After a while, I ended up getting into this grinding pattern that kept things different enough to be interesting for me for the time being. I’d run four maps and then spend all the sulfate I'd get in delve. Every 10th map I'd run a maven’s invitation. Every fourth delve trip I'd clear the darkness.

Since I was getting close to affording some rather desirable items for my alt. I decided to stop switching over to him every couple of maps. On my main, he can run four or so tier 16 maps and have a full bar of sulfite. It takes quite a few maps on the alt since he is not quite there yet.

It was also kind of hard in trying to work out which influence I wanted on my map. I decided to just stick with the maven and put any extra atlas points I've been earning further into those parts of the atlas tree that would benefit from having maven witness.

My main reason for doing this is that I want to get further influenced maps to drop when I take out a map boss. While it slows down my runs a bit having to stop to kill the boss. Even more so when there is a bonus of getting further encounters to spawn the fewer remaining creatures you have on the map.

In a more ideal setup, I'd just go as fast as possible around the map collecting the three sulfite veins and then porting out and starting another map. I find that to get a bit boning in the long run. I’m also at a point where I'm still map-sustaining without issues. The last thing I want to do is have to buy lots of maps from other players to keep farming sulfite to use in delve.

Every so often I end up getting enough map boss kills to be witnessed by the maven I get the standard invention. I’m hoping once my alt is powerful enough to reach the depths I want, he won’t have any issues taking on some harder-influenced maps and running some other maven invitations along with further end-game bosses.

What I was hoping for from having maven was getting awakened gems to drop. I did not get any for the couple of runs I did that day. In the past, I've looted about half a dozen. More times than not they are the ones worth only 15 or so chaos. I’ve also looted a couple that were worth around one divine orb. Naturally, I'm hoping to be getting much better gem drops than that. As that would reduce the amount of farming I still have left before I switch over to my alt and make it my new main.

Then I was off to use all the sulfate I had gained on yet another delve run. I ended up finding a currency and quite a few other nodes. Nothing of high value in this run. This node was quite fun as once you start the encounter all the piles of stone rubble on the ground rise as monsters you get to fight.

All fun at some point comes to an end as I would see the message pop up that I lack enough sulfate to keep going. I’d then head back into maps running those four more times before coming back into delve. After a few trips of that, I'd have a bunch of darkness to go exploring again hoping for some decent drops.

While I don’t share these often. In this, I show how I go about keeping track of which part of delve I've already explored the darkness around. Good old just using a red line to mark the areas explored.

I also write down the depth and starting point. Just in case I get interrupted and have to go back to checking out nodes I've cleared in the past. It’s also quite helpful when it’s been a while since explored the darkness for loot. Sometimes I end up taking five or six screenshots and just slowly make my way down crossing sections I've already been to.

I end up doing this as sometimes the map will not show where you left off. Not to mention I do get killed a few times on my current build at these depths. Not to mention the annoying running to the end of a region and being blocked from the next checkpoint where you can teleport out from. All these things can make it a bit easy to lose track of where I have been.

The biggest fine for the darkness exploring this time around was just a divine orb. I was kind of shocked I did not find yet another puzzle box. I’ll however take raw currency like this any time. This means I don’t need to sell it for other currencies and get to just add it to the pile I have growing for some future larger ticket items I'm saving up for.

While I tend to sell off some of the higher value fossils right away. I did end up getting a bit of a stockpile of everything else. Like in the past, I've been waiting for shortages in the market to drop some of the resonators I have been slowly restocking back up on that are at the bottom of the screenshot.

Final Thoughts

I was also just a couple of large loots away from reaching the number of divines I needed to try and switch over to playing on the alt more often than I have been. It seems like I almost leveled him up way too early. It was however a nice break from the normal grind when I did go back through the campaign again and do a bunch of lower-level mapping him.

Information

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