of income.
Ah maybe that was how I was being so badly outspent during the race. I know my economy game is not that great but some seem to have very deep pockets.
I for most part avoided the temple on hardcore. I noticed a few rips by others from it and stayed away.
Oh it was rippy alright :D
Early on I lost 2 characters to it.
And in endgame I almost died with scion there as I didn't know there would be so many mobs that deal chaos damage. After that I got my chaos resistance from -60 to 7% :D
Haha how cleaver and evil of them. I wonder how many have died not knowing it was chaos damage they where dealing. I don't even want to think how I would fit that onto my gear at this current time.
I've had a lot of success on here, mate; happy to share some of that around.
Ultimately STEEM is only valuable if it's used, and it can only be used if it's widely distributed.
Long term, if it helps us recruit a few of those millions of users on the GGG servers, all the better :)
@beercake you were flagged by a worthless gang of trolls, so, I gave you an upvote to counteract it! Enjoy!!
https://steempeak.com/poecomp/@mattclarke/poe-betrayal-24-hour-hardcore-race-160-steem-to-be-won