First time SSF experience. The good and the bad.

I was bored of every game out there at the moment and thought, screw it, let's hop on PoE 1 and play this new league (it was like 1-2 weeks in and I typically never play unless it's at the start of a league because I like to have value in what I trade early on). For the first time, considering the league was already a few weeks in, I said let's just try SSF, I've always wanted to anyway.

Thus, "BorisTheLost", was created (the marauder kinda looked like a Boris and I figured I would be quite lost in the SSF world). So the fittingly named Boris, took to his journey...Grok was also my best friend in this league/playthrough, as he helped me learn and understand so much about what to do for certain mechanics/leagues to help the SSF player. The PoE 1/2 discord also helped me out tremendously whenever I had questions about crafting or end game. To go back to my guy, Grok...He helped me with the initial plan of a good SSF build, which he recommended RF Chieftain. Luckily for me, there's a youtuber who specifically plays RF (Thank you Pohx)! So now with a build strategy/help from Pohx and websites like PoE Ninja, I was able to progress quite well with the build/character.

Anyway, first and foremost, I want to say this has been the most enjoyable ARPG experience I've had since I was a kid playing D2. I've put thousands of hours into D2/D3/D4 & PoE 1/2 combined, but nothing has ever been comparable in terms of how much fun and good times I was having progressing my character. I've leveled a 99 in PoE 1 previous to this league and I think have 2-3 other characters I've leveled and played. But none of them have I played to this extent. My gametime is probably around 8-10 days now, and I've killed around 2 million monsters.

I'd like to go over what I personally feel are the good and bad things I've experienced and am still unfortunately experiencing to this day of playing.

I could go on forever about the good, it overwhelmingly outweighs the bad. The SSF experience to me, is what a good ARPG should be about. You, grinding the game, picking up loot, using your crafting benches and mechanics given in the game to progress your character. Trading is cool, but to me, I don't think I'll ever play a non-SSF league again. Doing things yourself and having the self satisfaction that you didn't trade/buy anything from the market is such a feel good experience. I had so much fun having goals and things to work on everyday. PoE is such a well designed game and the SSF experience really gets you to use and work with almost every mechanic at one point if you truly want to progress and get what you need sometimes (which is awesome). I had no idea how many things in the game I would learn by playing SSF. Mechanics I had no clue how to use or do, are now my best friends in progressing. The good is obvious, the game is just amazing and playing it under the SSF rules imo just makes it that much better.

The bad (or things that imo could be worked on). So, there's been some frustrating walls that I've hit and maybe it's nitpicky, but after grinding for how many hours and days, with the amount of juiced maps and methods I've used to try and get certain things...The game just doesn't give you a chance...And playing SSF, it starts to really hurt and you get that itch to just say, "screw it, next time I'll play trade".

Which sucks, because I've again, truly enjoyed the SSF experience but things like Fractured Orbs...Certain scarabs that on market, sell for pennies, but seemingly have a drop rate of a divine orb. I've found/looted a total of 7 fractured orbs in the 15d, 17h it shows on my playtime. Mind you again, I'll probably say 8-10 days are straight grinding/playing, while the other time shown is from afk/learning/groking/etc. I get it, some things should be rare, but the drop rates really make no sense. A fracture is worth 100~ chaos atm on market, but I could find seemingly 500-1k chaos before one drops for me.

I've done every single method that I've researched and has been suggested to get them, with again, only 7 being found. For an item that is so crucial to a SSF experience for end game gearing, getting only 7 and having most of them fail is a miserable experience. I've fought through just to continue to see if I could grind new methods to farm them, but to no avail. I will say, it makes it feel REALLY good when I see one, but it's to the point of almost being frustrating over feel good when even after finding it, you know you still have a chance to be even MORE disappointed. Really weird emotional rollercoaster. Find really important item, get super happy and surprised it FINALLY dropped. Use item, doesn't hit, really sad/frustrating. Because knowing the next one that drops could take who knows how long? How many more maps/mechanics you try?

It just seems like an item that for whatever reason got super undertuned after harb left and I think in the SSF world, it's just a terrible bottleneck that you can't seem to fill and it really dampens the experience. This along with certain scarabs that make the game more playable for so many mechanics and never seemingly drop. Yet the price on the market is 10-50 chaos.

I had fun grinding awakener's orbs and high tier currency from bosses. That was awesome and I felt like was exactly what it was like finding fracture orbs but actually possible because I knew eventually, killing Sirus would drop me one. Where as, I did: Juiced breaches (hive and regular), juiced strongboxes, ore farming/shipping, Genesis Tree currency, Tujen, everything under the sun I saw was something to farm fractures, and yet, it felt painful every time because typically, they never dropped. I got 1 recently off mappers which was mind blowing to me, didn't even realize that was a method and now I've had mappers going non-stop too (had them going before just didn't realize they could bring home rare currencies like that, as they never did before in many maps).

TLDR of the bad is that I feel like certain drops/items have way too low a drop %, or no real way to target farm. And in a game where almost EVERYTHING is target farmable (that's the fun/gamble of boss fights and cycles of maps, etc), having lots of important things for end game locked behind, "pure luck", is frustrating.

My time in this league has been amazing. Every day, making improvements through learning mechanics and grinding. Just like a good ARPG should be. There were many times I had to figure things out and re-gear/upgrade because of an obstacle and again, that's what makes these games fun, for me at least. Even now, at day 10+, I'm still grinding for those fractures to finish my ring goal and get them finished for my character. Even if I had got the rings done, there would be ANOTHER goal next and with this game, it seemingly never stops. There's always something more you can do to improve your character and doing it YOURSELF, SOLO, is super feel good.

So thank you GGG for this masterpiece of a game and I hope my feedback is reasonable!