All of my friends who had 2 were calling me a noob.
I decided on March 23rd, that I needed and wanted to commit to getting another, and this race seemed a prime opportunity. Go look in the first page of this thread, you will see where I announced my goal, throwing down my gauntlet inviting competition.
The first step to achieving my goal was ensuring that I could maintain "No Life" status during the period of this race. This is not a decision to take lightly. I knew, from experience, that to achieve my goals for the race that I would need to play about 350 to 450 hours of POE during the month of April. It is a luxury that my career and life in the real world offers me opportunities to make such decadent decisions, such as devoting this much time to a video game. I understand that the majority of players cannot devote such time to eccentricities such as this. The ability, and choice, to make other sacrifices in the real world such that I can play POE for a month is the foundation required by the majority of teams which achieve POE accomplishments, not just mine. This fact gets joked about a lot, but it doesn't often get explicit acknowledgement. Look at the /AGE and /PLAYED of any top POE players and you will get an insight into the commitment required to attain these TOP TIER objectives.
The second step is to find a handful of other crazy people who are also prepared to live this monastic life with me for a month, for this league I ultimately aligned with Woods and Porter, though there were about 100 other friends and guild members who helped us immensely during the league and who have our appreciation.
For the three days before the league I took melatonin and set lighting differently in my sleep space to align my body to the time of my group.
Before the start of the league I had 40-50 hours of planning discussions with my core team about our builds, our objectives, our market strategies, our concerns.
The minute the league began I was online, I had a group of benevolent friends who was prepared to carry me to level 60 so I could spec my endgame build from the outset to avoid the need for respec.
Our primary market assumption for this league, was that thousands of players from both HC and SC would desire to complete the challenges, and that significant currency could be generated in being among the first, most reputable, and most visible selling the Boss Kills. We knew it would generate significant early league currency. We did not in our wildest dreams understand just how much currency this "Service" would provide. It was insane.
Porter rushed to top ladder position as fast as possible.
Woods rushed for Uber Atziri with the support of a significant player base and his nine brothers (Go Bahrain ! WILLEMA NESSINESS) whom he had rallied the week before the race.
Each of us attained the first stage of our plan with deft skill and quickness, and the support of our friends and early league teammates. You must understand that during the first 72 hours of a league up to the first week of a league there are HUNDREDS of awesome people who play just to enjoy the rush of leveling the content with so much activity and player base. It is amazing fun. I played with KG and TKNR, and SHAD and so many other awesome people the first week who then basically quit the league to await act 4 leaving us with what resources they had mustered so that we could continue with our plan.
Next you must understand, in this game, being the first, GIVES A HUGE ECONOMIC AND MARKET ADVANTAGE.
We were among the first into maps, the first to kill Atziri, the first to kill UBER.
I am the poorest, most ineffective early league trader when comparing myself to Woods and Porter. This being the case, I still made over 3000 chaos selling iLVL 78+ Harbingers, Diamond Rings, Armor, and other popular bases. I immediately started using this currency to flip popular leveling items, quickly amassing a few hundred exalts worth of net worth in the first week.
Woods and Porters plan made me look like a street beggar.
Woods was selling Atziri drops faster than anyone else and his brothers and guild-mates were flipping and trading for him almost 24 hours a day on their accounts to keep him blazing Atziri runs 50-60 at a time. He quickly had 50 UBER sets stacked up. Through Arbitrage trades Woods picked up a Harbinger that I would value at around 800 exalts, that easily set him up for UBER.
Porter was chaining shrines making 20-50 chaos A SLOT for people who wanted the challenge kills. Think about that, porters return on a shrine, a map he could solo in 6.5 mins at that point in the league, was 100 chaos MINIMUM. He was making 50-60 exalts a day for a few days in this fashion. Early league it is easy to make investments which will triple or quadruple as there is such a constrained currency base. Porter picked up a 6 link Carcass Jack and geared himself faster than any previous league.
When woods started doing his 50-60 UBER runs we decided that we would monopilize maps.
There were so few people doing UBER, and we knew most of them, that we predicted, accurately, that it would be easy to corner maps.
As a team, the three of us set aside 1000 exalts to the sole purpose of buying all 78 maps that were for sale. This was a strategic move on our part, not to profit, but to diminish the map pool available on the market to our competitors as much as possible.
Woods had a windfall in his chaining of UBER runs.
In addition to the hundred or so 78 maps that he got, he also got at least three Acutiy and at least 15 axes. After the first Acutiy he was unstoppable in UBER, his farm rate doubled.
At this phase he had passed down his other gear to his nine brothers and his guild mates so they could farm normal Atziri for us.
Porter had this whole time maintained position 1 on the ladder.
I had geared myself fully, and even acquired the first level 4 enhance in the league, which is critically important for my Temp Chains and Enfeeble in map bursting.
We were ready to start mapping hard.
At this point we consolidated into a TRIO and respecced so that our auras, and builds were min maxxed to compliment eachother.
We fed all the valuable drops to our guild mates who were trading for us and using our base of 1K exalts to buy all the 78s.
We got a few windrippers, 5 voll's devotions, and many other notable drops.
We sold a few hundred exalts of GG rares.
ALL OF THIS WENT TO CONTINUING TO MONOPOLIZE 78 MAPS.
EVERY map we rolled packsize, and we added domination. EVERY MAP
As of this posting Porter is the first to 100, Woods is competing in a tight race for position two, and I am shooting to maintain lucky number seven specifically because I want my ring to be the 7th !
We achieved all the goals I outlined, with INTEGRITY.
We complied fully with all the GGG TOS.
With our great network of friends and with substantial sacrifice and effort on our own behalf we will accept our Alt-Art Demi's with pride and honor.
I hope that this transparency can enlighten the community to what legitimate play looks like.
Thanks for reading my wall of text and getting a little insight into how we play this awesome game.
I love this community and love GGG and hope POE continues to thrive and grow.
VOC
Have you ever considered writing books of novels? That read was intense.
Builds : https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1813247
Challenge boss kill services : https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1814668
Was fun running a few maps with you! People should appreciate the insight you just gave.
I can understand the ppl who get jelly because they couldnt sustain a high map pool. I dropped back down to 72 maps at the end of the first week and just couldnt be bothered to continue with shitty map rng.
But that doesnt justify calling ppl rmters or cheaters. Thats just sad.
Well I guess he just confirmed that you cant substain map. You have to buy all of them, And you need hundreds of exalts. I think we can agree that only a very small amount of people can get such amount of currency, so only a small amount of people can actually chain 78s maps. Most of the people who does chain 78s are RMTer/JSPer. We just found out that there was a group of people who did collect such amount of currency without RMT but these people are extremely rare if theres some other than those 3. So i think its fair to say that most of top ladders are RMTer because you have to compete with people who has hundreds and exalts buying every single 78s they find on chat/forums.
Well I guess he just confirmed that you cant substain map. You have to buy all of them, And you need hundreds of exalts. I think we can agree that only a very small amount of people can get such amount of currency, so only a small amount of people can actually chain 78s maps. Most of the people who does chain 78s are RMTer/JSPer. We just found out that there was a group of people who did collect such amount of currency without RMT but these people are extremely rare if theres some other than those 3. So i think its fair to say that most of top ladders are RMTer because you have to compete with people who has hundreds and exalts buying every single 78s they find on chat/forums.
Game is broken.
He never wrote you can't sustain 78 Maps.
"
As a team, the three of us set aside 1000 exalts to the sole purpose of buying all 78 maps that were for sale. This was a strategic move on our part, not to profit, but to diminish the map pool available on the market to our competitors as much as possible.
That was the reason why they bought the Maps.
Getting rich in PoE is quite easy if you invest some time and have enough game/economy knowledge. Last leaugue i spend 2h every day for 2 weeks on trading and made 100+ex (got 6L Shavs, Mjöl). There are so many ways to make money in PoE - im quite sure there are a lot of rich (100+ex worth of currency/gear) people in every league - not just the Top 50.
Sadly there are some RMTs too - but most of the rich people are just smart and have a lot of knowledge in my opinion.
The problem is neither the game nor the community - its just how economy in general works. Its hard to get rich but its quite easy to get more money if you have a lot of money.
