Path of Exile: Died at Level 38 to Kaom in Act 4 :(steemCreated with Sketch.

in #poemcomp5 years ago (edited)

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(Picture: Purifying Flame Spell)

It was a long 24 hour race, and to add, it had been a long week at work, so I slept in. It was hard to drag myself out of bed to start with everyone on Saturday my time, so I was about an hour late. Oops!

This is my post to summarize on my 24 hour journey.

I had a total of 3 proper starts, if I didn't count muling the Scion for the onslaught gem, or the 2 failed misstarts because I was being stupid/distracted/impatient at re-starting of Act 1.

Of the 3 real starts, and each one was a gut-wrenching end, below was where they ended. All deaths are automatically migrated to Standard SSF outside the current League. I plan to maintain this list for my Hardcore journey for the rest of Synthesis. It's to see how high I can push myself as I die and learn a little more of the Hardcore strategies. If I can better my performance on the next attempt significantly, I'll post on it. To me, it really is a very different arena to Softcore and I have had various debates with other players about it too. I'd like to treat them as different games.

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You will see I went to Level 21, 31 and 38. So there was progression at least!

SynthesisLinny


This Witch finished on Level 21 because she was 1-shotted in a doorway by one of Einhar's red beasts. It was my first shock of the journey that left me floundering with WTH!??! Which brings me to a major gripe, why are there so many bestiary hunts in this league?! I had a hunt in what felt like 1 of 3 zones! And when you play hardcore, it's distracting. The red beasts were brutal and rippy for me! It was impossible to ignore them too. Since some were in my direct path. This is part of the Synthesis league I did not enjoy. I quite often ignore Einhar's hunts in Betrayal, because they don't interest me so much. But I've found they are kinda impossible to ignore in Synthesis if you're playing hardcore. With my first death, I learnt to treat them carefully and to sort them out on my terms.

DoNotDieLinny


This Witch finished on Level 31 because she got caught in a fire spray by naked monster chicks with tentacle arms. These ladies look like this:

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Do I need to mark this as #nsfw?! I was chatting to another player on voice at the time, he was telling me he'd love to date one of them and that they would be his dream future wife. lol. He liked them because these monster chicks are mean! They fire these red pin-prick projectile and my Witch got caught in a heavy crossfire of them. Her life dropped too quick for me to fix it. I took this death hard. I was exhausted from the amount of concentration I'd invested in not dying. I felt burnt out, on top of the exhaustion from a busy work week. I really wanted to go to bed as the family had decided to do a field trip so mum can be a gamer nerd in peace while they were gone. I'd already told hubby, I will be too immersed for all of Saturday. My husband was a good sport, and when I reported to him that I died in my final attempt about 1 hour or so before the end, he was smug when he said: "Well, get back to your computer. You have another hour!" Haha...gotta love hubby.

As for my final attempt...

DeadLinny


As you can see from the name, I had already accepted my fate by now. This Witch finished on Level 38. I got the hardcore high when Dominus finally sunk to the ground. He was a boss I feared greatly. I've never beaten him in my few attempts to practice before the race. I try to be active across across different social platforms for Path of Exile, so I'll just share a Facebook post I did not so long ago now that sums up my experience in defeating Dominus:

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I honestly could have shut down my pc at that stage, but it felt lame. I think at the time there was only a few 2-3 hours before the official end. I had it in my mind it started and ended at 7am Melbourne time. I considered grinding the blood aqueduct for levels and waiting for tomorrow to have another proper go when I was stronger, but as this is a proper race, it felt lame too.

So I pushed on.

I was pretty certain I would die, and I did in the end. After what felt like an eternity to find Kaom in his stronghold for the next quest, I was finally overwhelmed by him and his pals in his arena. I was unfamiliar with this map, but the guys I was in the voice later told me this is standard. I must have forgotten it since I never got that far in my practice. With her death, I am done with Hardcore for now and I'll be switching over to Softcore for the next couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to enjoying the content without the fear of dying and starting again. I love the Path of Exile visuals, and really want to check out the new hideouts too! This league, I want to find a rare one finally!

Hardcore Voice Channel not so Hardcore...

Which brings me to the last observation for this post, which kept me entertained for my final attempt. I spoke to the guys who kept me company on the voice channel throughout the night. When I reported to them I died, they mentioned I should have capped my fire resists for Kaom. Sadly, it was not fully capped. I was at about 68% of the required 75%. I had thought it would be enough, but maybe that would have made all the difference.

Crying

But what was so funny to me was that I'd deliberately moved to the rarely used "Hardcore" voice channel to hunt down Hardcore players to share the suffering. I've come to know a few names on the server and I'm fond of their personalities. But the amount of shit-talking they do to each other is outrageous. At one point, I paused my game and asked them how they could keep it up for so long. They insisted I was jealous of them flirting with each other. lol It so highlights the difference between the genders and hearing how these guys bond and position themselves in a group situation.

Anyway, a couple of my favourites on the voice channels seem quite popular, so when they see me by myself, they would drop in, except then it starts a chain effect. They in turn attracted people who like them, and before we knew it, we had a large group of Softcore players in the rarely used Hardcore channel. I had myself muted as I played, but I was cracking up listening to them hangout in the Hardcore channel. They were playing their Softcore game and comm-ing each other, but each time a new guy dropped in, he'd say something like:

"Hey, all you guys playing hardcore?"

"Hey, I'm not playing hardcore but do you mind if I hang out here anyway?"

"Who plays hardcore?!"

It was ironic that none of them were playing Hardcore but me!

I blamed my pal for the Softcore invasion though, since I noticed he always attracted an entourage of players. I often avoided a channel with his name listed because I found those groups too large and rowdy. After he contacted me privately, I realized he was actually a sensible person, and that all the rowdiness wasn't his fault. Still, the larger groups on these channels are exhausting. The Hardcore channel being filled with Softcore players gave me a pretty clear idea how few Hardcore players there were around. When I finally stopped playing and looked at the list, I exclaimed to them:

"You guys realize that I am the most inexperienced player here, the noob, and I'm the only person actually playing Hardcore in this Hardcore channel!"

It turned out that one guy from Europe had actually dropped in during the night and was quietly hanging out in the background. He was probably also wondering why the Softcorers were crowding in the Hardcore channel too. Most of these guys were already well into mapping.

All up I enjoyed the challenge of the race! Congrats to everyone whose characters lived through the experience and commiserations to every death. Now I just need to catch up with where @supersoju, @nvisible and @ratticus ended up!! I've been absent a lot the last week because I've just been so tired. Keen to see who won all @mattclarke's steem!!

Thank you again for organising this, Matt. I'll most likely be leaving Steem in the backseat as I immerse my free time in playing the Synthesis League or writing my novel. It's been such a fabulous journey so far, and as I've said previously, thank you to Matt for introducing the game to me, and especially to supersoju for coming along for the journey! Path of Exile is an excellent game, but beware, this game is addictive!

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I ended up dead also. My three Templars got L2, L8, and L36 (killed by Dominus)
My Duelist was only L16.

As for the Einhar stuff, consider yourself unlucky. I only had 2 zones with hunts in them. Both for 5 creatures. nearly died to a triple yellow battle in one of them

As I said in my post, I was pretty accepting of death when it came to him. I'd actually wasted a lot of time delaying going into his arena I was so scared! But this time I did make sure I had well over 800 hp, I had mid 700s last few times. But I honestly think the spells did it. There was a lot of talk that GGG had buffed all the handcasting spells and that Purifying Flame felt really good to use. I think that and the added totem made an enormous difference in my survivability. And it was @nvisible that got me onto the idea of using another way to trigger an attack when he showed me how he killed Dominus with lightning traps. So when I got to the final stage of Dominus, I'd literally sat on top of good ol' Dom and found I don't get hurt so badly by him. I get the opportunity to hit him with a lot of dps. So with the extra totem also on him and firing chaos damage, that seemed to do the trick. I think defeating Dominus has me so keyed up about Hardcore, I need a rest from the format.

And yeah, I felt very unlucky with Einhar. Each time I went into a new zone I dreaded he'd appear. I did notice they seemed to make the beasts more aggressive this league with double-teaming sometimes, I never got a triple! That would be horrible in hardcore. All the softcore guys I was hanging with seemed "Meh" about the beast hunts, but that is because they are not playing hardcore! If they are around and you don't pay attention to them, you will get killed! At different points, I had them jumping all over my Witch! And what is with that stupid giant bird flying overhead and shitting all over you with crap! I think it was related to one of the beasts, but I cannot be sure. And how about the massive team of phantom dogs that streamed across the screen damaging you with another beast. It was crazy stuff!

In any case, you're also a gracious victor to me (even if you didn't get onto the podium). It's more how you've approached the contest and the game in general. You might not realize it, but you've really helped me with your company on discord throughout this PoE journey. Just you being honest about how difficult Dominus can be for you helped me not feel too bad he is so problematic to me. <3 I remain quite scared of him, as I am now of Kaom! It seems with each boss you encounter in Hardcore, it's another arduous lesson to learn.

Thanks so much for the kind words linny. I'm always as honest as I can be, as anything else gets you into trouble (and I get into enough of that without adding to it!)

The difference between softcore and hardcore attitudes is always interesting, but I've always played softcore with a desire to not die anyway, so it's never been fun getting jumped by a beastie. Especially not when you find the red one first, as you don't have Einhar there demolishing everything else around it!

Yeah, the giant bird much like the phantom dogs is just a special attack that one of the red beasts has. And those attacks suck so much more than just the heavy hitting red beast types

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Lovely to have you in the race, Linny. Not sure if you saw, but I screwed up and recorded results an hour early, then went to sleep. I'm having people report in their results, to see if there are any inconsistencies.
Smashing Dominus has to have felt really good though :)
D'aresso is ususally my next big roadblock; don't usually struggle with Kaom.

Oh, I am a non-survivor as far as I am concerned. I was all dead before 6AM morning. So that is still in-game from my understanding. So just mark me down as that. hehehe As I said to @ratticus in my reply to him here, I think EVERY boss I encounter on my journey through the acts, they will ALL be a struggle to me.

Smashing Dominus was definitely a highlight, but I'd like to be able to do this consistently like I do the others before him. :)

Thanks for being a champion of PoE on steem. <3

I find beating one in hardcore actually takes the panic out of the encounter, and makes it easier on subsequent attempts. My trapper died in the mine just before Kaom/D'aresso, but he then went on to take them both, Avarius and Kitava without dying again.
Just the pressure making me play jittery I guess.

Yeah, I moved at a snail's pace in the mine beforehand and through Kaom's stronghold. I just did not remember that zone at all, so it was completely new to me. I had this crazy fear that it would be like that delve azurite mines where I walked in and it got dark and I died! I kept expecting to die just moving through the zone! That's the thing with Hardcore, it's so pressurized. I need to play a few weeks of SC just to decompress!

Isn't it just delicious though? Nothing like it. I even play hardcore on minecraft.
My boys play creative; but I love the rush of knowing everything is gone after one fatal error.

You are truly the masochist the Softcore players talk about! The thrill is in avoiding the fatal error...
:P

I kid you not, Matt, I am still all winded up from the last death. I haven't played all day or even started my Softcore journey!

Enjoyed reading this post specially the part about the voice chat haha,
about the beast hunt: it is dangerous indeed, and sometimes those beasts have some on death effects that's why I keep my distance for a while even after killing them, also they have some aura buffs that affect nearby monsters, in the other hand bestiary crafting is really good and sometimes people gets really expensive items out of it.

I know! I've been seeing stuff on that facebook group on all the cool stuff people are getting on the bestiary hunt! I'm jealous! It's just right now I am a little tired from life events, so I'm not as focused on PoE the last couple of days. I'll try to love those mean beasts a little more with the reminder I will get goodies at the end. So glad to see you commenting on steem, even if I plan to go quiet. But if you post. Ping me and I will read and comment! <3 But I also hang out on that FB group, I'll invite you to it as well.

I know! I've been seeing stuff on that facebook group on all the cool stuff people are getting on the bestiary hunt! I'm jealous! It's just right now I am a little tired from life events, so I'm not as focused on PoE the last couple of days. I'll try to love those mean beasts a little more with the reminder I will get goodies at the end. So glad to see you commenting on steem, even if I plan to go quieter. But if you post. Ping me and I will read and comment! <3 But I also hang out on that FB group, I'll invite you to it as well.

You did really well @linnyplant! I am very proud of you. I am proud for both of us to have survived playing til the sun rises.

I will combine my reply to your other reply/comment.

I'm surprised you were listening to people chat on Discord while playing; wasn't it distracting? But it sounds like it was heaps of fun. Maybe I'll listen in during the next race; but I'm too shy to talk.

I would like to continue playing OneCrazyCatLady; see how far I can go before I paint the floor red.

Einhar's hunts were ok for me; I only encountered it about 3 times. I did almost die at the first boss because my keyboard decided to stop working; so I was running trying to spam my skills hoping it will come out. The skills came out intermittently and I got there in the end.

I remember Kole; he jumped on me with a big thud and it woke me up. But he was ok. I just spammed purifying flame on him after dropping the rest of my skills. I had to fight him a couple of times because I had lost my spectres when I finally got the skill gem. I think there was a bug because I ported and they were gone. I had trouble finding the ones I was after in the temple. I wanted to take two into my fight with Dominus; but had to setting with one.

All thanks to you; I wanted to be prepared for Dominus; I didn't want to end up dead on a roof top. If you didn't mention him; I would surely have died there.

Also I didn't use soulrend; don't recall what it does. There were a lot of new skills and some of the ones I use weren't there; or were available later on. It sure was a challenge to try come up with a combo when I was planning to just follow what I did with my other character. They really did change things and mix it up to make it similar yet different to the previous league.

The race was fun; thanks for getting me involved. I knew I wouldn't have time to have multiple attempts; so I played it more carefully and tried to avoid doing silly things until I was certain I had a good enough skill combo to allow me to rush better. But I would like to try out some other classes; maybe give my HC scion a go before I delete her. But that will just have to wait.

How the hell is this reply 10 hours later? I am finding Busy's notifications flakey atm. I noticed all your responses very late!

Anyway, I know what you mean about distracting with the discord voice channels running. I had them on and off, but I needed them for the last attempt. I was feeling miserable at the idea of starting again. I did actually talk a bit for the first quarter of Act 1 for that one, but it was too distracting. So I told them I had to mute myself and listen only or I'd die. I got used to it after a while. Normally, I don't have voice running. I am either chatting or playing. And you would also know it's a balance to use the in-game chat too. But I suppose it's moving into the next level of gamer nerdiness that I can play and listen and then eventually play and chat. All the guys I voice chat to are playing the game and carrying on a full conversation. I don't know how they do it too. As my pal pointed out during the race, it was the first time he'd heard me swear so much. But that is me, I swear a lot when people are not meant to be listening -- remember I talk to myself a lot, especially when ambushed by a crowd of mobs trying to kill my witch. hehehe

I get it with being shy on voice. I used to be like that, but it's been an evolution for me when I first did voice a couple of years ago with a group of guys for my Dungeons and Dragons online campaign. It's just a case of ignoring the first time fear of awkwardness and just go with the flow. You will realize it is not at all scary and the fear is fun to defeat. I would actually prefer to communicate primarily by voice and fall back on text only when necessary. You'll find out quickly I am ditzy, immature and overly chatty in voice. My previous manager described me as "scatty" because I am forever confused, forgetful and lost. lol I actually hold back on the channels because I am really there to listen and learn by osmosis. Some just enjoy the novelty of having a female voice present, so I'll chatter more if they are helpful/polite, and I leave if they are the dickish types. But it's great to find a small group having an inclusive and friendly conversation, because it helps keep you enthusiastic about the game too. As you'd know by now, PoE is not team game without a fair bit of pre-planning, so voice chat is a great way to get that 'shared' experience. So if I see you online, and I am in a voice chat with a group of nice guys, I'll ping you. You'll realize it really isn't such a big deal. They'd probably be thrilled to have two female aussie voices to listen to if anything. That would be uncommon. But if they make you uncomfortable, we can move to a private chat too. But all things at your own pace so don't fuss about declining. I equally enjoy chatting to you in-game anyway. But I've dragged poor @nvisible into voice once and he is still practicing his English speaking since he's Morrocan. lol As I said to him, no worries, I can easily fill up the awkward silences with my chatterbox personality, but I'm someone who makes a point to listen if you speak. I love hearing people talk about themselves than the other way around.

Now that I've started this wall of text about voice chatting, which is an essential for me in PoE gaming fun, let me get to your gaming experience.

A while ago, I wrote a post on Facebook griping about those darn Solar Guard spectres. Here it is:

It was funny someone asked me on my latest post where was my spectres during the race. I'll be playing them again in SC, but my minions are not my primary strategy in this league. They are what I guess @nvisible would consider 'utility'. I need some about for distraction and to make Spiritual aid of value to me, but I plan to be a spellcaster this league for the Witch. I just didn't have time for spectres during the race.

I love soulrend, but I love all chaos damage. It's the purple. Give it a go. I'm not sure if toteming them is the go, but another player gave it a try after I mentioned it in voice. He reported back it wasn't at all bad. I've always wanted to cast chaos spells, but relying on them as a handcasted spells just never felt 'bang-bang' enough and I like the spells I cast to have instant kick, rather than be all soft and flowy.

Anyway, you never cease to amaze me on how well you pick things up and travel efficiently. As I've gushed all over the place, your support of my PoE journey has been an important part of my fun. Like you, I'm proud of both of us in our efforts to learn the game by just playing it and having so much fun. I've really loved the synergy in feeling like we're part of a team even though we played separately; in knowing we started from the same origins and we're still not giving up. Some seem boggled by my determination to just play the game for myself and not relying on trade. I plan to focus more on crafting, I just didn't have the time and patience last league. But I see this as no different as any offline game. The content is there for you to experience and we don't need to consult some expert for every action! I simply get a lot advice because I am a social. But before us, other players would have travelled the same learning paths. I don't want to cheat myself of this even when others might consider me arrogant or foolish in wanting to waste my time dying and not studiously following builds. As much as I try, I just can't find the interest to take in a build spec. IMO, learning from defeat it part of the core design of the game. That's why there is the re-use of content mixed in with new storylines and mechanics each league. It's all about what have you learnt in the previous leagues and how well do you adapt to new challenges.

There's no need to reply to this as you're so busy, I write so you have something to read. But honestly, thank you for being such a good friend to me here and in Path of Exile. It means a lot to me, I'd have dropped steem a long time ago had it not been for you keeping me interested through our engagement. Much love to you too!
<3<3<3

I’ll do a quick response since I just had a dinner/shower break; also I’m just waiting on a response for one of the projects before I go further.

I’m more of a text chat person; not much of a voice talker. With text I can re-read it and reply when I see it or after I’ve gathering my thoughts; or reply later if I’m busy; or re-read it if I forget what just happened. I’m more of an observer/listener/thinker than a talker.

Glad I wasn’t the only one who didn’t like Solar Guard as much. For the race I noticed the curtains were not the same; they didn’t shoot. So I grabbed the next best thing from there; Flame Sentinels.

I thought about trying out chaos spells; thought I would try it with the Scion. But I couldn’t figure out which way I should go without spending too much time on it since it was race day.

Thanks for engaging with me and writing things for me to read. Else I would have been MIA for a long time. Also I want to upvote your comments but those dam annoying bots are there. Lol. I ended up messaging the main one last time to stop upvoting on my comments; and they did. But they started upvoting yours again; and I doubt you would ask them to stop because to you it is a good thing because I wouldn’t ‘waste’ my vote on you. PFFT!

That's pretty good level improvement each time :D

Yay for beating Dominus! (I have no idea but it must be good if you were happy about it XD)

From all my discussions with players, he is the first boss that is a roadblock. All the others are easy peasy. Thanks for dropping by!

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