Through naufragar's mention in his PB64 thread I got hooked again after reading of Ruthless mode, and made an attempt to beat the campaign in Hardcore SSF.
I lost the first duelist against the fire witch on the coast, which was nostalgic, as that was also the very first PoE death that I can remember. The next one made it into Merveil's cavern and was exploded by some suicide squids, and the third one trying to clear the hideout in the Dread Thicket.
I then figured that I needed to stay a bit further from danger (also because of Sanctum) and started my very first summoner ever, a Raging Spirit necromancer with permanent minions for meatshields. That worked great, as she was also the first to find any support gems - I first found Melee Splash, but set it aside for a future duelist first, until later I realized how much it would boost the raging spirits. In early act 2 I also found added fire damage, which of course was super useful.
Ruthless impacts all of currency and gear, but I'd say the most impactful is support gems. Having to do with what chance gifts you is interesting, but also restricts power by a whole lot. Gear wise, you still get some blues or rares with resists and life - of course you're looking worse than standard, but it's manageable.
The necro made it through Dominus as a first milestone and the Labyrinth and Malachai as a second. Tonight she died in the Oriath Square (pre Innocence killing) of all places. I don't know really how, her 1.8k life + 800 MoM mana went down in about 2 seconds, with the minions fighting ahead but no enemy in sight really. I think I saw some black blob under her, so maybe some damage over time from a rare or the Matriarch (?) boss? Are there a lot of proectiles flying around in that area? Will never know. Still, I'm pretty happy to have got this far.
With Ruthless limitations, the campaign - and the few drops you get - feel exciting, and you get into hairy situations in unexpected places: the Weaver was close death for both the duelist and the necro, Vaal Oversoul and Piety seemed trivial, Dominus was easy but his pack got all my minions killed and the life ball down multiple times, as did Gravicius. Belly of the Beast Piety was even worse, despite me kiting her beam dutifully. Quite hairy, but then Malachai wasn't really an issue, again. From act 2 or so on, white packs would still go down pretty fast, and blues and yellows with a bit of patience. Well until I'd die against those all of a sudden.
Here is a link for those interested. The tree shows that I had not played for two years, and never a summoner. With the respec points from later act 5 I'd have reassigned the ascendancy to Mistress of Sacrifice (the offering thing), as increased skill effect duration is gold for SRS, as I realized later, and also some movement speed from flesh offering would have helped. The boots were the only 4-link I had found, and they even had life, mana and strength upon alching - too good to spend the one chaos orb in the inventory hoping for movement speed. In fact I only got some blue low tier move speed boots around act 4, maybe those mods were nerfed in particular, as reducing mobility seems to be a focus of Ruthless. Of course I had no fitting third support gem for SRS
, but it allowed to also link the zombies.
Sanctum seemed to provide above average drops, but I never managed to complete a floor. I think I faced the floor boss (something the Vaxen) 4 times, typically with some 150 resolve, and the best I achieved was to get him to around 1/3 health. Maybe with better move speed and movement skills it would be better possible to dodge, but the huge AoEs seem silly either way. So I still don't really know what the league is about
.
Notable drops:
- Sadima's Touch gloves - seemed like ideal for Ruthless with their increased item quantity. Found them in a Sanctum, lost them with the third duelist
- Rotgut quicksilver flask - stored away. It seems very situational, and not worth building a char around?
- gems: arcane surge, efficacy, faster projectiles, frostbite - all that points towards a cold witch, together with some witch equipment including a nice cold staff that I stored. And a zealotry aura that I suppose would be helpful for another duelist.
- currency, off the top of my head: 2 chaos (one lost with the second duelist
), 2 alchemy orbs, ~3 alts, 1 regret, ~3 orbs of augmentation - those were very valuable, and in fact I once bought one for 4 transmutes. Transmutes of course also being very scarce and valuable, but at least attainable from selling blue items.
- well on the link you see the best I could get for each slot. I'd argue not all of it is terrible.
I think I'm done once again. I'd have ideas for more chars but they'd likely die silly deaths again. I was half expecting to die against Innocence or Kitava soon enough, or get stuck in a random situation, but here I don't even know what happened and that always feels bad. And I think the duelist or cold witch that I'd do next would be in much more danger than the necro with her big life pool that didn't help her. And PoE for me has always been a lot of time investment, me being a slow player, and here it was more so obviously.
But the goal was to do a campaign playthrough while feeling excited about it, and while it was cut short it was still very fun. Would recommend, though maybe not hardcore, because bullshit deaths happen more often than usual. And with the variance factor of support gem drops, that alone might be enough motivation to build different chars.
