Purple on death explosion

How do I tell when a mob is going to have the purple on death explosion?

I've been looking but see no consistency, just sometimes I die (its about the only thing that consistently kills me) and my only reaction is oh look its that thing I can't tell is coming and can do nothing about.

I died two times on hardcore league cause of that suck ass mechanics. One of the char was lvl 90 jugg with 7 endurance charges and 40 chaos rez, was insta dead.

Yeah I think it scales of enemies HP? It seems to hurt way more on a tanky enemy like a harvest devourer, not sure though either way its Pretty much instagib with max chaos Res.

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Jonte_84 wrote:

Yeah I think it scales of enemies HP? It seems to hurt way more on a tanky enemy like a harvest devourer, not sure though either way its Pretty much instagib with max chaos Res.

It's not chaos dmg

Well as much as your death's suck I'm glad I'm not the only one. Still would be nice to know it was coming so you can make sure your movement skill is off cooldown etc.

I figure there is a tell, I just haven't found it yet. If anyone knows it or a keyword to look for in the mods description it would be greatly appreciated if you shared here.

Ooh, boys.

The mod you are talking about is "Exploding Crystals when Hit", which is the "normal" counterpart of the Archnemesis modifier Crystal-Skinned. While the original Archnemesis also came with extra Elemental Resistance and a whopping 50% extra damage as random element (compensated with a gem-only drop), the signature modifier remains: the crystals.

Basically, everytime you hit an enemy with "Exploding Crystals when Hit", you will generate a purple crystal where you are (sounds familiar? Just like Lightning Mirage pre-"nerf". So yes, it's a way to punish Speed builds over Damage builds, you got it right).

The moment the monster with Exploding Crystals when Hit" dies, all of those crystals explode with a 1 second delay.
The damage of those explosions? Well, it's purple, so as you can cleverly assume it deals cold damage.

Or, at the very least, the original AN dealt only cold damage, before one of the several "nerf waves" from Archenemsis League changed the damage from pure cold to an equal share of fire, cold and Lightning - let's assume this has transferred to the "Exploding Crystals when Hit" mod.

Yes, your 7 EC jugg has died because of... elemental damage, of all things. All of them equally shared. But most important, he died because he dared stand still for 1 split second. The nerve! Being stationary for a second - to the death!


The most amusing part is the mere existance of this thread, which means two failures:

1) the whole purpose of "remove AN, let's make descriptive mods instead" is missed - forgivable, who would read a mod that says "Create exploding crystals on your position when hit. On death crystals explodes after 1 second, dealing elemental damage (based on monster's HP)"? Yet, this means people would still need to check on internet for the "long version" of "Exploding Crystals when Hit", which they already needed to do for Crystal-skinned AN, and they will need to memorize all of this information.

2) At the very least, AN modifiers were colored. This may look trivial, but something like 6 years ago Rare monsters could roll a "Reflect x damage" on them, which caused a very big uproar both because it was instanteous (it was meant to punish to the death build that killed things from off-screen. Yes, different times, imagine having this today) AND the only visual feedback there was was a little aura on the monster's feet. After many leagues, the whole "Reflect x damage" was changed with the "x Thorn" Nemesis modifiers - which both solved the istantaneous part AND the visual feedback since it was a glaring orange.
Now? Now we are back to square one, with the most deadly or tricky modifiers white, just like any other modifier.

It has a very distinctive "plink plink plink" sound. I generally just start running in circles when I hear it until the plinking stops.

Rule Number One in PoE - never stand still :)

Yes, those crystals exploding underneath you are a menace. So far I've managed to avoid them as soon as I see any of those purple splodges.

Reflect - there is now a "monster reflects ailments" mod on the new mobs. Sneaky.

Thanks for all the info Maxtrux

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TemjinGold wrote:

It has a very distinctive "plink plink plink" sound. I generally just start running in circles when I hear it until the plinking stops.

Also this is another problem. I know there are a lot of sound clues, but usually unless I'm fighting an end game boss I have sound off (I have my reasons) so I missed the plink sound, but thanks for this I will keep it in mind.

When I need to play with the sound off (there are many times I do), I make it a habit to watch my guy's feet. The purple thing is pretty hard to miss if you do that.