Hardly seeing any Abyss Troves

This thread is not to complain about the difficulty of the Abyss spawns, which mostly prevents me from reaching the third pit that spawns the abyss trove. It's just that I don't get what exactly triggers the cracks to the 2nd and 3rd pit?

I usually only get to the 2nd pit. I play SSF (Yes, I hate trading. Don't try to convince me otherwise) and have rather low dps for my level. So I fail to kill all the mobs in time, I guess. But sometimes the cracks continue, even while there's still Abyss mobs around. Especially the rare abyss mobs are hard to kill fast, but I noticed sometimes that I can reach the 3rd pit and the trove appears, even with multiple abyss mobs still running around.

So... what makes the cracks continue? Exactly? Is it just a minimum number of spawned mobs that you need to kill, and then it proceeds?

I'm pretty sure it's timed.

The only times I haven't gotten Abyssal Troves is if I was too slow with killing the monsters or I died.

Yeah, initial announcement for Abyss mentioned something about "If you are quick and deadly enough" or something like that, implying it's timed.

If you look at the existing crack, you'll notice it slowly sealing itself. There's a puff of dust that travels along the fault line like a slow-burn fuse, sealing the Abyss behind itself. If that 'fuse' reaches the chasm you're fighting in and you haven't killed enough stuff yet, the Abyss will seal itself and you're out your trove.

From what I've seen, you need to hit a certain Kill Counter before that happens to get a new crack. Different monsters seem to be worth different amounts of points. The most effective ones to kill are the Magic critters, or the regular white spawns (not the critter-spawned grubs and such), as you can slice through those quickly enough to get your Kill Meter up without bogging down on the rares. Those add the most to your Kill Meter I assume, but they can be very hard to drop quickly so unless you can drop them quickly, let them be.

Murder the regular adds as quickly as you can, and when you see a new crack form leave whatever's left behind and Quicksilver your way to the new chasm. Repeat until Trove. Go back and clean up the remaining critters after that if you like, killing the rares can be good for drops, and those Stygian Vice belts are busted as hell. I haven't worn any other belt type since the league started and I don't see myself doing so unless I need a unique belt for some reason, not when I have a mediocre mid-tier Abyss jewel giving me 35 life and ~18 base flat fire damage for my Buzzsaw-style APS build.

Needless to say, dying basically means you're out your trove. I don't believe I've ever managed to recover an Abyss that killed me, which has happened a few times because these things mean bloody business and some of the rare critters they spawn are major hardasses.

As for your DPS problem...welcome to SSF, and why nobody likes SSF :P Trading sucks but it beats the alternative even if you're bad at it. I am super fisking awful at the Market Minigame, but I don't know if I could play PoE at all without it.

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1453R wrote:

From what I've seen, you need to hit a certain Kill Counter before that happens to get a new crack. Different monsters seem to be worth different amounts of points.

Ok, this explains a lot: so I don't need to kill the yellows to proceed to the next pit, but I do need to be fast enough in killing the normal white guys. Well, at least I'm glad to know I can skip those pesky bat things that fully heal every time they go underground.

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As for your DPS problem...welcome to SSF, and why nobody likes SSF

You're wrong. I like it. I like ladies in leather too, with whips.

I will preface this by saying that I do trade, and I think my AoE and damage is pretty good for my level (at least for a league as new as this one, my test character in standard was obviously better), but what I do is set off a few aoes and then go directly to the next pit until the next new crack spawns, always only fighting at the end.

If I'm not mistaken in my observations, it's a timer per crack / pit rather than an overall one, so if you manage to beat the timer at the first crack, you should be able to beat it at the second and so on. Staying alive with 5+ abyss rares that I have neglected to kill earlier was more of an issue for me.

I've been known to wear leather a time or two but I don't do whips. You'll have to find that on your own, solo :P

That said, yes. You can skip the rares. No need to chase down the runny shooters or deal with the goddamned bats, though some of those will give chase so be cautious about dragging half of one pit's fight to the next pit. If you have DPS problems with one fight, fighting a fight and a half instead probably isn't a great idea. Ideally you want a skill that hits a wide area; I'm running Molten Strike with buttloads of APS and both Wildfires, but Sunder, Earthquake, or the big AoE spells would be an idea too. If you're not spraying arrows at them from two screens away, anyways. Frankly I'm not sure how well archers are going to work this league, the Follow-That-Crack mechanic seems to favor closer combat than a lot of Clearspeed Meta bow guys like.

Hey man, I play SSF HC.. not that it matters, just saying it because I died at level 48 last night (to Innocence, in my first attempt at her ever) so I didn't get far nor did I have very good gear.

I struggled with the abyss things at first, and then I threw on a detonate dead gem I found just for shirts and giggles so I had some added aoe damage on my melee character. Game over. That's all it took. I was getting a trove from every single abyss with ease, which also meant gearing up a lot quicker since they seem to have decent quantity/rarity for whatever reason.

I'd also like to point out, that most of the time, I was seeing the Abyssal Trove raise up out of the ground while I had 1-2 of the rare mobs still alive. The trash mobs dying to detonate dead were more than sufficient to clear them in time.

Finally, not sure if it was buggy or not, but I was also getting the trove after quickly clearing even just one pit at times. A few of them didn't even branch to a second or third.

So, hope that helps a bit. I'm a crap player and super casual. Actually just came here to try and read up on mechanics again because I just don't get it. I'm just suggesting to try some area damage and afaik, detonate is kinda generic right? Ok.

Good luck bud.

I was just finally able to get started last night, but I've had no problem getting the abysmal trove on the first couple dozen troves I've encountered.

I watched a Ziggy D video and he instructs you to NOT kill the monsters along the cracks, but kill the monsters in and around the large holes that are created by the cracks. Killing those monsters around the hole is what triggers the crack to spread, not killing the monsters along the crack.

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CaseyHicks wrote:

I was just finally able to get started last night, but I've had no problem getting the abysmal trove on the first couple dozen troves I've encountered.

I watched a Ziggy D video and he instructs you to NOT kill the monsters along the cracks, but kill the monsters in and around the large holes that are created by the cracks. Killing those monsters around the hole is what triggers the crack to spread, not killing the monsters along the crack.

Oh, I didn't realize that was a thing so I didn't say so.. but can confirm from my little experience as well. I was doing the same thing naturally. I'd run/leap straight to the pit and let the ones from the cracks come into my aoe.

Not to mention a lot of the ones along the crack seem to just respawn/spawn others anyway.