Path of Exile | My Journey in Act I as a Clumsy Shadow
As I slice my way through wave after wave of cannibals, shit-spitting spiders, and your average skeletal archers, I levelled up and chuckled as my character quipped, "I'm impressed by how much this place wants me dead."
For a game that's been around for a while now, Path of Exile is quite impressive, and I'm really enjoying my time, despite the nonsense way of playing a rogue-type character I've been doing. Like in every game that let you pick a character, I always want to play as assassin or any role closest to assassin. So I go with Shadow.
How is it nonsensical is because my character's abilities that didn't feel like what an assassin would do. Here, let me list them for you...
I forgot how to assassin
Lightning Tendrils.
Channelling skill that create some sort of unstable lightning waves in front of me. A magic spell.
Freezing Pulse.
Shoot a freezing projectile that has a chance to freeze enemies in its path. Magic you use when you have to tell someone to chill the eff out.
Animate Weapon.
Animate up to 50 melee weapons to fight for you and pretend you have friends. This is obviously magic too.
Summon Raging Spirit.
A spell that let me summon up to 20 of this flaming Avenged Sevenfold. Rad.
Viper Strike.
A direct-hitting ability that deal more damage with a chance to apply poison. For a more convenient button-mashing experience.
Ethereal Knives.
Throw several blades in a cone in front of you. This was the only assassin-ish skill I had at the moment.
Detonate Dead.
Make a dead body explode because why the fuck not.
I was expecting something like dash, laying out traps, smoke bomb, incapacitation skills, maybe even the hallmark of an assassin; invisibility. But I did get mines and dash sometime after, along with other skills too. So it's just only at the beginning that I wore so many wrong shoes but I liked them anyway. Also, I heard the character's starting class will become a sub-class of the cooler class called Ascendancy class. The Shadow can either become a trickster, saboteur, or finally, assassin! I'm looking forward to that.
If I remember correctly, this is the first time I've played a game with a skill tree this crazy. All of these perks are passive skills. For the active skills, Path of Exile uses purchasable (and obtainable) item instead in the form of gems, which then can be attached to your equipments to grant both active and passive abilities.
Long story short, I cut my way through everything that lives only to kill me and met some of the quest givers that initially not around in the first town. One of them is Alva Valai, a treasure hunter who's been cast away from the nobility in her hometown.
The incursion itself has an interesting background story, involving a lost advanced civilization that we must find, by going to that lost civilization in the past in order to change its state in the present day.
We're to leap through time and space into the lost Temple of Atzoatl in the past, filled with enemies and two mini-bosses which, if killed will affect the temple differently for the better or worse. After doing this time-leap for 11 times, we can finally go into the temple in the present day based on our decision during the 11 temporal incursions.
I did an embarrassingly sloppy work on my first incursion, as did my second incursion. And the third. And so on. Failed to kill most of the architects. Check. Didn't manage to open most of the doors with the Stone of Passage. Check. Earned so little loot. Check. F&@#!
Even so, Alva never stop telling me "Good job, exile." Look, lady, I don't know if you're genuinely that patient, but I know deep inside you're disappointed.
After each temporal incursion, we'll bump into Alva again in another map. But before I met her again, I met another quest giver on my way called Haku the Armourmaster. He looks like Terry Crews from isometric perspective, just don't sound like him.
For someone with such title, he doesn't seem to have any decent armour works he got for sale. But maybe he will show his actual cool stuff later as I progress.
He told me to bring back a lost spirit of a warrior. Not sure what's the lore behind this and the extremely short dialogue with Haku really killed my curiosity. He basically only said "No spirit deserve to be abandoned. Find this warrior!" and then "Thanks, bruh." that's it.
The spirit was deep inside a cavern within, the cavern I was in. The enemies are of the same types, but their numbers making it satisfying to kill several of them at once with AoE abilities. When I found the lost spirit, as soon as I picked him up, I had a little treat with the loot. Then the cave suddenly falls to crumble. Not a single fucks was given.
I wonder if the lore behind this Armourmaster is as paper thin as it appeared to me, or I just missed something or haven't far enough to see his backstory, and this lost spirit's as well. I could be wrong, but at the moment I'm sure it's because of the latter, that he's not some empty NPC that's being put there for the sole purpose of adding more loot.
After a couple of encounters, a buttload of mobs to kill, tons of loot to sell in town, and even more mobs, I find myself in a creepy abandoned prison, with a big brute called Brutus that gave me quite a fun fight. The bosses' abilities, including Brutus', are easy to learn but if you play around underestimating them you'll be surprised when you see your HP suddenly down to 50%.
Good thing I acquired Whirling Blades by the time I encountered him, a dashing ability that I preferred in most games because it also allows the user to dodge, since there's no dodging move in this game. Heh, dashing.
The last boss of Act 1 was Merveil. Once a beautiful maiden turned into a slimy tentacle nightmare. Reading her lore I felt kinda sorry for her. A fine woman married a fine man, a famous swordsman named Daresso who gave Star of Wraeclast amulet that apparently evil. It's exactly like The One Ring, it corrupted Merveil the way The One Ring corrupted Andy Serkis until he became Gollum.
Daresso left her, with a promise to come back with a cure to her condition. But he never did. Merveil then resides within the cavern where I killed her, along with hundreds of smaller tentacle nightmares that apparently her children.
Why I felt sorry is because I was thinking of my version of Merveil's story; what if she's not entirely crazy deep inside? What if there's still a tiny piece of sanity left in her screaming for help? Yep, I was overthinking and felt sorry for a non-existing story, of a non-existing thing. Well, doesn't matter anymore. What matter is... where is the amulet?! She didn't drop it as a boss loot.
Merveil was the last boss of Act 1, and I now have reached the Forest Encampment, as I was told to in the quest. A slightly less grim safe area. I keep hearing about "personal hideout", "uber lab", and "red map", and other things I've yet to find out. Right now I the customizable personal hideout sounds interesting to me and that's what I'm going to look for. This is the end of my Act 1.
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Thank you very much, @archdruid!
Good game, well played!
Awesome post, i really like the layout and how you used short clips to show off all the different skills. I also really enjoyed reading your thoughts on the story, most people just rush through the game and miss it.
You chose the right class for an Assassin playstyle, although in PoE Shadow is a Int/Dex combined class that’s why you also got all these spells as options too.
I hope you keep up with the different storylines in the game, there isquite a lot of lore hidden in the areas and even some hints in unique item descriptions. I think the game a lot more imersive if you already read some things about the bosses you are fighting and know why they are sitting around in that place :)
Also, incursions area really hard at the first few areas, especially without leveling gear, later in the game the overall monster density gets larger, that alone helps a lot with the timer
I look forward to see how you are doing the next Act, good luck and have fun playing :)
Oh, that's a relief to know that there's quite a lot of lore this game has. Like Merveil's lore for example, I didn't know those tentacle monsters in the Cavern of Anger was her children and the water elemental was born from her tears (damn Daresso!). When I learnt about all of this I find her lore more interesting than before.
I'm still experimenting with my build and went with speed, critical chance, and so little damage over time. I don't even know for sure what "global physical damage" is and how some of the other attributes work. But I'm learning about them. I'll see how I can keep up with the incursion that I heard is difficult with my build and so called "skill" (I meant my gaming skill lol).
I'm thinking of writing about my adventure in Act II, maybe later. And thanks for stopping by and the comment! I'm glad you enjoyed reading this post.
Incursions can be a bit tricky till you are more set up to clear them out fast. I’m at a point now where I’m trying push into red maps and running the incursion inside is like trying do them for first time. Most times I get killed or can’t even kill the Architect in time or unlock a new door.
They become quite amazing once you start learning the rooms you really want and get to do a couple of runs to see what you get. Sometimes total waste of time and nothing. Other times amazing loot. Quite often I like to run them in lower tier maps just to 100% clear out an incursion for all the loot that drops once you are done and out. Quite a number of amulets and rings drop along with unique.
Once you start running labs to ascend your class some passive skills you pick up are amazing and can really give your class a strong sense of it being that! I hope you stick with things this game can be hard on new comers as it has quite a fair amount of learning!
Yep, it was total waste of time for me most of the time lol. You're put in a room full of OP mobs, then you have to kill either of the two architects, and open the doors... in 10 seconds. Yeah, tricky indeed.
But now since I have a dash ability (Whirling Blade) I'm having an easier time killing the architect. But still difficult to quickly find the Stone of Passage and unlock one of the doors. And I've never got a unique drop, eventhough I managed to kill the architect three(?) times.
I can't wait to be an assassin with the ascendancy class! It sounds amazing. And don't worry about the difficulty, I like it this way. And I hope it will still be difficult even when my character is in high level, otherwise it might get boring once I'm there.
After a while you learn to kill mobs to gain more time back on the clock and how to go about that in trying to manage the timer. Than you can work on taking down the Architect in chunks of need be. I've had times where there was over 20 sec remaining on the timer after it was all cleared so I just used a poral to leave instead of waiting around.
Some times I'll clear a little bit of one way towards the one I don't want kill then I'll move and clear out going to the one I want. Depends a lot on the loadout of the room you are in as well. Some times its just bad and you are not going get anything done.
Great and funny post!
As a fellow newb in PoE, you have my empathy.
Clearly you are looking into the plot, flavor text, and world building more than I do. When I understand how the content iteratively been added to the game, I forgive it for looking so random and/or as excuses for loot (which they mostly are, it is in the name: "Grinding Gear Games").
Thank you! It was fun writing this.
Mind = BlownYeah, not to mention that the game gave me a knife and shield the very first time I played lol.
Classes and Skills are more liquid in this game than in Diablo II. The Ascendancy class is the most important choice, I hope it will give you a fun playing even if your character so random skills that make little thematic sense.
e.g. I'm playing a Duelist, but all I do is hit my enemy with sword/axe, seeing 4 Balls of Molten Magma hitting anything around it (but me).
I really looking forward to that Ascendancy class, and I'm certain to choose assassin. Eventhough this game put me in a rather funny start with everything, I am having fun with PoE.
I have that magma balls ability too. I was kinda confused (with the design, I guess?) but also having fun looking at the mobs keep dying from it.
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Oooh awesome! Thanks!
As a fairly new Steemit user I tried searching for PoE content as its one of my bigger interests.. And I am amazed of the quality in this post and a different post i found showcasing a new players perspective!
Its very thorough and as a more experienced player I look forward to seeing your progress further :)
Thank you! I'm glad you like the post. I'm currently progressing in Act II slowly, due to a certain problem, and I plan to write my experience and how succ I am lol.
Also, not sure if this is too late, but allow me to say... welcome to Steemit! I'm following to see what you'll be posting about.
I hope to read your next chapters about acts 2-10 (I hope to finish them on time to read it). Your POV on the theme is really funny and helps me understand and remember the theme.
I do plan to write about the Act 2, but maybe it's going to be a few more days because my ISP is currently doing its weekly routine of acting like an asshole, if you know what I mean. So I can't play online games much.
And thank you, I'm glad you like the post ^_^
Also, will you be writing your PoE post too? If you do, I'd love to read it too.
3 posts so far, you read it here (It have links to parts 1 and 2)
I hope all is well and you are just taking time to enjoy summer. I’ve been going outdoors a lot myself as of late. Hard to want spend any time I don’t need to indoors!
How’s your progression been going on Path of Exile? They are starting a flashback Event over the weekend on the 4th.