Addressing "PoE2 is fun until you reach the endgame"

Some people on this sub have barely played past the campaign. Or they haven't made it to Tier 15 maps yet and are confused about what to expect and what mindset they should have when progressing...

(There are also players with plenty of endgame experience, and yet they still dislike it. That is totally fair, I am not writing this post to invalidate such opinions.)

But this post is meant for inexperienced players, those who are not quite sure what to expecting from the endgame. I don't want them to become disillusioned if all they see is doomer posts about the state of loot and Trade league, so I am writing this to give another perspective.

###Endgame content

When you are reaching PoE2's endgame for the first time, there is an actual end-of-campaign Quest Line where Doryani is asking you to clear Corrupted Nexuses. This will take you from Tier 1 to Tier 15 waystones. Go and finish that quest line if you are unsure about where to start.

Then, go and fight the following bosses:

Xesht (bring 50x Breach Splinters to the Realmgate)
King in the Mists (bring 50x Petition Splinters to the Realmgate)
Olroth (bring 50x Runic Splinters to the Realmgate)
The Simulacrum (bring 50x Simulacrum Splinters to the Realmgate)
Zarohk, The Eternal (complete the Trial of the Sekhemas)
Trialmaster (complete the Trial of Chaos)
Atziri (complete the Vaal Temple)
Arbiter of Ash (PoE2's final boss, rewards you with the ability to give Tablets a 3rd/4th modifier. To fight him, travel far away from the Atlas starting point until Citadels start spawning. Fight a campaign act 1-3 endboss in each type of Citadel, then bring their Crisis fragments to the Burning Monolith.)

While exploring your Atlas, also clear each type of Unique Map and find each uncollected Hideout appearance. All of the above should also help you unlock 40/40 points in your Atlas Passive Tree.

Note that the Splinters and Crisis Fragments can be purchased directly on the currency exchange.

###Juiced mapping

You probably know that you should slam 6 modifiers on your Waystones to increase their difficulty and rewards. But if you're starting out, you should carefully consider which modifiers you are able to handle.

Giving monsters 42% more health, 37% more elemental resist, 20% energy shield and Armored/Evasive can easily double or triple the tankiness of the mobs you are fighting.

Similarly, a lot of the modifiers will significantly increase your damage intake and make you much more likely to suddenly get 1-shot. Do not stack multipliers such as 27% increased monster damage, 24% extra monster damage as fire, 260% monster critical hit chance, -12% max player resistances, 2 additional monster projectiles, etc... You can easily end up taking 2-4 times more damage that you would've without the modifiers (also keep in mind that some of your Atlas Passive Tree nodes boost these numbers even higher...).

Also, most people only target damage nodes on their passive tree... There are many clusters of defensive stats, be sure to pick up some of them.

In terms of tablets, there are many guides out there explaining which modifier combinations you should run together. You only get the most juiced content by stacking modifiers that have multiplicative scaling with one another. Higher item rarity, more rare monsters, increased pack size, greater monster effectiveness, additional modifiers on monsters, better area level... Only when all of these values amplify each other will you play the most rewarding content.

If you want challenging mapping content, try the Unique abyss tablet (the one that adds 14-18 abyssal pits) combined with a secondary Abyssal tablet that increases monster difficulty and rewards for each pit closed. Depending on your RNG, you can spawn some truly unkillable monsters!

###Gear upgrades and power progression

Getting "perfect gear" or "finishing your build" is not an achievable goal. Realistically speaking, your gear will always have flawed stats or sub-optimal rolls, it's part of the game design. You are not supposed to earn a Mirror on your first endgame play-through, and in a similar manner, also assume deterministic crafting to be way outside of your budget. Endgame power progression has a lot of depth once you dive into it, and it is the main gameplay loop that keeps players hooked for 100+ hours.

Speaking of crafting... if you play Trade League (non-SSF), you are part of an open economy. Let's say I want a glass of milk. It would be crazy to go out and find a cow to milk myself; instead, I go to the store and buy milk produced by a farmer. In a similar manner, open the Trade Market and browse for some gear upgrades you can afford, this includes Level 21 skill gems and unique Jewels (these are crazy strong).

Now, you might argue that hunting your own cow for milk is more fun. That is fair, and self-imposed SSF exists as an option, but it is much less efficient than buying your upgrades from someone else. That is why all the sweaty players are obsessed with currency farms and profiting 100+ divines/hour, it is a deterministic way to progress towards the gear upgrades you care about.

An economy-based endgame is not perfect... For one, it means a lot of the loot you find on the ground is completely worthless. People are criticizing this, and rightfully so. Your best option is to get a loot filter that is appropriate for the content you are playing, and keep in mind that it is OK to leave low-value loot on the ground. Don't worry, you will still occasionally get the valuable, high-dopamine loot drops, but it will probably be in the form of a tradable currency.

Finally, embrace the fact that Trade League gives you freedom to specialize in the end game content you find the most fun. You dislike Kalguuran Expeditions? No problem, someone else in the community is playing them. You hate wisps? Good, let someone else follow them around. Crafting ain't for you? That's fine, there are plenty of gear crafts going around. Let's say I want an Adorned Jewel... in other games, I would have to spam Trial of Chaos for its 2% drop chance... but Trade League allows me to instead build my temple / farm abyssal / play rituals / etc. and buy it from another player. Due to its rarity, I would have to grind a lot, but I can grind on my own terms, and I appreciate that.

And if you hate the economy and currency grinding, play some self-imposed SSF. Try a unicorn build with weird stat requirements that can't easily be found on the Market. There are many ways to become strong in PoE2, play maps at a level that is appropriate for you. If you hate the 0 revives mapping system, you can have plenty of fun with 2 revives, 4 modifiers and 2 tablets. And if all else fails, play to get as close to Level 100 as possible. I'm rambling, what I'm trying to say is: Go find your own fun and don't become a burned out meta-chaser with a 5000 div build.

Comments

GreedyGundam•5 months ago•10

It’s just not fun, or engaging compared to the phenomenal campaign. Idk what’s hard to understand about that

Narrow-Rub3596•5 months ago•7

TLDR; wait for endgame rework or 1.0 for endgame fun. The atlas ain’t it. All bosses tip over with mild gear investment.

People put hundreds of hours into temple farms, just to slap arbiter with ease. They could have slapped him earlier with ease, but now they can do it in 5 seconds instead of 10.

Currently there isn’t any reason to push your build past a certain level.

whakapapa•5 months ago•5

How end-game is perceived is entirely subjective, just like your post is entirely subjective and can't invalidate or mitigate anything about what people think or feel about the game. Your post is fine, but you can't address anything without really diving into why people feel the way they do. That will require more data, more interviews with different player-types and so on, and the reasons will be multiple.

Without data it will be hard to know which concerns to address to "fix" end-game for more people. Everything in this thread will be anecdotal and personal opinions, upvoted or downvoted depending on which user is reading your comment. Downvotes if you happen to mention D4, upvotes if you blindly defend everything about POE2.

I've played every league as there is something about POE2 that I like, I just can't really figure out what it is though. When I really think about the game, what mostly comes to my mind is what doesn't work for me in the game. I am hard pressed to point out what I do like, that I also can't find in other games - and often times implemented in ways I like more.

I think it is the style of the game that does it for me, the gritty, corrupted, hardcore feeling I get when playing the game. I like that. I like the horror genre and this game has a horror-vibe to it that I, so far, only found in Grim Dawn when looking for ARPG.

However as to the topic you want to address about end-game, for me personally, I don't like it. I've done all end-game and I think it is extremely boring, mechanics are badly telegraphed to the player, and progression is way too grindy to be fun - for me.

I absolutely hate that ground loot is so bad, that is a major turnoff for me. I hate that in order to progress I need to farm extensively amounts of too many different crafting materials to make the items I need to improve my character - OR buy them in trade. If I want to learn how crafting works, I have to spend hours OUT of the game learning - and even then I can't be guaranteed anything good will come of it, as crafting is rng.

Every league I start SSF as I enjoy making my own progression. But every time the game trips me up by not dropping stuff I need, making everything a crawl, progression comes extremely slow. Crafting in SSF is a nightmare as they make too many materials you need, which makes it way too time consuming to play SSF.

Even then, eventually you get to a point with your character where progression doesn't make sense as you top the difficulty scale. You just kill things faster, to get more currencies, to do what purpose? It is meaningless to kill a boss 0.2 seconds faster than before you upgraded a certain item, you still kill them in 1-5 seconds.

So in my opinion, with my preferences for end-game content, there is literally no point to playing once you get there.

BorgsCube•5 months ago•3

seems like theres two distinct playerbase types. people who can grind temple indefinitely, maybe give away their currency if they burn out

and players who just want to complete their build, beat the hardest content, maybe farm for a bit after. i happen to be in this camp

endgame is fine, its 100 playtime hours fine. the seasons last a bit long, but it gives me time to play other games and ggg time to work on new content and build-balance

fruitsteak_mother•5 months ago•2

Many of the long time PoE/PoE2 players forgot how it was to play the first time.
Me and a buddy are just exploring endgame in coop, we avoid reading guides or builds, we try to figure things out. It’s so much fun.
Yeah, we use trading - but have no idea what is ‚the best‘ gear out there, we just go step by step.
Clearing T15 maps with 3 Tablets is fun, and each time the game offers something new (like those realmgate levels or this obsidian tower - which annihilated us) it’s great fun and exciting.

TL;DR
as new player you should simply enjoy the game and not read guides too much

Bahlok-Avaritia•5 months ago•2

I mostly just STRONGLY dislike the current implementation of the Atlas. The whole infinite scrolling this reaaaally puts me off of maps.

zavorak_eth•5 months ago•2

Cool write up. I wish I read something like this in 0.1. It took me way too long to figure out what was what. I think the game is fun beyond reaching endgame and i play each league to the very end cause im not that good and i still need better gear. It is also evident by how many people are still playing. Most of the complaints on reddit are bs anyway from ppl who play this right after bitching about it on here. I love/despise this place.

bgbookoo•5 months ago•2

Thank you for this great post. I started playing the game 3 weeks ago and I love it so much. I reached mapping yesterday and I am so eager to try it today. I only played PoE1 briefly when it first released, so it will be something new and cool to me. I loved the campaign, played slowly and explored everything. Maybe I was doing something right and/or the league temple overleveled me so much, plus I bought some nice, cheap gear that it all made the campaign so easy. Looking forward how far I can make it in the maps. It looks we think similarly. I don't care that much about gear. I don't want better gear, just to be able to farm for even better gear. There is a lot of content and I wanna experience it all. My main is a Warrior and I already started a Witch and a Druid. Love playing in coop too. Not sure if bugged or intended, sometimes it seems we both complete the quest and sometimes we each have to do it separately. Same for revealing the map and unlocking waypoints. First time we played, I could see the map revealed by my partner, we were playing yesterday and their part of the map was hidden for me. Thanks once again for the post. Great advice. Saving it for reference.

FireFireoldman•5 months ago•1

For me fun ends after I've played all weapons. This season there was only talisman, did that, fun finished.
I tried all the bosses in past seasons, nothing's changed, I don't care to run these bosses over and over.
The play meccanics are the same, by minmaxin you just add dps numbers on the screen.

The game will be fun when all the weapons are added into the game and after that when devs start adding skills and ways to mix and combine builds.

Still waiting on swords

dylanthegreat12•5 months ago•1

Thanks for this

Addressing "PoE2 is fun until you reach the endgame"

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