been a little over a week since i started making the big man build improvements. since then it's been repeatedly drilled into me that this is not the best game for me to be so into. i've mostly been logging on to send off a couple ships to disappoint results, and in the meantime absentmindedly farm currency that i will gamble away to similarly disappointing results. then the physical pain eventually resurfaces and i stop. i bought a little thingy to put next to my mousepad to relieve it and i can't figure out how to use it in a way that doesn't feel suck

largely focused on getting that one single nonexistent unique map to complete my atlas, so i specced into getting more scouting reports, as well as better tormented spirits. it turns out i'm not supposed to kill these guys the instant i see them. no matter because the mirage archer above my head will immediately gun them down anyway, alongside the weird floating weapon Rampage(?) minions that are always spawning around me

took me a while to figure out where all that was coming from when i switched up my gear. not super into the league mechanics that encourage deleting as many enemies as possible as zoomily as possible, so when this counter started showing up and telling me to do so 100% of the time for maximum DPS it just made me long for PoE2 even more. also specced into Legion to farm for a big jewel to slot into my passive tree that gave me just a silly amount of dexterity

anyway i finally got the coward Coward's Trial, too cowardly to show its face to me all this time. the process for trying to roll this one map was the first instance of me thinking, alright. alright i'm not too sure about this game actually. i ran through half my chance/scouring orbs trying to unique-ify a map to no avail, and went to bed that night feeling the way someone who hypothetically had experience with gambling addiction might be familiar with

i got one of these from completing the atlas not-battle-pass. made it about halfway through the waves, and couldn't shake the feeling i maybe should've waited until i was significantly stronger to use it, since it was the Ultimate Reward and farming the splinters for it seemed like a lot. but i don't know i felt like i was getting pretty epic strong. i got down to only dying once to Catarina. i did try a single tier 17 map and got my booty rocked by the boss, also felt like i should have held onto that for a while since that was still the only one of those i've found so far

so i'd unlocked the final crafting mod i was looking for, and thus said hmm it is time to miscalculate its usage and waste some divines and exalts on totally ruining my bow. this was the next instance. everything really does just revolve around gambling at this point! i'm not into it. sure there's RNG in other games like this but at least i'd be making progress in other ways in the meantime. here all else i'm getting is other currency to gamble away, and it's not like i'm leveling up anymore because my glass cannon bowgirl is dying constantly and losing all her XP

i've already had a dream about gambling divination cards for a Mageblood this is the point i'm at. i got a single The Patient card, 8 of which give The Nurse, 8 of which give The Doctor, 8 of which give a Headhunter. so not even remotely almost on the way to being close to a Headhunter. and for some reason i decided, hey i haven't done any div card gambling yet i want to feel that same despair that others do. gambled that one Patient three times to turn it into two Patients, costing me a stupid amount of plant juice farming

think i've seen Path of Exile at this point, and i feel okay about winding down a bit for now. i mean there are more bosses but it's not like i'd be able to see them or what they do anyway with how many projectiles are on screen. game got ~200 hours out of me so far and that's pretty dang good, probably grabbed me harder and more violently than any game ever has. don't think it's worth posting my build because i destroyed my bow but last i checked my DPS in PoB was around 1.2 million

still very excited for PoE2, i hope the increased emphasis on skillful play rather than solely optimizing numbers in a spreadsheet and then gambling endlessly to achieve those numbers extends far enough into the endgame to keep me playing just as long. plus i spent all that money on stash tabs i'd like to get a little more use out of them. if the cricket pet i spent 50 cents on doesn't carry over i'm going to be extremely mad

let me make something clear: i still be playing this game, a little. not long after writing that last entry i got drunk, went back and de-"final entry"-ized it a tad then started going wacky in those azurite mines looking for funny fossils. i then determined that farming fossils is not worth the time investment. i just desperately wanted to utilize a straightforward crafting method other than spending hours collecting harvestjuice then watching it all drain away as i end up with a worse item than before. fought the Harvest boss once which took like 10 minutes and i am never ever using that white harvestjuice i got from it

i realized part of my problem is digital hoarding. even though i plan on 100% superditching this character at league's end and especially at PoE2-not-being-out's end, i'm still iffy about using currency because i want the big bulky leftover collection in Standard for whatever reason. gotta bash it into my head that as SSF there is literally no other purpose for rare items than to actually use them. i watched someone in chat finish all their challenges and proceed to gamble away their Mageblood for the hell of it since they were done with the league, and that's the kind of mindset i gotta have

gambling still feels bad but i probably care too much. i've decided to cope by considering the league challenge for 4,000 total map modifiers what i'm mainly progressing towards, so when i run out of essence/harvestjuice/fossils/toomanydifferentthings attempting to make an item marginally better but actually making it meganally worse, it doesn't seem like a complete waste of time. what was a waste of time was impulsively spending my gold on the black market in Kingsmarch. always feel guilty taking gold out of the treasury even though i was the one who collected all of it. if i want to blow my workers' wages on gambling it is my right

so um um what have i been doing lately. most days i just log on for a couple hours and run maps until i'm bored of nothing interesting happening, as a result of my lack of attempting to make something interesting happen. somehow i didn't die going up against 10 bosses at once in the big spacegirl arena, and i got my fifth map slot. got around to learning how to upgrade my pantheon, which were some pretty chunky character upgrades i just left sitting on the table there. now i want those last two voidstones!! just getting the drops needed for the chance to fight the bosses is taking so long i will most likely be too scared to actually attempt them

i came across this strongbox and thought this might be the point everything turned around. like those are some pretty big numbers huh!! but it didn't drop ANYTHING worth even hovering over man. in case it wasn't already clear that this journal is now just complaining about RNG i thought i should throw this in here. if it also wasn't already clear i have reached the point where i've stopped trying to make these writings accessible to anyone who is not also unhealthily into PoE. do you know how PhD and/or NASA you have to be to understand this game man i don't have time to explain to you all what "Fire damage" is