As it turns out my plans ended up not ready for this event. In fact, it went sideways for most of my gameplay until I finally gave up. My overall plans where to have some updates regarding my progression and different stopping points along the way to get away from the game.

As you can tell from the lack of updates I never made any posts until now. It was one endless struggle and bad decision after another. I think it is fair enough to say I’m more or less a veteran of this game at this point. So when things are worked out in my mind I tend to stick with them. I knew at some point I would have to deal with some hard pushing to get myself over a hump before things got easy again. Naturally, I tried for far too long and ended walking away disappointed and somewhat burned out.

My time for this event was rather short. I was not going have the entire month to enjoy this flashback event. In fact, I had till today to get done what I could and that was not much. This meant I got creative to cut some corners. Which failed in an epic manner that I can say. Instead of trying to save time I wasted most not getting things done.

When it comes to flashback events there are a few things to keep in mind

• It’s a fresh league as you start with nothing
• Zones have more challenges in them making it harder
• They only last for around a month
• Players tend to have an easier time acquiring currency and items
• Ascendancy class choice cannot be changed
• Sometimes changes are made to that you never look into

With these things in mind I wanted to play something new that I’ve not before. I played a fair amount in Incursion. I just did not want to do what I already did. In fact, I’ve grown bored of a few builds I’ve used in the past few leagues. While I still enjoy their playstyles I’ve done them a few times by now. I’m nearing the end of my enjoyment of the game overall so it was time to spice things up.

The Plan

I was to go with a Mjolner build and just dart around zones bringing waves of death as I moved. None of this having to stop to cast spells. Having totems or mines get killed and not dealing damage nonsense. I just wanted to be like the wind and everything is killed in my wake. Sounds like a great plan but there were some issues I could see.

The item to make the build itself requires you to be level 60 and have 300 intelligence along with 200 strength. This is also not a build people tend to make there league starters with. What they do is level up something else like I have in the past such as a blade vortex. Which is a very cheap and easy build to play.

After that, they farm up some in-game currency to buy leveling gear and make the journey for that secondary character a cake walk. Along the way you are just wearing some best gear currency can buy and it’s not a big deal if you are more focused for mapping then anything else.

Another option would be to level up a class and then spend spending its passive points in a way to help aid in leveling up and getting past that point. Then you buy up a bunch of Orb of regret and do a massive skill tree reset. Along with changing your Ascendancy class picks as well.

The issue here is I did not want level up multiple characters. I can’t reset my Ascendancy class and I am not going be currency rich to do a massive skill reset either. So I thought to myself can I get away with not following the basic procedure that I normally do? Well, I must say I cannot but more on that in a bit.

Path of Building

I opened up a third party program a large amount of Path of Exile players uses outside of the game called Path of Building. The build I want to go with is a Templar (Inquisitor) that uses Vaal Arc as a primary skill. That skill set up would be used with the level 60 hammer.

As far as some skill crossover and even better the same base starting a class there is the Arc Templar (Hierophant). It uses totems with the Arc skill. The issue I knew I would face here is the way it uses them with totems. In the skill tree, there is a set of nodes that lead to having +1 totems and some damage for them. Along with that Hierophant Ascendancy class allows you to get the third one.

So I understood trying to get to level 60 on just 1 totem instead of 3 was going be a challenge. Totems often die and well if it did not work out maybe I would just switch to some other things for a while. I could slap a few gems even into a 4-linked chest if I had to I thought.

League Event Start

It started off with no issues and me in a joyful mood. I showed up thirty minutes before the Flashback event even started. During these, you get to make your character and sit in the starter zone if you like before it starts. You are just frozen till the timer hits zero. Then it is off to race everyone else and get as far as you can.

I made a mad dash for the town not wanting to be in the first zone longer then I needed. I went with my classic opener of picking up a skill called Freezing Pulse at level one and then pairing it with an another called Onslaught support at level 2. It always a decent frontal cone attack damage and you pick up a speed buff as well when you kill things. From there I used that set up till I unlocked Arc and kept progressing.

The first few acts were not a big issue what so ever. Things seem to be going a little slower than normal. Perhaps there were some changes during the league I was unaware of to the Arc skill. I was also playing a class that had less damage then I'm used to right away. Instead, it started not too far away from picking up a bunch of life nodes only a few levels in.

Along with that, I was trying to level up as many skill gems for the Mjolner build as I could. Which I am willing to admit right now was being very greedy. Greedy to the point I just flat out got murdered over and over and over again. I had a few times where I was stuck in a death loop even as I just did not have any damage. The totem would get killed right away and that was my damage. Not to mention the overall build is bad for taking out bosses or anything very hard. It’s more for clearing trash very fast. Which is what I enjoy mapping for later on in the game.

That along with me just feeling rushed I made quite a lot of mistakes. From overlooking getting upgrades to not getting some better skill gems to make things easy on me. It left me quite frustrated by my failures in a game that I should be able to play in my sleep. In fact most times by the time I do play this game I’m so tired I forget half what I did in the first place the next day.

Around the boss fight, Malachai I really started to noticed things were going bad. I started to question somewhat some of my choices and maybe I should just stick going with arc totem instead. It would not be much effort to pick up some nodes I had skipped over to make it much better on myself. I somewhat wish I had done so. For a little while, I did not even pick up totem skill just to see how far I could go without it with a combination of other support damage skills.

While I was really hoping to beat this boss in one go without having to portal out to town to refill my life and mana flasks I ended up doing that around a dozen or so times. At least the benefit of getting all those life nodes right away in the passive skill tree was I had a fair amount of life. It is just a shame I hit like a butterfly instead of a truck. After I defeated him I picked up the totem skill and some other skills trying a few different things.

That alone left me a fair amount confused when I started to check my played time compared to what zone I was in. At first, I thought oh there timer is somewhat broken. It can’t be that bad. It was, in fact, that bad! I’m not a real speed runner when I can make it act 5 in under 5 hours I’m just happy to have set a pace of 1 hour per zone. Needless to say, 6 hours and 47 minutes was something else. Well, that is not a good time for my limited time or my level of enjoyment either.

One item that I did end up picking that I thought would help was a really amazing leveling item that drops in high frequency from the Temple of Atzoatl. I ended up just buying mine for 2 Chaos Orb. It adds quite a lot of flat elemental damage to your attacks. While it did not quite double my damage it was near doing so. Well worth the investment I thought. Not to mention I only expected the price to fall to 1 Chaos Orb by the time I would want to replace it with an amulet that had some base stats on it.

After a while, I knew I needed more damage. Best way to do that was to acquire an item called a Tabula Rasa. It is body armor that has 6-linked socked that can fit any color of skill gem. With that, I would be able to really beef up Arc and make up for not having some really needed passive skills to get me by.

The best way to acquire one that I know of when you are playing in the flashback league is in the Tidal Island zone. It is a very small and low-level zone. Because of its low level, it has a very small pool of unique items that can drop. On top of that if you do it while Exile Rouges are up for an hour they are your best chances at getting unique items to drop. So I did that for 3 rounds 1 hour each. I walked away without any luck and just kept trying to push after that.

Along the way, I did get a few kills in. Normal Kitava was not that bad. I might have died a dozen or so times. It is softcore after all so I can just die and run back in and die again. That was typical for builds I play when it comes to bosses. They are more about clearing maps fast and having to put up with some pain to take someone like him out.

Most of my boss and even god fights where like that. Each one starting to become harder and harder than the last. More deaths, more losing experience each time around. More time being eaten up. I even skipped a few of the minor gods to save some time and with high hopes of returning to them.

I ended up making it to level 56. Now to be fair I did afk quite often and sometimes I did leave the game open and running. Still even with those excuses only making it act 8 to The Bath House zone at 16 hours played is horrible, to say the least. That is then with a heavy heart I thought its best to cut my losses of this event.

I at least made it to level 30 and got an Apocalypse Mystery Box out of the deal. I opened the create and got some really strange Wasteland Horns out of the deal. I’ll take a free cosmetic item when I can. A helmet attachment is at least a new slot I did not have anything for.

Some lessons learned from this at the very least. Sometimes it’s just best to take a moment and draw up some new battle plans when things are not going great. Mine where flawed from the start and I knew better. I just thought I had the willpower and time to make it to the proses lands of level 60 and getting a Mjolner Gavel to enjoy the rest of the league. I’m really looking forward to playing some other games now!

Information

Screenshots were taken and content written by @enjar. Screenshots are from a game called Path of Exile unless otherwise stated.

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