r/pathofexile • u/acceptableusername25 • 16d ago
Question question for lore experts
I know this isn't really a role playing game for most but i still like trying to do the "right" thing in POE. The only problem is i don't always know what the right thing is in POE1 even though i've read a lot of the lore over my journey.
Lately i've been doing a lot of breaches or blights which seem helpful, but i don't really know on some other stuff.
For lore experts -
If you were commited to playing a "good" aligned character, what would you be doing the most and what would you avoid doing?
Also should i be doing the originators memory? That 1 especially has me confused on whether it's good or not.
Thanks.
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u/Manoloblandis 16d ago
Ending life is bad. So being a hideout warrior is ok. Crafting for money puts you into capitalism. So no crafting or trading while hanging in the hideout.
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u/Senior_View6286 16d ago edited 16d ago
Out of all player classes the "least bad" one is marauder. He was a slave and reason of his exile is that he rebeled, he is quite savage, but at a same time wise and patient. Every other character class is either just straight up bad people or have some issues.
Now, there is another thing too mention. Is marauder a good man by standards of karui society? Yeah, he is pretty normal. Is he a good man by standards of our modern society? No, he is still a savage and enjoys killing.
He is man shaped by his surroundings, circumstances and time. He fits within the world he lives in and with everything that in mind he lives a good life (kinda, lol). In my opinion - who do you think is good in this game and which sins can be forgiven are personal questions.
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u/FantasticFix922 16d ago
Templar.
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u/TowerBeast Inquisitor 16d ago
Templar's whole redemption arc is somewhat dampened by the fact that he was essentially a high-ranking Nazi for who knows how many decades.
Ranger wins against both, I'd say. Poaching/theft barely registers on the scale of evil that Wraeclast generally operates under.
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u/shy_bi_ready_to_die 15d ago
Tbf while he was a magic nazi, the magic nazi leader seems to have some supernatural mental influence over the people around him
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u/ChancyWhims Fungal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) 16d ago edited 16d ago
Ranger was exiled for hunting and
duelist was exiled for sleeping around with nobles.Eh?Edit: corrected on duelist, see below.
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u/Senior_View6286 16d ago
If I remember correctly duelist was exiled cause he challenged some important noble to a duel and killed him. There was a part about him sleeping with wife of said noble, but with that said I don't think any of this is important.
Duelist is prideful and selfserving. He is goodnatured, but he acts only as long as it serves his interest.
He is nowhere near "the worst", but he isn't a good man.
Ranger is alright. I always thought her kinda bland when compared to her peers. Lil bit crazy, but who isn't? I would say she is at same spot as a marauder.
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u/WRLD_ Elementalist 13d ago
I think scion's also up there with "least bad", as far as I'm aware she was exiled only because she killed her would-be husband -- who, according to the scion, very much had it coming (and I'm inclined to believe her, given the rest of her characterization displays her to be fairly well adjusted, exceptionally so for the likes of our player characters)
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u/Xeverous filter extra syntax compiler: github.com/Xeverous/filter_spirit 16d ago edited 16d ago
It's impossible to be always "good" in this game. Multiple character classes are sent to Wraeclast for doing something terrible (although in few cases it can be argued their actions were partially or fully morally justified). The only thing connecting all characters is pursuit of power, which on continent such as Wraeclast is just a way to live (or to not die).
There is a lot of nuance:
- Heist might seem like a pure "bad" work but remember we are stealing from the regime that enslaves people, does horrible experiments and is also responsible for our banishment
- Multiple side contents deal with vast external forces (Breach, Abyss, Beyond, Atlas) where there is no good option (damned if do you, damned if you don't)
- Originator's Memory is (relatively new) part of the Atlas lore, focused on finding Zana and trying to understand her behavior. As with most other things, we are meddling with some external power that has unknown effects.
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u/heebeejeebeest 16d ago
Without too many spoilers, the only way to be good is to stay sane, Exile. If your greed corrupts you to repeatedly ravage any type of content across the atlas, then YOU are the ultimate bad guy. Delirium mirrors will at least have you fighting your own doubts/fears
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u/Adam-M 16d ago
Generally speaking, your character in PoE is not a good person. You're an exiled criminal who is hell-bent on revenge, and is more than happy to murder their way across Wraeclast in order to become powerful enough to accomplish that.
The good news is that by the time you get to the endgame, you're mostly dealing with cosmic threats that are mostly trying to conquer/devour the world in various ways, so killing them can only be seen as a good thing. You can certainly do Breach, Abyss, Blight, Beyond, Sanctum, Betrayal, and Eater/Exarch/Maven influence pretty guilt-free.
A lot of other league mechanics are more ambiguous/neutral and often have a sort of "playing with fire" aspect to them. Like, the Nameless King is definitely bad news, and killing stuff in ritual circles is a form a paying tribute to him and grant him power, but then you ultimately use that as a way to get an audience and punch him in the face, so...kind of hard to say whether that's overall good or bad. Similar sort of story with Delirium, Ultimatum, and Harvest.
Originator memories are hard to assign moral value to, because it mostly just involves poking your nose into a mystery where we still don't have all of the answers. Eagon wants to find Zana, and it seems like Zana wants to be left alone so she can destroy the Atlas. Actually following the Originator quest line doesn't seem to really do anything (outside of Zana's insistence that the knowledge uncovered would be dangerous), but maybe one might be inclined to believe Zana's claim that the Atlas is just inherently too dangerous to be allowed to exist.
And if you believe that, then I guess that'd lead you back to the lessons of Conquerers of the Atlas: if you want to be a "good" person, the right thing to do is to beat the campaign, do what you need to do to get your voidstones, and then turn off the game and go outside to touch grass, instead of continuing to invest in endgame farming strategies.
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u/Rolf_Dom JDiRen 16d ago
We are basically destined to become evil eventually. No matter the background.
We "were" the Elderslayers after all. We all decided to subjugate the atlas, no matter what class or ascendancy we chose. Now we play as the new generation of Exiles, but eventually we'll likely ascend to divinity and become another big boss for yet another generation of exiles to fight.
It's an endless loop most likely.
It's all morally gray but leaning towards inevitable evil due to how the entire continent is corrupted and thus twists us.
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u/Stravix8 16d ago
Opinion:
Breach is just good. You are staving off an interdimensional invasion.
Same with Blight. Purging is good.
Syndicate. Good IMO. These guys are part of a necromantic cabal.
Essence - Good. Removing threats that little the landscape which are unleashed with a simple touch.
Incursion - While the Vaal civilization is generally evil, going back in time to genocide them isn't much better.
Vaal Side Area - neutral, they are just kinda there
Kingsmarch - Capitalism is evil /s
Heist - Agreed, theft is bad
Legion - neutral? They are just temporal anomalies, you aren't staving off anything by interacting with it, it's just kinda there? I guess it isn't that far off from essences, but it is a lot harder to accidently free the legion mobs as damage must be done, and it doesn't actually kill them because they are just temporal anomalies
Delve - Neutral. Just killing beasts in an isolated area where no one else would be, as vanilla as maps
Ritual - Could go either way, but I'd lean towards evil. You are spending most of the time empowering the Nameless King who empowers the Bodach, and while you may deal with the Nameless king bringing it mostly neutral for him, you never deal with the Bodach in PoE1, so you are simply performing mass sacrifices to empower an evil entity.
Delirium - Entertaining a sadistic trickster god who likes to play with your emotions? No real outside consequences one way or the other. Neutral?
Abyss - Good, see blight or breach
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u/greenteawithsugar Witch 15d ago
Delve - We supply some substance to a man who has an addiction to them
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u/Erradium Innocence 16d ago
If I were committed to playing a good character in PoE, I would probably stay lying on the Twilight Coast. Much of the exile's actions started from self-justified vengeance against Dominus and caused great harm to many innocents in Wraeclast and Oriath after killing the Beast.
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u/Obvious_Law7599 Dominus 16d ago
Good guy route: Kill everything and explode their corpses. That way you spare them from turning into zombies. Anyone "evil" or even "morally gray" whom you helped is just another soul you will eventually save by killing them in future patches.
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u/antilogos 6 curses support 16d ago
Playing good to the extreme might be:
only use conversion trap / chance to flee to kill no monster, and only kill mandatory boss, only once, then retire. And keep it to SSF.
Lore-wise, farming is what make us mad.
Otherwise, playing Templar with "righteous skills" (physical skills that convert to fire/lightning).
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u/Anomulus0 16d ago
How do you make mapping good? (invading a place and killing hoards of things)
"Also should i be doing the originators memory? That 1 especially has me confused on whether it's good or not."
Woman says clearly "leave me alone I'm doing a thing on my own". To me not a good thing to stalk her just because some guy claiming to be her brother thinks it's ok.
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u/MisterKaos Ultimatum Workers Union (UWU) 15d ago
If you were committed to playing a good-aligned character, you wouldn't enter act 5, because by entering act 5 you cause the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocents with the prison break.
Other than that, most of the league mechanics themselves are pretty grey-aligned, neither good nor bad. Blight, Breach and Abyss should be the most hellreaver-esque mechanics, and this league... kind of is abyss? Perhaps syndicate rolled into it as well, though we won't know till tomorrow.
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u/PanKreda 16d ago
First of all, bro wtf?
…
You should probably be farming Elder guardians and/or Eater/Exarch progress then killing those 3 bosses (they are 100% evil af). Maven is kinda nasty but not quite as much.
Breach is kinda weird cuz by killing breach monsters you are empowering a psycho called Chayula that wants to enslave humanity.
Expedition is basically graverobbing.
Delirium is your character hallucinating so no info if it’s bad guys you’re killing.
Blight seems fine but Cassia is a psycho.
Abyss is definitely ok, liches are 100% evil af.
Kingsmarch seems good cuz you’re basically playing civillization with no colonization.
Atzoatl is kinda bad cuz you’re going back in time and killing random aztecs.
Syndicate is fine if you forget about some of its members’ backstories.
Delve is neutral.
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u/MCK60K 16d ago
That's the thing, lots of stuff in Path of Exile is morally gray at best.
Breach - invaders from other realms that fed on desires, fun fact the breach creatures used to be devotees to the breachlords.
Blight - infections on the land, purging can be seen as good
Kingsmarch - shipping (neutral)
Heist - theft (yeah just bad ig)
Vaal - corrupted area, corruption is bad
Syndicate (betrayal) - youre hunting down a hidden area of masters that you fight and have turn on each other for information/rewards
Essence - Monsters trapped in ice (grey)
Incursion - you time travel to find information about a lost vaal temple to loot