The Odyssey

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I am a very large fan of ancient history and in particular the bronze age. That covers 3300BC to about 1200BC. This is the age of myth, with very little writing, as that came mostly in the iron age. What we know if that time is quite limited, and what is written is often written centuries after occurring. It was a time of gods.

The Odyssey is a great example of this. What we know of it is generally attributed to Homer (800BC) about an event that happened a heck of a long time before (1200BC). Think about that for a second. If I asked you to talk about a story that happened in the year 1600, but gave you no books and only people to explain it, what would you actually understand? Heck, even Homer was an oral poet (as he was blind), so the written versions are solely interpretations, many years later.

The Odyssey is not a factual retelling of actual events. There is no proof that there was a Trojan Horse – in fact it’s barely mentioned at all in this story, and what we know of it came from the Aeneid written by Virgil in about 30BC. That’s 800 years after the story was told, and 1200 years after the actual even took place.

What the Odyssey is, is a story. A story meant to convey the storyteller’s principles and values in an entertaining medium. We experience that daily today. A thousand years ago, theatre and books. Two thousand years ago? Three? This story is thematic, and nearly all adventures today replicate the structure of a nearly 3,000 year old tale. It is enduring and impactful.

In the past 100 years there have been nearly a dozen retellings of this story in film & TV. I can still remember the version with Armand Assante, where he basically had sex with everyone on his journey. The most recent interpretation from Chris Nolan is in theatres now, and I did have the chance to see it in IMAX. I have thoughts.

First, and importantly in all Nolan films, is the artistic elements. There’s very little CG anywhere, which is frankly mind-boggling when you think of the scale of things. The sound and picture framing are simply ridiculous, it’s a purposeful loudness and structure. Truly this can only be fully appreciated in IMAX – the environment and presentation is so important. Don’t watch this on a phone! As is often with Nolan, the narrative structure is broken and non-linear. By seeing Odysseus at multiple simultaneous points in his journey, you can better appreciate his growth. There isn’t much artistic liberty taken in the story, as the main beats are hit in the order they normally are, and the themes all remain in various formats. There is liberty in the cast and weighting of the various themes, but that’s the point – I’d watch another version or read a book if I wanted something done before.

What I did enjoy in this interpretation was the weight applied to humanity. There is no direct involvement of any Greek god here, simply the fall out of prior items. The Cyclops (which is wildly impressive) is present and is still Poseidon’s child, but Poseidon himself is not here. The journey of Odysseus through all of these events therefore is a human burden, and the growing realization of the impacts of his decisions. What may have seemed small is in fact epic in scope. The journey in the literal sense is also figurative – that’s why we have the word odyssey after all.

The net result is that this film is an event. Event with a capital E. Whether you enjoy it or not, there’s a likely line in the sand of ‘did you see this or not’, similar to things like The Matrix. Go see it!

Dave the Diver: In the Jungle

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This is more of an expansion pack than a DLC, surreal amount of content here and strongly recommended if you have the base game.

Dave the Diver has a solid gameplay loop. Dive, find fish (or fish like), farm, run a sushi restaurant, and embark on a zany quest with bosses. I spent many an hour exploring the depths. In the Jungle takes that model and then goes ‘watch me’.

The core loop of diving + restaurant still exists. You still have weapons (though the interface is much improved). But now you play in semi-real time, need to manage friendships, collect and battle bugs (ala pokemon), explore with a turn-based RPG, actual fishing (!), Duck Hunt, and decorate a tiny shack. The whole game takes place in a different area, so aside from your diving gear items, nothing else transfers here. There’s a solid 10 hours of extra content though, which puts this in expansion territory.

The new stuff:

  • Friendships: You need to feed them certain meals or give certain gifts. They end up coming to the restaurant and at max friendship, give you some rather useful item. I like that there are more than 6 characters this time, makes the world seem much more alive.
  • Bug Battles: Rock / Paper / Scissors with a stupid amount of RNG. This is the only part of the game that is not fun as the random is too random for my tastes.
  • RPG: This is very weird. Super Mario RPG like actually. I mean it sort of works, but it has no real long-term value.
  • Fishing: Basic enough and provides some fish you can’t get elsewhere. About time I say! (Also, don’t bother upgrading your rod, trust me).
  • Duck Hunt: Pretty much exactly what you think it is. Gives bird meat, which is a mid-tier ingredient.
  • Decoration: No in-game value other than looking neat.

The old (but improved) stuff:

  • Diving: You still have the RNG of the map but the fish themselves are always present. You want a caiman, it’s going to be top right 100% of the time.
  • Gear: You start with a purifier for the dirty water and the minute you upgrade it, you no longer need it. If you’ve maxed it all in the base game, then this seems very strange.
  • Weapons: Ahh, this is so much better. You get access to all 4 weapon types from the start now, at the same time! Upgrading them is the same structure as before. The large area wave gun is life, prioritize that if you can!
  • Restaurant: Some minor tweaks here and there. You need to shoo monkeys away from time to time, making one of 2 servers mandatory. Cooking skewers has replaced the Wasabi mini-game where you are needed. Recipe ingredients are harder to come by as dispatching gives less and there’s no real farm this time. From a practical perspective this only means upgrading recipes takes a lot longer.

The way some systems are presented, this seems like the foundation for more content. The ‘bones’ here are generally improved from the base game, so I’d certainly welcome it. Give it a shot!

The Incident at Galley House

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I like puzzle games, particular those focused on deduction. Return of the Obra Dinn remains top of list for me. A recent addition to the genre is The Incident at Galley House, which is a remake of a text only gamed called Type Help.

The challenge with describing any of these games is that the plot and the mechanisms to uncover the plot are so intertwined that they can’t really be talked about without spoiling the other. Going in blind is all but required to fully appreciate the art. In that respect, I’ll try to avoid as much as I can.

The GODOT engine can do a lot of things, and puzzle games is one that it really does well. Voice acting, interactive buttons, simple animations. Puzzles are about how your brain perceives data, so generally less is more from a visual aid perspective. Well… more is more I suppose as if the effort was made to visually present something, there’s a reason for it. That is certainly the case here, as the presentation is extremely well done.

The game starts off simple enough, you’re sent to investigate a slew of deaths at Galley House and through various presentations of key data, you piece together a timeline of characters, locations, and events. A few times I thought I was playing ‘And Then There Were None’, as it feels as though the characters all have something to hide, yet have a common thread. The act of discovering a name, or an avatar to show the character is as much fun as figuring out how they all interact within the timeline.

This timeline acts as a branching spiderweb of sorts, and some are hubs connecting to a half dozen threads, while others are simply dead ends. The good news is that you don’t have to discover all the threads, just piece enough of them together to get the major beats from start to finish. My obsessive part wanted to find all the bits though, and there are handy indicators when a thread is left to be found. In fact, the UI itself is a really an amazing tool as compared to the text only version. The visual aids are a tremendous help when you’re trying to keep track of key bits of data – it even comes with a search feature! I wouldn’t consider it difficult in any way, and if you do get stuck on any bit there’s a free hint system too.

By the time I closed the book on the mysteries of Galley House, I was somewhat amazed at how the story itself was constructed. All the logical breaks actually made sense, and seeming dead ends turned into new roads. Time, memory, and perspective are all key pieces of any puzzle, and they are wonderfully done here. It’s good to have closure.

Also worth noting, it plays great on the Steam Deck. Strong recommendation!

Chrono Cross

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Do I need to explain this game? It’s from 1999, so I guess there are folks that don’t recall it. I picked it up again on a Steam Sale, like less than $10 type of deal. Nostalgia I guess.

It’s a sort of Chrono Trigger in 3D, a spiritual successor with next to no thought on the lore conflicts between both games. In order to collect all the possible characters, you need a minimum of 3 playthroughs. The difficulty level isn’t really there (aside from 2 specific fights), making it a rather weird game in the SQUENIX repertoire of JRPGs.

There are 40 characters to start, which is an absurd number with very little meaningful purpose. Feels like every NPC with more than 2 lines becomes someone you can recruit. Each character’s set of abilities is determined by their elemental grid. Some have a lot of low level slots, some more near the end. You can more as you level, which is realistically only occurring when you defeat bosses… so no point in grinding for levels! Combat is a mix of melee + magic. The first playthrough favors magic, in fact the ‘perfect’ ending requires it. Eventually you become so strong that a small knife attack is enough (the final boss is balanced for level 48, you can max at 99). This could have been a rock/paper/scissors type of system, but it lacks the mechanical depth to do so. I mean, how could you with 40 characters and find any semblance of balance, right?

The story is convoluted and hard to follow, especially with the final twists and turns. In fact, I’d argue you are better off not having played Chrono Trigger to make sense of it all as there are too many conflicting plot items as a result. Time traveling, fate, destiny, and warring reptiles all play a big part. There are some interesting, though short, side quests throughout. That part is actually a lot of fun to run through! The thing about RPGs is that the plot needs to have some sense… but this feels more like ideas were thrown on the wall without any thought. Which is a real shame.

The good here, is that it plays really well on the Steam Deck and is bite-sized enough to playthrough in small sittings. My 3rd replay was maybe 20% of the time of the first one, just because I knew what I was doing and there was no real combat challenge.

The less good is that the plot makes little sense, the meaningful moments are hidden in a diluted cast, and that we’re unlikely to ever see a Chrono Trigger 3.

Rose-colored glasses were certainly part of the purchasing decision. I have spent more on a bad coffee, so no real complaints here. In fact, it’s a great marker in the SQUENIX journey of RPGs. This experimental game worked in some areas, didn’t in others, and the next game out learned a ton of lessons.

Life is Defined by Loss

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I’ve been away on a break for a few weeks, hence the quiet blog. Where generally folks use New Year’s to ponder their annual goals, I do that during the summer break as a mental reset. And this year was an interesting one. Within about a week two meaningful events occurred.

First, a great friend’s father passed, a man I knew for over 30 years and treated everyone as his best friend. It was relatively quick, and he went out with a giant grin. He was a man with infinite energy and boundless optimism. Truly a fascinating character and no matter how bad a day you may have had, he was enthused to make it a good one. He embodied the adage that ‘a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met’.

Second, Belghast passed away. A year to the day that he lost his wife, and nearly 6 months from when he shared he had cancer. ‘Pillar’ is a term that is thrown about, and in this case it’s certainly apt. Blogging is everywhere and in today’s age, one of the most archaic forms of sharing if you’re not using some sort of AI tool and recipe hunting. Bel found a way to bring more people under the tent (Blaugust) and somehow found time to share his passion for gaming on a near daily basis. His was one of the few blogs I checked on a near daily basis… and as a habit I still do, until it hits that we won’t see anything more. He’s frankly the reason I played FF14 and enjoyed the time spent in there with him and the guild.

It’s an interesting thing this concept of life, as ephemeral as it is. I’m at that age where there are way more funerals than weddings, way more divorces than baby showers. The absolute certitude of youth is replaced with a sort of melancholic acceptance of loss of control.

It reminds me of a sci-fi trope that immortality is a curse, where true appreciation is bound by the loss of something. The act of procrastination or deference to a future date is pushing out the ability to enjoy what you have today. There are so many things that can happen tomorrow that you can’t control, and if you can do something today, you generally should.

My friend’s dad lived every day like it was going to be his last. Nearly his entire life that way. Bel shared what he had with what tools he had on a near daily basis, spreading the good word of community and gaming as a way to bring people together. Neither made excuses, they just appreciated and moved forward.

If there’s a resolution or attempt I want to spend my energy on, it’s exactly that. Appreciate the day. Appreciate the gift of the people around me. Cause tomorrow is another day that may not bring that gift.

PoE 2 & Diablo 4 – End Game Events

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This will seem like a weird comparison, but functionally it’s the 2 big hitters in the ARPG space. The deeper I get into PoE2 the more dramatic the differences between Diablo 4.

The design concepts are really the big deal here, in the macro and micro space.

  • Importantly, Diablo 4 has an overworld that is interspersed with timed events (Helltides), PoE2 doesn’t have anything like that as everything is instanced. Helltides are about the closest thing D4 has to PoE2 in construct, which is wild when you think about it.
  • Diablo 4 has its end game activities wrapped up in War Plans, a meta progression that covers all end-game activities
    • Tree of Whispers: Meta achievements for loot boxes
    • Dungeons: A large pool of maps with bosses
    • Lair Bosses: Harder enemies with targeted loot
    • Infernal Hordes: Wave based single arenas
    • Undercity: Time-based dungeons with the ability to target types of loot
    • The Pit: Time-based dungeons meant to progress skill gems
  • PoE2 has the end-game wrapped up in maps, which are procedurally generated and have one or more of the following events within:
    • Towers: A massive meta progression tree that modifies all other map conditions for better loot and harder difficulty
    • Breach: An expanding circle of enemy spawns that also gives currency for crafting rings/amulets
    • Rituals: Small arena-based events that give access to crating materials + uniques
    • Delirium: Map-based timed runs that increase difficulty over the run and duplicate bosses
    • Vaal: From the last league, a rogue-like dungeon creator.
    • Abyss: Chained enemy spawns that provide piles of loot and access to a cavern with more loot
    • Expeditions: Use explosives to uncover loot boxes or rune events
    • Exiles: Player-like enemies with loot drops based on their class
    • Summoning Circles: Summon bosses
    • Strongboxes: Kill enemies to open a chest
    • Runes: Wave-based events that provide runes + crafting mats
    • Summons: Unfreeze enemy groups.
    • Wisps: Follow them around and they will eventually upgrade an enemy to a harder version
    • Trials: Small rogue-like events that add difficulty markers during progression. Die and restart if you have the rare currency to do so. (Concepts are sound, but the execution is atrocious. These are worse than Infernal Hordes in nearly every conceivable way.)

Diablo 4 has a mechanic where each specific event cannot overlap with another. It is not possible to have Lair Bosses show up in the Pit, for example. If you want to do an activity, you are only doing that activity. This is why Helltides are my favorite content as the random events add some variety. Dungeons are not fun as they all play near identical – rush to the end and kill the boss. Infernal Hordes are likely the worst as they are time-based and unless the RNG gods are on your side, provide next to no loot.

PoE2 is way different. Every map contains 1 or more of any given event. Sometimes all of them (except trials). The meta progression changes some of the mechanics so that they can overlap in even more interesting ways. I’ve had multiple maps where I had bosses on the map, with a pair of Exiles, tripped a Breach and had an Abyss fight at the same time. There’s something to be said about the pure chaos of having 5+ mechanics all going at the same time, surviving it, and then being showered, absolutely showered, with loot drops. And that’s just a random map! The planned events alter some component of the map for pinnacle bosses (think ultra hard bosses). Rituals are something else, where you progress through 5 maps and the boss of each map follows you to the next one. The last boss fight has you fighting at least 5 versions.

It’s like the difference between going to Dairy Queen and then going to a real Ice Cream bar. DQ gives you a limited set of pretty decent options. Hard to get confused there. An Ice Cream bar has hundreds of permutations and options for you, and no two orders are the same.

The net effect is that every PoE2 map has something different to offer, and that something is going to reward you in some fashion. This design principle for end-game activity is focused on always providing more things to do rather than limiting your choice. The main challenge (and 0.5 does a great job of addressing this) is that having too much is about as appealing as having none. You need some guardrails of sorts to get kick started, learn the systems, and then choose to tailor what you want from it.

Factorio 2.1

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Which is going to be the last meaningful patch for Factorio, ending a 10 year dev cycle. And well, hundreds of thousands of engineer (player) hours. 2.1 is going to bring a lot of QoL bits but no actual content… fine, there are seemingly infinite mods for that!

Most of the design concepts of Vanilla were thrown out with Space Age, as production chains dramatically changed and ‘free’ material was the new foundation. No longer did you need to mine iron patches, you simply used free molten lava and had infinite amounts. The mechanical transport mechanisms of vanilla were sort of cut and pasted to the space versions, specifically relating to rockets.

Trains used to be required on Nauvis, not a little required, like a LOT required. They generally operated on a single concept of maximum efficiency of moving 1 type of material from one place to another. Need another type of material? Build another train. The investment cost of trains is exceptionally low, and they are mostly sunk costs. The ‘challenge’ with trains was making sure that railways didn’t conflict. Blueprints solved this.

Rockets in Space Age are treated as disposable, and somewhat expensive, trains. You load them up, shoot them up, and move on. The ‘challenge’ here is on the actual platforms and landing pads, a give an take of requests and availability. If you need 15 of something, the rocket will generally only send you a full stack of 100. If you don’t have a stack of 100, you won’t get any items. You can certainly manually change this, but it’s painful. And in the early stages of Space Age, this is very costly. Even late game, the method of delivery of parts means that you can only effectively build platforms around Nauvis, as all other planets will have asteroids attacking you and no real way to defend them.

2.1 is going to modify the logic on the pile of this. Rockets will be able to ship partial stacks, based on requests. You’ll be able to ship between platforms. You’ll be able to apply better logic on requests so that you can pick up a material from any planet, rather than just one. Very useful QoL bits here and will certainly smooth out some rough spots. For those struggling to ‘kick start’ Space Age, this is a welcome change.

Of all the items, I have only seen one mechanical item of note. What 2.1 is also bringing is the death of space casinos but for some reason keeping the LDS shuffle. Space Casinos are space platforms that upcycle material to legendary, notably iron and coal using rarity mods. In 2.1 rarity mods will be removed from space platforms. This is odd since casinos are actually a pain to build, while the LDS shuffle remains (recycling legendary low-density structures give MORE material than you invested, meaning free LDS, copper, and steel.) It is entirely possible to get legendary iron and coal from other means, though admittedly scaling those is it’s own challenge. To me though, this doesn’t address the core issue – that legendary items exist in the first place. I like the benefits legendary items provide, it’s just the mechanisms to get them that are broken and burdensome. But hey, there are mods that just permanently unlock legendary once researched, and I would think that is the likely end-scenario here.

Given 2.1 is just around the corner, and marking the end of an era, it’s bittersweet to see it come to a close. Factorio isn’t just a great game, it’s honestly a gold standard for the genre where there are dozens and dozens of imitators. What was achieved with an insanely small team of absolutely dedicated developers is beyond impressive. Now for the modding community to figure out what’s next…

Satisfactory 1.2

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It’s been nearly a year since patch 1.1, which was mostly QoL stuff as a result of the massive 1.0 launch. Well, 1.2 is here and there are a few notable changes.

  • Rain is back, which was removed to do occlusion issues (it rained indoors).
  • Additional game mode where you can set the resource costs and node richness values. This is a sort of middle ground to ‘build for free’ mode. Tweaking power consumption is a nice option.
    • Related, Space Elevator costs can be tweaked if you want to turn on ‘hard mode’
  • Vehicle pathing and reworks. This is more like trains now. I’ve always thought the concept of vehicles was good, but the execution was really quite random. Trains are almost always a better option, and at the end game, drones run the show.
  • Trucks can now transport fluids. This is good for mid-game options, where for some reason you don’t want trains.
  • Daisy Chaining for power connections between buildings. Never really had an issue with this outside of the start of the game, but certainly a ‘cleaner’ view of power poles.
  • Pipeline T-Junctions. This one is weird. Fluid dynamics in Satisfactory are physics-based, which really shows up when you make aluminum. Should make for cleaner pipes… should.
  • The recipe list also now shows alternative recipes prior to you unlocking them. I really like alternative recipes, as much for efficiency as flexibility. This QoL thing effectively removes the need to alt-tab to a wiki.

In total, the majority of this is also in the QoL space, though vehicles are the bigger piece. Which brings to topic the choice of when to use which vehicle. First, the list:

  • Belts & Pipes
    • Belts go from 60 to 1200 items per minute and can span the entire map. These generally make for ugly maps if you rips belts everywhere, but for short distances they absolutely rock.
    • Pipes are 300 or 700 per minute. Liquid piping usually isn’t too bad and due to transport issues, often better than all other options. Gas piping… this actually impacts your factory locations. Very rare to ship liquid in mass quantities for long distances.
  • Terrain Vehicle
    • Truck – Unlocked at tier 3. Uses for medium deliveries (25). Uses fuel. Needs a dedicated path.
    • Tractor – Unlocked at tier 5. Used for larger deliveries (48). Uses fuel. Needs a dedicated path.
  • Rails
    • Trains. Unlocked at tier 6. Used for long distances and very large deliveries (32 per car). Uses electricity. Needs a rail.
  • Air
    • Drones. Unlocked at tier 7. Uses for very large distances and smaller deliveries (9). Can only deliver material, not liquid. Uses fuel. Auto-maps.

The tiers do matter. Tier 3 is Phase 1 of the elevator. Tier 5+6 are Phase 2. Tier 7 is Phase 3. This generally means that Tractors are somewhat irrelevant as Trains are way more effective and unlocked at the same time.

Picking the appropriate delivery model is primarily a math exercise… how many items do you need per minute? You would be surprised at how few items you actually do need near the end game and how many items you need for raw materials. Time to delivery is total (volume per trip * # of trips per minute). The distance and pathing matters. Small trips with Trucks are going to be faster than trains, and way faster than drones. Medium trips for trains work well enough. Long trips, trains and drones are king. Something like 200 items or less per minute across medium/long distances, drones are amazing.

I tend to apply a rule of thumb here. If I can see it, I will belt/pipe it. If I can’t see it, and I only need a few, then I will drop a drone. If I can’t see it and I need a lot, then I’ll add some cars to a rail. Trucks are used for a very niche set of work on micro-factories, which are primarily Sulfur or Carbon related as those recipes aren’t used all that much and the nodes are in weird spaces.

Which gets back to 1.2 and vehicle changes. These are good changes, yet apply to a niche deployment. They don’t move fast enough or transport enough to make them viable alternatives to trains. This patch has a lot of work in it, no question there, but the net effect for a playthrough isn’t actually impactful.

PoE2 – Scaling & Mods

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Scaling is an interesting thing, I’ve written a lot about the concepts in gaming. Most ARPGs tend to have a weird mix of them, where monsters appear linear but are actually exponential, and players appear linear but are actually logarithmic bumps. The math behind it generally results in you either feeling good or bad about your power level. You feel strong being a level 50 taking on level 1 mice, but feel week taking on a level 60 boss, right?

Ok, real hard tangent for a minute. Taxes are math. When you’re young, taxes are pretty simple. When you get older, taxes can get hard, man. There’s an actual profession for it! The goal of taxes remains simple enough, people pay their fair share for common services. Now, everyone has their own definition of fair, and that’s why the complex math exists. Your emotional reaction to fair has a major impact.

ARPGs use this model, where some content feels fair and others do not. Some encounters feel good, and others on the exact same map, feel punishing. Why? There are a couple reasons here, and they boil down to mechanics and math.

Mechanics

Enemies have their own methods of attacking you. Some burrow, some fly, some are melee, some are ranged. PoE has some rather insane enemy variety to parse, and they are generally visually distinct which helps. Mods though, mods will do you in. A monster with a hp/mana drain effect and can only be hit while being next to them is, for most players, an immortal enemy. Again, all the deadly ones have a very obvious visual clue.

Some events are more fun than others, mostly due to their mechanics. Having a ton of spawning enemies is generally manageable. Having multiple rares spawn at the same time – that is extra spicy. Breach, Expedition, and Rune events can cause this, with minimal warning. The net effect is that while you’re pushing maps there are certain events you will absolutely want to avoid, simply because the mechanics themselves are too volatile. Delirium certainly feels like hard mode if you get all the way to the boss and get a double spawn, as the difficulty in the map actually gets harder as you go!

Map bosses have their own amount of fun with generally a fair share of AE mechanic to avoid. With only a couple exceptions, there are few 1-hit-kill attacks so you are generally provided ample time to avoid a big hit. The effects of a given map will impact a battle, but this isn’t specific to the boss but all content in a map. Arguably, the harder a map, the easier the boss as you will have memorized the mechanics by that point. Except maybe the psycho gorilla. Screw that guy.

Major bosses are a different matter – these are either end-of-act repeats of bosses or new pinnacle bosses with absolutely punishing mechanics that will kill you. And then kill you again. But then you’ll get it! And then die again. (Noting that every death has you lose 10% xp, but not a level. Ideally only try these bosses when you just leveled up.)

Math

This is where PoE2 frankly does most people in. Your damage output and taken is under a complicated formula. Conceptually it is simple, but the practicality is much, much different. A minor thing, like +5 damage on a glove could have a few hundred damage impact in the end game. Uncapped resists are just, well, wild when you look at the actual impacts on numbers. And there are so many intertwining systems, it honestly feels like a math degree to work it all out.

In this space, hats off to frankly every other ARPG out there for having generally solved this issue. You can get to max difficulty in pretty much all of them without any help. PoE has a Solo-Self-Found (SSF) mode where you can’t trade. That should give you an idea of how much trading is core to the process of gearing. PoE2 has this mode as well, but has some controls to try and help here… back to a prior post on item drops.

The net effect is that by changing 1 piece of gear you will immediately feel the in-game effects. Making the correct choice as to which piece of gear to prioritize (99% of the time it’s your weapon) and what stats you want on it, well, that’s the true battle.

Finally a bit on the actual Waystone tiers. Maps start at 65 for tier 1 and go to 80 for tier 16. One level may not seem like much, but enemy stats scale with levels. There’s no damage penalty for a level difference, but the game expects you to be at a certain threshold – and item / mod drops are level based – so you will for sure feel a difference between tiers.

The net result is that difficulty in PoE2 is a combination of the Waystone tier, the mods on that Waystone/Tablet, the actual event within that map, and finally the RNG of enemy mods on any given enemy. That means the concept of fair at any given time fluctuates wildly. What an interesting model.

Path of Exiles 2 – Maps and More Maps

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This lake has no bottoms.

A long-standing challenge with Path of Exile is that seasons build upon themselves. Most mechanics in a given season become baseline, so you have an ever growing list of balls to juggle the more seasons take place. Most games tend to put this in the DLC space, Grim Dawn certainly fits this bills. Others repackage content, like Diablo.

PoE2 released 0.5 recently and brought the Runes mechanic to the game. It’s a sort of RNG system where you get a choice of outcomes, fight some baddies, and get rewards. It also includes a Runic mechanic that gives access to a subset of different skills. Cool. It also keeps the Abyss, Vaal Temple, 2x Trials, Rogue Exiles, Breach, Expeditions, Rituals, Delirium, Shrines, Lockboxes, Pinnacle Bosses, and then of course the Atlas Map proper.

The Atlas is a gateway to all this content, an infinite set of procedurally generated map for you to clear. Each map can have one or more of the pieces of content present. You ‘juice’ these maps with a set of currency (Tributes & Tokens) to make them harder and more rewarding, and to potentially focus on a specific set of activities. You like running Abyss? You can narrow down that activity if you want.

As with everything PoE2, there’s a ton to unpack here and it will take a while. Credit though, GGG has figured out a way to more naturally direct you towards progress with clearer map markers and passive boosts. Make a choice as to what content you want to take on has no real bad answer, as all of them have their own rewards. This is so drastically different than say Diablo 4, where there’s zero reason to run the Pit once you have gems sorted out, or the wildly unbalanced Inferno runs. The further you get in D4, the less actual content there is to run and the harder it becomes to unlock said content. That is less the case with PoE2 as each activity drives the larger meta content forward.

Now, this doesn’t diminish at all the core challenges with PoE2. You still need a stupidly strong beating stick (with a specific set of stats) to be relevant, movement speed on boots is king, and it’s relatively easy to get lost in the skills + skill tree. On your own, building a viable character build, that’s gonna be quite tricky. The difference between viable and not is a friggin’ steep curve, if not a wall.

My major gripe with D4 is around War Plans, which is a sort of simplified Atlas passive tree. It takes quite a few hours to progress in War Plans, which is restricted per character and cannot be shared across groups. I still think this is such a weird decision. I do enjoy D4’s general lack of friction, a sort of fast-food of ARPGs. War Plans break that. PoE2, as with the original, doesn’t follow that mindset and your Atlas is shared across all characters. Kinda makes a big overall actually, as the leveling phase in this game is much longer than in D4.

0.5 Changes

I won’t go full hyperbole and say that everything has changed, but I will say enough has changed that the end game has general purpose and direction. The map has an interesting flow to it, where cardinal directions push you into specific types of content. There are quest markers that push you along those directions so that you get a general feel for what you enjoy. While the content is available pretty much anywhere, the randomness favors certain directions. And those directions provide more intrinsic rewards, primarily through points you can invest in the Atlas tree.

Now, PoE doing PoE things, very few systems are actually described with enough detail to make sense of it. While the direction and visual incentives make it sort of easier to navigate, the actual mechanics haven’t really been tweaked and remain somewhat obtuse. Breach for example, it seems straightforward to just kill as much as you can, but the reality is that passive points and targeting hands is the actual goal. Waystone ‘juicing’ has no real instructions, you just hope for the best while crafting. 0.5 is certainly better than before as it isn’t a blind buffet of options. It can still use some tweaks though, as it truly feels like its bursting at the seams with content in a small framework. Best example is that every 20 maps or so seems to have all possible content spawn within, which is a half dozen trips back to base to manage the drops.

The final point I do want to make for 0.5 is that there is substantially too many items that drop and no simple way to manage it. I have 2 tabs that are just for crafting things, and both are full. This is a QoL thing for sure, and frankly a massive barrier for new players to digest. There really isn’t a solution here as many of these items are specifically related to rolling a given modifier on a specific item (e.g. +cold dmg on gloves). On the one hand, great that you can sort of customize gear, but less great when you come to realize the amount of possible permutations on gear + mods and therefore the amount of crafting materials to cover the broader pieces.

The end game in PoE2 is the best it’s ever been, and the changes so far have filled in a lot of the confusing holes that were present before. It’s quite obvious people can spend a lot of time here trying to put all the pieces together and no two sessions ever feel the same. There’s still ample room for improvement here without necessarily simplifying any particular component, as the depth is the real selling feature. And aside from the final 2 story acts, this feels mechanically ‘complete’ as compared to other games in the genre. Still a good 6+ months before it truly launches, and if you haven’t already dived in, I would personally wait until the F2P launch actually occurs. And I say that solely because if you are not already playing, that learning all these systems likely would benefit from a couple QoL reviews.