[3.12] Deadeye Ice Shot Barrage Miner | Deep Delver | depth 6k reached | In depth delve guide

3.12
Seems like nothing changed at all, still viable for next league, though I recommend doing references on poe.ninja as the gear right here maybe slightly outdated

Death's Harp + Opus has been nerfed, crit multi is gutted by half, so before you could delve to 2k depth, now expect to delve to about 1.5k depth with Death's Opus.

3.11
Lost about 30% crit multi from the tree, and additional 20% crit multi from our cluster jewels, it is quite a nerf to all mines.

Circle of fears also got nerfed, but the differences isn't very huge but still quite a bit. Overall build is still viable

This build is made by Mothraelite (a twitch streamer) on 3.8 When he attempts to make a build that does not rely on frost wall because we thought that GGG might change how frost wall works (but they did not), but since Ice Shot received buff on 3.9, so we would use this skill as our main clearing skill.

Our Single target will be barrage (not barrage support), barrage gives us a lot of projectiles, the dps tooltip (even on PoB) is a single projectile, you must manually multiply the amount of arrows that barrage fires and that will be your actual dps.

Low Life/Es because everything 1 shots you in these depths anyways (yes even 100k+ es). CI for Poison / Degen / Chaos immunity. - At some point you have to decide what to scale defence or DPS, and if you scale defence, you won't be able to scale offense at the same time.

Since everything starts one shot us, why not we just give up all our defenses and go for full in damage? So that's basically the concept of zhp (zero hp) deep delve build.

So a lot of you guys would have the mindset "kill them before they kill you", it is true but this is not actually very accurate to describe how we survive. The more accurate answer juking the monsters, as long as their animation / attack speed won't catch us up, we will survive.

This can be easily explained when you do Twilight Strand, if you run across the map, you can notice the monsters did not hit you at all. Why is that? Because the monsters attack on your location that you have already walked past on, so instead of hitting you, they will hit nothing. This concept basically applies to deep delving, basically you have to scale more speed when you are delving deep.

Also, we don't scale evasion or dodge, both of them acts as a "safety net" so it will not be very punishing when we make a mistake. When you have good movement and positioning, dodge and evasion is just a room for us in case we make mistakes we won't be punished by it.

You might have a question, what if monsters have onslaught or turbo (increase action speed)? So to deal with those mods, it is basically the same but you have to be faster and more careful on your pathing because making a mistake during pathing could be deadly due to the fact that their speed is faster compared to before, and they will easily catch up to you.

How to survive with 1 hp?
*Updated*
Surviving with 1hp is a challenge at first, but once you got the muscle memory, there won't be much trouble on surviving anymore when you know what mistakes you made. It is basically playing a rhythm game, the more you play the better you become, so part of this comes from your experience.

There is actually no specific way on how to survive, so instead, I will give you some tips on "How to Avoid Dying.

> Don't Stop Moving (pathing)
Never. Stand. Still. When you stand still in delve during pathing, it is just a deathwish. As long as there is room for you to move, just move, even you are cornered. As soon as you stop moving, the monsters will come towards at you, basically you became a stationary target at a fps game which is insanely easy to hit.

> Have awareness
Saw a mob running at you? Noticed a blue pack monsters with purple outline with them? Saw an elemental thorns nemesis monster? React to them! When you saw those monsters, be aware!

For example, when you saw an elemental thorns dude, you know when your ice shot hits him, he will fire off a projectile that will most likely going to hit you, so you have to react to that, you know the projectile will fire to your direction, so just simply move out of the way and get away from him as fast as possible.

If you know what is the cause of your every death, you will improve significantly because you know what you did wrong and you know what you need to avoid. If you don't know the cause of your death, try to be more aware of your surroundings next time, know what to expect.

> Use your utilities
You are given a flare and a dynamite when you are in delve, use them properly, they are not something that stays in your storage space for the whole league, flare if you have to kill a mob that is stuck inside the darkness. Dynamite the place if the monster is getting too close to you and you can't get out from the way.

Dynamite is very useful in delve, they not only break the fractured walls, but they also damage and stun the monsters, almost all monsters and their abilities can be stunned by the dynamite, so use this piece of "utility" well! Sometimes using or not using a dynamite can determine whether you survive or not.

> Flask management, use your flask
When you ran out of flask charges, it is when you will have a hard time. Flask management is important, I too have a bad habbit on spamming my flask or sometimes just forgot to use the flask. Make sure you have your flask up all the time and don't spam it. If you have your flask buffs gone, it's like basically dealing 70% damage less damage. This comes with practice, there is no specific way on learning this too

A LOT of players asked like what they should do first on a deep delve build. My answer to that is delve to around 800 depth with your character first. Because this build is ineffective on depths below 800 (recommended depth is actually about 1000 depth). I will list out a few builds that will be able to guide you to the depths

1. Cold Snap Vortex Occultist / Trickster
2. Agony Crawler Jugg

Any tank builds will work as long as they have the damage.

Can this X build reach 800 depth?
Most builds will start falling off at 600 depth, you will need to look for defensive setups in your auras and gear.

These auras are pretty important
Purity of Ice
Flesh and Stone

When I was around 700 depth, I notice the things that kills me the most is the crystal fissure, that damage basically rip through my tank build. Also the cold ground degen actually starts to hurt a lot, once I picked up purity of ice, the damage I received is significantly lower.

Flesh and stone is pretty much rng, in delve what kills you is multiple hits under a second, so flesh and stone will prevent that from happening a lot. Physical damage in delve will start to be a problem after a bit, so you must use damage conversion like taste of hate flask to sustain your life / es.

You would also need to prioritize getting max resistance. Your resis is capped at 75%, you need to find a way to get your resis up to 80% cap. This will significantly reduce the damage taken.

Pros
1. Explore new things
You completely learn new things when you attempt to deep delve with this build that you have never thought about before. We deep delvers have yet to find all the methods to approach certain nodes / deal with X boss and so on. We'd really need to think outside the box in order to create the best and most effective method to approach certain nodes and it is yet to be discovered actually. So if you really enjoy learn and explore methods and ways to complete certain nodes in delve, this build is for you!

2. Extreme DPS
As you saw the damage above on those conquerors, you can one shot any bosses as long as they don't have a lot of phases and arena degens. This include Synthesis bosses, Elder slayers, and any map bosses that don't have phases. Sometimes when I found an elderslayer, I'd swap into this build just because the damage makes one shotting those bosses satisfying. In fact, your Ice shot also able to freeze any T16 bosses and even metamorphs as long as they don't have avoid ailments.

3. Profits base on skill, not luck
You might ask, where do our profits come from? Our profits come from farming expensive fossils, including Faceted (+socketed level gems), Fractured (mirror), Hollowed (Abyss socket), and Bloodstain (Vaal modifiers) fossils. In about 1.5k depth starting, they will become extremely common. Imagine you have 3ex worth of items just looking in your delve tab without scrolling up side ways, just in front of you. You can earn up to 10ex per hour base on your efficiency and skills, not luck. The creator of this build, Moth, had farmed 2 mirrors on this league, so you could pretty much know how profitable it is now.

Here is a quick panel of the delve tab

As you can see here, there is a bunch of fossil icon nodes, imagine if each of those fossil nodes are worth about 1-2ex, imagine the amount of currency you are able to farm in just 1 single look.

Although it is 5k depth, but the fossils spawnrate is almost the same as on 2k.


Cons
1. Extreme squishy
I won't need to go detail on this as you all know our defense layers now. Basically if you get hit and your acrobatics keystone / dodge chance failed, you are pretty much dead. Same goes to mapping, mapping this build is possible but difficult because of the barrels and sometimes the map degen (for example the Redeemer influence will spawn those cold degen on the map), these things could drain your portal very easy.

2. High skill cap
Because if we get hit we are dead, you need to play around this. There are a lot of methods to approach certain nodes in delve and some of them requires a lot of skills to deal with (for example triple tank molten cavity). Different mods in some nodes will require different approach to them. Also if you aren't that experience enough with this build, you will be losing sulphite just because you can't proceed, and if this stacks up you will end up in a loss instead of profit.

3. Expensive
Because we need a lot of damage output, most of our gear will be expensive, depends on your depth too. When you reaches certain depth, you will start on dealing less damage and require some gear upgrades, which will be even more expensive. To reduce wasting your money on unnecessary upgrades, ONLY buy gear upgrades when you are struggling a lot, buy those gears that I've listed as "Priority" because you would sticking with them for quite an amount of time.

Introduction to mines
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Mine is a support skill that turns a certain attack or spell skills by laying mines to activate. It has a self target AI for most of the skill and not a self cast skill, which reflect damage from monsters won't deal any harm to you because the source from the damage is the mine, not the player. Downside is you won't be able to life /mana leech monsters. On 3.8 Blight mines rework, mines are now a throw-able mine that reserve some percentage of your mana upon throwing. After it is detonated, it will remove the reserved mana after detonation, the more mines you placed the more mana it will reserve.

The mines mana reservation will not be fully removed when mines are detonated, they detonate the mines each by each and also removes the percentage reserved mana by each mine detonated. Until all the mines is detonated, the mana will return to its original state with no mana reservation from mines.

Each mines have a base duration, after a certain amount of seconds passed the mines will not be armed and will disappear.

Mines required a manual activation to detonate, some people might find it clunky because of how mines generally work. I don't find mines clunky but this is subjective, so this build is not suitable for all players on playstyle wise.

This is quite hard to explain, if you actually witness us streaming, you will get it why we use it, that will be the easiest way to understand about why we are using mines.

I will still attempt to explain why. So when you are using self cast, you will only hit the monsters in front of you, you will not able to use certain angles because your skill will not be able to hit monsters.

Mines have an auto target AI, so we will be able to hit mobs with our mines when we are hiding behind a wall to kill them.

Weapon
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This is the bow I am currently using, dex stacking double pen shaped thicket bow.

It is not the best bow on this game, but this bow will be able to carry me to at least 2k depth.

*Note : Do not use these dex stack bows unless you have a good brutal restraint. Death Opus is actually surpass the damage output of this bow when I have lower than 750 total dex.

To craft this bow, I spammed Frigid, Serrated and Prismatic Fossil, I got the dex stack stats and single penetration. After that I multi modded this bow, crafting another Penetration and base crit. The stun duration is failed slam so don't worry about that.

Prioritize these stats
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Dex stack
Penetration
Double damage
Crit chance
Flat Phys
%Phys
Crit multi

- note : Only get %phys if you got flat phys, or else just go with penetration.

This bow total worth is about 11ex, 5ex for the 6l shaped thicket bow, 2ex multi mod, 2ex prefix block, 1ex for the pen craft, 1ex for the amount of fossils used (depends on your luck, you might use more than this amount to get the right one.)

Budget Option
Priority
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Believe or not, this bow is actually better than my rare bow if I don't have a good brutal restraint. If you are in a budget ish situation, just get this bow and it will be able to keep you until about 1.8k to 2k. If you can't spend about 11ex on a bow, just get this bow, it is very good.

Extra note : If you able to get a mirror tier bow yourself, you will know what to look for, you won't need my guide anymore if you manage to get a mirror by yourself Kapp.
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Quiver
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My current quiver


This quiver is the cheapest option if you don't have enough currency to invest in. This quiver gives us the attributes we need and the dex stack also helps us a lot. Make sure it is Hyrri's Demise, not Hyrri's Bite. To get Hyrri's Demise, you will need a Fated Prophecy to upgrade it.

Hyrri's Demise cost me about 40c on the time I bought it, for corruption, look for chain.

If you have more currency to spend on this build, you can look for a rare quiver like this


prioritize these stats
+1 Arrow
+Dex
Crit multi

Prioritize +1 arrow over the others, this mod can be found in warlord's and shaper's quiver.

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Helmet
Priority
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This is the best DPS helmet once you have a high average hit on ice shot and barrage because it basically doubles the dps you deal.

For this helmet, you need to look for Mana Multiplier as corruption to sustain your mana or reduced Hatred reservation for helmet enchant.

We can't use smoke mine when we are using curtain call because you thorw 2 mines instead and usually will mess you up pretty hard.

Use this helmet when you are dealing against Increased Area Aul or low average hit


For helmet enchant, look for
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Barrage fires an additional proj
Ice shot angle

Prioritize barrage because barrage is our source of single target.

Ice shot angles enchantment makes the ice shot far more likey to overlap, which can result in extreme dps in packs.
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Chest piece
This is the best option for us

Hyrri's gives us a lot of flat cold, dex and dodge. It is pretty much Jack of all trades for our build. Prioritize the flat damage then the dex.

You might wonder about the explody chest, explody chest won't be able to compete with Hyrri's on both defensive and damage wise, because we usually have trouble against tanky mobs only. Also Hyrri's gives us a lot more damage compare to those generic Explody chest, so the best is to stick with this chest piece.

For rolls, prioritize high rolled inc cold damage and dexterity. Evasion rating does not matter.

This cost me 6ex (including 6 link)
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Gloves
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Non dex stack and budget option :

Actually this gloves is way better than shadow and dust for the first 1.8k depth. Look for crit corruption on this glove, the damage this glove gives is insane.

After 1.8k depth, look for

This is the gloves when oskarm curse falls off.
For the curse on hit it is not mandatory, but I think getting temp chains is way better because it will able to buy some time for us to reposition and get us out from sticky situations.

I highly recommend to use this glove with a crit corruption on it.

If you have a ton of currency to burn on, use a rare hunter influenced gloves with
% dex
+ Dex
+1 frenzy
Phys conver to cold
% chance to Intimidate on hit
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Boots
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(Look for 1 socket bubonics, it will actually be better)
Bubonics gives us the speed we need and additional abyss socket for more damage, pretty much about it. It is basically the best boots for us to actually put more damage in.

Tailwind boots pretty much does nothing to us so don't ever try to use that boots. (don't be like the korean RMT guy Kapp)

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Belts
My current belt


Prioritize elemental damage and Str, make sure you have a high rolled Str or else your Str won't be able to cap over the Int for the 15% Inc dex on the Fractal Thoughts.

Elemental dmg and Cold dmg together in these belt are very expensive, so just look for either one of them first.

Prioritize these stats
%Inc elemental damage
+ Str
Inc ele dmg
Inc cold dmg
Ele dmg with attacks
Dmg against chilled enemies

If you have a headhunter, use it, the dex and str it gives is very useful.
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Rings
Priority
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These are the budget rings

Note : You must have increased cold dmg and increased buff effect

They are costly, but they are the only budget rings you can have. If you want a better ring, look for mirror tier precursors.

Buff effect basically adds flat added cold, if you have a maxed rolled and a decent increase, use them. But Prioritize inc cold dmg. Price also depends on the implicit of the rings.

For implicit, look for increased elemental damage if you have more currency to invest in. If you have like an mirror amount of currency to waste on, you can look for curse on hit rings.

Use Turbulent catalyst, they will increase the %dmg while affected by Herald of Ice.

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Amulet
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Budget amulet

This is like the next tier budget amulet, but you have the rough idea what to look for.

For a better amulet, look for
+ Dex
Inc dmg per 15 dex
+ All attributes
% ele dmg with attacks
% Crit multi

Before you have a really good dex stack gears like good dex stack bow, good brutal restraint etc, prioritize crit multi on your amulet.

For anointment, look for divine judgement, they are pretty cheap, cost about 10c and very effective.

This is my current flask setup for normal nodes

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Mandatory Flasks

Quartz Flask :
This flask is very important, phasing allows you to walk past monsters without them blocking you, they are the most important flask in delving when moving to a node because when a monster blocked you, you will slowed down, unable to path through faster, usually resulting in a death.

Quicksilver Flask
This flask is also very important, make sure you have the suffix "of Adrenaline". This suffix is a must because your move speed must exceed their cast / attack speed or else you won't be able to survive speed nodes like Onslaught and Turbo.

Optional Flask

These flask is just to increase your damage, you can use a bottled faith but they are quite expensive. On boss fight you must drop Quartz flask for a damage flask.

If you don't have a clarity recover watchers, I recommend you to get

This flask is very important, you must drop cinderswallow flask for the mana flask if you don't have the clarity watchers.

Make sure you have prefix "of enduring", this drastically increases your mana sustain.

Rare Jewels

Look for these stats
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Dex
Mine damage
Cold damage
Crit chance
Crit multi


*Side note* - if you don't have enough money to invest in a Efficient Training (like me), look for

Must be the highest reduce Int, and then look for high rolled strength on belt and amulet.

Note : if you don't have Efficient Training (like me), look for Strength stats in the jewels.
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Watcher's Eye

For Clarity "Chance to recover 10% mana when you have used a skill recently"
For Hatred, look for either of these, based on priority order too
"Hatred penetrate cold resistance"
"Hatred increase crit chance"

Other rolls are not mandatory, there is no need for a third watcher's stats
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Brutal Restraint
Important

This is the most important part of the build. Make sure that you have
2 of the 5% increase Dexterity. That is the most important stats you need

Place your brutals on here


For Brutals, here are some of the helpful stats.
5% Increase Dexterity (2)
+20 Dex (any, if not present it's fine)
5% To movement speed (any, if not present it's fine)

The type of brutals does not matter, as long as you get at least 10% dex on it then it's fine. I rolled 40 divines on this jewel to get the one that I can use, so don't give up on divining your brutals :>

If you want to purchase a 10% dex brutals, I recommend you to check on the forum trading side or any streamers that are trying to sell it, as long as they are able to prove the jewel have those 10% dex increase (recommend in a video because it is hard to scam on a video). This is to avoid being scammed, because these jewels with these kind of stats usually cost about 4-10ex, depends on the other stats the brutals gives.

Main Link
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Ice Shot (Clear)

Barrage (Boss)

If you don't have 3 blue, replace Ele focus with trap and mine damage, I suggest you use 2-3 white socket vorici craft for the colors.

We don't use damage on full life just because of the mana multiplier, you will be able to place more mines = more damage.
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Utilities
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Aura setup
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If possible get enlighten lvl 4, it helps a lot. Socket your clarity on your gloves, also make sure clarity is on lvl 1.

Mobility
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Flame dash is instant dash, so it covers the slight delay for smoke mine. Smoke mine is for the speed, make sure you have the smoke mine speed buff on when you are proceeding a node.

Utilities
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Vaal skellies is very important, make sure you have both single pack cast and the vaal cast. Skeletons have 2 jobs
1. Lure the monsters (monster aggro)
Skellies is able to lure nearby monsters to them, enabling you to chain your ice shot to mobs that you knocked too far away.
2. Body block
Skellies also able to block projectiles and damage, they act as a body guard tool too, but they won't be blocking any AoE skills.

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Frost wall is also another skill that blocks projectiles and melee monsters from reaching you, they are pretty helpful on some situations.

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This one is used when you are fighting a boss like Aul. They are just used to penetrate the cold resistance.

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Only use this on mapping so we don't need to perform the walk of shame.

I highly recommend you level with another build then transition into this build, so I will not cover the leveling part of the tree. Also I will not go in depth for trees because it is pretty much straight forward.

Tree looks something like this


Final Tree


Note : If you have Efficient Training, place your Efficient Training at here


Part of your tree is also based on what your brutal restraint gives you, so because I have a 5% Inc Dex at the Blast Waves (Mine damage and area effect, near Acrobatics Keystone and King of the Hill Notable). Even so your tree won't be very different compare to ours.

For Ascendancy, there are only 4 nodes which are actually useful for us, others does give some damaging stats but not as useful as these gives.

We prioritize Ricochet and Endless Munitions more than any other, we will need the chain for our iceshot so we are able to chain our damage to the node bosses without actually fighting them face to face. An additional Proj from the Endless Munitions is pretty helpful, increasing both our clear and damage.

Due to that, we will not be using any other ascendancy and will not use the other nodes because Tailwind is the only node left that is useful compared to the other three available ascendancy nodes.

Major Soul
Lunaris
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Lunaris gives us movement speed, and phys reduction, but we just need the speed, phys reduction does nothing.
Prioritize upgrading the "avoid projectiles have been chained", that one is massive, because that would save us from nodes that have chain, mobs will be able to chain their skills from our skellies to us.

Major Soul
Abberath
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As stated on above, we use abberath just because burning ground will not affect us by a single bit.

Kill all

We don't go Alira because Alira actually gives us resistance, which does not benefit us. Also in the long term, +2 passive points is way superior than crit multi and mana regen.

Also we are tight in passive points so +2 is very helpful for us.

I won't be very in depth in leveling because most of you should have at least some knowledge on leveling a character to level 85++.

There are multiple ways to level to this character, what you need to do is at least use that build, level to about lvl 94 (highly recommended), then transition into this build.

Builds that you can use to level
Toxic Rain PF
Explosive Arrow PF
Frost Blades Raider

I do not recommend bow characters that rely on the bow a lot (like ice shot deadeye) because you'd need to invest quite an amount and they are squishy. You just need a tanky build to get the level you need and transition.

To transition ascendancy, you will need at least 40 regrets (if you are not deadeye) to reset ascendancy. Refund all of the ascendancy skills, then go into the first lab. Complete the lab, then when you press the Ascendancy Altar, it will have a button at the bottom of the ascendancy icon and it's named "Change". You will get a message if you enter the Aspirant's Plaza saying something like "your character have no ascendancy allocated" etc etc, don't worry about it, it is just a message to players who play in standard.

You might use up to 100+ regrets, depending what build you use and your pathing.

If you want to level faster, i recommend you to join any exp rota at 820. DO NOT JOIN any leeching, it is just a waste of your time. Here are a few rotas you can do
Pure Chayula rota
Poorjoy rota
Acton rota
Coward's Trial rota

rotas are the best, they cost a little but the return is a lot. But make sure you are on the same server with the host or close to it if you are doing a bunch of them (for example 5 per person) or else it will be a nightmare.

Before you start playing, you must change your keybindings to the ones you find the most comfortable playing with. Here are the things you need to press almost all the time, and my keybindings for it (ofc your keybindings won't be the same as mine but you have a rough idea for my setup)

Main Skill and Boss skill (both barrage and ice shot) (Mouse 2 and Mouse 5)
Detonate mines (E)
5 flask (default setup, 12345)
flare (6)
flame dash (Q)
Smoke mine (W)
frost wall (R)
dynamite (spacebar)
skellies (ctrl + W)
vaal skellies (T)
(total of 15 keys)

make sure you can change from ice shot to barrage pretty quickly and able to dynamite at the same time and also you don't find it clunky or uncomfortable when you are swapping.

Again, make sure you change your keybindings to the most comfortable one, it is very important for you in some sticky situations and you might need all of the 15 keys activate at once, it will also affect the gameplay by a lot.

When you start the node, make sure to smoke mine then activate the cart. When the cart starts going, piano all 5 flask. You must balancing your killings and running, as in the GIF on top I kinda kill a bit too much.

When you are running
- Straight line
Hug the wall as much as possible, don't run at the middle between the walls, this will increase the risk of you getting hit.

- Turning
When you are going to turn, you need to cut straight into the opposite wall, this is to prevent monsters hitting you. Because when you hug the same wall when you turn, monsters are targetting the same wall, so this will increases your risk getting hit by a lot.

Delve have different mods compared to maps. In delve you will never get mods like no regen, no leech, reflect etc.

You are highly suggested to read the map mods and proceed accordingly with the map mods. Here are a list of mods, and the difficulty of them
S - Hard
A - Moderate hard
B - Moderate easy
C - Easy

Tank Mods
- Monsters increase life (B)
- Physical reduction (C)
- Reduce damage from crit (B)
- Monsters avoid ailments (A)
- Monster have elemental and chaos resistance (B)

On tank wise
*If there are 2 B Tier mods at present at the same time, they will become A-Tier
*If there is avoid ailments with any other mods, it will become A+ Tier.
*If there is any 3 of the mods presence, they will become S tier.

Speed Mods
- Monsters increase speed (3 stats, action, attack and cast speed) (A)
- Onslaught (B)
- Monsters action cannot be reduce below base speed (no chill) (A)

On speed wise
*If there is any speed mods together, they automatically becomes S tier

the reason why speed mods are hard is because you are relying on juking them, as long as their speed won't catch up yours, you survive. If there is double speed, this makes juking them way harder, and you must maintain the speed as much as possible so they will not catch up. A single mistake like reading wrong layout will easily kill you, while no speed nodes you still might survive.

City nodes with double speed are the hardest, because most monsters in city nodes are ranged and have a lot of range and speed by default. Avoid getting through any city nodes with speed if possible.

Misc Mods
- Nemesis
- Bloodlines
- Beyond

Nemesis
- Be careful of these 3 mods
Lightning strike
Mirage
Elemental Thorns

These 3 mods usually kills you a lot if you are not careful. If Nemesis is present on a node, you must stay away from the spawning area as far as possible but still in range to damage them. Just don't stay too close towards the nodes. Below there is a list of positions you can use, if there is a (no nemesis) on it, means that spot cannot be used if there is nemesis mod present.

Also, if the harbinger node have nemesis mod present, that will be a S tier node, avoid that if possible.


Bloodlines
- Be careful of these mods
Order of the sky (ice storm)
Union of soul (fking tanky mobs)
Heralds of the Obelisk (lightning totems, if they use lightning warp on you, you're done)

Bloodlines are not as dangerous as Nemesis, but you still need to be careful of those mods too.

Beyond
For beyond, as long as you stay a distance between yourself and the node, they will not interfere you much, including beyond bosses. For beyond bosses your greatest enemy is Ephij (The one that cast lightning strike totems). The lightning strike totems is extremely dangerous, if you saw that guy coming to your location, you must literally fall back and try to offsceen kill him asap or else he will easily 1 shot you.

I might have missed some mods, if you do noticed it please notify me.

Azurite 1/2 - Layout 1
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Azurite 3
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Azurite 1/2 - Layout 2
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Frigid Recess
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Restless Rubbles
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Harbinger node
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Azurite 1 - Layout 1
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Azurite 3
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Nesting ground (no nemesis only)
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Grim Copse
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Dusty Grove
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Growiling Grove
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Pulsating Grotto
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Restless rubble
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Harbinger (with nemesis)
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Humid Hive
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Azurite 2 (change depending on visibility)
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Azurite 3
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Azurite 1
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Azurite 2
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Grim Copse
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Azurite 1 - Layout 1
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Azurite 2 - Layout 1
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Pulsating Grotto
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Azurite 1 - Layout 1
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Azurite 1 - Layout 2
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Haunted Remains
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Crystal Spire (Hollow Fossil drop)
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1. Skellys behavior
This may seem dumb but skeletons behavior matters a lot. There will be a total of 3 behaviors total and you must act accordingly to their behavior.

- Running into the node (good sign)
This is a good sign because this shows that there are monsters in range and they are luring the monsters towards them, allowing you to chain your ice shot to other nearby monsters.

- Afking / not chasing (depends)
This is a bad sign, so if they basically just stands there and do nothing and the node isn't completed yet, this means that they are not aggro-ing any monsters toward them, you have to go check it by yourself just to find the monster (usually a node boss / exile), basically showing your face to the node, increasing the risk of dying.

It is recommended that you slowly extend yourself, spam frost wall as much as possible and then summon normal skellies to aggro, until your skellies starting to chase something, you must back off a little because sometimes the monsters might immediately jump in front of your face and using abilities that will kill you.

This could also hint you a good sign if you use skellies in the darkness and they just stand still, means that there will no monsters in the darkness will be able to backstab you, make sure the skellies are far enough in the darkness, if they aren't even in the darkness this doesn't help anything.

- Running into darkness (bad sign)
This is the worst sign that the skellies can give you. What this means is that they are chasing a monster in the darkness, this gives you the hint that there will be monsters able to backstab you. You have to immediately flare to that direction and kill the monsters first before killing the node. Make sure you'd also frost wall, blocking the monsters from node approaching to you.

Azurite 1 / 2
Difficulty : easy
Does not require a lot of skills, even with hard mods.

After you reach the node, run around in circles and try to clear all the mobs in the area. After the area is clear, look for a wall to hide behind with. Make sure you flare into darkness on the nearby spot so no potential mobs in the darkness will backstab you. After that, activate the node, go to the spot, sit there and just spam your mines until you see a small pop and azurite flow out, indicating the node has been completed.

What if you have been sitting on the spot for 10 minutes and the node is still yet to complete? This means that you knocked the Living Azurite too far away and your mines could not chain on it. This only happens when your spots are bad. To deal with this, you have to run into the node, use your phasing flask and frost wall on your face, not in front nor behind, on yourself. Frost wall will block the projectiles that the living azurite fires, you use the frost wall on yourself because the :Living azurites will teleport to you when you are in line of sight, frost wall makes sure that the projectile will not hit you. If you frost wall in front of yourself, it is likely you are not protected from behind and the Living Azurite might take this chance and give you the respawn in checkpoint screen.

Note that blue walls (the azurite crystal walls) are not considered as a wall.
If you don't know what wall to hide behind, I have a list of positions and spots you can use below, use that as a reference for your spots and position.

If the Living Azurite teleports to you, it means that the wall you are using is not a wall, because Living Azurite only teleports you when it is in line of sight with you.
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Azurite 3
Difficulty : normal - hard
Depends on the node mods and the node boss.

There are 3 types of bosses in azurite 3
Lion (hardest)
Screamer (moderate)
Dragon (moderate)

Time your vaal skellies right for the boss, because this will lure the boss towards to the skellies and you can keep the boss occupied. If you mistimed it, don't worry, rely on the normal summon skellies to deal with the boss. Usually if you died even using the spot below, this indicates that your timing is incorrect and all of your skellies failed to occupied that boss.

If you'd sit on the position and waited like 10 minutes, it is prob that you knocked the boss to far away. If it is a lion you must be very careful because the Lion will able to offscreen you easily. Screamer can wind up the scream so you'd also have to care for that. You have to run into the node and search for it. If you found the boss, quickly retreat back to the position and spam dynamite to keep it perma stunned. No stun mods will not affect the stun by dynamite.

Lion is the hardest because it can use a skill that acts like a icestorm which could offscreen you. But if you lock him back without him getting close to you, he will not use that skill.

Dragon is the only one that have phases. The dragon have a skill that acts like lacerate, unsure if frost wall will block it, but if you are hugging a wall, it is unlikely that the dragon will able to hit you with that skill. Also if you timed the skellies right, the dragon will not use the fire breath close to you because the skellies will bait the fire instead.

For screamer, there is nothing too dangerous about it. If you did lose him in the middle of fight and you need to search him, make sure to dynamite your position because it is likely that he will leap first then scream immediately. The dynamite will interrupt your scream, usually buying you enough time if the stun hits it and you spammed enough dynamite.

Potential difficulty increase is the node mods like beyond and nemesis, if you have sounds disabled, you must be aware of your current location to prevent the lightning mirage catching you offguard.
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Frigid Recess
Difficulty : normal
The ghost can use blade vortex, usually kills you when you almost path to the node if you did not kill them and you walked into them.

This is the node that you have to kill a node boss that looks like the Captain Fairgraves.

The only threat that this node have is pathing to it. Because usually you are focused on the map overlay / minimap and you did not see them cast their blade vortex, usually you walked into it.

When you almost reached the node, make sure to slow down and kill all of the ghost. If the area is clear, next is to find the wall behind it, then flare into darkness and clear off potential backstabbers. When you activated it, throw your mines over the ship, that is the spot that you can chain kill most of the ghost on there. Just care the potential ghost that could come from behind.
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Necromancer Excavation / Grim Copse
Difficulty : Easy - Moderate
This one is not that hard, the only hard part is you need to clear all the sides of the darkness to prevent potential backstab.

When you activated the node, make sure to run out of the area inside, stay outside so the zombie will not fire their spirits towards you. Usually you won't get killed unless you somehow mess up the skellies and your position.

Note that the necro is able to teleport out from the small area if you didn't freeze him.
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Humid Fissure
Difficulty : Moderate - Hard
Depends on mods, the more tankier the mobs are, the harder the node becomes.

Humid fissure is the fossil node that drops Fractured Fossil, which grants you a mirror copy.

You must approach this node carefully, if you killed the boss but died in the meantime, you will actually lose the fossil.

There's a small spot that you can use, it is behind the node boss itself. Before you activate the node, make sure to clear ALL the mobs in the darkness to prevent ANY backstab, because you really don't want to lose the mirror fossil. Make sure the node is completely cleared before starting.

When you start the node, try to clear as much as possible. Don't frost wall because frost wall will not block any projectiles in the node. Roughly about 5-7 seconds you will see a small green light, when that happens, preload all the mines and then time your dynamite right to burst the boss down. If you did it right it will not summon any golems that kills you.

If you failed to burst in within 1-2 seconds, don't damage it anymore because it is likely that it summons a lot of golems already and you will get killed without getting the fossil.
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Molten Cavity
Difficulty : Easy

Molten cavity takes some small practice before it becomes easy. Before you almost reach the node, you can vaal skellies on front of the boss, then use your barrage to perma knockback him. There isn't a lot of explanation because the boss is just too easy to deal with on this build. Tip is just pin him with your barrage and that's it.
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Timelost Cavern
Difficulty : Hard

Timelost can be difficult depending on the node mods and the essence mods. Some mods can be insanely stupid, but some can be done easily by just running around.

Sometimes you will need to unspec your knockback (King of the Hill notable), this will prevent you from knockbacking the monster too far into the darkness.

You need to bait slowly with your skeletons, do not overbait or else they will instantly come towards you and kill you. This node takes a lot of patience, as long as you are killing, DO NOT bait with your skeletons.
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Harbinger Node
Difficulty : Moderate - Hard
Depends on mods, mods like Nemesis could make the node even harder.

For harby nodes, they are instant start nodes. So as soon as you are near the node, you must slow down, clear the surroundings and look for a spot to stay. Skellies plays an important role here to bait the monsters so you won't need to find the monsters by yourself. If the harbinger got the chance to came close to you, you must back off, even the spot is bad. This node could burn up to 10+ flares depending on the situation of the node. If you notice that you are not killing monsters, you must step forward for a bit, then summon skellies. As long as you started killing, immediately back off to the original spot.

Character limit has been reached, I will put this section on another layer later on.
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Smuggler's Stash
I believe almost every delver sometimes struggle against smuggler's stash, because this node sometimes is just stupid to fight against. There are A LOT of ways to approach this node, I will list some methods out as long as the mods to avoid.

Mods to avoid
Monsters avoid ailments
No chill
Beyond

These 3 mods are the most annoying mods of them all. I've encountered a double tank beyond before, it is a nightmare, you are basically hoping that you don't summon Ephij and Haast out or else it's pretty much over.

No chill and avoid ailments are almost the same, but no chill is worse. The reason why no chill is worse is you can't freeze them at all, unlike avoid ailments you still able to freeze them because it's a 50/50, but this one is just totally cancelled, nope. The only way to kill these no chill is to burst them down asap.

Approach
As I said above, there are multiple ways to approach this node, I will only state out 2 ways that I've tried and used before, and also works for me. The most dangerous exile is the bow girl, she is the one that can offscreen you pretty easily. The second one you need to aware of is the arc girl. She can chain you with her arc so you also need to be careful of her, but she usually won't pose a threat. Other exiles are basically easy to deal with because they are melee, just don't let them get close to you, then you are pretty much safe.

1. Offscreen
Like any other nodes, when the cart almost reaches the node, you need to clear around it because it is an instant start node without any preparations. When the cart approached it, you summon skellies then back off immediately, and hope to offscreen em.

This method is pretty safe and easy to learn how to use this method. The downside of it is you can knock them into darkness. You will notice when your skellies aren't moving at all to their direction (on the tips 1) and the node is still yet to be completed. This is a very bad situation because you have to search them in the darkness, basically flare in and pray the remaining exiles are does not contain the bow girl.

This method is also ineffective on no chill because when you flare in, usually they will immediately jump onto your face cus you can't freeze em or slow em down in any way.

2. Burst
This method is a bit dangerous and hard to learn for newer players, but once mastered you can basically use this method over the offscreen method. So when you reaches the node, find a wall nearby, usually it's near the tents, then vaal skellies when the cart reaches it.

When the rogue exiles spawn in, immediately spam dynamite at the middle to stun them all and prevent them from moving, at the same time spam your mines too (well ofc). This method will easily burst them down fast and you usually won't need to flare into the darkness and find em. This method is a bit dangerous because you are basically fighting them face to face, with no experience it is pretty much insta death.

This method is best use on nodes like beyond because you don't want the beyond boss to spawn in, so just kill the exiles before you spawn a boss in so even you died, you've completed the node.

I have finally killed my 1k Aul and I have been doing it consistently (although with some fail rates too). If you find yourself having trouble on Auls, you can msg me and I will attempt your aul, and the loot is also all yours, free carry service in short.

Aul Abilities


Aul is not insanely hard, it is just me that keep making stupid mistakes, but here's the general rule of thumb and the things you must do when fighting Aul.

1. Count
This is the first boss in poe that forces me to count, here is the rough pattern of his. This count is for auls with no speed modifiers.

- Every 5-6 Auto Attack, he will perform a Pizza Cutter
- After his pizza cutter, about 2-3 more Auto attack he will perform a Pizza slam
- Roughly every 30 seconds (usually after a slam, base on your damage), he will go shield charge phase, increasing the amount of shield charge by 1
- Shield charge will start with a total of 6, +1 for each time he did shield charge phase (for example if it's the 4th shield charge phase he does, he will have +4, a total of 10 shield charges during shield charge phase)

2. Stay close
You must stay close as much as possible to Aul, if you kept a distance away, he will have 2 new abilities, Whirling Blades and Abyss Slam. To prevent that, simply just stay very close to him.

3. Make sure dynamite stock is up
Make sure you have full stock of 7 dynamite before fight starts, dynamite is able to stun Aul even with stun immunity. There are 2 occasions you would need to use dynamite on Aul
- Pizza slam
- On 20%hp or lower

Notes :
- To stop Aul's pizza slam with dynamite, the dynamite must be thrown the moment he charge the blade, when he put the blade to the ground it's too late.
- dynamite cannot stop Aul's pizza cutter
- walk in larger circle during add phase
- when flare is gone during the add phase, this indicate the aul is almost back up, so you have to focus on aul's action after the flare ended about 10 seconds later. Add phase is roughly 35 seconds.
- When Aul is low (20% hp), spam dynamite on him to stunlock him.
- If you use curtains call, you cannot use the smoke mine trick.