Does Delve get any better as you go deeper?

It took some time before I got fun out of it.

At first it was like "Gather sulphite to gather azurite to buy upgrades so I can gather more sulphite". The whip, but not the sugar bread. A stick without a carrot attached to it. Why am I doing this?

Now I'm really enjoying my delving. I play a couple maps as I would usually do, nothing fancy, then, whenever the sulphite bar nears completion, I jump into delve.

I really like to explore the darkness for its hidden treasures. With capped resist and a lot of life regen (Jugger), it's not that big of a deal to go off path for a while.

Some of the encounters are a bit too slow, but overall, it's a nice league.
Can't wait to get a couple nice base items for resonator crafting. They are just piling up atm.

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Peterlerock wrote:

I play a couple maps as I would usually do, nothing fancy, then, whenever the sulphite bar nears completion, I jump into delve.

This is what I am doing, I am nowhere near maxing out my sulphite bar, so it doesn't take long to get near full then go Delve for a bit then do some maps.
I like the variety instead of endlessly doing maps.

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adghar wrote:

The most interesting are probably the City Biomes but they're a little bit rare. May not be worth the Grind for you.

i come close to death every time i go in those things, but i cant help myself for going back for more. its raining currency in there.

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idrankyourbeer wrote:

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adghar wrote:

The most interesting are probably the City Biomes but they're a little bit rare. May not be worth the Grind for you.

i come close to death every time i go in those things, but i cant help myself for going back for more. its raining currency in there.

Yep. The usual solution for unfun mechanics in this game:

Bribes.

I can't say the delve becomes more efficient compared to mapping. However, what completly got me addicted more than anything in a long time are the rare areas in the delve and the rare encounters.

I've on purpose not read anything about what to find in the delve before the league and I am so glad I did.

The normal delve nodes are pretty much the same as your usual grind. Go there. Kill that. Get loot + extra loot based on node type.

However, I love the rare nodes. There was one node I've encountered so far where I've had to dig quite my way there and after reaching it I was so super happy I did. It was almost definetly less efficient than investing the time in some good maps, but hell, it was so much more fun. I had to use my flare to get the loot. I was so sure there is quite a lot of loot in that node, because the game highlighted it for me, but I also knew I can't easily reach it because the darkness kills me pretty easily. I barely managed to get in, refill flares and loot the second area. That was so much fun. I can't remember when looting felt so insanely intense the last time - compared to the usual "grind through maps until your loot filter tells you to pay attention". You can bet, I did pay attention in that node on my own, because the number of tries was limited and my ressources and upgrades where likely a bit too low to do it easily.

I really hate the darkness, especially because I dislike to have to play in a dark environment. This is the one thing I hope they improve with further iterations of endless dungeons. The darkness fulfils it's purpose and before playing it I thought it's an awesome idea, now I am pretty annoyed by not seeing much. Also the handling of flares and dynamites is pretting annoying. Also other games did that much better before (Terraria, and terraria did not even implement that in a good way, but still better than the delve darkness, as you were able to really lit up your mine and some biomes where bright on their own).

I hope so much they will keep giving us infinite dungeons in the way the delve works, but keep on improving them. I'm so addicted to PoE right now, I haven't had that much fun in a game for quite some time. I am a pretty casual PoE player and just managed to get enough of the content to keep me going. Someone playing even less than me, will essentially nothing out of the Delve Content. The interesting nodes are far down or rare. However, someone playing PoE less than me, has likely also already more than enough content in the game.

I am looking forward to start crafting new items with the new currency, but I am also annoyed it does not stack. Thats completle unecessary bullshit - and I am saying that as someone who invested quite some money into stash tabs and have no problem to support GGG via micro transactions, but here it seems simply cluttering the interface. I am missing a delve stash tab, but also don't hope they will release one for delve, but will release it together with something like "delve 2" :D

Your mileage might vary.

Couldnt find a harbinger node the whole time delving down to 300 depth

I just found one from going sideways at depth 70ish (because its cheaper to travel) and found one after an hour.

and I found this at depth 72 behind a wall after several hours




I dont think its really worth the sulphite grind to go 280+ if you want to experience the content as long as possible before having to do maps unless you are blessed with an endless supply of t16s.

I personally like doing a few red maps then just binge delving in the 100s for a few hours straight.

no

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Couldnt find a harbinger node the whole time delving down to 300 depth

I just found one from going sideways at depth 70ish (because its cheaper to travel) and found one after an hour.

and I found this at depth 72 behind a wall after several hours

I dont think its really worth the sulphite grind to go 280+ if you want to experience the content as long as possible before having to do maps unless you are blessed with an endless supply of t16s.

I personally like doing a few red maps then just binge delving in the 100s for a few hours straight.

Going by a lot of sentiments the last couple weeks, this seems to be best advice / outlook as to enjoyably experiencing delve; despite it being a pretty huge contradiction of the entire point of it.

And that is, of course, provided GGG doesn't realize people are sticking to low level delves ...and subsequently nerf it more than they have been actively doing already.

It's definitely more enjoyable to stick to bellow the 270 ish softcap ( where it eequals T16 and monsters stop gaining levels ); and just let your highest tier map feed you enough sulphite to delve in quantity, rather than trying to delve in quality.

The rewards just don't scale proportionate to the sulphite, time, gear, etc. requirements as you get lower depths in the mines. It's like a game where each increase in difficulty doubles the health and damage of the enemy ..but only increases the rewards by 5%. Sure, if you're still 1 shotting things then its an obvious buff to efficiency ..but it's a grossly abused "rewards" system that doesn't actually reward players for their effort and challenge.

I think it's safe to say that the general population of players who delve are not worried so much about the item rewards for completing a delve ..but in just finding a delve node that isn't one of the super common generic / weapon / armor / etc. ones that make up 99.9999% of your encounters.

And that's not really a depth issue.

If you like more challenge and more loot, it gets better.

If your looking at it from a gameplay standpoint, its the exact same.

It was better before the quarry patch, now its like 1 map for 1 node. Really sucks when your low and know you gotta farm maps. Sometimes you wanna do maps but full on suphite. Can work two ways against you.

To me, delve feels best around depth 270-350 (start of monster level 83). It feels rewarding since it drops T16 maps and the delve cost in sulphite feels allright. Delving deeper than this is for 600 depth challenge or delve ladder only imo. Rewards for going deeper than the sweet spot are dimnishing at best.