i made a bow that i think is ok. when i equipped it some numbers went up and that's mostly what i'm going by. i used an exalted orb on it and those are apparently very rare and valuable, and i definitely am the type to hoard potentially useful upgrade items for the absolute most optimal scenario in RPGs. but i'm SSF and there's a seasonal challenge for using one, so i figured what else am i gonna do? wait to use it on something i won't later realize actually sucks for reasons i don't yet understand? please

i kind of am not super crazy into how random crafting is, if only because i used dozens of chromatics and fusings on one item to no avail attempting to get the sockets i needed, and with each click felt the void within me become blacker. i will neither confirm nor deny whether i have struggled with gambling addiction in the past but IF I HAD, i might make a comparison between the two experiences. but i won't. so i will simply say "it makes me feel bad"

delving into league mechanics one at a time to slowly piece together the puzzle that is this game. how it looks to me right now is there are just a hundred thousand different ways to make the same general progress towards gearing up. which is neat i think! Delves are cool, there's this guy named Steve who i guess does it a ton and every now and then the chat window gives an update on his progress and every single person playing starts spamming "STEVE" "GO STEVE GO"

checking out Heist as well and it's very funny. least graceful stealth gameplay of all time, 10000 explosions around me constantly but my alert level is at zero. my first time going into it i really pussyfooted around while i wondered, is this game really asking me to be sneaky. this is the loudest game in the world i don't know how i'd even go about it. then a dozen guards ran at me and i right-clicked and they all turned into fireworks so i guess the stealth meter means literally nothing aside from how much extra loot i'm allowed to pick up

of course sometimes even if i pay them enough they'll be so useless as to go and get taken over by pirates, and i'll lose everything. i absolutely couldn't afford the ransom so i wondered what the 'rescue' button would do, then a portal opened up next to me and i remembered this isn't just a boring town management sim but a cool action RPG also!!

so i had to go and fight the pirate captain to save my crops crew!!! game's so rad i like it

level 90 currently and up to red maps. did some grinding because i decided it was time to sit down and study this build i keep open in Path of Building pretending i understand it, and i wanted to have the same number of passive points so i could more closely 100% supercompare it with my current stats. obviously this was just an excuse to put off having to think about my gear a little longer. i will take the time to scale a very high progression wall if it means i get to continue actually playing the game

leveling gettin kinda scary. there's a 10% xp penalty for dying after the campaign, and dying just Happens so i have to be wary not to put myself in situations where things can happen, which unfortunately is most situations. really wish there was any degree of attrition when it comes to combat, instead of me instantly losing all my health and having to make an uneducated guess as to whether it was because my stats were bad or because i stood somewhere that was bad. there's no death recap or anything so i might start replay buffering deaths and taking a magnifying glass to them

next up in excuses to continue playing instead of thinking: the earlygame build uses this gem instead of the lightning arrow i currently use, even though it later switches to lightning arrow. if obtaining this gem was simple i would've said, well i don't quite understand why it says to use this when i already have the supposedly better gem but hey they're the expert. but it was in fact not simple, and i instead said, why am i running this stupid labyrinth for the 20th time for the chance to get this gem that i will later replace with a gem i already have. whatever though i got a lot of 20% quality gems out of it. but i am sick of "Izaro"

there's a lot of weird unique gear with weird unique mods. i very un-soberly bought the unique collection stash tab that cost (please remember i was not sober whilst reading the following) 14 dollars' worth of points, even though it's not that useful because it can only store one of each item. even the collection completionist aspect of it which is mostly what drew me in, isn't great since it's league-specific. i'm still hoarding duplicates because what if i need a unique for some specific build synergy and i mess up the stats on it somehow. thinking very longterm for this character that will be left to rot in Standard three months from now

everyone says it sucks and to not do it. but i trialed a Ruthless character last night, because "PoE but much much slower" sounded appealing. aside from how sudden dying is, my biggest complaint about this game is there is just too much. too much of attacks killing too much of guys that drop too much of loot. when i zip through a dozen packs of white mobs that all immediately get sent to hell with a single click and drop fifty yellow items i can't help but wonder what was the point. maybe that's the genre but it's a little too Vampire Survivors for my liking

i quickly started to understand why everyone said it sucked and to not do it. item scarcity being the only major difference meant it was still a too-much game, just now very disproportionate in its toomuchity. i did enjoy actually feeling excited over loot at first, but when i started running into the dozen-packs of white mobs again it just went back to how it was before, only now the items were white instead of yellow. the candy in the piñatas has been replaced with store-brand variants

i be fighting bosses. not well and not necessarily to completion either but i be fighting them. i unlocked the Syndicate boss yesterday via means i'm still not totally clear on, and died six times losing all my portals, meaning i Failed. it's okay this just means i have to fumble around for a while longer until eventually i have a chance to fight her again. was my first time having to look up a guide for a specific fight because i could not figure out what to do, usually i just zip zoom around for a while panic drink flasks every two seconds hold right-click and eventually the thing dies

now i have an invitation to fight """The Searing Exarch""" but i know i will fail, so i'm taking the time to be all confused about my build and not make any actual progress on it beforehand. i still haven't followed the gear aspect of this build guide in the slightest and i don't have any idea how i would even go about it. my list of things about which i keep telling myself "i need to sit down and really study this at some point" just gets bigger and bigger

thank hell i unlocked more of these atlas tree builds, i did not know that was a thing. i've just been doing what i was doing before with my passive tree and speccing into whatever mood was in the air that night, and i was not going to have the currency to fix my mistakes if/when/if i figure out what they are

i guess i should start leaving build snapshots for posterity. i don't know if i configured this properly because there are one hundred thousand variable settings in PoB. seeing some different numbers after pasting it into this site too. and i don't know if these links expire. my website has been offline for the past month so it's possible no one will ever be able to see how i'm exiling. whatever here is a page that you can look at