I was still struggling a bit with the build I was playing. Things were however finally coming together in a meaningful way. I fixed what I could without breaking the bank. It was however time for some big upgrades and for that, I needed to push the map further for some better rewards.

To be able to do the last labyrinth run which is merciless you need to find the trails in the maps and do all six. Some leagues I've been rather unlocking in finding them. Other times I'll get them right away.

If I get desperate there is also an atlas crafting option to have a random trail on the map. At the time I felt I was making decent enough progress on getting the first three trials done that I did not need to resort to that just yet.

There is always the other option of finding players who have a trial. Some people sell slots to join in on the map they are doing. I prefer to find my own. It’s also nice when you find them for the league you are playing in you don’t have to get them again if you make any alts. They still need to run the labyrinth themselves to unlock the skill points.

I always find it funny how past league high-end items would make my heart leap a little when I see one drop. I had a Ventor’s Gamble drop and it had decent stats on it as well. Not enough to be worth much. Still, I put it up for sale anyway.

Every once in a while, I'd make a list of unfinished maps I still had to run. Then run over to the mapping device and started rolling any Kirac scrolls I had to see if I could get any of the maps I was missing.

One thing I kept an eye out for was any unique maps that popped up as well. Those would end up being the ones that I'd be lacking the most. At some point, I might decide to break my own rule of wanting to farm all my maps and pay for some of the harder-to-get ones if I can't get them myself.

There is one unique map that I looted that I don’t dare run myself. It is the grand hall master map. It is filled with former league powerful characters. I don’t quite recall as it’s been too many years how someone wins a slot to have their character in it. I already knew they would kick me back into the stone age before even thinking about running the map. So, I just put the map I looted into my stash tab for some future time I'd attempt it.

The maps are also so all over the place I have yet to find all my favorites. That is part of the fun when they move what tier different maps are in. While I hated most of the lower-tier maps. Making it a bit hard to find one I want to just sit around and farm a bunch. I’m hoping I'll run into some mid to higher-tier ones that are old-time favorites.

While I was busy running maps myself. I was also slowly growing my town. I’ve decided I'll make a more dedicated post about that at some point. So far, I've liked the in-game currency trading market. Not much else from the league I've cared much about. It is however just fun to return to this game after a long break and see what has and has not changed.

Funny enough while sorting out some of my loot. I did have the map device in the town unlocked. They were only running like tier 1 and 2 maps. Somehow, I had an atlas runner get killed. Even worse this was not the first time this had happened either. Most times however I'll return after logging out for the night to find out they never ran a bunch of maps I've given them since someone got killed.

I also turn into quite the hoarding packrat in Path of Exile. I’ve now had to go through all my stash tabs twice and do a massive cleaning. Most of it was just stuff I knew had some value but not a lot. At the time I did not want to spend the time working out a price to sell them.

With how much I've been making off selling scarabs. A lot of items are just not worth my time trying to work out a price let alone stopping what I'm doing to jump out of a map or elsewhere in the game to go make a trade.

Things started to change a lot for my build once I was able to afford a much better axe. I’ve been slowly gaining some currency. I noticed this thing popped up on the market as I had a search running on two-handed axes running in the background. It was a little under the expected market price as well. So, I jumped on it emptying most of what I had stored up to buy it.

Shortly after getting a new weapon, I found the last of the trails I needed. And went to run the merciless labyrinth for my last berserker passive skills. I ended up unlocking Rite of Ruin which gave a massive boost to rage. However, I'd be taking a bit of a life regen hit when the rage was not up.

I’d end up learning the hard way much later on when I was running quite a nasty map that had 118% or something crazy reduced life regeneration. I died just leaping around the map for a couple of steps. Took me a second death to realize what was going on. From then on I am quite careful in avoiding maps that have crazy reduction in life regeneration. It turns out that between my skills of using some life for mana and Rite of Ruin, it can become quite a deadly combo for me.

It is always so hard to want to decide what atlas passives to get first. Some of them like a 50% increase in rare monsters dropping a scarab are just so hard to not rush towards. While this does not mean I'll have a 50% chance of getting one to drop.

I did end up having a couple of maps where it sure felt like I had a 50% chance drop rate. I must have pulled around a dozen scarabs out of a single map. Then the RNG gods would curse me and I'd go on a bit of a dry streak for a bit before it started to rain scarabs again.

Final Thoughts

I was finishing up the last of the yellow maps I had before I moved on to reds. I always expect red maps to be a bit of a step up in challenge. They were not as bad as I was expecting. I also had a couple already stacked up waiting for me to run them.

Information

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