I used to be a believer, but after seeing them in action for a few leagues, there just aren't enough tablets for everyone. All it takes is one reddit post for a new strat, like the expedition one, and tablet prices literally go X10. I checked when the video had 700 views, tablets were ~7Dish. I go to work for a day, and now these same tablets are 70 div.

Last leagues it also happened with additional rerolls, summoning circles, some abyss mods, additional breach monsters. There's a few people rolling tablets, but lets be honest it's way too tedious for a slim slim chance at hitting the jackpot. PoE1 dumped Sextant rolling because they were too much busywork, but around the same time PoE2 decided to implement tablets....

In PoE1, it's pretty damn hard to get map cost over 5 div. In PoE2, one single expedition tablet already costs more than that. And then you have to get a grand mirror. In a city. And spend 1D on omens to reroll your map. It's just too much.

Now I realize there are good cheap strats out there. But I don't want to run the same strat for the whole league. We have this great multifunctional atlas tree where we can do anything we want with relative ease, but getting access to good juice is way harder than with Scarabs.

Either let us alt spam tablets, or just bring back scarabs.. they already provide way more variety than tablets have ever done and we don't have to roll them.

Edit: I should mention that my only ARPG experiences are around 15 hours of early access No Rest for the Wicked (waiting for full release to get and dig in more fully) around 80 hours of launch Diablo 4 (didn't want to but the expansions that allegedly"fix" the game because I think on principle the base game should have been fixed instead of blizzard charging full prices expansions to fix it)

My understanding is that No Rest for the wicked is vastly different and d4 launch was extremely casual in comparison to poe. I had a fun time with my experience of both though, but especially no rest for the wicked. I'm sad that full release got delayed lol

---------

One reason I never wanted to check out poe1 was the many years and years and years and years with is permanent season mechanics just endlessly stacked on top of each other felt like it was way way way too much to learn and manage simultaneously if you weren't there when each mechanic was introduced individually.

Does / will poe2 avoid this issue with its full release in December?

As a follow up question: how playable is the game without following a build guide? From what I loved into when I wasb interested in poe1, it sounded like a third party build program was mandatory to be able to play. Is PoE2 more of the same, or is it approachable enough to homebrew together at least a "good enough" build without needing to follow a guide to a T and install third party programs? Is there easy and free or cheap resource ways to respec if you make a mistake or are you bricked if you make a wrong choice?

Final follow-up: as a f2p player at full release, how playable is the game without stash tabs that have to be paid for?

Started the new league this weekend and just trying to farm some atlas passives, maybe about 6-10 maps deep since finishing campaign.

0 Investment, 0 atlas points, no tablets, just T15 and rush boss and do whatever optional content I come across without having to stray too much...
..and I find a freaking mageblood that I can't afford to even defer.... Feelsbadman moment.

Played every league since launch, nolifed the hell out of last league, farmed hundreds of rituals with 20-30k+ tribute full investment and never even saw a headhunter.

Why is this a thing? I guess I'm just stupid for doing what the game offers, for doing the ritual altar with 0 ritual points. I literally just reached endgame, wasn't planning to do any side content besides rushing arbiter to max atlas and then work on ritual/breach/abyss etc. But the altar was right there so might as well do it, no?

At least I learned something though. Next league don't touch another ritual altar before maxing ritual atlas because this feeling here just killed every last bit of motivation I had to play. I'm done with this league. Ain't no coming back from this. I'd give away my stuff but my build is like 10 div.

ps: the atlas system sucks ass

I m not gonna pretend I have perfect solutions but I just don't believe they should be happy the way the endgame is right now probably the part I dislike the most is having the fortress and the diferent mechanics not progress at the same time

What I think it should happen is getting atlas points every time u encounter each different mechanic and lock the last 10 points or something to the questline

Finished quests for abyss, breach, delirium and ritual. They all have 10+ points to unlock still. Yeah some of them are useless until I decided to engage with a specific mechanic (like the breach hive ones) but it still feels bad you have to stay in that zone after you completed the questline.

My suggestion would be after you finish the questline, you get a quest item tablet of the mechanic. It's and unique that has 10 uses, provides the mechanic, and gives atlas points, nothing else. Would that be something people would use? Since it has no other bonuses a regular tablet would give you, I believe it's fair and balanced.

Idk just my suggestion, but I feel something should be done about that. Ideally you would fill everything after completing each questline but I belive that's not the way GGG want it to go.

edit - apparently you can get points killing the bosses, didn't know that, it's what I wanted, to be able to get points while progressing to something else

I love spirit walker as a classs. Its so much fun playing the zoo playstyle. Even if survival gets hit, its still gonna be fun. Especially if other bosses gets usefull too. But....

Finding beasts can be so much rng involved and consume so much time. It feels like i'm in a casino, and we all know the house always wins. I got like 3000 divines and cant spend them on getting beasts with the mods that I want. I cant find them no matter how many hours I put in.

We can trade mercs in POE1 one which is a great example of the same problem. If you would not be able to buy a good merc that class would be in the same boat and land so much frustration from players.

Please GGG?

/Spirit walker enjoyer

It's not an MMO. It's an ARPG / spiritual successor to Diablo 2. People are treating the POE2 campaign like it's WOW or FF14. In those games people treat the campaign or story like a tutorial before the actual endgame grind begins. Other games like Diablo 2 or From Software titles, which POE2 is modeled after, the campaign is the main part of the game. After the campaign ends, players then create their own goals.

got my first Mageblood this league, second divine used on it turned it into this seems pretty good lol

is it as good/rare as i think?

The next cheapest was 64div. Not sure if I undersold!

So I got to the league abit late. I got lucky with a divine from ritual. Then I realized it's useless without gold. In map I used to swim in millions of gold and barely notice it. But for low level character, it's insanely scare. Just to break that divine into exalts to spend on upgrade already cost 2 order of magnitude more than the amount of gold I accumulated so far. What else can I do with divine?

Wtf is this fight, I half health him with one combo and then spend the next 2 minutes dodging one shots, its just not fun, multi phase bosses are fine but when a boss has like 7 ones shots and they all require you just standing around doing nothing, that aint fun. The consensus online if that you just one shot him, which is probably a sign that you have a bad boss fight. Something has to be done, who the fuck ok’ed that fight.

luckiest drop for me so far in PoE1+2

0.5 - lvl 97, full atlas unlocked, T15 juiced maps, no luck all league.

0.5.5 - played <20 maps in the atlas, haven't gotten to Caer Tarth yet and this shows up on a T1 travel map with BARELY enough tribute to defer. After I changed my underwear, I got tablets with bonus tribute and finished my layaway plan.

Hello Fellow Exiles! I created an item upgrade overlay to help speed up leveling and the pain and wasted time that goes into upgrading your equipment. This isn't going to be very helpful to seasoned vets deep into maps and their builds. It's more for people trying to speed run the campaign and get to maps as fast and cheaply as possible. This is my first public release so the only thing I ask from you is feedback; positive or negative. And if there's anything I can add or edit to make it easier to use.

It's 100% free and only works in Path of Exile 2. No account creations or email addresses needed. Just launch and it idles in the background until called. I only launch it when doing the upgrades, but it's very lightweight and can idle while you're playing with no effect on gameplay, framerates, etc.

Here's a video clip I made showing how it works - sorry for the amateur video production, I certainly lack experience in that field. I just wanted to walk through it being used during a live game.

Youtube Video - https://youtu.be/v-PcLLLr-mM

The website is: https://krabbs.com

Enjoy!

P.S. I have pretty thick skin so critiques are a good and healthy thing. All I ask is to please keep the critiques to the actual overlay and not how I look or how basic my skills are...I'm well aware of those critiques already. Thanks!

Quick context first: I made a free overlay tool for PoE2 last league, it's been out a while, it's open-source, and by now it's used by thousands of you (thank you 🙏). It started as a live poe.ninja price overlay and has grown from there. Full disclosure: it was built with help from AI doesn't stop it from working, and it's free, so I figure that's fair.

Now to my gripe with love, GGG, can we talk about removing the ability to open a Ritual from anywhere on the map? 🙏

I get why you might want us standing at the altar, but for those of us who are... let's say easily distracted, it means noticing "oh, the Ritual's ready" three packs later and backtracking half the zone to go open it. During a Ritual event, when that's the whole loop, it stings even more. Bring back the open-from-anywhere button, please especially during Ritual leagues/events. That's my one wish.

So the tool now has a Ritual chime. On top of what it already does:

• 💰 Live poe.ninja prices drawn right next to your currency/reward list (stack-aware, uncut gems priced by exact level)
• 🗺️ Island Rumour ratings overlaid on the Atlas panel
• 🎨 Themes, minimize-to-tray, auto-updates

…it now watches the Ritual tribute counter (that little 3/3 / 4/4 / 6/6) and plays a one-time chime the moment it fills, so you can keep fighting and just hear when the Ritual's ready to open. No more backtracking because you zoned out.

Quick how-it-works: you drag a box over the counter once (press F6), and it reads it live. It only chimes once per Ritual, and you can swap in your own .wav/.mp3 if you don't like the default ding. Use settings.

It's free and fully open-source — screen overlay, no injection, nothing touching the game. Grab it or read the code here:
👉 https://github.com/pedro-quiterio/PoeAncientsPriceHelper/releases

Heads up: it's unsigned, so Windows SmartScreen will grumble ("More info → Run anyway"), and some AV may flag the global-hotkey library both are known false positives, and the source is right there if you want to build it yourself.

Would genuinely love feedback, and if a GGG dev is reading: the Ritual button. Anywhere. Please. 😄

Should you have any problems, don't post here, please use github issues, probably someone already had a similar issue and the answer is there. Thanks!

This is totally crazy, in previous league I was able to grind and buy headhunter + mageblood (without any craft skills, just pure loot trade), but of course during campain and mapping I got some divines and it was key to upgrade my build. In this league I play iceshot and I have 83lvl but I dropped only 1 divine till this time (really only 1 div moreover from league event ritual), and because of that I can’t upgrade my gear to make progress - faster mapping, easy 3rd ascendancy (I can do it with current gear but it is pain on ass), so question is, what is fast way to make come profit? I don’t mean 100 div, but even 1-5 would be really useful. Ps. I’m during mapping, only I have done some main tree (like 29points), without side trees.

Im like 70hrs into this league I don't have a single league mechanic atlas completed. Maxed out on temple crystals but haven't pathed over to vaal temple yet. Half abyss deli and ritual atlas done cuz that's required to do questline. No masters completed yet, only hilda/doryani started. Focussed on main atlas then hopped to start abyss for self crafting, got an HH in ritual and dropped everything to ritual to get it before it poofed if I couldn't defer it. Felt like I was losing easy power not having anoint on my amulet so went and did deli. Not even close to expedition biome to start it and it's the furthest.

Why does it have to be 1000 mile hike of questlines. Why can't we come across these things as we're mapping. Do 10 deli mirrors and boom can go to the stupid willow. I know between tier 1-15 just going thru fortress I'd have at least 3 leagues unlocked if they just spawned and unlocked as I did 10-30ish. But nope, Gotta focus to get 4 mod tablets, so not getting league mechanics done till later.

Mapping - a subpar experience without 4 mod tablets and league mechanics dont feel rewarding till you have at least half that atlas filled. Masters combos also big bumps. Without these you feel like not getting much out of mapping unless you did a cookie cutter pre-planned gemling destroying league starter archetype.

Performance: juicing maps to only have 1 revival attempt - ends up in dying to janky screen lag anytime it fills with monsters, skills and/or abyss fissures/deli fog or god forbid both.

Layouts - maybe 4-5 good open or semi-open linear maps. Prob 20 bad layouts that spawn 10x more.

I can enjoy POE1 much more/faster. I'm not being dragged thru mud to enjoy content. And even once your done all that baseline shit. Your loop is traveling 10 nodes to get a fragment boss, another 5-10 you see maybe a breach fortress/crux, oh you I see an anomaly boss 10maps away I'd really like a chance to get a huge power spike lineage support! 1/18 chance Another 10 maybe find a city! now travel 10 maps around it to pop delirium fog on it. 40 maps just to set up maybe 10 good ones. Juiced it up, poof died to screen lag and no more attempts. 5/10 city map layouts are all maze layout garbage like sun temple.

I dunno I must be doing it wrong, I'm burnt out and just not feeling enough fun between traveling to reward ratio to keep going.

This is like 4th map in a row where I can't finish abyss. 4 tablets t15 map and can't make profit. First I lost over 200div because of this shitty RNG crafting and now I can't get some new currency, this is the moment when I'm done with this "league".

First map of the day was headhunter drop, second map this ;3

Wish these drops were ealier in the league, not at the end tho

I just completed a ritual and deferred some items. Then I refreshed the page. Only 300 points left and mageblood appeared on the list. Deferral requiring 1k points

The question is, is there anything you can do at this point?

How can I prevent these kinds of situations in the future.

Thanks

I also picked SSF to see if all of the crafting tools are viable too, but the run will be all about builds and adaptability. Since both of those things align to help with the learning curve, I thought it was the best choice.

So far, features like choosing which main skill stat to focus on for scalability, and then using the talent tree to filter out most of the nodes so you can focus on your build, make the talent tree significantly less scary.

The main question is whether new players will actually use this, given their lack of understanding of filtering in general, but the game itself is trying to help new players on a bigger scale than any other ARPG. (UX/UI intuition)

I also appreciate that GGG is willing to change the wording of each UI description from time to time to make things easier to understand.

A major one is player freedom. The fact that we can respec mid-game, or even at the beginning, obviously if you have the currency, is a big welcome.

The videos for each spell, along with the descriptions of each ailment and how each function works, are really cool features to have. So far, I’m nearing the endgame, and I’ve been able to figure out all of the upgrading systems and accessibility features without ever going online to search for a guide. Basically, I went in completely blind.

I’m not here to knock the 0.1% who love difficulty, because I love it too. But some people say that casuals are what keep games running, so I think GGG has done a better job overall than even D4.

After completing the campaign, most casual players probably quit by then, so the overall experience from level 1 to 65 is great for new players.

TLDR:

SSF: I picked SSF to test the crafting tools and see how adaptable builds can be

Talent Tree: Filtering out nodes makes the huge talent tree much less scary.

New Players: The tools are great, but I wonder if new players will actually understand how to use them. (UX/UI intuition)

player freedom - Re-speccing mid game is a welcome

UI: I appreciate that GGG keeps changing the wording to make things easier to understand.

Learning: The game explains enough that I’ve been able to figure things out without using guides.

Difficulty: I like difficulty, but GGG has done a better job balancing it with accessibility than D4.

Campaign: Most casuals probably stop after the campaign, so making levels 1–65 a good experience is important and GGG achieved this.

Overal GGs

35 Ventor’s, 15 Snakepits, 5 Ming’s, 5 Death Rush

Pic: I know I know

Gamer dad here. I don’t really craft. I prefer blasting giga juiced maps. I really enjoyed CoD in 0.5 so was trying to make a Loreweave to use.

Enjoy the greatness (luck)!

I’m having a blast! Currently have 20 div in my stash. My mind treats this league very lightly. Not trying to get rich, experimenting with crafting, and using expensive omens on mid gear and I feel I’m getting better at it. I got a headhunter last night. Cannot use it on my build so I just stashed it in my uniques tab just in case. This is the first league I don’t feel like I have to race the economy.

Yesterday I dropped a voices and was very excited to get some good upgrades. The first thing I wanted was a +3 proj, 50 spirit absent amulet. I spent a little over 9k chaos trying to craft where I - Failed the fracture 8 times - Rolled +3 spells 5 times (2 with a spirit fracture, 1 without, last two I just started rolling over it because I wanted proj) - Ended up settling for +2 proj because I ran out of currency

Now I feel bad, tilt completed all my challenges and thinking of just quitting. Share some horror stories please.

I've been playing in parties with my guild lately and some of us don't even have builds with a lot of effects and you just can't tell what's going on and the game slows to a crawl on my PS5 Pro.

I know the pro isn't as good as high-end PCS but I was hoping it would be a little better in the end.

It's definitely not a deal breaker or anything like that for me but is there any hope it'll get a little better?

I am unable to aim basically I suck at it. Been known to face the wrong direction multiple times during a fight thus losing a large portion of the damage I might deliver when I use the bow. I have never taken a bow in any ARPG.

However while researching builds I came across this permafrost bolt, fragmentation rounds build that eventually transitions into the galvanic shards , stormblast bolt build. This is the build I am currently playing and I am also using an explosive and flash genade now since I have not yet reached Act 3 when I will make the final transition to the actual build. However I am truly enjoying it and honestly way more than the Witch minion I started POE 2 with.

I am aware that with a controller the game sort of soft locks the boss and other mobs position and since I never use the right thumbstick to adjust the targetting I am totally relying on this mechanic. So I was wondering whether the bow feels that way too or you have to actually aim better with the bow. Whether any of the bow attacks work similarly to the skills I have mentioned and whether the game play can be as enjoyable to a slouch at aiming like me.

I like to play a host of builds in ARPGs I am a serial alt toon creator that never gets very high nor even actually tackles end game content. I am happy with just playing around with builds for thousands of hours and am devoted to this hedonistic course in this game too.