Path of Exile

Made a dude. A shadow. Only level 3. A bit laggy for me.
Is there a way to teleport back to sown to sell my junk? I am finding tons and tons of items but the walk makes it not worth it most of the time.

 

Waypoints are in ALMOST every zone. But zones are randomized a bit so it can vary as to where it is, I believe. I've totally been unable to find a waypoint one day, then the next day it magically appears (or so it seems to me -- I could be wrong about that). I leanred a lot about that on my previous character because sometimes I'd die, and have to run through 3 or so zones because there was no waypoint in between, or so I had thought.

 

Or if they are "superior" (another thing worth saving, for the recipe where selling "superior" items of the same type [armour/weapons/flasks/gems] to a vendor with the combined quality of 40+ will give you an upgrade item).

That being said, the beginning is a little tedious like that. You need scrolls of wisdom because you want to ID most junk (due to how shoddy your own equipment often is), but to do that you need scrolls of wisdom, and to get them you need to sell all the white crud you find lying around.
In the later part of the game it is somewhat better, because you don't ID most magic items (only those you think you could use, and rare items, and unique ones) so you usually get enough, or even more than that, scrolls if the only white items you pick are belts, flasks, and rings (taking 1x2, 2x1, and 1x1 in inventory, respectively)

And it's really easy to find out if a zone has a waypoint - after entering said zone, open your world map and check there, as it is marked in two ways (a dot when you are not in said zone, and a special icon in the description which is always visible).

 

Make sure to grab a lot of max HP nodes, regardless of build - I made that mistake, game basically became unplayable after a point and I had to start over on normal again.

 

Well, depending on the build you want "some" of it or "a lot of it".

If you go for armour, you want a lot.
If you go for energy shield, find the answer yourself.
And if you go for evasion, you want enough never to be one-shot (and couple that with 3 "heal instantly when low on life" healing potions); preferably a lot but because the hit calculator can't "chain hit" you, that much is enough if you are good (that being said, on the last difficulty "enough never to be one-shot" still means at least 80~90% bonus to health, or more depending on your build).

 

I've been playing this for the last couple days, and I'm pretty surprised by how much I'm liking it. The amount of character customization is staggering. I'm not sure how many passable builds there are out there though. They really nailed almost everything that Diablo 3 messed up (the story is kind of bland, but at least it's not in your face like in d3). I played the demo for Torchlight II, and that didn't really grab me. I foresee this being my go to ARPG for quite a while.

 

It's an action game so I can only play it in small doses. But it is holding my attention.

 

And now talking about "passable builds", I've actually discovered that building a character for full evasion (as opposed to armour, energy shield, or any combination of the three) is actually viable.
That is not to say that the creation of a "glass cannon" character is viable. But, because of the way the game's hit calculation system works, having your evasion rating higher than the monster's accuracy rating (meaning: having your evasion at 50% or more when against this monster) means that it will miss you at least once after every hit. Sure, the hits will be harder than those armoured characters take, but because you have a window to heal after being hit (for as long as we face against only one monster and it doesn't have the "hits very accurately" modifier, anyway, but that's where you use Freeze Mine, Cold Snap, or Bear Trap [Cold Snap and Bear Trap are literally my only means of real ranged attack now; the only other non-melee no-aura skill gem I use being Ethereal Knives, a shotgun-cone type of ability that I use to clear entrances to rooms in mazes and low-health monsters wandering around]) and it's possible to get potions with "-25% healed amount; heals instantly" effect rather easily, you only need enough health to be able to survive one hit the strongest enemy where you are can deal to you.
Even more so, because evasion is also used to "evade" critical hits (downgrading them to non-critical hits), having evasion of 50% not only means every second hit gets through, but it also means that every second critical becomes a normal hit. And evading attacks instead of only reducing damage means you also evade negative effects coming from these attacks, which is also nice.

That being said, using evasion does require one to think, because it is the means of defence not suitable for fighting against masses of monsters without monitoring the situation carefully. But if you can focus on everything happening on the screen and not forget about your health meter, it's a really viable way to build a character.

 

The viability of a build is dependent largely upon your definition of "viable" and how far into the game you want to go. I've already lost a few characters to the sharp increase in difficulty post-normal, and I haven't even made it to merciless yet. It's a problem that D2 had as well. Myself, I'm content to just finish Normal on a build and call that character done.

 

The level of viability is "for as long as you know what you are doing, you are no worse off than the rest of players".

One-hit-kill attacks from bosses will still be one-hit-kill attacks, but you have a chance to dodge them; sure, it's a quasi-random chance and thus something you shouldn't rely on, but the chance is still there; it's almost just as likely as it is for
Against enemies with elemental damage you are faring better, because you don't get hit as much and thus you are dealt less damage overall, assuming you don't forget about elemental resistances (with enough evasion and a certain keystone, it's possible to completely ignore all projectile attacks too, meaning that the "annoying" snakes with chaos damage in act 2 and 3 of merciless will not be able to hurt you at all). Sure, the physical part of the elemental attacks will hit you harder when it hits because you have no armour, so any status effects inflicted on you will be less common but stronger, but this isn't a bad thing because that means you won't have to use flasks to dispel them as often as you otherwise would.
Against enemies using spells you are no worse for you than for all the other characters, assuming you don't make the mistake of not getting any bonuses to health, as making an evasion-centric character does not equal a glass cannon (glass cannons aren't very viable, by the way).

As I said, full-evasion characters do require planning. You can't just go in and engage a group of 20+ normal monsters and a few elite ones at the same time without a risk that your character will die, because with so many monsters there is a possibility of the hit calculation system being less merciful than usually (with so many monsters attacking, it's possible that normal monsters will mostly miss but the elite ones will always hit, and the opposite is also possible; that is why you do not want to engage large crowds on your own with such a build); and you really need to know which enemies can actually be dangerous for you (heavy spellcasters, monsters with "hits accurately" and "allies hit more accurately") and eliminate them quickly. But if you can do that much, you really are no worse off than the armour-centric and energy-shield-centric characters.
That being said, such a build is more vulnerable to lags because these mean delayed reaction and evasion-centric builds do require the player to react in time to the things happening. That is a large part of the reason why it's not "hardcore viable", by the way.

And if you really want to know, my character is currently on cruel difficulty, with my gear (outside of two pieces) being outdated by about 12~14 levels because I haven't gotten any orbs of alchemy nor any worthwhile drops that I'd use for a long time. And I'm not dying constantly or anything of the sort. And I'm not an expert in playing action RPGs - while I'm undoubtedly not the worst player possible, if I can do something in an action RPG then it means doing that is not too hard.

 

My characters so far have been of a more offensive slant, which seems to be at a disadvantage. I've tried a summoner templar who made it to Merveil on Cruel before the game became completely impossible and I scrapped him - more recently I was running with an iron reflexes, point blank, iron grip archer wearing armor/evade hybrid armor. Sadly you need a massive HP pool to make good use of armor it seems, and Oak presented another unpassable brick wall for him. I'm hoping my Discharge-based marauder tank will have more luck, I've learned my lesson and just gone full-out tank this time around.

 

Yeah, I know how you feel there. I wanted to make a glass cannon when I started, but it just so went that I found a lot of fun gems which can be a good way to make up for lack of offensive ability and thus could make a more defensive character (meaning that I grabbed a few health nodes and a few resistance nodes, only to go for the "evade projectiles" keystone and then for the dodge-granting one - currently I need 3 more levels to get the 20% spell evasion one, and then I'll go for special status evasion).

And if it makes you feel any better, Oak was the only one of the three bandits I had any problems with. And Merveil was also somewhat bothersome for me, until I learned to defeat her first form from distance (because "melee" seems to mean "use ranged skills for bosses and perhaps finish them with your melee skills while protecting other ranged team members from wandering monsters with your melee skills" in PoE, which I don't really mind because it means you can't just steam-roll through the whole thing and have to plan ahead) and got the cold resistance flask with bonus to all resistances ready.

 

Has anyone else been playing non stop since beta? I've got 1 level 70 and numerous 20-25 characters in normal and hardcore. Right now I'm working on grinding up to level 80 and forward and making a level 28 character to exclusively PvP in act 2 normal.

And for anyone that didn't know, if you find an item with linked RGB slots then you can sell it to the vendors for a chromatic orb

 

Non stop? Nay, I had work and projects I spent time on as well (not to even mention another person who wanted my attention as well).

But I have a level 46 character now, which isn't all that bad for the amount of time spent; the only problem I really have now is that I'm not getting much (any) alchemy drops, which locked me with really outdated equipment for 17 levels (I got back on track on level 43), meaning all of the act 3 on normal and act 1 on cruel. At least the recipes help with that so I'm hoarding every "superior" rare item I find and then matching magic and normal items to it; sure, that means I spend 12~14 upgrade items on a single orb, but I think it's not that high of a price (and I would be able to get more orbs easily if I sold the support gems and divine orbs I'm not using, but I'm too much of a hoarder to do that before I get a copy).

 

For me it's one of these games I need to play in very small doses. So I probably haven't been on more than an hour in the past week or two. But that's how it goes with me with action games. My Ranger is about level 27 now, and that's not bad for me.

I don't generally get addicted to action games. My main vices are 4-X games, some rpgs, and the occasional rogue-like. Action games are, at best for me, time killers between games I can really sink my teeth into. I just can't get serious about any game where I cannot literally see what's happening and have time to think about it. I think other people sometimes play games to stop thinking, I play games to be engaged, and I can't do that if the game moves too fast.

 

It wouldn't be so bad if they could fix some of the framerate issues. The crashing gets pretty annoying too. I've tried 6 times to kill Piety on merciless and every time I got to her I either got a DC or crash. Aside from that I really love the game. I like it a lot more than D2.