found out i can download other people's hideout setups. this was the first one that came up i swear i was just testing it out. kind of want to take the time to make my place all nice and cozy since i'll be spending so much time here, but this is very very low down on the list of things i need to spend extended amounts of time thinking about in this game. up till now i've been going to Karui Shores for everything but that has other players and other players have annoying noisy microtransactions following them around

speaking of. proud to announce i have earned a microtransaction for this league. so glad that my hard work has enabled me, to spend more money on the game. i spent more money on the game i bought more stash tabs, no screenshot because i don't want to draw attention to it i'm actually hoping people will just gloss over and not see this part. also i only just learned about stash tab affinities, i've been manually switching between tabs all this time giving myself headaches when i accidentally put things into the wrong tab

fought Catarina again and almost lost, again. but i didn't! turns out the whole Betrayal system that culimates in this fight is one of the most complicated things in the game in terms of going for specific rewards. when i run into guys i usually just click the 'execute' button 0.1 second after they begin talking to me. then ten minutes later i run into them again completely alive which i assume is why it's called betrayal. we had a deal, the deal was that you die

beating the boss rewarded me with this minigame that gave me limited time to use essentially limitless crafting currencies on an item. this is like the ultimate test of whether i can tell if an item's mods are good or not (i can't) (i just went umm uhh the whole time and whipped my eyes back and forth from the timer)

starting to seek out specific crafting options. even though this is extremely expensive (1500 fusings and i have maybe 200) i still prefer it over straight gambling which eats away at my soul. of course if i ever can afford it i will be sure to hesitate on the off chance i later find a better base to use it on, and end up being stuck with 5-links the entire league

right after finishing that last entry i got a 6-link bow from a Kingsmarch shipment hehe. unfortunately i think the base is kinda bad for the build i'm going for but i'm keeping it (and way too many other bows that i think maybe might be kinda potentially sorta good) on the backburner in case i can salvage it somehow. haven't checked out the new recombinator crafting method they just added because i saw a guide for it that was pages long and got scared but that sounds like it could be the key

learning about how useful Harvest is for crafting, and also how grindy it is just to farm chances to make good crafts, and also how pretty much the whole game is just farming chances for things. Sacred Grove used to be a whole farming (as in horticulture this time) thing apparently that involved purposely growing plant monsters to kill? before it became functionally the same as a lot of other mechanics. sounds way more tedious to reap results from but aw i kinda would have preferred having my own lil murder garden

this week in doing the mindless stuff to put off having to think about the complicated stuff: i've been focusing on Atlas completion, done all tier 1-16 maps and now trying to roll unique ones. i like the uniques because they're not totally mindless at first as they'll have a small gimmick to them like this jumpy/teleporty platform one, and i'll think oh this is neat, for a few seconds then i'll usually realize it's actually annoying to deal with. i did one where the whole thing was that there was no loot but it was like 300% increased exp, all of which i promptly lost from dying on the next couple maps

started to reach the point where i'm wondering hm is this game good for my brain. obviously the answer is no but as a Gamer the threshold at which i'm willing to recognize when my dopamine receptors are simply being taken for a ride is markedly higher. thing is, Path of Exile 2 is coming out soon and it looks really really good and and i'm very excited. but a lot of people aren't!! because from what's been shown so far the game looks slower and more methodical. they've specifically described the combat as being more "soulslike" and many people are not into the idea of not being able to zoom through a map at 10000mph killing 10000 enemies per second

so it's not that i don't want to be lumped in with the Slot Machine Gamers but it's just made me very aware of who this game is for. reconsidering my thoughts on Ruthless as well, since it's supposedly more in-line with the "vision" they originally had for PoE as evidenced by PoE2. on top of all this i definitely plan on checking the hell out of this game as soon as 2 is out, as if the seasonal format didn't make everything i do feel pointless enough. that and the fact it's a video game. and also that we're all going to die someday anyway. see it's usually only games like these that make me go down this path which is what has me wary

went ahead and fought the Searing Exarch, paying no mind to the fact i had no idea how long it would take to get another opportunity if i goofed it up. wasn't too bad except for the big flaming ballwalls that suck to dodge because the camera angle gives me negative depth perception and they kill me in two hits. now i have a small chance to get tier 17 maps and i'm surprised i'm at this point, i thought it would take me much longer to have the knowledge needed to trudge my way up to the content i actually see people talk about

i configured my current build in PoB with the same settings as the build i've been following and the DPS isn't crazy off. i mean it's almost half off but that's nowhere near what i was expecting. i'm marking my opinion on how i'm doing down as: "pretty good for my first character, playing Solo Self-Found skimming a guide that keeps telling me to buy stuff from other players, and also i don't know what da hell goin on". but now it's time for me to completely screw everything up by attempting to switch to a crit-focused build. i'm ready for it to be way more than half off

if i was responsible and cared about taking basic care of my body i would write, haven't played as much these past few days due to repetitive strain injuries from clicking all damn day. but instead i'm writing that i've started playing with a controller to ease up the pain, and it's not amazing. they keep talking about the focus on controller support for PoE2 and after trying it out on PoE1 i'm thinking they just forgot to backport the good parts. UI elements are all bugged out and a lot of them look like placeholders. and i have to fully commit to either logging on in KB/M Mode or Controller Mode, so i gotta relogin for inventory management which is crazy sucks

i would blame the controller but after fighting Catarina i think four times now i still can't figure out what's randomly killing me all the time. the moment-to-moment gameplay does actually feel nice aside from not being able to target parts of the grind to zipzoom toward. anyway since gear management is now so tedious this has become yet another great excuse to keep mindlessly farming. i'm still trying to get the last few unique maps to drop so i can unlock every supercrafting mod, then after that i don't know probably keep farming because they cost a couple divines and i'll definitely mess it up a few times

i fought "World Eatsman", then later accidentally managed to recombine a pretty baller bow so now the Crit Switch has begun. i hate crafting bro i'm using all these calculators and simulator websites to determine the thousand different mods that can and can't go on things at certain probabilities and aaaahh!!! still it's better than playing trade, because from what i've read i was completely right before when i said everything probably just comes down to farming currency. and they don't even pull a slot machine lever so where's the fun