Good Morning Folks! I had to take the obligatory screenshot of my sad little totem as it has become a little less sad and a little less little. I am currently at 33 of 40 challenges completed for the Necropolis League in Path of Exile and without a doubt I will be hitting 34 before I am said and done. In past leagues, I have been happy enough with getting 19 challenges completed in order to get the most basic form of the totem pole hideout decoration. As such I have totems for Sanctum, Crucible, Ancestor, Affliction, and now Necropolis. During the Affliction League, I was playing a particularly strong bosser character and managed to get a few more challenges completed than I normally would have during a league. This time around however I seem to have gone all in on a number of these and ground out things that I never thought I would accomplish.
The biggest event of the weekend was that I managed to take down “The Feared” which is a special Maven invitation where you fight a number of pinnacle bosses at the same time. Essentially you fight them two at a time and get a random order of Cortex, Chayula, Uber Atziri, The Shaper, and The Elder. It took me two attempts to complete this but I managed to take it down as a Righteous Fire Chieftain. I could have probably had an easier time were I to build a dedicated bossing character, but it feels more “legitimate” after having accomplished this on my own in my preferred method of play. Atziri really was the only challenge because her explosions just take up most of the room leaving you very little place to stand. What makes it even more wild is that I managed to do this… without having a healing potion equipped.
The reason why I did not have a health potion equipped is that I recently purchased a Mageblood. I realize this is the second mageblood I have owned, but it feels a bit more legitimate as I did not borrow anything from the guild bank to purchase this one. Last League Kodra managed to find a Mirror and as a result it felt a bit Oprah-esc as we all got to buy items of our wildest dreams. This time around I actually had a reason for purchasing it. Basically, I wanted to swap some of my gear and points around so that I could maintain 90% all elemental resistance from equipping a Ruby Flask, and then use flask rolls to make myself immune to shock, bleeding, corrupted blood, and poison. I still stand by my statement that Headhunters are way more interesting than Magebloods, largely because one lets you do something really fun… and the other just patches holes in your build.
Another thing that happened this weekend is that I went really hard on Heist. This is something that I have dabbled with in the past but never really focused on specifically. Essentially I had to knock out a bunch of Heist-specific goals for the Tactful Thievery challenge. This involved running five different blueprints with four wings unlocked… which in turn required me to level all of my rogues so that they had at least one level 5 skill. Basically, I ran a ton of heist on Friday since I took the day off from work, and in doing so I dove seriously into the mechanics of it. I gotta say with the right character, I think I enjoy it every bit as much as I enjoy Delve.
Another big goal that I completed this weekend was Mag Magnifience which is to clear 10,000 Tiers of Maps. What this means is each map that you run counts towards that total and it means that I have run at least 700 maps during this league. That number is probably significantly higher considering I spent several days running maps before I got all four voidstones and upgraded everything to T16. This is more mapping than I’ve ever done in a league before. Normally I spend the vast majority of my time down in the Delve mines, but the availability and variety of scarabs have made running just maps in bulk a ton of fun. Essentially I have been rolling up eight maps at a time and then chain-running them on my Elemental Hit Champion.
The last big challenge that I am working on currently, is Grueling Gauntlet Grinds which is designed as a bit of a capstone activity. This all started when I noticed that I had a bunch of Guardian maps completed, and still had even more sitting in the bank. Collecting corpses in T16 maps is pretty much a “gimme” and I reached level 100 earlier in the league on my Righteous Fire Chieftain. I had a ton of Kirac missions saved up, so I used those and my stockpile of scouting reports to fish for 8 mod maps that I could run easily. That just has left Guardian maps as the remaining task that I need to complete. I have a few more Kirac missions so I will likely fish for maps there and then potentially either buy off the market the remaining maps that I need or chain run T16s until I get some as drops. My goal is to finish this up tonight so that I can move forward into the next Diablo IV season with a clear conscience.
While I feel like I should be wrapping things up… I am still having quite a lot of fun piddling around in this league. I am hoping that D4 Season 4 will be equally fun and distract me for a bit, but in a worse-case scenario I would be more than happy to return to Necropolis League and continue to slowly chip away at these things. I’ve not touched the one related to Atlas Memories and have a bunch of those saved up that I could burn through. The only thing that is a bit disheartening is that I cannot see myself ever finishing the T17 or Uber-Boss-related ones without pouring some time and effort into building a proper bossing character. Bossing is just not really what I want out of a game like this, so it is never really my focus. I am a bit worried that I am setting myself up for the future expectation of getting this far into the challenges every time, since I am on a bit of a roll of getting further in each league lately.
Anyways! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. Are you going to be playing some Diablo IV with the launch of Season 4 on Tuesday? Drop me a line below.
