Share Your Path of Exile Memories With Us!

I first heard about Path of Exile when reading a forum post on Gamereactor. The game was still in closed Alpha at this time but there were a few videos and interviews to enjoy.
After a while some Youtube channels got access to the game and posted videos. I remember enjoying Tales of Lumin's videos back then while waiting for my chance to try it.

And then it happened, I went to this site and there it was, the Beta Invite Timer showing my name as the next veteran to get a key for the game. I took a screenshot of that moment and still have the image: https://imgur.com/a/2bTirdi


Some things I remember from the Beta was the introduction of the snakes in Act 2. The chat was full of players getting killed by this new unexpected threat.

Back then, Merveil did not have a phase two, so I also remember when encountering that for the first time and how again the chat was full of players talking about how cool but super difficult she had become and how you now needed to team up to defeat her.


So it have been a lot of fun to see how things have been added to the game and changes made to areas. Very impressive work.

Memories from past to present.
- learning the hard way on first build that damage isn't everything and maxing resists matters
- Seeing La Toucan in chat and praising it
- Seeing a corrupted toucan and chanting Vaal
- First beat down of Uber Atziri
- Helping out a noob by telling them to max out resists (end of my noob-hood?)
- Watching the world change as we know it from 4 acts to 10
- First ass whooping by Shaper
- Making a build that shouldn't work but somehow does
- Making up reason not to take wife to dinner on a Friday night so I can start a new league (repated several times)
- Playing POE most of the day while 'teleworking' during COVID

I started in 2011, and you "had to" play HC back then (I switched to SC later), and I played in all leagues since they have started being a thing, but obviously the most memorable moments are coming from the earlier years of POE:


- Hailrake was a scary thing, and I think most people died to him on their first playthrough, before dying to Brutus on their 2nd playthrough.
- When I first encountered Bleed in Act 3 Marketplace (and died running away), I thought it is the coolest monster mechanic ever created.
- My wife's tried to switch to CI with her first ever character (SC) in Cruel, so she had pretty a rough start.
- You actually had to hover over all rare monsters to see what they do, because their abilites were dangerous back then. When you understood what they did, you were amazed by the great mechanics GGG came up with, and it seemed fair dying to those.
- You could make "good" money on carrying people through Curel Vaal Oversoul, and Merciless Weaver.
- Maps were terrifying at first, we felt that we have to farm ledges, fellshrine, docks, library, whatever the current meta suggested before entering them.
- You actually had to test what your build could achieve (no POB), and it was a lot of fun.
- I participated in a lot of stupid chorma lotterys.
- It was resonable to use exalted orbs on high level maps, because there just were not many of them.
- I used 10 or so eternal orbs on crap before realizing its actual value.
- It was normal typing /oos to avoid dangeourous desync a couple times on every map in group play especially.
- Since tittyb*tches were scary, my mind was blown away to see that you can just stand in front of them w high level Arctic Armor (it had huge mana degen).

First ever MTX - The Keyblade

Most memorable moment...

Breach League
Was running through Imperial Gardens to get to tower when I got ambushed by a gang of exilees with Shockwave totems. Was having a really rough time, slurping potions like they're 50 cent jello shots, but only got one of them. I see a breach, and hit it. In the ensuing chaos, I refilled my potions by killing breach minions while whittling down the exile gang. Lived to get to tower to fight Dominus, who killed me a few times. (Back then, bad player + craptop = hating Dominus fights...)

My most painful memory is when I got a Headhunter to drop back in the day, I thought it was crap because 20 seconds wasn't long enough for a buff. I sold it for a few chaos if I remember correctly. I haven't seen one drop since.

My first encounter with POE was when some members of GGG came out to a LAN event in 2012 A6. They held an even there where everyone who played the game and hit a certain level (10 I think) got a beta key.

Being a huge D2 and Titan quest fan I had to give any new ARPG a try.

I loved the skill gem system which reminded me of Materia from FF7. At the time I was a hardcore player and liked the systems a lot. Unfortunately at the time the clunky feel of combat and desync mad me quickly drop the game.

Fast forward a few years to Abyss having dropped in a few times in between to check out the updates to the game and the issues I saw were fixed and I've been hooked on it since missing two leagues in that time. Delve which I probably regret now but the system and aesthetic didn't appeal very much at the time and synthesis which I dropped in a couple of weeks.

I remember when reflect was in the game and it was actually fun because you couldnt have insane damage or clearspeed because you would oneshot yourself to reflect. Low clearspeed meant that currency and other drops had actual value, since there was less of it on the market. And with no crafting bench, good rares had value too.

My best memory is when I found a reflect shrine in a small room in the Library, surrounded by 2 white packs, 1 blue pack and 1 rare mob with a reflect aura. I died 5 times trying to clear that room, but it felt so worth it since no one cared about clear speed at the time. It was simply better days.