Why Self Found is Fine: 7 Days of Progress

All the time there's this talk about self found leagues and blah blah blah a bunch of boring rambling about how you didn't find a soul taker and 6 link in the first 5 maps you run. There's a tl;dr at the end because this post is full of a lot of useless shit, like every long post ever.

I've been playing solo self found since the templar was first added, which was a long time ago. And also the first time I got to play PoE. Coincidentally, the templar is my favorite class.

I used to play hardcore but I don't have the tolerance for it at the moment. And Ambush was awesome enough to keep me in softcore, so I don't really play hardcore anymore. However, playing hardcore made me a lot better at the game a lot faster, so I've got some residual skill.

I'm going to break down why self found is fine using the progress I've made in the last 7 days of the new 1.2 patch in the challenge leagues.

Going into every new challenge league, I plan for the worst RNG imaginable. And for the first 3 days, that was basically exactly what happened. Not even an alch drop, I didn't see a chaos until I was already a man. But it didn't stop my progress at all, because again, I planned for it.













Time for some background on my main, he's a crit ice nova/glacial cascade build, with emphasis on freezing.



Now, the fabled 5 linked ice nova, if it was a 4link I would drop added lightning and just used echo, added chaos, and crit multi(how much you wanna bet that gem gets nerfed). The 50% increased damage when I crit would be missed, but I do so much damage on crits it really wouldn't make a difference. The skill I use for killing bosses is the same 4link setup minus echo because I haven't got 2 of them.

Just for reference on how good I am, Zana assigned me a courtyard map and this map had double unique bosses with the unique boss damage and speed affix. Zana also only gave me one portal to do this map, and I cleared it. Using a 4 link glacial cascade that only has crit multi and added chaos linked to it (effectively).

The Point:
Contrary to what some vocal people seem to think, self found is fine. It's better than ever in fact, strongboxes and crafting are both incredible for closing gaps you might have in your gear.

7 days in my gear on my main is far from exceptional, and I'm doing 72+ maps with really uncool mods with ease through the magic of lightning warping into the biggest pack I see and spamming ice nova.

I play self found simply because the vast majority of the time I don't feel like spending the ~2 minutes it takes to get a trade going. I like to kill stuff, acquire currency, and from time to time an awesome drop comes along, and that is what I spend most of my time doing. I have absolutely no interest in any sort of self found league, even though it wouldn't change the way I play at all.

I like my item drops having value, and when items can't be traded, they lose value. A soul taker is now just a soul taker, and not ~20 exalts that can be put towards whatever I want. What if I have no interest in melee builds? I guess I can just shove that soul taker straight up my ass, because that's the only place it'll fit. Exalted orbs are no longer potentially a unique you could use, they're now exclusively "add thorns to a rare item" orbs, significantly devaluing them. Eternal orbs are no longer "remove this shit from the game", they're now "really, remove this shit from the game." Note that this isn't something that would apply to me, but it is the reality of making items untradeable. Finding amazing drops would be quite a bit less amazing, especially if the horrific suggestion of increasing drop rates was ever implemented alongside a self found league.

TL;DR: There's nothing wrong with self found, there's something wrong with your build/play relative to your ingame wealth and that's the actual source of your struggles. Don't make a build for soul taker/6l when you don't even have a soul taker/6l. 4l is all you need.

P.S. All of the drops I think are pretty good, this is with ~50 hours in the new leagues(holy fuck)(Take note on how none of them help my main progress at all, unless, of course, I traded)


If anybody wants some more specific tips on how to make self found tolerable, or whether or not a build is practical for self found, feel free to PM me.

I'll admit, I bought the gloves (was using Slitherpinch previously, which I found). Rest is self found (the ruby ring was a quest reward from Gemling Queen! First time I've ever gotten a quest reward I could actually use past level 25).

i play semi-felf-found (i trade for uniques as i know i have almost 0 chances of them dropping for me - i play without much MF)

and yesterday ive found my first ever GOOD item (with day-before-yesterday ive found something almost good)

items in question:



ill craft this maul for attack speed and then yolo exalt it hoping for crit chance

i play on this account since day 1 of open beta and these (relatively) are best items ive ever found. and tbh 3/4 of the top 2h and 2res, semi-decent ev chest are not that great to talk about..

self found is fine for few builds (spells, dual strike anything). but difference in twinked/traded char and self found one is pretty brutal.

sadly - content is tailored for 'traded' characters. since so much deaths at cruel domino - this is THE gear check of the game and even with crafting it is difficult to pass for self found guys if they happen to not pick few 'easy' builds

Septile: How much did you play in those 7 days?
Also, why did you post the mirror?

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majesw wrote:

Septile: How much did you play in those 7 days?
Also, why did you post the mirror?

He said ~50 hours.
Seconding the curiousity about the mirror. The link says hardcore league.
Good on you for playing self-found and telling off the whiners.

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sidtherat wrote:

self found is fine for few builds (spells, dual strike anything). but difference in twinked/traded char and self found one is pretty brutal.

Yeah, some builds are better at starting off from scratch than others. This is just the reality of loot-based ARPGs, I always started off with a sorceress in d2 even though I love playing frenzy barbarians because frenzy barbarians are pretty awful without good gear.

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sidtherat wrote:

sadly - content is tailored for 'traded' characters. since so much deaths at cruel domino - this is THE gear check of the game and even with crafting it is difficult to pass for self found guys if they happen to not pick few 'easy' builds

I don't think any of the bosses are gearchecks. Obviously you need max resists, but that's just a given, and with resist rings it's very easily achievable. For dominus, on his second form you just need good health flasks. On his first form you can just dodge his main sources of damage with ease.

The point of most big bosses is just to simply not tank them at all. Vaal oversoul is the most obvious example of this. All the bosses are super tanky compared to other mobs which means there are more chances that their big ticket attacks connect and potentially kill you. In Merveil's case it is more of not getting caught by a combination of her spells, rather than just a single big hitter. I think Merveil is very well done this patch.

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nikheizen wrote:

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majesw wrote:

Septile: How much did you play in those 7 days?
Also, why did you post the mirror?

He said ~50 hours.
Seconding the curiousity about the mirror. The link says hardcore league.
Good on you for playing self-found and telling off the whiners.

The mirror is just to see who is paying attention.
And yeah, ~50 hours, 40 hours on my level 80 main, and then ~10 hours on everything else.

Nice long write up on your "Experiment". You have demonstrated an extremely high level of understanding and accomplishments of this game.

Couple of points to ponder:

1. Are you proving that drops are in fact good, or that you are able to succeed in spite of poor drops?

2. You are hardly a typical player. 50 hours of playing time in a week is over 7 hours a day on average, that puts you in an elite category of player. You fully understand the game mechanics and how to deal with the various situations that come up, how to deal with Bosses. When you understand the dance then having better equipment just makes the dance a little shorter.

3. You understand your build very well and wisely chose a build that is not equipment heavy and I am guessing you could probably have done very well wearing no equipment at all.


Solo self found BEGINNER players are going to get blocked by the act end bosses, and if Merv doesn't get them, Vaal or Dom will.

I'm self found too... All this is just drop or made by me... And I don't need a SFL. All is fine in the actual state.

But your entire point is nullified by hardcore players, as you died many times.

Only thing I traded for was currency to get this claw... so like 95% self found?



Here's the claw I was using before Bloodseeker


for comparison on how I was doing before.


Also have TONS of low level maps (only been running them for like a day). So yeah. Self found is pretty awesome now.

Skill tree