Self-Found Gems Challenge (updated for Bestiary!)

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jolsen26 wrote:

Damn dude, you are rockin' it!

Hope you kill Kitava! If you continue I'd be interested to know what strategy/goal you set after that

I'm going templar. Not sure if that's wise, but we'll see.

I hope the templar will have better luck with the drops than your Scion.
Just checked, you already have Glacial Hammer + Ruthless, not a bad start!

If I manage to kill Kitava and get to maps, there's a part of me that would like to "free" my char allowing him to use any items/gems, he earned his redemption afterall!
But don't know.. will see.

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Any rules for death?

The rule is that when you are dead, it's over, it's an HC challenge.
But no one stops you from playing it your own way.

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FrancescoV wrote:

I hope the templar will have better luck with the drops than your Scion.
Just checked, you already have Glacial Hammer + Ruthless, not a bed start!

If I manage to kill Kitava and get to maps, there's a part of me that would like to "free" my char allowing him to use any items/gems, he earned his redemption afterall!
But don't know.. will see.

Yeah. That's my current Templar. The first died around 40. Couldn't get any support gems and I should have just built around blade vortex as spark wasn't good without proper supports.

My current character is the weirdest ever. I toss out two ansestral bond totems to get some kills then body swap to aoe packs down. Then swap to my glacial hammer and single target with AB. Obviously a temporary solution but it's kind of fun :)

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FrancescoV wrote:

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Any rules for death?

The rule is that when you are dead, it's over, it's an HC challenge.
But no one stops you from playing it your own way.

Yeah I play my characters HC. I honestly don't know what death penalties or anything you could do in SC.

You could just set a max number of deaths if you wanted to play that way.

I just did it, killed Kitava ACT 10 and finished the storyline.
The fight was long and tiresome but thanks to the 6 endurance charges and 78% fire res I was able to kite most of his attacks... it took some time but eventually the beast went down.

My gear still counts 4 normal white items, a couple of crappy uniques and a random improbable gem setup. In this difficult conditions it was quite an achivement.

Now on to the maps!
First I capped the resists, which required just minor adjustments as I already planned the skill tree with post Kitava in mind, maximizing the amount of resists.

Then I will do Merciless Lab as soon as I can (tried it just after Kitava, but Izaro was melting me, too dangerous at the moment), getting the Undeniable notable (+1000 accuracy)... having 0 accuracy on my gear is starting to hinder my dps too much.

Labyrinth is also a good source of skill gems, so I will probably run it multiple times hoping to get some useful skills.

Wow, gratz! That's awesome!

Why not just grab resolute technique for 3 points? You have ele overload so you aren't getting benefit from any crits any way.

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jolsen26 wrote:

Wow, gratz! That's awesome!

Why not just grab resolute technique for 3 points? You have ele overload so you aren't getting benefit from any crits any way.

To trigger Ele Overload you first need to land a critical strike. Resolute Technique prevents you from scoring criticals so you can't have both.

I prefer Ele overload as I know I can fix accuracy with ascendancy and the 40% more damage is really needed to boost dps.

Yeah I realized my mistake right after I posted that. I forgot how that works with melee as I've only ever used EO with spells and they'd never take RT obviously :)

My plan is to possibly run a bunch of labs in either cruel or merciless to try to get some gems (if I get that far!)

What do you think about this?

My thought is that it's not really unfair as if you make it that far, you should be able to farm for gems in the lab because (1) it's dangerous, especially with the gear restrictions; (2) it's no guarantee to get gems in lower level labs and no guarantee to get anything you need.

IDK at first I thought maybe it would be a kind of way to cheese the challenge, but the more I think about it I think it's just fine.

Yeah in fact I am a little reluctant like you on the idea of running Lab multiple times to get gems. It looks like cheating in this case.

But not allowing Lab to be farmed would also mean you can't get a desired enchant on gloves/boots.
The rule here could be that you can't farm lab before finishing the storyline.

But in all truth I think that getting gems this way is not completely fair to the challenge... and would have a bad taste for me doing this now.
So maybe Uber lab could be the only one allowed for farming (assuming one ever gets that far). Because we are real masochist :D

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FrancescoV wrote:

But not allowing Lab to be farmed would also mean you can't get a desired enchant on gloves/boots.
The rule here could be that you can't farm lab before finishing the storyline.

I like this as a middle ground. So after killing Kitava Act 10 you can do Merciless (or Uber Lab I guess) as much as you want.

I think it'd actually be fairly hard to farm, if I ever get far :P

Also, holy shit. Just found a "Poet's Pen" lol

Started this yesterday, just killed Merveil as a level 15 Ranger... found two gems so far Molten Shell and a Spell Cascade Support (that so far is pretty useless)

Molten Shell is very useful against groups of melee opponets and it was a great tool against Brutus, not so much against Merveil, she was a close call, but at the same time it's very exciting :)

and i get to see a whole lot of boss/elite mechanics that i usually don't see, like the fact that The Dweller of the Deep summons lots of really annoying minions, so i guess it's usually dead long before it starts doing that

So now of to the Southern forest where i will count on my Molten Shell to protect me from and kill some Apes .... and hopefully i will find myself a real attack gem soon

*edit* i realized that i will not be able to clear an abyss of my own level, so i went back to The Ledge in hope of a Stygian Vise, and i got that , a pair of unique gloves (Lochtonial Caress) and two new gems, Elemental Proliferation Support and Glacial Hammer.. but i'm not sure that Glacial Hammer is better than a bow since it's single target... and i need to have a mace or staff to use it... hmmm... the things you never need to think about when you play "normal" :)

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JoakimBackryd wrote:

*edit* i realized that i will not be able to clear an abyss of my own level, so i went back to The Ledge in hope of a Stygian Vise, and i got that , a pair of unique gloves (Lochtonial Caress) and two new gems, Elemental Proliferation Support and Glacial Hammer.. but i'm not sure that Glacial Hammer is better than a bow since it's single target... and i need to have a mace or staff to use it... hmmm... the things you never need to think about when you play "normal" :)

Right? Really adds some interesting stuff to the PoE experience!

Lochonial Caress is really good find for attack speed and generating a few random charges. Keep after it and once you get a ranged or melee attack skill or maybe melee splash or ancestral call for glacial hammer things will start to pick up!