[PB57] Pindicator searches for his mascot

[pindicator]

018

Up north there was a lion prowling around my city location, so I moved my warrior onto a nearby forest. We won the fight over the IT, but only at 0.1/2 health remaining. If someone comes along with their own warrior soonish we could be in a pickle. At least I do have a promotion next turn to help jump-start the healing.

I do find I'm going to want more warriors, though. MP and scouting alike.

For instance, scouting the east is becoming very profitable. It seems my south and east and linked:




That's Cornflake's baby blue borders peeking through the fog, I believe. I think I'll continue east with my warrior and avoid contact up there and instead use my scout coming from the south. It is an interesting land configuration, however.

[pindicator]

021

Emory University in Atlanta has a mascot skeleton named Dooley. For some reason I find this hilarious:




Finished BW and revolted, then whipped Ace Purple for 2p for my next settlers. These cities are going to add up, so I decided to skip Fishing and go straight to Pottery. Need to get cottages down ASAP, and I only have 1 fishing resource in my borders now anyway.

After Pottery I may still skip Fishing and try to go for an early religion. But I may just go Stonehenge in Cecil once its worker finishes and try get my borders that way. I'm not sure, I feel like I'm late to the Stonehenge party.

***

In Path of Exile, I'm really enjoying Ritual League and the new expansion mechanics. I ended up play an archmage fireball trickster, using Agnostic and MoM for defense. It took a bit for the character to come into its own, but by Act 4 I was starting to progress all right. Then I hit another snag towards the end until I found my first 5L. Still don't have a 6L, but I've gotten all my lab trials and just yesterday found a great burning damage staff. The ultimate goal for staff is Searing Touch. I haven't started using Chance Orbs for it yet, been hopeful that it would come up in a ritual but I haven't had that kind of luck yet. I did get a Kitava's Thrist out of a ritual around Act 7, which was a huge pickup for my build.

I'm just starting to get into red maps. I've never tried to do the achievement challenges before, so I think I'm going to see how far i can get. 36/40 gets a hideout but I don't know how feasible that is for me.

My brother is getting me thinking about what my next character might be - I've gotten some decent bleed 2h weapons along the way, so i thought I might try to make a bleed Spectral Throw and use the new Deadeye ascendancy skill of Rupture. But I'm still a long way off of doing that. I still am having a lot of fun with the Fireball Trickster and it still has a lot of progression to do.

[pindicator]

022

More news out east as I met Gavagai:




Also, interesting that Cornflakes decided to go for the trade routes. But I suppose it makes some sense - I had forgotten just how small map this was going to be played on and now I wonder if I will have the economy to compete. And yet, would I have made the same decision if I had remembered this was a 32x32 toroid? (Personal note: i hate small maps, I'm not sure I would have kept my sign-up if I had properly noticed this. I'm glad I went for ORG over EXP in any case.) Because that city of Cornflakes' is not really contributing anything except to be a commerce dump. And meanwhile I'm ignoring Fishing just to get Pottery online faster. I think long-term my plan will be better, but I have to make it through some tech hurdles first. Will I be able to?

Also interesting is that Gavagai is on just 2 cities and I'm about to plant my 5th. Settler moves this turn and next, and founds on the desert hill t24. I could have gone east but I think it's better to keep stuff closer together where it will be easier to get improvements going. Gav on 2 cities is actually very alarming and I hope he does not come my direction. This screams Immortal Rush to me, as he must have put his points into population and maybe even tech.




OH scout found us from the south this turn.

Now, another weakness from mine (aside from paying attention to map settings) is I undervalue wonders. It wasn't until last turn that I started to think "hey, why don't I try for Stonehenge?" It's certainly possible this is too late, but there is the upside that I don't have a lot for my cities to build and unless someone decided to go for Stonehenge at the outset they were 1) likely discouraged by me being the only Mysticism civ, and 2) would have to research Mysticism in a game with crippling expenses.

So I am deciding to make a last-minute adjustment and go for Stonehenge. "Adjustment" - ha! This implies I have a micro plan; I do not, fellow lurkers. Just a general idea of what I want to do. But here at Cecil the worker was 1 turn away from completion and so I knew I would get heavy overflow. 33h into the wonder to be precise. I'll chop the two trees in borders to get me to 73. Accounting for the turns it takes to chop them, I'll be at 81/120. And from there I may even chop the trees outside my borders to get the wonder. Now if I fail I figure my consolation prize is a bunch of needed money. If I get the wonder then my border pops are solved, Cecil becomes culturally dominant over everything to the south (there's nothing really worth settling down there anyway - at least compared to the northwest and east), and I have a great prophet in 50 turns that I can use to build a shrine later on.

I'm still flying by the seat of my pants here, and none of this is very elaborately thought through. I'm putting zero effort into thinking about my opponents' moves (except for the portion bout Gavagai you saw above), so I don't suppose it's unlikely that someone comes around and just smacks me in a bit. Speaking of which, I'll be hooking up my copper and building a couple metal units soon.

[pindicator]

024

City #5 is named after the St. Louis College of Pharmacy.



I'm not sure if the name of the mascot is the Eutectic or if the school are the Eutectics and the mascot's name is Morty.  So we did a bit of both for our city name:




I'm even more happy to grab this spot now that I see Gav has a warrior staking out his eastern border and that silver.  My warrior coming straight east has come across Gav's borders in that direction, and so it looks like i don't have the most direct border with the game's most unpredictably dangerous entity.  (TBS are OH are far more of a threat to win, but Gav is the biggest threat to cause me to lose.)

Also I'm happy to see that Ace Purple is the beginning of a peninsula.  I'll be able to cram a city down there at a somewhat leisurely pace.

I think Pottery is done in 3 - I'm not working the silver mine these last couple turns as I try to grow my capital.  Too many good tiles at the capital; I'll need to get Fishing.  But next turn the capital grows to size 4 and we need to start working that silver again.

[pindicator]

Event log:

[pindicator]

While we wait for the game to catch up again, I wanted to share some ideas on my next Path of Exile character.  I'll admit, this one is still a ways off - however, I started playing it a bit yesterday and found it working so well in the acts that I'm getting more excited to play this than I am my Fireball Trickster.

So I've got the beginnings of a basic tree put together that I'm reasonably happy with:

The idea is to build around Rupture. I've not seen many builds online that talk about Rupture yet - Gladiator is still the king of Bleed on PoE - but what struck me was how Spectral Throw can quickly get multiple bleeds because the crits are rolled per attack and spectral throw's attack can hit the same enemy multiple times and stack multiple ruptures. From there it makes sense to go with Crimson Dance to stack multiple bleeds on a target.

This is an early tree that goes off of axes simply because i have a decently-rolled bleed axe waiting for me when my character hits level 64 (yay Harvest crafting). Swords may be better but in the long run shouldn't be a big change either way. Later on I'll be trying to build up some clusters jewels with the idea of eliminating the marauder part of the tree, and then possibly eliminating the part where I go into the duelist starting area.  Late, late, late down the road I envision going up to Perfect Agony but that would require a lot of crit multi, which I'm simply ignoring for now. I have a general idea of which cluster jewels I'll need to get, but I still need to farm them, and since I don't trade it may be a bit of a project.

Some questions I still have are about Ascendancy Points. Rupture is a given, Far Shot seems correct for Spectral Throw, but then I have some choices: do I go for +2 projectiles and try to eliminate GMP/LMP altogether and add in a Swift Agony? (Current gem setup is: Spectral Throw + GMP + Vicious Projectiles + Deadly Ailments + Chance to Bleed + Increased Crit.) Do I pick up Focal Point for using Marks? Right now I'm only finding a need to mark bosses. Do I go for Gale Force and the increased defense that provides?

Anyway, that's what I've been pondering while we wait for the game to catch back up.

[Serdoa]

Focal Point should be very good to reduce damage taken. With Spectral Throw you won't have Fortify, so that should be a reasonable alternative. You'd need some way to apply it without having to self-cast it though.

I've seen one build using Rupture, Focal Point, Gale Force - that was Bleed Sweep though, using 2h-Axes. Seemed to work a little slow but very safe. I've started a character like that but only got it to 33 before switching to my current Hexblaster - for no reason other than that I wanted to play Hexblast.

[pindicator]

That's true, I forgot about the 25% reduced damage part of Focal Point. My original idea was to do Rupture, Focal Point, Gale Force - but then I start getting enamored by Far Shot to Endless Munitions (even the projectile speed minor ascendancy nodes). It's potentially great if you can keep enemies at distance - or line up the return shot of the spectral throw. But all that seems clunky compared to just getting better defenses.

I've been using Leap Slam while I level and have fortify on that. But I don't think that's good enough for me to bank on, just an occasional extra mitigation. Also, leap slam feels slow compared to other movement options.

[pindicator]

026

We are caught up and surpassed our reset point!  Meanwhile, the Rupture Spectral Throw char has just beaten A10 Kitava. Stationary bosses are the best.




I finally mapped out what i was doing to finish up Stonehenge, and I'm a little disappointed that it's going to be slower than it should be.  Part of the problem is all my workers are up north and had to head south this turn.  There really isn't even the choice of chopping trees outside my borders at Cecil just because the workers are too far away.  So as it is, I'm looking at Stonehenge in 5 more turns or end of t31.  I fear that is too slow, but I wasn't really planning or thinking like that until back on t21, sadly.

Pottery done at end of turn, then we'll start getting granaries up everywhere.  I think next is Fishing > AH > Writing and once we get the Furs and Elephants hooked up then we grow everything upwards on cottages.

[pindicator]

027

Pottery done, as well as the worker at Benny Beaver, so that worker starts a cottage on the flood plains at the capital. Ideally I'd be starting more cottages, but we're dedicating half the work force to Stonehenge.

Granaries started in Benny, Ace Purple, and Dooley Skeleton. I'd start one at Eutectic Morty too, but I want to get its spear to 5/35 first, just in case...