Path of Exile – Paying Respects to The RNG Gods P2

We concluded yesterday’s part of Paying Respects to the RNG Gods at Cruel Ledge.  We were all online and ready to go at 8AM EST.  I had played a little bit before the other guys got on and gained a few levels, mainly for my own survivability.  At this point, my Summoner build had a decent amount of minions but their kill speed was abysmally slow, so I was using freezing pulse.  We ended up grinding Ledge for an additional level and continued onward.

Because we weren’t focussing solely on survivability and a bit more on progression, our resists were rough.  We trucked through Rocky Climb, the Prison, wrecked Brutus and made our way to Prisoner’s Gate.  We cheesed the The Burning Menace on top of a hill with range/skeletons and got into Ship Graveyard.  This is when things started to get a little rough.

I can’t remember if it was a Rhoa or a Sea Witch, but FoolyCoolant got destroyed by a rare of one of those types.  It was a little deflating group-wise, but he was going to recreate and we’d boost him through the parts we could and all he’d have to focus on was grinding levels to catch back up.  Ragnarok and I kept moving forward and he restarted.  We knew once we did Maligaro and we could start cheesing with Spork Totem things would be ridiculously easy.  We finished up Act 1 Cruel and moved into Act 2.

We went straight for Weaver’s and acquired Spell Totem and everything from then on was a cakewalk.  Fooly continued to level solo and we’d alternate aiding him on boss fights/giving him waypoints while the other continued forward progression wise to keep up the pace.  We had just finished Brutus Ruthless when Fooly needed help with Cruel Vaal, so we gave him a hand and we were just about at the same stage again and things were looking up.

That is until Fooly died again.  Because he was still a few levels behind, we thought it’d be best if he grinded Ledge to catch up in experience as we were mostly just progressing so he could close the level difference that way.  Within a few minutes of him going to Ledge, he died.  At first we thought he was joking, but he was absolutely serious.  He had no idea what killed him and he was extremely close to wanting to quit the race after 2 deaths that day.  He ultimately decided he’d restart one last time and that would be it, live or die.  I went to Ledge to see what could have killed him and there was a rare skeleton that had a critical aura.  I suspect he got critical strike 1/2 shotted and he simply wasn’t paying attention, it happens.

We continued through Ruthless and ended up getting to Act 2 Merciless at the end of the day.  The entire time we’d go back and help Fooly, like we did before, and Ragnarok and I were roughly level 51 when we went to bed.  Fooly though decided to stay awake the entire time to catch up.  When we got up in the morning to start our Fellshrine farming, Fooly was level 61.  I’m not sure if he did it solo, I believe he did, but he managed to not only catch up but get ahead of us.  He also had found 4 maps during that time.

Ragnarok’s first kill in Fellshrine gave him a map, so we were already stoked.  Fellshrine farming can be extremely boring.  It’s very hard to die and it’s highly repetitive.  The issue I was having was as a Summoner, their kill speed was slow.  Ragnarok could clear Fellshrine almost twice as fast as I could.  In retrospect, I’d use a different Summoner build with some hybrid capability damage wise.  For most of the day we farmed Fellshrine and by the time we finished we had accumulate about 9 maps.  At this point I was extremely bored with Fellshrine due to my slow kill speed and wanted to progress and finish Merciless so we could hopefully get through some maps that night, and I would rather farm Pyramid since the minion kill speed wasn’t going to change that much, but I’d get better loot.

While Fooly was asleep, Ragnarok and I finished progressing and continued to farm.  Fooly would eventually get back on after a 4 hour sleep, and we began maps.  The group had a few issues with how to do maps.  Some of them wanted to chisel 63 and up, others wanted 64/65 and up chiselled, depending on the map surplus.  Others also didn’t want to keep doing lower level maps even if we had a good base of higher leveled maps.  A few disputes would come up over the next few days regarding this, and I’ll get into more detail later.

We started plowing through our 60 maps, rolling them blue and aiming for mods that would give us a higher chance for more map drops, or for better experience.  We didn’t waste a lot of materials doing this, but I’m sure we could have saved some.  By the end of the night we had used up most of our 60s and had a surplus of 61s and we were starting to build our 62 base.  Fooly decided he was going to continue to stay up and doing the lower maps.  Ragnarok and I were concerned with him over-levelling which would negatively affect our experience, but there was also the benefit of getting more maps.  Ragnarok and I went to sleep and would hook up with Fooly again in the morning.

I woke up before Ragnarok and got on and began talking to Fooly who was doing maps still.  He had acquired a few 63s and a good stockpile of 62s.  He was also level 71, 4 levels higher than Ragnarok and I.  The difference wasn’t too bad.  I told Fooly we still had some 61 maps left and we’d do those when Ragnarok got online.  Fooly said he thinks it’s time to move up to the 62s.  This was a stupid idea as Ragnarok and I were still in unaffected experience range of 61 maps and the only reason he wanted to move up was he was getting diminished experience gains.  I asked him how many 61s he had left and he said none.  I immediately called bullshit, citing the reasons above, considering the fact he requested moving up the map ladder prior to stating he was out of 61s.  It seemed extremely duplicitous and selfish and it was at this point I really couldn’t have cared less if he died again.  Yes, I’m saying that about my party member.

Ragnarok finally got on and as it turns out we only had about 6 61 maps left, so we plowed through those and moved up to the 62s.  Halfway through the day our stockpile of 62s began to run dry and we had the choice of either moving up to 63s or doing the lower level maps.  As a group we decided to save the lower level maps for solo/break times when another member stepped away so we started doing 63 maps.  For whatever reason Ragnarok and Fooly were chiselling some of the 63s.  I believed this to be a waste, but we’ll never truly know the results had this not occurred.  I never chiselled a single 63 map in my possession.  We finished the day with some 63 maps left to do, a decent amount of 64s and I believe a couple 65s.  Fooly was going to continue staying up doing lower level maps again, but Ragnarok and I were heading to sleep.  This concludes part 2 of Paying Respects to the RNG Gods, the final part will be prepared shortly.  Thanks for reading!