Fall of Oriath: Strange Days

The World of Path of Exile is not the same.

There's the obvious stuff like a new Act to play through.  New monsters to vanquish and of course the mandatory passive tree respec the first time you log in to POE v3....

Yeah, that last one is always a treat.  Treat as in getting punched in the face while simultaneously being crapped on by a swarm of pigeons.

But perhaps most jarring to longtime players is the elimination of the cruel and merciless modes.  To my eye it appears that Grinding Gear took my advice and eliminated the XP penalties in favor of harder boss battles.

At least to MY EYE...

A friend of mine with a couple of characters past level 80 claims to still be getting an XP penalty on death.  I haven't experienced this myself but it that's what I have to look forward to I may dump this game once and for all.

Already in Act 5 I've gone through 2 vicious boss battles that took my level 40 something witch at least 30 minutes and almost as many deaths to get through.  Neither of which cost me any XP.

There does seem to be a kind of trade-off or perhaps just a side-effect of revamping the underlying game progression.  Higher level characters can literally walk through maps in Act 5 with little fear most of the time.

Other than a blank slate this was bound to be the case with veteran characters.  Grinding gear was looking to attract more players so those new to the game would see the same rate of character progression through the acts as veterans saw with cruel and merciless game modes.

So the veterans are kind of the odd-man out.  If there is an XP penalty for higher level characters it's likely a compromise to keep the game interesting.  Otherwise your level 80 Marauder would be waiting till Act 10 to have any kind of challenge.

One oddity when playing co-op is both welcome and annoying.  As you may already know you can't join a player somewhere you haven't been.  However with the advent of Act 5 there are maps where you can still adventure with a friend.  It's only in the boss battles where you'll find that you're once again on your own.  Better than being completely blocked from participating but annoying when you find out that your buddy can't help you.

But there had to be some compromises somewhere....

The alternative would have been to wipe out everyone's characters and start over.  Something that wuld likely lose veteran players.  After all, get about 500 hours into Path of Exile and chances are you know the NPC speeches by heart.  If I never see the Western Forest again it'll be too soon...

So as we bravely go forth into this new world of Oriath all we can do is see what all of these changes have wrought and go from there.

I'm well on my way as you can see below.  As Adam the Woo would say, " Join Me, Shall You?"