A trip down memory lane - Old challenges

How many can I clear now? 8/8
How many did I clear back then? 0/8 (didnt care for leagues back then)

Interesting notes: as part of one of the old challenges we're supposed to use an eternal orb. back then eternal orbs were just 4 exalts. I guess I could easily farm up whatever I needed to clear the challenges.

There are also challenges where you need uniques but i guess i can farm up to buy any i m missing.

How many can I clear now? 20/20
How many did I clear back then? 3/20 (didnt care for leagues back then)

How many can I clear now? 32/32
How many did I clear back then? 28/32

Interesting note: this is the first league that I seriously all in because back then i wanted to get Nature's Hierarchy. Back then i thought it was the BEST AMULET EVER. as it had tons of DPS. nowadays i just vendor it whenever i get em.

Also the first league where i actually "tried" as a warmup is darkshrine (the league right before this). i dont know why darkshrine is not listed)

I would also add this is the "last" league where i find challenges are reasonable for the slightly above average player.

How many can I clear now? 40/40
How many did I clear back then? 29/40

Interesting note: I can't remember why i went in this league so much. My guess is there were many people showing mirrors being sold by perandus. until the very end where GGG removed perandus from the game and made his coins useless, i've never had him sell me a mirror. the best he ever sold me was perandus manor.

From now onwards i'll assume all item drop related challenges as doable as all it needs is farming and getting them from players. to me this is a RNG challenge so it has nothing much to do with skill.

on the flipside, i'll be transparent. if any boss challenge that requires player skill, if i cant do it today, then i ll assume i cant do the challenge.

How many can I clear now? 40/40
How many did I clear back then? 28/40

Interesting note: I resent that i couldnt get navali's monkey pet reward but i wasnt good enough back. I think if i put more effort i could have gotten closer but probably would have needed to rely on carries.

Another interesting note is how easy the "grinding game goals" challenge were where you could actually kill a campaign boss 1200 times if you were not strong enough to do the harder bosses.

its quite a big difference to how it is now where what players are expected to be able to do is do damn high.

How many can I clear now? 40/40
How many did I clear back then? 0/40

Interesting note: I skipped this league and i clearly remember its because i didnt see any cool items that could make me stronger in std and the MTX rewards were... ugly. all you new kids are damn spoilt with the quality of the MTX rewards that GGG generously gives you guys nowadays. Back in my day all we had were ugly recolours of seraph armor.

How many can I clear now? 40/40
How many did I clear back then? 36/40

Interesting note: After looking thru the challenges, i think this would have been the first time i could have perfected 40/40 all by myself with no carries. but i never saw the need to as 40/40 was not important for me back then. 36/40 was the major milestone as it granted me the final mtx reward that i wanted.

I think i went hard in this league because of mtx rewards

How many can I clear now? 40/40
How many did I clear back then? 25/40

Interesting note: I remember this is the first league where i ragequit. not because i kept dying. but because i had a gazillion league stones which each had a different level requirement and different charges. so much micro management i simply could not deal with it.

I played in this league because of the potential of getting a legacy kaoms heart

How many can I clear now? 40/40
How many did I clear back then? 16/40

Interesting note: This is the first time that GGG has challenges where you need to defeat bosses with conditions such as not getting hit by a certain attack.

I only got 16/40 and i forgot why i even bothered to play in this league.

How many can I clear now? 40/40
How many did I clear back then? 32/40

Interesting note: i remember clearly back in the day, one of the challenges caused so much rage. which was killing the abyss bosses 40 times. we didnt have atlas passives back then so it was highly RNG. many players had BAD RNG and barely had 10 kills to their name. But i guess if i hung around global 820 long enough i probably could get more encounters (i dont consider these as carries). and if we had the atlas passives i totally could have cleared it myself. then again there were other ways to fulfill the challenge and just skip the abyss bosses.

How many can I clear now? 38/40
How many did I clear back then? 12/40

Interesting note: Holy Moly, even at my current power now i dont think i can 40/40 this leagues challenges.

The 2 notable challenges i dont think i could have managed are
1. Completing the beastiary - like for real? i dont think i've ever completed it even on STD
2. kill elder without some dot being placed on the floor. i think i COULD do it if i used an aoe build but if talking about my "own build", then it would be too tedious to keep in check. i tend to have mid range aoe clear. i think MAAAAAYBE i could achieve it as my dps now is damn high and its just "regular elder". but who knows

How many can I clear now? 38-40/40
How many did I clear back then? 25/40

Interesting note: 38-40 listed as some of the challenges require conditional boss kills. i m not confident that i'll pull them off

I remember that this is the first league where i started to feel like this game isnt for me as incursion leaned heavily on zoom zoom meta. abyss also had the zoom zoom feel but it felt more lenient. i remember not doing higher tier maps or intentionally not running tough maps because i know that it could make the incursion room mobs possibly too tough, which could lead to bricked rooms.

How many can I clear now? 40/40
How many did I clear back then? 14/40

Interesting note: i remember that i've felt delve as an interesting concept but i've never actually liked delve.

I remember always going to the mines to finish up my sulphite but one day i decided. you know what? fuck this shit. and from then onwards even if i wasted sulphite by not delving i didnt give a fuck.

Also i like flicker strike so delve can get me in shitty situations where i flick into the darkness and just have no way back.

How many can I clear now? 39-40/40
How many did I clear back then? 28/40

Interesting note: when the masters were removed, i did miss them somewhat. seeing them in betrayal was a pleasant surprise. i always think its tragic that catarina betrayed them and now theyre stuck in a bad cycle of life and death.

but i do remember hating syndicate as the assassination team sometimes appears when i least expect it and wrecks me. speaking of which i do still miss the old masters such as vagan who would bend my rear.

How many can I clear now? 38-40/40
How many did I clear back then? 5/40

Interesting note: This is the first league where i fucking rage quit. 2 reasons
1. as a flicker strike user i tend to always flick into the void. its ridiculous as the narrator cant even finish his sentance and i m already back in the real world.
2. i suffered from incredibly bugged RNG. i could not progress my atlas as maps tend to drop at equal or lower tiers. it was frustrating. i couldnt even complete "white tier" maps and barely had and yellow tier maps. even with alc and run strats i barely could maintain t3-t4 map pool. and when i went forums i a lot of people brushed me off saying i m exaggerating. bitches please. i wasnt a great player but i used to get to t14-t16 maps at that time so i know what i m doing. there were an odd 1-2 persons experiencing the exact same problem i had. but it didnt matter. i rage quit.

How many can I clear now? 40/40
How many did I clear back then? 19/40

Interesting note: I mentioned how i felt the game wasnt for me back in incursion. This league solidified it. people were easily breaking the entire map's legion by just a few clicks which had tons of dps and aoe. i lacked both severely. I did give legion a fair go until i felt so disgusted with legion that i decided to quit. i dont remember if i was in rage or just disappointed.

How many can I clear now? 40/40
How many did I clear back then? 19/40

Interesting note: I remember the spore helmet mtx being butt ugly. but i do wear it at times.

As for blight itself, to me this is what i would say GGG's first venture into delving into different genres but failing to translate what makes the genres great. for sure many people may like blight. but i fucking hate it. in TDs we get to see a preset path, and we can easily click on any tower to upgrade em. in blight, the paths are guesswork. new paths might sprout, new tower locations might appear. having to be right next to a tower is unnecessary tedium when we're already busy by default.

for sure there is a way to cheese it, which is to keep building tons of seismic towers. but that is a p2w feature. my pc would lag and quit on me if i tried it. Also as tru melee-er with poor aoe, i just cant handle it. if i was to defend a choke point, i guess its fine, but its multiple points. and on top of that there are tons of delayed effect such as lightning mirage, and other on death effects.

How many can I clear now? 40/40
How many did I clear back then? 36/40

Interesting note: This is another league which i think i could have 40/40'd myself. Its one of my fav leagues as metamorph does not require a zoom zoom build. visibility was shit tho and i hate the fact i dont know what the boss is going to do. does ggg expect us to know 1001 different enemy attacks? The caveat is i could always CHOOSE not to run overly difficult metamorph bosses.

How many can I clear now? 40/40
How many did I clear back then? 14/40

Interesting note: As a flicker striker with mild OCD i have a love hate relationship with simulacrum. on one had i can get tons of loot. on another theres a lot of back tracking. I also hate the fact that i need to keep going fast with no time to lose.

I believe i quit the league as i didnt like zoom zoom leagues.

How many can I clear now? 38-40/40
How many did I clear back then? 29/40

Interesting note: This is one of the leagues that i had the most fun. i made tons of perfect jewels and i also made a perfect crafted explody chest armor with crazy mods. i had a spare slot and i thought of getting phy resists or block chance. i rerolled phys mod. then a few times later. then i realized explody mod was a phy mod. i fucking bricked it. the armor still is pretty good but seeing it makes me salty beyond belief.

i played the league till the last second when ggg took the server down. oof.

Also, despite loving the league I really did not want it to go core "as is". because the farming aspect was really tedious. I theorized early in the league that some blokes would come up with an optimized excel sheet in a week or 2. and thats exactly what happened. thankfully harvest was integrated in a less tedious manner. tho harvest was nerfed so many times i dont even bother with it nowadays.

How many can I clear now? 40/40
How many did I clear back then? 5/40

Interesting note: I FUCKING HATE HEIST. its the first league where you could "get" an item and if you died you lost it. i dont play HC for that very reason. This league had me salty beyond belief. i could be carrying a divine or 2 and if i died.. it got poofed. fuck that. i still hate heist today but more of not liking the content.

i really LOVED the idea of having a companion. i really loved all of the npcs. i regret not sticking out for gruff's helmet mtx but then again i was so done with the league after losing a divine or two.

How many can I clear now? 39/40
How many did I clear back then? 17/40

Interesting note: This league is the beginning of the end for my poe journey. Maven increased "what players were expected to be able to do". and i felt it was just too high. i can NEVER always complete the memory game. even when i'm getting carried, i try and "play it" while dead, but i still fail.

for an arpg, i feel very slighted as this is going beyond skill but instead mental capabilities. i m not getting any younger and i know my limits. tons of other players have given tips on how to deal with it but still. its just rng to me where i sometimes win but most of the time i dont.

Bundled that with ritual, it really made me feel the game has gone in a separate direction than what i would have prefered. in a ritual, theres so many things going on at once. if you cant delete the monsters fast, its just too overwhelming.

Also ritual gave me a lot of fomo. WHAT IF, WHAT IF, a mirror appeared. but i dont have enough points? its a cruel thing to even think but i think some players have experienced it already.

How many can I clear now? 38?/40
How many did I clear back then? 4/40

Interesting note: Ultimatum is a compact version of heist. Heres a potential reward but you only get it on completion. Which i think is fair. You never lost the item and never held it. And if you lose the encounter you lose the reward. the feel is different.

That said i hate ultimatum. i feel it has too much RNG involved and some of the mods are just ridiculous for the average player.

How many can I clear now? 36/40
How many did I clear back then? 24/40

Interesting note: I like how expedition doesnt force players in to zoom zoom meta. but after awhile due to my minor ocd i realized i was spending way too much time planning out bombing routes than actually playing.

As for the skill based challenges, i really dont know enough about the bosses to be able to do them. unless of course i end up deleting them asap.

How many can I clear now? 38/40
How many did I clear back then? 36/40

I think this is where challenges really went beyond what i can do personally as they have started to involve aspirational content.

I enjoyed scourge somewhat as i liked cooking my gear in hopes of getting something awesome (i didnt get anything awesome sadface.jpg)

How many can I clear now? 40/40
How many did I clear back then? 3/40

Interesting note: Ragequit hard during the league. AN monsters are BS. i can understand where they're going with AN monsters but overall...its just... BS. I still resent that now in the current poe, harder mods have all made it into the general mod pool instead of harder mods only existing on nemesis monsters.

it takes all balance out of the window. for example like what i mentioned in blight, lightning mirages and volatile dead. these nemesis mods make an already challenging encounter and just makes it very dangerous. its really anti tru melee unless of course you're hitting the entire screen and deleting everything to begin with.

Interestingly the challenges in this league are rather quite doable.

How many can I clear now? 34?/40
How many did I clear back then? 0/40

Interesting note: Skipped the league. there was no mtx that i wanted nor any gear that i wanted.

A lot of skill based challenges on things i m not too certain of so i ll just reduce my clear rate. clearing maven with at least running 5 memory games successfully is IMPOSSIBLE for me.

How many can I clear now? 38/40
How many did I clear back then? 15/40

Interesting note: Dont remember why I played. quit when i felt too much fomo. the concept of building a lake is interesting but if you're gonna put effort building a lake, you would definitely want to juice it up as much as possible right? and when you do that it can get too difficult for most players.

for sure its on me that i shouldnt have made it too difficult, but isnt building your perfect lake the entire purpose of the league? i might as well not play if i just play half assed lakes. and thats what i did.

there are a few challenges of note that i wont be able to complete. which are defeating the trialmaster and doing uber pinnacles.

Interestingly i defeated trialmaster many times in poe2 using my half assed trumelee macer.

How many can I clear now? 38?/40
How many did I clear back then? 23/40

Interesting note: Sanctum was the first league where i really ENJOYED the league content. i did not need to rely on MF. all i needed was pure skill. it was very rough for tru melee builds but once i was strong enough i could complete most sanctums regularly. tho sometimes i did get fucked by bad rng where i got afflictions upon afflictions.

sanctum also highlights one thing i resent the devs for. which is their implementation of dash. unlike spell based movement skills, dash does not have a "teleport" functionality. this meant dashing past any beams would still assume you've touched the beams so it would apply debuffs and reduce your honor. this also works the same with sirus "beam phase".

and i really hate how the devs "listened to feedback" where they rebalanced sanctum so that defences mattered. from one of my most enjoyed league mechanics to one that i entirely avoid today. its just a big fall from grace. but i guess they will listen to the voice of the many.

i believe i rage quit the league the moment they announced that sanctified relics were not making it into core.

this also made all players like me be wary of future league content. I specifically preferred to play POE Standard league because i like the idea of permanency. I only jump into temp leagues for either league exclusive gear that would make my STD character more powerful, or for cool mtx challenge rewards. not for anything else.

up till that point players have never LOST any gear they earned during temp leagues. losing harvest seeds and crafting material or sentinels are all not gear. they dont provide any permanent buff to the player directly. so when they were taken away people didnt care. most of us had the idea that our efforts will always be rewarded. i myself spent maybe 12 divines or so to get my sanctified relic enchanted. its "not too much" by today's standard but losing it sucked non the less.

for players like me this is really huge. if we dont play league, we might not get exclusive gear that we want. but if we DO play league, theres no guarantee that we get to keep em. damn if we do damned if we dont.

How many can I clear now? 38?/40
How many did I clear back then? 14/40

Interesting note: I hated every moment of playing this league BUT i wanted to bring home a powerful crucible weapon. many people expected the crucible weapons be poofed similar to how sanctified relics were poofed. but i reasoned, unlike sanc relics which occupy a new item slot, this item does not have any special slot required so it wouldnt be too difficult to implement on STD.

my bet paid off and i got a nice weapon. i would add that the process of making your own dream crucible is largely RNG. i can follow guides and just get fucked. i broke tons of weapons trying to get my best weapon.

i spent maybe over 200divines buying weapons/forging materials. but by the end of the league the best one i got came from buying from a player for 21 divine.

A friend of mine who has the same motivation as me (to improve his std character) opted to sit it out thinking the crucible weapons wont make it to std. he ended up being VERY salty when it did as the weapons he would have wanted suddenly spiked in prices ranging from mirrors.

How many can I clear now? 38?/40
How many did I clear back then? 6/40

Interesting note: i dont find this fun at all, no disrespect to those who do.

the tattoos tho are really powerful. it was the only reason i tried. but at that point i was already feeling tired of poe.

as a std player i wanted to play poe forever, and around that time we found out that poe2 was going to be made separate from poe1. the entire purpose of me playing league was to make my std character stronger, but what point was it all when my gear wont matter in poe2? i left the league pretty fast.

How many can I clear now? 39/40
How many did I clear back then? 40/40

Interesting note: I refuse to try any uber pinnacles as i think i would just fail. its a waste of my time. I used carries to get the last challenge. I regret that i did not bag 40/40 back when challenges were easier. but back then i never felt it was a good achievement to aim for.

i will never expect to get 40/40 by myself nowadays and this was the closest i ever got with my pure effort (39/40).

As for the league itself, this was the first league where i enjoyed myself "just playing" poe. and i owe it a lot to the borrowed power that ggg gave us with the half ascendancy granted by affliction's charms/tinctures. i dont like the mechanic itself. but the boss and his rewards are real good.

predictably the charms went away. the tintures came back but i really would have prefered if they kept tinctures the way they originally started with.

How many can I clear now? 38?/40
How many did I clear back then? 0/40

Interesting note: Skipped. there was literally nothing that i wanted and i didnt like the idea of starting all over again.

How many can I clear now? 39/40
How many did I clear back then? 40/40

Interesting note: My 2nd 40/40 but with a carry for ubers.

This was the first league that i felt like i was playing poe "as it's meant to be". i've been playing trumelee stubbornly for a decade and always could not get too far. turns out my biggest barrier was DPS. GGG had reworked melee so we were doing a lot more damage.

As for settlers. its equally my most favourite and hated mechanic ever. on one hand it gives me a reason to keep logging back in poe, but on another the level of fomo is overwhelming. you always wanted to farm gold to keep "the lights on". you always felt you're wasting resources if the lights arent on. if you do you get rewarded greatly.

Also this is where my opinion on ggg creating content for the top player base was cemented. NO good player EVER complained about gold. MOST weaker players always complained about gold.

if you were running a juiced t16 or a juiced t17 you would gain tons of gold. If you ran a t16 with absolutely no juicing you would be lucky to get 5k gold. gold consumption at higher levels can get really high.

i always tend to be biased towards a more "above average" player experience. realizing the target audience that GGG wants to cater to is....honestly disappointing. i do understand it. its likely the small portion at the top are huge whales so it makes perfect sense.

"back in the day" t14 was where everything was at. you could access the end game content such as rigwald or beastiary areas at t14. but looking thru the challenge history i can see how things have changed. ggg expects more from the player. and on my side i m done giving more.

How many can I clear now? 38?/40
How many did I clear back then? 0/40

Interesting note: I kinda got jaded with poe at this point so i skipped the league and went std. all my years of hard work and effort. i enjoyed playing std. i've always HATED the very notion of restarting all progress every league.

i think i should have enjoyed merceneries. but currently i dont even think this game is for me anymore.