Being gone from the game for so long I should not be shocked by anyone that I can’t get enough delve since returning. While I somewhat ignored my sulfate bar being full at the start of the league. Once I had made some decent map progression it was time to start delving down.

One of the reasons I somewhat ignore Delve for a little while till I get some decent progression down in mapping is the mine keeps expanding down. It’s great that it will do so even after you have started it.

It however leaves me in such situations where the spot I was working on in Delve now got passed up by a bunch of progress being cleared down in a straight line by me just getting into higher tier maps. Many times, clearing right through a blocked area I'd have spent a decent amount of sulphate being past so I could find a path to go deeper.

First, before that could even happen, I had to open the mine. It’s always a surreal moment before my adventure down in Delve is about to begin to be sitting at the exit to the mine. Just waiting till I can start the mining crawler that will soon be dropping a path of light guiding me to my next location.

Since I get to skip quite a few mine levels there is a bit of a struggle right away. As I have quite a low resistance to the delve darkness the amount of light I have is reduced to quite a small radius.

One thing I started focusing on right away is nodes that have azurite. As that is a mineral, I can spend to increase my darkness resistance and light level. The deeper I go however the larger penalty I take on and the further I have to keep investing into these two things. Creating an endless look of wanting to go deeper but also wanting to stop to farm some out-of-the-way locations for azurite beyond any nodes I pick on my way down.

After I got those levels increased a little bit. I then go for upgrading my sulfate capacity. At the start, I can only hold around 1,180 of it. At a later point, I'll have nodes that will cost more than that just to fuel the crawler to get to them. Not to mention I don’t want to have to stop every third map to have to go spend my sulphate once it hits the cap delving. I like to spend at least a bit of time before mixing up what I'm doing.

I have always hated trying to offload my delve loot after quite a long run. Many times, like now I'd just be trying to go as deep as I could. While also looking for any towns along the way to raid. Other times I’d be blowing down walls and diving into the Delve darkness for riches.

Thankfully in Settlers Of Kalguur, there is now a currency market. While they did not include every single fossil I'd be looting as one you can place for sale on the currency market. Quite a few of the delve drops you can. I have no idea why they chose to not include the higher-valued stuff.

It has however made it quite nice once done with a run if I decided to sell. All I have to do is go and list it. I don’t need to put a bunch of stuff up for sale and be spammed for hours on end with people who are just spamming 10 people at once and only buying from the first person to send a group invite to make the trade.

Another nice thing about Delve is you can get quite a few map drops from any town you find depending on what the loot chests are inside them. Settlers Of Kalguur have map runners in your town who can run quite a few maps every hour. Getting enough maps to keep them busy is a bit of a struggle. I’m hoping Delve can help at some point with that.

At the start of the mine, things were quite easy. Unless I ran into this ambush by a bunch of rogues to unlock the next node. It was rare I'd get killed. Getting killed before unlocking the next node would mean having to do it again. Sometimes I'd even head to an alternative path if I knew the way I was trying to go was deadly the first time around.

After clearing out a few nodes and venturing down I got my first little surface. It was just a one-town outpost. At depth 51 I knew the loot was not going to be anything that interesting. I however can’t pass these things.

There is always a little bit of hope when you see one that there will be others connected. I could kind of tell by the outline that there was nothing else. Sometimes you might find these single square ones that have a much bigger town adjacent to them. This was not one of those times.

After exploring around a bit going after some decent size azurite nodes. I ended up finding another town but yet again with a single outpost. While there were some maps to loot inside it. They were quite low-level. I’d need to gain a few more depth levels in the mine before they would become a lot more worth my time. So, I went on deeper.

It seems I had some luck in finding a lot of just single outpost towns. This one had quite a little treasure room in it. However, at the depths I was at. It was yet again a bit disappointing. With me mostly just get some chisels and chaos orbs for my troubles.

With each trip down into the mine I'd always get a little sad once my sulphate was getting low. I’d know I just had one more node I could get to if at all. Then I'd be back up on the surface running maps again.

After a while, I ended up getting most of the atlas nodes for Delve. While my main focus at first was a heist. I soon had lots of points to spend almost anywhere I wanted. There would even be moments where I simply hit my sulphate cap and not run down to delve instantly as I just wanted to run a few more maps.

Most of the time however I could not wait to get down into the mine. Sometimes I'd even not wait till I had a full bar of sulphate. I just had that itch that needed to be scratched some days. There were also sometimes I was close to something good. I’d just quickly go run one more map to get enough to reach the node I wanted.

Final Thoughts

At this part of the league, I had a good cycle going between mapping, heist, and delve. I’d get to run a few maps. Then I'd stop and hit up Delve for a bit. Then I'd return to maps and depending on how much sulphate I'd end up mining I'd either be back into delve or have enough contracts stacked to head out and run some heist for a bit. Usually, I found myself going into delve at least twice if not three times as much as heist. I also rather preferred it that way. I always love the darkness of the Delve mine wondering what the next area will hold.

While I did not make a killing in the first couple of days off of Delve. I knew I had a small fortunate waiting for me to return when I felt like going on quite an adventure returning to nodes I already had cleared to and exploring the darkness for riches.

I do like having quite a lot of areas to explore first before I set out to do so. I also know I can’t wait around forever to do it. There was the point where I needed the path of exile economy to get into full swing but before the markets got flooded. So, while I was not in any rush, I'd be returning soon enough to see what was lurking off in the darkness for me to find away from my trusty crawler.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Path Of Exile.