[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

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Piros wrote:

When should I be using Silver coins for prophecies... save... spend immediately... etc... I started saving the uniques that are fated since that seemed like a thing to do...

Also, essenses... I have some of them corrupting essences... when should I be using those... anything else I should know...

Essences are basically alcs. Do what you want with them, sell or craft, but the Remnants are meant to be used on Misery, Scorn, Dread and Envy to get the rarest Essences. I don't have any real advice on crafting with essences, I just collect and sell.

As far as Prophecies, wait until ~75. Some of the Prophecies you get are based on your character level, but you end up getting more trash ones 69 and below. Not sure if there's a difference between 70 & 75 or not, but I just hold off until 75 as a safety measure.

The most valuable ones I can think of off the top of my head are the 5L and 6L prophecies, Monstrous Treasure and of course running the The Pale Council (Plaguemaw, Unbreathing, Unbearable, Feral) which will drop keys after finishing the fifth stage. Pale Council is what drops Reach of the Council (very profitable if you get it). Twice Enchanted can also be fairly valuable to sell but you may be interested in retaining that one in order to do your own Uber Lab runs.

That's all I can think of quickly.

Thanks... I've just been collecting essences so far... no plan...

Prophesies... I tried 1 and got rats in Normal... and tried another and can't remember what I got in Cruel/Merciless... then I used 6 recently before my first map at 78... and 3 prophesies happened pretty quickly in that map alone... Invader, currency pinata, and something else... and another rats and 6 strongboxes popped up pretty quick after that too... seemed like i could run out of silver coins really quickly if I just started using them... I mean, I've only found about 50 so far, and traded some to afford my started CA gear

Yeah, you can burn through coins incredibly fast. No doubt. I almost never have my prophecy tab full. Debating investing in coins while Reach is still fairly expensive.

I'm not reading through 522 pages to find the answer I need.

Why do you say you're not going to put a Ranger tree up, yet do, and tell us to go Scion, but not put up the full Scion tree-build?

Sense.
This makes none, and I cannot be the only one confused.

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DestroyPoE wrote:

I'm not reading through 522 pages to find the answer I need.

Why do you say you're not going to put a Ranger tree up, yet do, and tell us to go Scion, but not put up the full Scion tree-build?

Sense.
This makes none, and I cannot be the only one confused.

[03.00] - Skill Tree & Ascendancies
[03.01] - Scion Ascendant Occultist/Deadeye
[03.02] - Shadow Trickster [HC Option]

That's an excerpt from the Table of Contents... it says the tree is 2.4, but it seems to be 2.5 to me... but the full build is there... the leveling builds at the bottom are the only place I see any Ranger build summary... and that section is for reaching level 50 as a Scion/Ranger/Shadow before you respec out of mana passives when you are ready to go CA finally

@Serleth: I started fiddling with the filter... mostly adding unified borders for the RGB, 6L and Gavel items I religiously pick up and recoloring the medium-tier currencies to more resemble the splinters... its funny how many more scrolls I pick up with a purple/pink border on them than I did before... color matters subconsciously I guess... I mostly did it because I wanted more difference between scrolls and trans and chromes/etc... parsing faster is better, and i pick up transmutes even when im being lazy about scrolls... because they feel more rewarding when they vendor for 4 scrolls

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Piros wrote:

i pick up transmutes even when im being lazy about scrolls... because they feel more rewarding when they vendor for 4 scrolls

I honestly find as long as I'm on top of picking up whetstones, transmutes and a reasonable amount of scraps, I can go a long while once I've built up a scroll base before I have to worry about picking up *actual* scrolls again.

Alternately, I just play for awhile where I only worry about good bases and recipe parts, while still focusing on stones/scraps/'mutes. Either way.

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DestroyPoE wrote:

Why do you say you're not going to put a Ranger tree up, yet do

I haven't.

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and tell us to go Scion, but not put up the full Scion tree-build?

There's an entire section headered with a green highlight entitled "Skill Tree & Ascendancies," complete with a link to the tree nested inside a spoiler, clearly marked "Scion Passive Tree," which, when you open it, centres on the Scion starting position.

So either you blatantly just didn't bother to read, or your confusion is sourced from the fact that "Path of the Ranger" was picked up in the Scion Ascendant tree, which allows us to allocate nodes at the Ranger starting position, and you just figured remarkably that because there's passive nodes at Ranger start, somehow that means it's a Ranger build, even though the tree itself centres on AND highlights the Scion starting position.

Either way, c'mon buddy.

Hey there, nice looking guide. Couple questions:

1) Do you think this is still potent for farming currency when the new league has already been going on 2 weeks?

2) If we have a 5L bow and our empower is only lvl 1, what do?

3) I feel like I'm really slow when mapping. Do you use neversinks MF filter? Do you customize it at all? Even with that filter on, how do you determine what you pick up and what you skip?

THanks!

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broseidon07 wrote:

Hey there, nice looking guide. Couple questions:

1) Do you think this is still potent for farming currency when the new league has already been going on 2 weeks?

2) If we have a 5L bow and our empower is only lvl 1, what do?

3) I feel like I'm really slow when mapping. Do you use neversinks MF filter? Do you customize it at all? Even with that filter on, how do you determine what you pick up and what you skip?

THanks!

1) I typically run this build for at least four weeks of a league. Longer, if I'm enjoying the league. Works well the entire three months, because it's always generating consistent currency that isn't anywhere near as dependent on the economic up or downturns a league goes through.

2) Level your Empower elsewhere. CA - VM - RD - Conc - Pierce/Slower Projectiles (Pierce if Drillneck, SP if not).

EDIT: From the FAQ:

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First, Slower Proj is your last damage link, before the upgrade to Empower.

However, Empower "4" trumps Slower Proj.

In quotes, because you'll need a raw Empower 4 in a +2 bow, but an Empower 3 in a +3 bow, due to it becoming Empower 4 from the +1 all gems.

Once you have Ascended however, and drop the AoE gem, it's all about the dps. Remember that clear speed is effective IIQ. The faster you can kill shit, the more loot you'll drop. Therefore, in the 5L setup, it's more beneficial to run dps-centric rather than running IIR as your fifth link, because the more things you drop, the more chances you're giving your existing IIR to roll.

3) I use my own. In the video section, there's an inventory and stash management video that covers some of how I go about making my decisions, but it essentially comes down to i) Picking up only one 2h'er per trip, making an exception for bows/staves for their +3 potential ii) grab literally everything else, prioritizing what I'm missing for chaos recipe parts and chrome vends over rares, unless I'm low on alts/jews/fuse and I want to farm those up. Alts are usually 18-20:1c, while chromes are 12:1. Chromes are not only worth more, but you can accumulate more per item slot space than you will alts.

3b) If I'm tired of doing lots of vendor trips and don't feel the pressure of alt-farming, I'll just pick up T1-2 bases. Hubris Circlet, Vaal Regalias, Slink Gloves / Boots, Praetor Crowns, etc.

I see what the guy meant now... took me a few minutes to figure it out when I returned as well... cause this is my first league with Uber Labs in them... still need to do that so I can respec them 3 dex nodes between Scion start and 2nd Jewel node...

Also... I feel stupid for missing Pierce + Drillneck being better than Slower Projectiles pre-Empower... I take it the tooltip misses this, tho... cause my DPS dropped from 8700 to 8400... which I think is the difference between 28% projectile dmg on lvl 18 Slower Projectiles and 23% on my 10% lvl 18 Pierce (ignoring the 50% Pierce -> 50% dmg)

My scrolls have been steadily growing mostly from selling stacks of 40 transmutes when I can and picking up all wisdom/portal after breaches... I keep my stones for chisel recipes so they dont help... I have about 450 scrolls at the moment

My pickup strategy pretty much transitions from pickup everything to focus on 3x1s and 2x2s as I finish getting 20/300 or 40/260 (I try to go Ventor's eventually... they seem even cheaper now than 3 leagues ago when I did it... them and 6Ls I've been eye-ing)... if I find Zana or anything else that indicates this is going to be a heavy loot map I get more selective as well... I found I was jumping the gun a little in my first T1 30/15% maps to be skipping much yet with my 15/180

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Piros wrote:

I see what the guy meant now... took me a few minutes to figure it out when I returned as well...

Yeah, but a) you figured it, b) even if you didn't, you wouldn't pop up in this thread all antagonistic like he did. The tone of his post was basically, "Oh hey, I didn't pay attention, so f*** you and your shitty guide."

Really pisses me off when people point blame for their own ignorance.

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Also... I feel stupid for missing Pierce + Drillneck being better than Slower Projectiles pre-Empower.

You weren't the only one. That whole post in the FAQ started because somebody asked a question way-back when, on when to switch to Empower, so I investigated more thoroughly to get an accurate differential, substituting various gems in to figure it out. For at least a short while, I was using Pierce anyway.

Tooltip will reflect it, but you also have to remember that Pierce + Drillneck is not just pre-Empower, but pre-Piercing shots. If you take Piercing Shots, especially the north road, you'll hit 90% Pierce chance once you grab Deadeye, meaning the maximum Pierce chance -> Projectile damage increase you can get from the gem is only 10%. Hence, Slower Proj beats it.

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My scrolls have been steadily growing mostly from selling stacks of 40 transmutes when I can and picking up all wisdom/portal after breaches... I keep my stones for chisel recipes so they dont help... I have about 450 scrolls at the moment

Chisel recipe imho is a waste of a time. MF or no MF. Takes five recipes to make a chaos, and that's a lot of downtime you're spending in your hideout to organize it each time. Better off just blowing an alc on an amulet to finish off a chaos recipe. Alcs are basically 1:1 chisel.

So, five recipes to make a chaos, or one alc and one recipe to make 4/5's of a chaos. Then go buy five chisels with that chaos, if you need chisels. And who knows, that alc could turn into a sellable amulet, getting you even more chisels.

(Ratio's actually 4.2:1 right now, but you get the point).

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if I find Zana or anything else that indicates this is going to be a heavy loot map I get more selective as well

That's one of those things that I barely touched on in the video, if at all. Been a year, can't remember, but it's really important. If your first few packs are pinatas, you gotta immediately cut back on what you're picking up if you want to get an efficient six portals of loot out.

Same goes for if you're running even tri-boss blue twinned maps. I'd routinely do museums back when they were T3s, and would almost always burn six portals just on the boss loot.

This is one of those things you only really learn properly by experience, though. Glad you've picked up on it.