3.26 looking good for SSF

As an old school D2 player I have always hoped that PoE would introduce Mercs but held very little hope of it ever happening. It always seemed that GG were very opposed to the notion, so I am absolutely delighted to see this happen!

I've played SSF for some time now but adding a Merc and a less risky Animate Guardian means I can have my party play in keeping with how I prefer to play.

Kingsmarch remaining in the game is an added bonus to SSF play.

The only thing that concerns me is the comments from Mark about how this will impact drops with Mercs adding a half player multiplier to the calculation. Which means as a SSF player I get a small tweak to my drops but a 6 player party, all with 6 mercs gets a significant multiplier to their calculation (although Mark did mention there was some differences to how that works now but there were no details about it).

Now, to compensate has GG amended the drop rate so that the top end remains relatively aligned to their previous drops, but single players get absolutely starved, or will we have a bit more of a curve to it?

Additionally, will there be some shenanigans with bosses such as entering the boss arena without a Merc, teleporting out and then back in with your Merc so as not to trigger the additional Monster life calculation?

Also keen to see if there's some rebalancing with rarity tiers for certain items. With the change to Ralakesh's boots should these be a little more comment (seeing as there's now 3 versions of them) or are the other up sides so strong that they'll be even rarer (i.e. I'll never see them).

Lots of questions but overall, I'm starting to look forward to this league!

Kingsmarch solved some SSF problems so we can move to new ones. Such as horrible pinnacle boss grind, for example.

I am level 93 in SSF and didn't find even 1 divine. I really need them for crafting, please advise on how to get raw divines in SSF.

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SirSly#7980 wrote:

I am level 93 in SSF and didn't find even 1 divine. I really need them for crafting, please advise on how to get raw divines in SSF.

Grind Expedition for Tujen rerolls.
Check every merc.
Send shipments with crops only. I got a mirror shard from 2 mio crops, but that wouldn't be good in ssf now would it it? lol (they say 10k blue zanthium to kalguur without anything else is a good strategy to get divines regularly, but haven't tried that one)
Use scarabs to up the monster count in your map and you significantly enhance the drop chance, although don't count to much on drops in maps...
heist blueprints. Divines show up regularly, sometimes up to 4 divines. Just don't die on the way back, lmao

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Aldora_the_Summoner#4021 wrote:

Which means as a SSF player I get a small tweak to my drops but a 6 player party, all with 6 mercs gets a significant multiplier to their calculation

YOu already made the right decision and clicked on ssf, so this doesn't have to concern you anymore. Only trade cucks like me are affected by this situation.