PoE is fully free to play?

I got 40/40 challenges in HC SSF Settlers to prove that this game can be played completely free to play (I still play on 4 stash tabs) and that you can still clear all content and enjoy it. It is more annoying than playing with unlimited stash - but it is still REALLY enjoyable.

If you are a new player or you are not planning on going hard on the end game content - you don't need the extra tabs to enjoy the game.

If you are planning to spend a lot of time clearing and farming endgame content however - I would suggest you buy a currency tab and a quad stash tab. The worst part of this challenge was managing fusing orbs (if I don't have a base to six-link 60% of my currency tab was filling up with fuses), doing specific vendor recipies (breach rings, unique rings, 4 unique staffs map) and doing armor recombinating. I had to completely give up on breach rings armor because I couldn't be bothered to manage my stash by the end of the league. Also recombinating 15 bases to get 1 item without having a full empty tab to dump them in meant that I had to farm 1-2 base-types at a time and stash them, I couldn't just pick up all new 83 level bases I saw.

Regardless, I had a lot of fun doing this and playing the game, doing all the content for specific items/crafting strategies etc. Don't be discouraged to no-life PoE1 if you are free to play!

P.S.
I also got a Defiance of Destiny drop, divined it to good rolls and didn't use it because it is unethical. True story



Uber Eater got noob'ed

This should be a fun thread.

The game is free. You can finish for free. The question is about how reasonable it is to do so.

I think when I started it was somewhat reasonable. But after they added a ton of fragments, essences, orbs, etc. I think it quit being reasonable to play for free. It's kind of akin to the mobile games that are free, but you can't really progress in a reasonable way without buying something.

I would argue the game is a free demo of [everything]. If you want to play it reasonably, it costs about the same as a AAA in terms of points to get the stash tabs needed.

Both are an exceptionally good deal since you can try it for free forever without limitations on progress or capability and pay if you enjoy. And if you pay, you really only have to pay once. Future expansions/releases are free to you whether you spend or not.

I would disagree that it is unreasonable to play for free even including all the fragments (at least for 98-99% of the playerbase). You don't have to use them all at the same time, and if you are playing trade - all the better, just buy scarabs you want to run and run 3-4 types of specific content.

On SSF it is harder, but there is less fragment drops overall I think, so it's not really an issue.

I would agree that it is unreasonable to play for free if you are top 1% player tho. True min maxing and perfect optimisation is pretty much impossible on 4 tabs