Consecutive Beta Weekend, Part 1: Path of Exile

A week ago I took part for the Guild Wars 2's Last Beta Weekend, the last of the two race: Sylvari and Asura is finally playable, I took a time exploring their homeworld and their starting area (risking spoiler, I know), Mesmer's gameplay is still engaging, my sylvari's chosen story still feel quite unappealing though, so I'll switch back to charr for the release. The game itself still need smoothing around the edges, and I love the new feature: vista, unlockable stereoscopic vision of an area in a map, they're quite fun to find and reach to (usually involving some jumping puzzle) and it cures some of my past traumas about jumping puzzles (not gonna tell you about it) :P

And last week i decided to suppress my Guild Wars 2 withdrawal with taking on Path of Exile public stress test and City of Steam public alpha stage, I already followed Path of Exile for a while, it's an action MMORPG in a fixed 3d environment just like Diablo 2, created by Grinding Gear Games (GGG) an independent game studio, it'll be free to play when it came out with 'ethical' cash shop

Path of Exile

Path of Exile tells a story of an exile in the world of Wraeclast , a land filled with the worst of nature and sorcery, undeads, mutated kiwis (yep, the developer are New Zealanders :P), there are six class: Marauder (strength-centric melee class), Ranger (ranged), Witch (Intelligence), Duelist (hybrid strength and dexterity), Templar (hybrid strength and intelligence), and Shadow (dexterity and intelligence), although you have your premade setup you can still mix and match every class to your playstyle, your character can wear any weapon and armor if your stats meet the requirements just like Diablo.

Above: Diablo

The original mechanic is somewhat cool, for example: there's no money in Path of Exile because an undead carrying 1 gold coin is absurd and the story implied that money is worthless in Wraeclast, in return you have two scroll, scrolls of wisdom (identify in Diablo) and scroll of portal (yep, town portal) as a currency, when you sell that yellow rare rugged looking breastplate that somehow dropped from a cthullu-looking boss into an NPC you'll get a piece of scrap that can be combined (10 of them) into one scroll of wisdom, you can also getting an orb piece, that can be combined into an orb which present the second awesome mechanism in Path of Exile:

An orb can be used to level up an item, turn plain items into magic ones, add a magic attribute, reforge their quality, randomized some their properties, reset their slot, add a slot, change slot color, or even REMOVE the entire customization you put into the item. It sound complicated but after spending half an hour experimenting with them it was FUN: take a plain saber, turn it into a magic item, toy around with the properties and slots, and equipped it to meet some crazy miniboss, the result is satisfying (a.k.a exploding corpse)

And exploding floortiles

The character skills are also unique, you're not learning your skill from a spellbook or anything, you got them from skill gem (which dropped from chests and sometimes mobs), gems are then slotted into your equipments, and are placed in your hotkey bars, gems come in three colors, red (str), green (dex), and blue (int), you can slot any gem you want and they'll level up in battles, as they level up so does your skill, there's also attribute gem, a gem that can be linked into a linked slot next to your skill gem (if they;re linked) and add an attribute to the skill ex: fire damage linked with cleave = awesome burning foes, you can swap gems in the fly, bringing you lots of skill combinations and attributes, but the rate of level gems also determined by your build, if your stat doesn't have enough int yet then the blue gems probably won't level, this is where the passive skill tree came up

Everytime you leveled up you gain skill points to be invested into the Passive Skill Tree: A skill tree that looks like a Final Fantasy X sphere grid, here you build your character's stat, if you choose Marauder for example: only one tree is unlocked, the strength skill tree but it breaks down into specialization of weapons such as dual wield, single wield, two handed, shield defense, axe, sword, mace, etc. If you choose duelist two skill tree is unlocked: The strength and the dexterity which governs bows, daggers, dual wield, attack speed, evasion, and so on. Yep I drooled when I first see it, imagine what you can build into those characters with so much to choose

With so much customisation and so much properties, gems, and everything else curiously I don't feel stuck, repulsed, or baffled by it. There's some game with complex custom things that repulse me a lot before, but Path of Exile did just right for the customisation (which is still ABUNDANT), I'm having fun playing it, there's also some things to be smoothed though, like the unclear drop rates for gems, also the public party system that doesn't list an instance reset time (let's kill a boss, OMG he's already dead, who killed it? --silence--) but overall trekking through the land filled with undead, demons, goatmans, and mutated kiwis (yay) into an inland unknown feels so.... good (with a lots of 'o'), as usual for the guaranteed beta access and some cash shop coins you can also prepurchase here, I'll admit Path of Exile is a good game and worth your pennies, for investors there are also a diamond pack worth $1000 there, I think I'll stick with the starter pack though :)

Big pool with bloods and human parts? count me in :D

I'll cover up City of Steam on my next post, and for the meanwhile, let's stare at this picture again:

Cute