Path Of Exile got even BETTER!

[Jutter]

Path Of Exile is a Diablo-style action rollplaying game on STEAM, with Final Fantasy VII-style skillgems, and an insane amount of possible builds. It's absolutely -no bullshit- free to play (microtransactions only buy you cosmetic changes, or extra room for your allready royally sized loot-stash, or special tools for creating a guild; all cool additions, none of them nessecary.)

The new add-on patch The Sacrifice Of Vaal just made Path of Exile even more awesome!! The tree's been tweaked to avoid the curse of false choice, placed on skilltrees by overpowered or underpowered builds; so some nerfs and some buffs. There are new areas to explore, new loot to find, new insane bosses to defeat for unique items. There's really too much cool stuff to mention in a brief post.

The game features different "leagues". The standard one is non-ladder softcore. The other leagues are laddertournaments, at least one of them hardcore (you die, you're gone, no respawns). These ladder-leagues drop items unavailable in standard league.

It doesn't matter which portal you play through. Europe, America, or Australia. All can join each other's party, as long as it's in the same league.
My hero is called JutterDomDuellist if you wish to add me.
I'm a high-level, dual-swordwielding, cyclone-leacher, with iron reflexes, unwavering stance and resolute technique. And plenty of other tricks up the sleeve.

[Plu]

I was looking forward to the new release (although I'm probably not far enough into the game to notice anything) but the login servers were down yesterday :(

Maybe I'll get to have a look over the weekend.

[Jutter]

although I'm probably not far enough into the game to notice anything

Think again  :-D

The shrines from the recently ended domination-league have been added to every league. Those are fun. The so-called Corrupted Areas can occur as early on as the Mud Flats in normal difficulty (been there, done that, found a Vaal's version of Rain of Arrows). There's plenty of new stuff you'll find, but perhaps not as often as you'd hope. I'm yet to encounter another corrupted area on the mudflats, in spite of many runs.

JutterDomDuellist

(P.S. right after I posted that, I found another corrupted area. I estimate that was somewhere between my fifteenth or twentieth attempt. So I estimate they have a 5% chance of occuring. I did get a Vaal's version of a gem both times; this time poison arrow.)

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Gaming? Here I was thinking we were getting free tickets to exile in Siberia.  :-k

[Jutter]

[youtube:3qoaocoj]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb9_yNhiprM[/youtube:3qoaocoj]

[Jutter]

Corrupted areas are easies to find with a split up group. They never appear in several maps at once, you each pick a map on the worldscreen to farm, and TownPortal over to whoever finds one first. You always get a corrupted goody after killing the endboss... and those are tricky.

[Jason78]

I might just look into this.  It could be the very thing I need to fill the void between when I quit my world of warcraft addiction and when Star Citizen comes out.

[Jutter]

The new free-for all PVP arena is fun. With the PVP dedicated crowd in there you'll die hillariously quick. On quiet moments you and your buddies may very well have the place to yourself.

Forraging for corrupted areas is great. Still keep on finding new  types of Vaal's gems. Right now I'm using Vaal's ColdSnap, linked to cold penetration and increased duration... Vaal's cold snap drops an icy carpet around you that always freezes enemies. Charges up fairly quick.
And you can get some challenging corruptions on the maps: everyone get's bloodmagic, all enemies reflect 18% elemental dammage, all players regenerate life and mana 50% slower... stuff like that.
For lifeleachers the life-on-hit gem has definately become the most desired support-gem. It's surely the backbone of my build.

[Jutter]

Short version: searing bond and flameblast are excellent vehicle skills. Use them while your character grows towards your ultimate build.

My guild-buddies from SevenOhThree (area-code; yes they're from Washington DC) and I decided to start new characters in standard mode. This means we could benefit from gems etc. we found with our old heroes. The almighty hero-loot-stash is league-bound, and once a ladder-league ends, the character and their loot get transported over to standard league.

My previous hero was melee based, with a heavy emphasys on armor and leeching. I decided to go a decidedly different route this time around. A combination of Desecrate ground (which created poisenous piles of corpses on the ground) and Detonate Corpse (which makes my deadly carpet go BOOM! with lots of firedamage). But for now that combo isn't potent enough yet. Gems still have to level up further, and there's more damagedealing to be milked from gear-upgrades and the passive skilltree. Also this time around I want to place more emphasys on energyshield. It'll take me quite some more level-ups to get there, but in the meantime there's Searing Bond and Flameblast.

These two skills are so overpowered right now, that they don't need support-gems or other additional boosts from skilltree-nodes or gear-bonuses, thus they demand relatively little mana. They won't intervene with your future plans.  As soon as you reach requirements (characterlevel, strength, dexterity, intelligence), and you have a blue and a red gem-socket to spare, those two alone will help you own the place, while you grow and perfect the build you'll use later on.

[frosty]

You seem quite excited about this game, Jutter. I've seen it before on Steam, it's free, so one of these days I'll download it and give it a try, maybe I'll like it.

[PickelledEggs]

Just redownloaded and installed it. After I finish Diablo, I'm getting back on it!
OHHHH YEEA