Danut's Self-Found Gems Challenge [streamlined for Betrayal!]

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Antaiseito wrote:

Congratulations to you both FrancescoV and DanutMS!! :D

Now i know what you meant about the lab, opened a box and completed my Essence Drain set AND Ice crash + added cold. Had Ancestral Warchief already, so Izaro became much easier.
I love essence drain but since my tree was already near the ice nodes of ranger i chose to go Ice Crash elementalist.

So far so good.
Alas, with this new found strength i felt like i got complacent again...
Tried to concentrate again but on the way up the mountain found a phase run gem, so cool to get out of harms way right. Tried it out in a group of monsters and got slaughtered. Just like that :o
Ah well, gotta keep that in mind next time for real. It's not like i never made it to maps in HC before >.<
Not having specced life regen as a fledgling melee character was probably something i should have taken into consideration more.

Will probably start a new run soon. It was absolutely great (again) to work with what you get (still including rares).

Character is not deleted yet if you want to check it out.

Have fun in maps and stay safe! :)

Thanks :)

Lab helps a lot, that's why I think it's needed to not allow more than one run of each lab. You'll still probably get something that helps you on this one run (unless you're me, lol), but it will not give you everything you'd want.

About your char: ouch :/ I've been using Phase Run on Delves (just there because I actually need the skill slot for something else on normal play, GGG pls give moar skill slots) and it has been really helpful.

I wish you more luck on the next run!

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FrancescoV wrote:

Congratz on reaching maps too!
I always wait till 70 to do Kitava on the first run of a League (this is to be cosnider a first run as I'm not using gear from any previous char), it helps... and I also consider 400 life per ACT a minimum to be safe (4000 at ACT 10). This time I had around 4500 (invested a lot in the tree to compensate for the crappy gear)

My strategy with the Lab is different though, I usually do it after killing Kitava and being already on low tier maps, usally around 75 or so.
I know I could do it before, it's just that I'm used to do it this way and it's not that you really need to do merc lab to beat Kitava (once you know the fight)

Thanks :) I was really happy with it, felt like my biggest achievement in PoE (biggest one in SC was killing Shaper, but I waited so long for my first try that I was so overgeared I just deleted him, so it wasn't special).

I wasn't really sure how much life is needed, since I'm a SC player. So my usual leveling is just running around with a lot of movespeed and damage and if you die whatever. I'll start using the 400 life per act as a baseline, seems good (and it's easy to remember).

As for lab, I wanted to do it before to see if I could get any helpful gem for the Kitava fight. Ended up not getting anything. But it doesn't really matter if you do it before or after - though it might be a good idea to skip Argus if doing it earlier.

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DanutMS wrote:

I'm a SC player

I warn you... once you go HC you can hardly go back ;)



Today seems to be a lucky day for me.
Found an abyss while mapping... 5th or 6th since I'm on maps... but this time it had an abyssal depth!

Finding a stygian vise was a great opportunity to improve my crappy gear.. so, fearing of not having enough damage to kill the Stygian Spire in time, to boost my damage I used the Jeweller's Touch prophecy that I got earlier... on my white astral plate.
But the boss wan't a Spire.. it was a Lich!
Manged to kill it and got some nice stuff... both the unique belt and the boots!

For now I'm not using the boots though as they don't have resists, and also don't have enough good jewels at the moment.

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FrancescoV wrote:

I warn you... once you go HC you can hardly go back ;)

Yeah, I know. I've played "HC" for the self-found gems challenge on Bestiary (I created the char on SC, but soon after told myself it was a HC run, so when I died I deleted the char). And now again, for three chars in a row (since the first two ripped to Innocence). It is indeed much more fun than SC.

On SC, the game feels quite dull right now - you can ignore pretty much everything, every once in a while something kills you but you don't have to even learn what it was. Just go back into the map and keep going. On HC, those things become meaningful (since, well, you can only die once).

The sad part is that I don't think I can play much more HC on my PC/Internet/Server. While leveling I already had Internet/Server troubles, somedays I just have to give up on playing this char and go back to SC because of that. And now that I'm mapping (where the mob density is higher and more taxing on performance) my PC is starting to be a problem as well.

Also, GGG did something to Beyond on the last patch. The game just freezes for 2 to 3 seconds every single time a beyond mob spawns - I never had this before, and I know I'm not the only one who started having it on 3.4. I did one beyond t1 map, and had to give up cause I'd certainly end up dying. Guess I'll have to reroll any map that get's the mod.

This is already a problem on SC, but at least I can just keep going after I die. So yeah, right now I have the problem of having discovered how much more fun HC is, but at the same time not really being able to play it fully.

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DanutMS wrote:

So yeah, right now I have the problem of having discovered how much more fun HC is, but at the same time not really being able to play it fully.

Sorry to hear that, tech problems and bad ping can really ruin the fun on HC. I'm lucky on this aspect... my ping is usually stable below 50... and my pc, while not exactly the fastest, can still handle PoE very well. I play HC only since Perandus and of all my deaths only a bunch were due to bugs, glitches or bad conncection.

Anyway... I see you are still up and running, level 76, not bad if it's the first time for you on maps with HC.

If it can be of any help, I take into account 200 life per map tier as the bare minimum... so it's 5000 at tier 5, 6000 at tier 10, 7000 at tier 15. This, however, is the minimum... never go below that, but try to stay above by at least a 10%.


Speaking of me I'm level 82 now, found Enfeeble and replaced Poacher's Mark with it, this however forced me to replace Smite (which I was starting to like a lot) with the recently found Lighting Strike... with LS you can use Claws and I needed a new source of leech/LGoH after removing Poacher's Mark.

I also found Thunderfist gloves... cool unique as my primary damage type is Lighting, but I would replace it anytime with something having flat life, I really need to add more life to my gear or I'll start to be in serious danger.

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FrancescoV wrote:

Anyway... I see you are still up and running, level 76, not bad if it's the first time for you on maps with HC.

If it can be of any help, I take into account 200 life per map tier as the bare minimum... so it's 5000 at tier 5, 6000 at tier 10, 7000 at tier 15. This, however, is the minimum... never go below that, but try to stay above by at least a 10%.


Speaking of me I'm level 82 now, found Enfeeble and replaced Poacher's Mark with it, this however forced me to replace Smite (which I was starting to like a lot) with the recently found Lighting Strike... with LS you can use Claws and I needed a new source of leech/LGoH after removing Poacher's Mark.

I also found Thunderfist gloves... cool unique as my primary damage type is Lighting, but I would replace it anytime with something having flat life, I really need to add more life to my gear or I'll start to be in serious danger.

Yep, it's my first time mapping on HC. I'm curious to see how far I can make it. It's a totally new experience in terms of how to progress, both because of being HC (and thus I can't just run every map I have without caring much if I'm ready for it) and being SSF (I always buy most of my maps while progressing through the Atlas). So I really wanna see how it goes. Though I still think I'll soon die due to technical reasons.

The part about the amount of life per tier will be of great help. So far I've only ventured into tier 2 map bosses (and tier 3 maps on zana missions, but without boss kills). And last time I was playing I was wondering about this exact question, about how much life I need for each tier. So thanks for the help :)

I've said earlier on your reports that I didn't like Smite as much when I used it. Well, Lightning Strike is one skill I find even worse, lol. But hey, if it's working for you...

Worst part about going with uniques only (or almost so) is the life amount. It's easier to fix resists through passives (since a "normal" tree usually goes near them anyway) than life (as most builds already pick up every life point nearby, so there isn't much else to pick, and increases don't give much without a good base life anyway).

But I see you already progressed two more levels, so I guess things are still working out. Just two more to beat your past run, right?

While looking at your profile I also saw you're using a white amulet and a white ring. Haven't you found any uniques for these slots or were they just so bad that you preferred to stick with white items?

Level 86 as of now! 1 day and 18 hours of play time.
The previous char, at level 85, had 2 days and a couple of hours of play time. So I was also faster this time (probably thanks to Delve).

Surprisingly I still have to find a single unique ring/amulet... that's why I'm using the white stuff. Found a couple of dozen of unique bows wands and other stuff I can't use though. Depressing, but not giving up.

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FrancescoV wrote:

Level 86 as of now! 1 day and 18 hours of play time.
The previous char, at level 85, had 2 days and a couple of hours of play time. So I was also faster this time (probably thanks to Delve).

Surprisingly I still have to find a single unique ring/amulet... that's why I'm using the white stuff. Found a couple of dozen of unique bows wands and other stuff I can't use though. Depressing, but not giving up.

Congrats!

That's some impressive bad luck though, with rings and amulets. At least they haven't been needed.

My own char is now level 77. I managed to upgrade my gloves and boots today, bringing me close to 5k life. Only downside is that I've spent all my 180-ish chromatic orbs trying to get 2 red 2 blue on my boots and I didn't manage to do so. Will try again when I get a bunch more orbs.

I also vaaled one strongbox and got a 6 link (4 red, 1 green and 1 blue) with 72 life and some resists. I've been really lucky with that. While leveling I vaaled just one strongbox and got myself a 5-link with the right colors. This one now was my second vaaled strongbox.

However, the colors aren't exactly the ones I need for earthquake, since I can't really make much use of a green socket (I could socket faster attacks, but that's not optimal for earthquake). But one map before that I had gotten a Lacerate gem, which is a green gem. I've been playing around with it a bit and it works okay. I still think I prefer Earthquake though, I really liked the flow of hit the ground, use vigilant strike, run, aftershock goes off killing stuff behind me, hit the ground again, use vigilant strike and so on.

So now I'm thorn between three options:

a) keep using my Tabula with Earthquake, to make use of the best supports, and take the hit to life (4.9k with Tabula against 5.1k with the other chest);

b) use the new chest with Earthquake, even though I don't have an ideal green support, thus taking a hit on damage;

c) use Lacerate as my main skill with the new chest, so that I can use the best supports, but being unable to keep Earthquaking around.

I'm still not sure on what to do. For now I'm sticking to Lacerate to see if I get used to it.

Just hit level 80! I really didn't expect to make it so far on HC.

So far mapping has been reasonably good. I still have to reroll beyond and use my logout macro when things freeze too much, but it's doable.

Kept using Lacerate, although I'm still not really into the way it feels. But I can kill stuff from farther away with it.

Now what I really wanted would be a better weapon. My damage isn't great, a better weapon would help a lot.

Worst part have been the lab trials. I don't normally die on them on SC, but knowing I can't die makes it harder. I'm about to do the fourth trial, I hope posting here about it doesn't give me bad luck.

EDIT: Oh, and unlocking maps is also bad. It's so much easier to unlock stuff when you can buy everything.

Well done.

I'm still progressing too, level 88, found an Ambu's Chargé plate... a nice boost to my hp pool. Still no unique ring/amulet.

Currently doing tier 9-10 maps... my progression is surely a lot smoother than yours as I already had Zana 7 and 100+ bonus on the atlas thanks to my previous HC chars.

Had a couple of close calls while Delving, death will come inevitable at a certain point with this limited gear.

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FrancescoV wrote:

Well done.

I'm still progressing too, level 88, found an Ambu's Chargé plate... a nice boost to my hp pool. Still no unique ring/amulet.

Currently doing tier 9-10 maps... my progression is surely a lot smoother than yours as I already had Zana 7 and 100+ bonus on the atlas thanks to my previous HC chars.

Had a couple of close calls while Delving, death will come inevitable at a certain point with this limited gear.

Yeah, having atlas bonus would've helped a lot. I was getting crazy with the t1 map drops.

So my char was going pretty well. I managed to hit level 83 even just playing low tier maps. Got some really good gear, lots of life. Even managed to find a pair of Haemophilia gloves, so I could explode enemies on death till I got my uber lab done. Lacerate started feeling much better with that and some 30% movespeed boots to help positioning myself faster.

My plan was on playing till I hit level 90. And honestly, I think I'd be able to do it, my char was totally fleshed out and feeling good to play. Also, with the trouble on progressing map tiers, I'd probably be way overleveled for everything.

Yesterday I played until I was out of t2 and t3 maps, so I decided to wait for Zana reset. Logged back on now, realized I was almost capped on sulphite and went delving first. Started the Delve, moved one screen or less, game freezes. I decided to wait a little bit as there were no enemies on my screen (and my game often freezes for a second or so and comes back, if I were to logout every time I wouldn't be able to play). After a little bit I realized it wasn't coming back and hit my logout button. I log back in and I'm on standard.

Just like that. I don't even have an idea of what type of mob killed me.

I'm not really pissed off, which surprises me - I thought I'd go crazy if this happens. But I guess I saw it coming already, playing on this shitty PC of mine. It's just frustrating, since I really think I could hit my personal goal of getting to 90, and I died to something that I couldn't do shit about. Oh well.

I'm going to play the same challenge on next league, probably as league starter already. Till now I was sure I'd play it on HC league, now I'm thinking of going for a "HC" play on SC league (basically one life like a HC char, but if I die to something that was absolutely and undoubtly a crash - like this - then I keep playing). Might be the way of keeping sanity with what I have in hands.