While I've done some amazing things so far in Delve it was getting to the point where my league starter was just not cutting it anymore. It was time to send in the alt and get quite a bit more needed leveling done on him as well. I had a fat stack of divine orbs to spend to hopefully get him the gear so he could take over and continue downwards.

My main already surpassed by quite a bit whatever would have been my personal best depth record in delve. I decided to go with quite a crazy goal of 1k depth. My best guess is that has to be around three times deeper than I've gone in other leagues.

I’ve at least had a considerable amount of fun and some decent finds along the way with the build I started with. It was also quite clear as I slowly went deeper into Delve that the loot was getting better.

Many times, it just felt like the same old same old loot. Other times I'd notice I was getting a higher chance of better nodes to appear. On top of that, I started to notice when looking at all the modifiers that were affecting some of the areas, I was passing through that they gave a special boost. Sometimes I'd be in an area that had more currency or strange chests could be found. Makes me have quite a keen eye for such modifiers in the future. Along with the ones like onslaught that usually got me killed quickly.

I would still keep grinding out maven innovations. To my shock, some of the ones I ran were also quite insane in the drops. Between looting around a dozen awakened support gems now to quite a few orbs of conflict. These runs as well were helping pave the costs of getting some insane gear.

It was also quite nice that four scarab map runs focusing on sulfate and taking out the map boss when doing mavens conflict invitation would get me enough for a solid run in delve. As well as getting to do yet another maven’s invitation.

At this point, I had quite a lot of influenced maps that had drops stacking up. Sometimes I'd go on map runs and end up looting more influenced maps than I would end up using. My supply of them would dwindle over time but for now, I had more than enough.

To my shock delve was not as much of a struggle as I was expecting when I made the final switch over to my alt that would later become my main. This was not the first time I've taken him down to delve but he has struggled way too much to want to put him in.

His damage output was not as great as my main. He however could tank damage like crazy. He also had quite a heavy focus on leaching both life and a small amount of mana as well. Making him quite a pain to kill once he started to get some hits in to steal the life needed to survive the endless onslaught Delve had prepared for me.

From my understanding of delve things were expected to get a bit more interesting around depth 500. At the time of almost hitting depth 400 that felt like it would take ages to get to. I was already quite excited by the increased amount of fossil nodes that were showing up.

While not all of them were worth running. Some of them even proved to be too much of a challenge for the time being. I would usually look for a decent path to move over and clear them out when I could.

Even the ones that were worth my time in clearing that I failed to be able to do so. I’d return later after an item upgrade and slaughter what used to be challenging to me. That was usually my test to see how much better anything new I acquired would help in my journey down delve.

Getting to depth 400 ended up being a bigger milestone than I was expecting. Turns out there was a challenge for it. It even shocked me a bit when it popped up. I so wanted to go achievement hunting on my alt. He however would need some massive upgrades before I went around doing things I've been wanting to do for years. For the time being, he would have to bide his time between mapping for sulfate and running around in delve.

It was also rather fun not getting killed as much as I had been on my former main. It felt like I did not have to push so hard to get somewhere in Delve. While that would change once I got much closer to my goal. It seems things were within reason of increasing the power of my character to keep going.

The build I was playing scales a lot off of my total strength and chaos damage. Just being able to afford these boots alone broke the bank. At the time they were going for 30-40 divine orbs.

It’s kind of funny looking back at it now. That many divine orbs for a single item ended up not being that bad. Sure, it took what felt like forever to make that much. The deeper I'd go in delve the quicker those kinds of slow days would end up being behind me.

Final Thoughts

In the past, some of the best loot I'd get out of delve would just be the fossils and resonators along with a random divine orb or two during a season. I had gotten to a point now where on occasion an item worth a divine or two could on a rare occasion drop.

Despite how powerful my character was becoming. There would sometimes be bumps in the path I was taking to get deeper in delve. I would sometimes wonder if this was now the end and if my goals of reaching 1k depth were coming to an end.

Then I'd retrace my steps and go up twenty or so depth. I’d then go sideways for a few nodes before making another attempt to descend even further into the madness of delve. I would then burst past the former spot I was struggling at like it was nothing and just keep going.

Information

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