⭐ Your Scourge Final Impressions? ⭐ ⋆Updated⋆

It is all part of the vision. Time consuming, high risk and low reward.

This is the way.

Pretty meh tbh and the items that drop with it are just another waste of time. Currency drops are all-time low and if it was not for the quality changes I almost like expedition more and we all know how that went

Nothing to brag about for the developers... this league is simply an abomination.

Stop putting money into the false marketing and MTX crap - start respecting your customers ffs! Or just bury this game and get lost.

Btw, fast uninstall.

worst league ever. like mechanic wise. I didn't play a few like heist and synthesis so maybe off mark, but damn this mechanics are bad, like objectively bad.

I am having fun in this league, doing league content whenever the bar fills up.

From a slow levelling perspective the mechanic could be a fun little assist during the campaign except for the currency drought.

I've found only a handful of Alchs at this point and even less Jewellers and Fusings. So obviously players will want to Scourge a yellow item with useful sockets and because your item gets corrupted, the sockets need to be linked before you put it in the crucible, but there's not enough Jewellers and Fusings to do that so you have to look for pre-linked drops.

Then there's no Alchs so my item sits in my stash till I eventually find an Alch by which stage that white item is underlevelled and useless.

Exactly what is GGG afraid of in the early campaign that they starve players of just basic currency to get going?

That aside, I was trying to work out what to play when I saw the game mechanic and the swarming mobs which helped eliminate quite a few builds. Slow gameplay relying on DOT with limited defences was going to be suicide as a number of players have attested to.

Also, here's another timer. Thanks GGG, we all love timers!

I'm already losing interest in the league but enjoying the character I'm playing so I'll keep pushing into maps but can see myself dropping out of the league pretty quickly as I have absolutely zero interest in levelling another character through this.

Overall I'd say it's an interesting concept delivered in a ham-fisted way that misses the mark.

Oh, and forgot to add, Act 1 is stupidly overtuned for new players. It's not clever or cool, it's just tedious and punishing which I guess is the culmination of poor design that epitomises where PoE currently is as a game.

I don't think there is any redeeming this league mechanic. I don't like it, I can't conceive of any amount of tuning that would make it fun, I can't imagine any amount of drop buffs that would make it rewarding enough to put up with it. I think if this league mechanic gets added to the core game I'll probably just quit playing the game.

Words have not yet been invented which could politely describe how I feel about the mechanic.

So, after playing a bit and getting into maps and trying to balance gear now that I have more crafting recipes...first impressions so far:


1. The mechanic as a concept is an interesting idea and fits GGG's standard trope of 'risk vs. reward'...at least in theory. In practice? Too much risk and not enough reward, which sadly seems to fit their track record to a 'T' for the most part. Early on, the Scourge mobs are placed a bit too far apart and many times when you are starting off you kill plenty of normal mobs for a brief run in the alternate realm, but barely find anything. There certainly needs to be a balance to not overwhelm a player while giving them enough of a chance to learn how everything works and get their feet wet.

Sadly, I found myself 'phasing' into an area and finding almost no mobs to kill, or just a group and then searching for more and getting nothing. Now, in that case, it's likely better to just exit the demon-infested realm early and conserve your blood power, but it seems so counterintuitive with how it is presented. Limited time means kill, kill, kill, and despite GGG wanting to slow players down, they keep doing things that encourage them to go fast, fast, fast.


2. Visibility with the mechanic and specifically the mobs are very poor and lead to deaths that should be avoidable. With a limited amount of time and zoning into the middle of a pack of mobs, you barely have a moment to register the biggest threats before you start killing. And in this case, not to kill for loot...but to survive. Even with the 'grace period' provided by the 'stun and push back', often times I found myself getting assaulted and ganged up on within half a second.

Having popped flasks and laid down totems, I found that I was very often chunked extremely fast, and more than a few times outright one-shot by the charge-up-beam monsters. Mostly because they were out of range of the push back and I had to quickly decide where to try and dash/move to to try and get out of the way before even thinking about attacking and thinning the numbers. Long and short of it...the phase-in mechanic and the sheer reaction speed of mobs is just too much and should be toned down a little.


3. In line with number one, once again, GGG shows a lack of good balance between risk vs. reward, despite their elegant speaking and interviews done by Chris. Despite entering the Scourge area probably well over 100 times or more, I have only NINE...yes...NINE total pieces of the tainted 'currency/crafting orbs' to use. I understand that GGG wants to limit power and the like, but this is beyond silly and I have no reason to even touch the corrupted items I have with those orbs. Hell, I would be better off not using ANY of them and just letting them roll over to Standard League at the end and get some use out of them that way.

This is a recurring problem that GGG still has not learned their lesson on; they introduce a league mechanic and want people to interact with it, and people do. However, they are not rewarded for it, though at least there have been leagues in the past where this has been true, albeit some other issues would plague the league, but at least they made sense. Thusfar, I more happy to come across Blight and Legion things in maps so far rather than Scourge stuff, mostly because I feel I can't interact with it in a meaningful way.


4. The corruption idea of items is a fun one, and once again, I am glad I tempered my expectations here. GGG once more cherry-picks and shows off all the good stuff to get people hyped, and then reality comes crashing down. I haven't gotten a single good Tier 1 craft that didn't have something in it with the downsides that were just either too much, or completely bricked an item and made me go, "At least this was a side project and not a main piece of gear I was shooting for".

Also, the amount of time it takes to corrupt certain items, and especially maps is just too much. I could understand if this was weighted where the positives were very likely to have a high chance of rolling really well, and thus the time investment was needed. HOWEVER, as per GGG's obsession with RNG and making sure players are bent over and ****** raw without lube, that's not what happens here. I have no desire to push items to Tier 3 Corruptions except for the challenge and that's it...I'll let others do the dirty work.

And that's a problem. When I as a player feel that my time is not being rewarded by the new league mechanic and I would rather stick with what IS reliable, despite that (non-existent) 'carrot' being dangled in front of me...that isn't good. The only items I would ever try this on would be uniques, since those (in general) are easier to come by and I'll not gamble with rares or other nicely crafted gear.


5. Related to point two, but the balance for Scourge mobs is just not in a good place, I feel. I can totally understand when pushing the corruption meter up (reminds me a bit of Last Epoch and it's map system 'corruption' in a way) that you can really get punished, though that is of your own doing. However, even when starting off at basic maps that have extra damage modifiers, and you have minimum stacks and still can get totally blasted in less than a second...that's a problem.

I know I'll likely be able to overcome some of those things with better gear and better play, but even those can only go so far. Again, the big culprit is just that mobs can assault you so fast initially that you can die before you get to do anything or assess the situation, and since you're zoning in and don't know what is going to be there...I think I'll ignore Scourge for now when leveling in maps.


All-in-all, just initial impressions, and are subject to change the more I play of the league and see what it has to offer. But initially...looking pretty poor on GGG's end for my personal rating, and this needed some more balancing and time in the oven.

So far I am having an alright time with it.

Though sometimes things are a bit too chaotic if you shift in a small room and next thing I know I am surrounded by demons that leak out of the room too. Even if I try to blink arrow away after panic slamming my defensive flasks, I am greeted with the respawn at check point or town window.

I do like it is something you can more or less do at will than having to run around for an NPC to talk to. Always liked the leagues where it's just touch the thing and go kill stuff.

Corrupting items is interesting. So far I have...been getting trash but I am using a ring that has less max mana but gives me a chance to get a power charge on kill so using that during my leveling. Most of the time I throw in a white ring or amulet and just sell it if it's junk cause hey, alchemy orbs and alteration orbs!

That said, I am in Act 8 and getting my ass handed to me when I phase in. Probably because my defenses are starting to fall behind. Though I'd imagine it's only going to get worse from here on when I make it to maps. Not going to be fun to shift and then get slapped immediately and lose a portal.

As for tainted currency, got some whet stones...uhhh...yeah...woo...?

We'll see how GGG tweak things in the middle of the league.
Though I am concerned if GGG has a thing for blood. Cause we had Ritual, then Ultimatum annnnd now Scourge!

I decided against my better judgment to give league a try. I didn't plan to.

The core game changes are fairly good. Atlas in particular.

But the league mechanic? Might be the single worst I've ever seen. It takes way way too long to krangle things. I have so far gotten 1 item I could use from it. And it isn't even very good. It's not rewarding, not fun, and super rippy.

If I keep playing I think I'm going to just ignore it.