Is Act 1 Too Hard Now?

As a seasoned Path of Exile player, I’ve personally never found Act 1 to be overly challenging. However, I recently tried introducing a friend to the game, and he kept getting repeatedly ganked by a rare enemy with a Hinder Aura. To help him progress, I suggested he ctrl click the portal to reset the area. Instead, he ended up uninstalling the game and said he has no interest in playing either PoE or PoE 2 after that experience.

Now, I know his reaction is on the extreme side, and he might be overreacting. But this incident got me thinking: is Act 1 too difficult? Personally, I enjoy the challenge, but when new players log in for the first time only to be met with rhoas that stun-lock, Hinder Aura rares on fast-moving monsters, and Merveil just being Merveil, I wonder what it’s like to experience the game as a beginner. It must be brutal, right? Or has my friend's reaction skewed my view of Act 1?

Anyway, I just wanted to put this out there for discussion. Feel free to share your thoughts.

I got to Act 2 before the PC Servers went down for the Event league.
I think OP should just come to terms that whatever league start build they cooked simply isn't compatible with Act 1.

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Woobowiz wrote:

I got to Act 2 before the PC Servers went down for the Event league.
I think OP should just come to terms that whatever league start build they cooked simply isn't compatible with Act 1.

Or they make the mistake of trying to kill everything in their way. Just get the objective, move on. Had 10 meatsacks chasing me out of the flats.

His reaction wasn't extreme nor overreacting at all, it's a normal behavior on a sane person. A normal person with a functioning brain when faced with a similar situation would do the same thing. It's just a game, you are not obliged to play, no one is forcing you to play and if you don't find the game fun or it generates some kind of negative stimulus, the normal thing to do is to quit.

Personally, not everyone is made out for stunlock by a pack of hasted/onslaugh/ambush rhoas, and while I don't find the game/act 1 to be as hard as some makes it out to be, I still feel like the game has a very high barrier to entry for players relatively new to ARPGs or gaming in general.

It's mainly just mud flats. A new person who doesn't know how to avoid getting stun locked is gonna have a hard time. But other than that, there's really nothing super challenging about Act 1.

Mud flats was a little nuts with impossible to kill mobs, but so far it hasn't been too bad overall.

had 10 meatsacks also, but when clicking the zone, zone not available like 100 plus times

It all depends on what random stuff you got.

I had Meatbags with ES. Literally Impossible to kill and they run faster then you so I had 4 deaths just trying to get to the door.

I dont know if its me but all the mobs seem to have ES and slows

It's not too hard but there's a couple abilities over tuned. The fire rain in the first area 1 shot me while running because I stopped a half sec to pick something up. Rhoa's are annoying and getting frozen in caves is annoying but it's nothing to do with builds. You can get to red maps without a build but if your friend isn't an arpg player they'll never like the game whether because of difficulty early or there's just so much to learn. Every game isn't for everyone but in today's world younger people only have fun winning.

Don't you remember? GGG buffed mobs in Act 1 and 2 recently.