One thing I love doing is holding off on farming the darkness into Delve till I have quite a decent amount of depth already unlocked. With the Path of Exile economy going into full swing I can’t wait forever for the riches I have waiting for me to find or risk prices plummeting a lot by the time I get to them.

At the time I did this many of the lower-tier Delve fossils and other stuff were still going for a decent rate. I would end up pulling in inventories of riches worth their inventory space in chaos orbs.

For those not in the know in the Delve part of Path of Exile if you leave the protection of areas with light you start to take damage over time after a while depending on your darkness resistance.

Here is me going down a corridor where my crawler had dropped light between two nodes, I had already unlocked beforehand. I would then jump into the dark areas leaving behind the safety of the light.

You can also carry around a limited number of flares. While they don’t last forever, they help provide some light. Which protects you from the darkness damage. While also allowing you to damage any creatures.

Lurking in the darkness are chests of loot. Hidden areas that can be opened and the crawler can be sent out to. There are also fractured walls that can be blown up and have loot to be taken.

Since I've cleared to around 250 depth it was time to get my hands on what I can. To make it so I don’t get lost I tend to take a screenshot of the current part of the map I'm exploring around. I’ll then mark that section off as explored.

I ended up skipping the shaft-down section of the mine. The shaft was created to be getting further along in maps. There is not anything I've ever seen that is worth my time to run down it. Any off branch and everywhere else though could have something special worth looting.

Mostly I'm just looking for these kinds of walls to break down. I took this screenshot just as the explosives took out the wall. Inside the chamber, there are a few creatures guarding any chests or fossils that are waiting for me to loot them.

While I could focus on regions that have higher rewarding fossils and the like. This early on I just go for everything. I did not clear down with any region targeting in mind. I just wanted to get some depth going.

Also, the higher-tier fossils are not on the in-game currency exchange. This means I have to list them the old way and then manually trade people them. That can get a bit annoying even more so if I just want to be left alone for hours in Delve exploring around.

So, I started the slow but fun work of exploring around. In each instance, you can only go so far before you end up hitting an invisible wall that forces you to go back. So, every couple of nodes I went exploring along even if they were not long, I left the mine and reentered. These tend to be where the regions change.

One thing I love finding while exploring is wealth and resonator caches. While at these depths I'm not expecting to find the best resonator. The second best at the time was selling for around 21 chaos orbs each. That price would slowly decline as more and more people start farming at deeper depths getting larger amounts.

While out exploring the fractured walls were not the only thing I was looking for. In certain regions, you can just find resonator caches hiding in the darkness. Like many random chests in the darkness, they can be hard to spot. Often appears almost invisible unless you are right on top of it.

There is usually a slight glimmer that catches my eye and I'll investigate such things if I spot them. More times than not it’s nothing as the walls of the mine will glimmer a little from time to time. Other times it was a chest.

Along the way, I was also looting more azurite than I was spending. So, I was just dropping flares like breadcrumbs almost everywhere I went off the path of light left behind by the crawler.

After exploring for a while I decided it was time to start getting items listed for sale. Thankfully at the time, I had a decent chunk of gold. As it cost gold to list items, I'd quickly discover I would need to run some quick maps for a bunch more of it. While I was looting some gold while in the Delve mine, it would not be enough to keep up with all the items I was listing for sale.

After a decent chunk of what I had looted sold or was listed. I converted many of the chaos orbs I got into divine orbs and went back into the mine for further exploring in areas I had yet been.

I must have taken over a dozen screenshots as I slowly marked off areas where I had been. While I was only going down to around 250 depth. It’s not like I made it in a straight line. I would sometimes hit dead ends or see something worth going to after taking a bit of a detour like towns.

I was also keeping an eye out for any areas where I had to break down a fractured wall to unlock and send the crawler out. I was kind of shocked I out of pure dumb luck did not end up by many that were worth the time to go after. So, I decided I'd just ignore any special areas. Even more so if I was at the lower depths. Later on, much deeper that will be a different case.

Every once in a while, between resupplying on flares and dynamite I'd need to dump some loot into my stash. For the most part, I was not looting anything crazy. It however did not matter this early into the league. So many things were selling quickly and for a decent amount.

My biggest fine of a couple of days I did this ended up not being any resonator or fossil I looted. Out of a wealth chest if I recall dropped a Voidborn Reliquary Key. Since I am not focused on running that kind of content at the time. I ended up selling it for 349 chaos orbs. That was quite an insane amount.

One day I'll have to try using one of those keys. It makes me wonder a bit what makes that item worth so much. Perhaps much later in the league, they will be a lot cheaper and I'll buy one to check them out what kind of content it involves.

After a while I started to get deep enough into the Delve mine, I found my first Prime Chaotic resonator. Along with quite a few shuddering fossils. That resonator at the time went for 38 chaos and the ten shuddering went for 18 chaos each.

While I had a bit more depth to explore that I had already unlocked. Once I got to around 250, I felt I had enough loot to sell for the time being. I wanted to leave a little bit for when I came back after unlocking a few more nodes and ended up doing another run of darkness.

Final Thoughts

In this league, I want to attempt to go much deeper than I've been in Delve in the past. I believe somewhere in the 300-depth range was my record. It however has been quite some time so I don’t quite recall.

To be able to do that I'll need to make an alt that the whole build focus is just Delve. At the time I was looking to see what the top depth players were using. I thought around 400 Divine orbs would be the total cost.

After digging into and understanding those builds better it looks to be closer to 800 divine orbs. Which for me is quite an insane amount to even think about getting. Let alone having.

My entire darkness run so far netted me around 20 divine orbs. I was hoping to try and put something together on the cheaper end around 30 divine orbs. I however realized quite a critical item I'd be needing cost around 50 divines alone. So, I'll be trying to farm a little bit and hope to get lucky with getting that item to drop. Otherwise, I have a lot of farming ahead of me. I'll more than likely need closer to 80 divine orbs to be running at the lower end of things.

Information

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