“The Mobs Are Too Fast!”—No, You’re Doing It Wrong

I think alot players like me that we stopped at step2 because we never get anything good with crafting in 5000 minutes, not to mention in 5.

The whole bullet points you provide just prove on how PoE 2 combat and itemization is a mismatch and the game needs to choose on whether it wants to focus on combat, or on itemization.

Most of these points are relevant for like maybe the first or second day of a league / campaign only. PoE 2 still designed just like PoE 1. The faster you are able to access higher amount / higher quality of loots, the better your wealth will be. And in an competitive economic environment, being slow, sluggish, and cant generate / access higher quality or amount of loots is a death sentence for character progression.

Nobody going to argue with defenses, because its a given that everyone will build defenses one way or another. But crafting ? There is no crafting here, its a casino slot-style system where jesus take the wheel. Players have minimum to 0 agency to control the craft. Even with essence, you still able to roll stat that you don't want. People will not have problems with replaying zone to grind abit more gears, IF there is a deterministic way to actually get gears that you need with the stat that you need.

All of the changes for acts are all just bandaid for the core problem of wanting PoE 2 be different than PoE 1 with its "action-combat" and yet still designing the game around randomization, itemization, and trade, just like PoE 1. The game ended up as an abomination of mish-mash action combat rpg game, that neither have good action combat system, or on par with its predecessor (PoE 1) system : Itemization.

If GGG wants PoE 2 to be more into the action and combat, then start designing the game like so. Not in the itemization, not in the randomization, not in balancing around trade, but focus solely on the action and combat. Popular and proven to be amazing action combat games never have its itemization supersede the core design of the game in focusing on action and combat, like Monster Hunter franchise, Dark Souls series, Elden Ring, Sekiro, Black Myth Wukong, and many others that follows those game formula.

Why would anyone giving their full efforts, attention and focus, fighting mobs in PoE 2 in every sessions of their gaming time just to get rewarded by items that they might or might not need, and interacting with "crafting" system that might or might not give them the mods they need. Challenge / difficulty has to have reward that equal with the efforts given, and currently PoE 2 is really lacking in both aspects.

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Googous#1585 wrote:

Surprised you mentioned checking vendors for quality/sockets but didn't recommend picking up similar items to salvage. I pick up every socketed/superior item to salvage and never run short of their respective salvage.

100%, I kinda took this as a given but yes it reallyt should be added. Thanks for the constrcutive feedback, will add now.

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Ragestorm26#0930 wrote:

G’day mate, sorry to hear you’re not finding any rings — but after spending 500+ hours in HCSSF, I have to say I’m a bit surprised.

As a helpful tip: make sure you’re picking up white rings and checking vendors at every single level. I almost always have more rings than I need just from doing that alone. There are also two guaranteed rings — one from the Cemetery quest in Act 1, and another from the Burial Chambers — and you even get to choose the elemental resistance on the second one.

This is actually a great bit of design from GGG, because the Burial Chambers fire boss is the first real gear check, where you do need some resistances to get through without a rough time. Before that, resists help (like cold resist on the Act 1 boss), but I usually just stack whatever cold res gear I find — not necessarily from rings.

Hope that helps — good luck out there!


(Disclaimer: I’m only mentioning that I’ve played 500+ hours in HCSSF not as some elitist flex, but simply to show that — statistically — I’ve seen enough to make an informed comment. This isn’t just a case of “you got lucky with RNG”; with this much playtime, patterns do emerge.)

This is why im in favour of more encounters/spots in the campaign you can seek out if ur gear is lacking to get stuff. Like speed runners can avoid that and just speed through but if im lacking, I can seek the encounter out to get that guranteed gear

The fact that people rather complain than fix their obvious issues is hard to even understand.
This post should be an obvious knowledge.. but even if not, this guys is writing it down.. and we still see people commenting their excuses why the game should make 0 challenge so they don't die.

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Disclaimer:
This post is meant to be fun and helpful, not to mock anyone—including popular streamers. Zizaran and others are great players, and I respect their grind. This guide simply shares what worked for me, with 550+ hours played in Hardcore Solo Self-Found (HCSSF) campaign. I genuinely don’t believe the game is too hard or the loot too low. I just want to offer a different perspective so we can avoid nerfing the game into the ground. Hope this helps! Keep grinding, fellow Exiles.

Notice I threw your disclaimer to the top of the post? Because it literally describes your mentality, the reason you stated common knowledge and probably shouldn't even have titled this document what you did because its completely anecdotal and attention seeking.

Your once again another HC SSF player defending the current state of the game, because it fits your agenda as the 5-10% who actually play the game as such.

90% of your post can be summarized as you saying, if your weak buy gear and pray to RNG and your doing bad at the game, get good lol

The problem is to even do what your saying, is illogical and for most of the player base boring as hell if you have to spend 30 min each ACT replacing gear by hoping the market is available (Which every start of the league wont be, congrats on being solo self found and willing to grind out ledge for 3 hours to get your gear updated.) and if it isn't grinding until you can fix it which I actually did tbf because I absolutely had to because the drop rate was horrendous. Your talking adding 3-5 hours to the acts which for the worst player already takes 30 hours to complete. Time is relative that's the truth if it takes 35 hours to complete then whatever but 35 hours of straight slog-fest in a ARPG is unacceptable. We will re-genre this game as an adventure RPG souls like grinder for the niche community.

For those comparing it to D2, "don't". D2 at least had a modest rare drop rate, rune word compensation and periodic legendary (Theirs even a quest in the first act of D2 to guarantee a rare drop for you of your item choice to compensate, charsi mission.) Played the game back in 2001, for those questioning whether i played it before the first patches.

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Sargoth_CZ#3391 wrote:

The fact that people rather complain than fix their obvious issues is hard to even understand.
This post should be an obvious knowledge.. but even if not, this guys is writing it down.. and we still see people commenting their excuses why the game should make 0 challenge so they don't die.

+1