We welcome First Impression posts! Please be nice to those posts.

I want so say a BIG THANK YOU to the Support Team.

Twice time i needed help and the reply and help goes SO FAST.
Normally i hv to wait a few days in other games.

Thank you very much for the goodwill and the messages to fix my bug.
I am really infected by this game and love it.

Harvest league is very bad imo.

All mechanics that break the gameplay is pretty bad. The rewards feel bad, the crafting is locked to levels, the moment you get it, and wether you have an appropriate item.

I have 2 good things to say. Performance seems ok, and at least its not all white. Thats it.

Delerium was pretty meh mechanic wise, but the clusters made Delerium the funnest league I've ever played in my 3k+ hours in this game.

Harvest will be the third league I quit, along with bestiary and synthesis. And it seems I will quit this league even before finishing the campaign, making it my least favorite league of all time.

Sorry GGG, better luck next time.

Hi, this is my first league ever. I've watched people play PoE before and was excited to join PoE myself, now that my computer can handle some of the intense graphics it starts to put out. I was able to watch the delve league (cool!) and Metamorph seemed really neat. Really excited to finally play myself and experience the theme of this fresh league! Except there has been confusion and disappointment in this regard.

I have been playing with a partner most of the time. When we can't play together, he gave me a list of zones to fight bosses in, in hopes of finding some kind of zone specific loot. The first thing I found is that, even though I have barely collected any seeds, I am unable to find seed caches in places we have been. These are places where I was never able to harvest the Cache myself or plant anything myself. The next thing I noticed today is that I went to kill Voll (I think, Purity's buddy?). He was there the first time, but after creating a new instance, the zone is empty. No bosses. My partner is a long time player and suggested I return to zones like Dried Lake and Aqueduct to farm but I can't find anything to farm there besides the usual low mobs.

As far as the seed caches go that I never got to pick up in the majority of zones, I spent the whole morning revisiting the areas we had been through and I have yet to find a seed cache. So I have two questions.

1. If a party member has already looted the seed cache for that zone, are you blocked from ever looting it yourself? This seems to be the case. I understand this could be highly exploitable but it would be nice as new player to get to loot it at least one time per zone.

2. If I have killed a zone boss (not a story boss but a boss like the one in Dried Lake) is it gone forever as well?

I just don't want to waste time exploring maps that are totally tapped out, even if I got nothing for doing the map the 1st time aside from story progression. I was under the impression that entering a new instance would reset the basic mechanics (bosses, rng encounters). I looked to twitch for answers but everyone is super hype watching the hardcore players go and not really into explaining these mechanics to a newb - *the best I got is that these type of mechanics can change daily or even hourly at the start of a league* - and that was that.

Can anyone shed some light onto this for me? If only one person gets to profit off a zone, it sure seems to discourage group play... and it's kind of sad for the newb like me who is struggling just to keep up and figure out: what is good, what is not, are my sockets logical in the least, what's going on with my skill tree, and omg I can't wait to get into my garden (my only chance is through a waypoint with no seeds in my pack to plant) etc. while your friend plows through the content. Don't get me wrong, my friend is helping me a lot, but as a new player trying to understand and experience it all, you lag behind a bit. I did spend HOURS AND HOURS watching guides to how the Harvest part of the league works, but it seems like it was all for nothing. Maybe I just have to give up entirely on the "harvest" portion of the league though that seems kind of sad, maybe all the players in the party should get a shot at trying it out? It's pretty discouraging and I am just trying to understand the rules as they are at the moment. I really want to experience the gardens and actually use the knowledge I have spent so much time learning in preparation for this specific league. If anyone can help me understand this it would be great.

Since it is the Harvest League, it sure seems like every player should get a chance to make their garden area and try out the new mechanic in the game. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case. It would be cool if all characters had a shot at a harvest from every map they visited, just once would be fine! I am not looking to harvest over and over and over from the SAME map, but we are already on Act 8 and I have barely been able to experience the Harvest league mechanic because I am playing with 1 other person. I can only imagine if you were playing in a larger group how crappy this would start to feel as your partners gardens grow and start to drop amazing items but you haven't even had the chance to start yours up.

I understand your friends are supposed to and should share the wealth with you, but only allowing 1 member of your static group to partake in the new league activities seems kinda rough and not very fun. For the rest of the group, the experience just isn't there, it's just something that other people get to do and you are only along for the ride and be an onlooker. I feel like a dps bot when we enter the garden together. I certainly don't get to work on my own at all, even in my free time when we are not together. I sure tried, though.

Please let each character or account have at least 1 Seed Cache per zone so that the entire community can experience the new content. It's really disappointing, lackluster and sad for the person who didn't create the zone and thus loot/plant/work with the seeds. Like I said, I spent hours this morning backtracking to try and find the caches I missed out on; and they are gone - presumably just because I was there at all with another person. All the hours of researching the garden mechanics were a total waste too, just because I am playing with *one* other person.

Just started playing the game 3 days ago (Harvest non-hardcore). At this point I am just above level 40. I am currently playing a witch necormancer style build. I did not look up guides for builds or gear. Finished the first 3 acts.

Reason I tried it: I loved Diablo 2's necromancer. I've always liked playing with minions. Watched a youtube mentioned necromancer class in this game. Decided to try it out.

Visual Look: I was content with the visuals. However, as I played more I both liked some of the details put into the level designs, in particular I noticed a level which was like a hell torcher area or something with sound effects of people crying and screaming through most of it. I enjoyed seeing all the various ways they made bodies in all sorts of conditions all over the whole map (piles, torture scene's etc). I also enjoy the effects like spiders climbing up from below you in area's etc.

However, I disliked how busy everything became in fights. It's really hard to figure out what is happening at times with all the visual effects from abilities and spam mobs running all over the place.

Initial Gameplay: so in the very beginning, I remember thinking the enemies seemed to be dying without to much trouble. I figured it was made easy for the very early game to get players used to the game mechanics and the challenge rating would scale up. However, the game play for me actually went in the opposite direction. in the first few levels I had to actively attack and use healing. After about half way through act 1, I basically stopped needing to use any flasks at all. With the rare exception of a very large boss fight or me making some teleport mistake and putting myself into the middle of enemies.

I think part of this is due to my character choice of necromancer. If I play correctly to my build, if I am getting hit then I am kinda doing something wrong. That's my minions job. So it's not entirely unsatisfying, however the game does feel to easy still to me. It needs some more challenge in some fashion.

Minions: So I want to speak on minions specifically, as they are a big reason I came to the game. (Note, I have only gone for minion based passive skill points, so my minions might be a bit stronger feeling due to being highly focused on minion passives.)

Semi-permanent: I love these minions in that they do not have a duration.

Zombies: (currently 6 summons) very very rarely die to anything I am fighting, even bosses, which makes part of the cost of needing a corpse nearly pointless. So I am happy they don't die, but... it feels a bit to op. Perhaps late game that changes a lot more.

Specters: (currently 2 summons) I really enjoy that I can pick what I want to summon and they stick around. I really like that I keep them even after logging off and back on. I have chosen ranged type minions but they still seem rather powerful, though it could just be the combination of everything I have together. They have yet to die.

Others: I am planning to add Golem's and Animated Armor to my mix. I am also trying to find a way to get Herald of Agony? To proc and get into the mix I have. Currently, I don't have them yet though.

Duration minions: I've never been a fan of duration minions. However, some of how it is done in this game isn't terrible.

Skeletons: (currently 8 summons on a limited duration, as well as a much longer cooldown one off horde of 20ish skeletons all at once) I have reached a point now that I only throw out skeletons if I need an instant blocker in front of me because my zombies are off doing something else, or I am in a boss fight of some sort. Otherwise I now find I am not using the skill as much as I was in act 1 and 2. The duration feels to low, they don't stick around long enough so it's annoying to spam the skill.

Animated Weapons: (40 second duration currently. Not sure how many I can have, think it dependent on how many weapons you can find) I like these actually. I run around from fight to fight and convert all the normal melee weapons to animated ones. The duration feels like it's long enough to make it worth it for me to use the skill. I am sad to see when they disappear though. I like that they appear to be the same weapon that I cast the skill on, rather then some generic one.

Phantasm's: This is a support gem, I have it tied into my zombies, specters and possibly skeles(?) at the moment. Anyways, it spawns flying minions that attack things and live for a short duration. From time to time I notice them flying around. They don't mean to much to me, I just consider them as another added dps source. I appreciate that they scale off the rest of my character build decisions.

Raging Skull head things: This spawns little flying heads on fire that seek out enemies and basically die on contact. Very spammable. I basically think of it as heat seeking fireballs that scale off my minion skills, which is nice. Once again though, I find my minions are strong enough, I only need to use this skill in boss fights.

Overall minion impression: I think it would be nicer if I felt more attached to my minions and choices of minions. That being said, the minions are for the most part very satisfying to play with in that the permanent ones don't go away very often for me. It almost makes me wish I could choose which kinds of zombies I summoned (like specters). However, I feel like I am basically walking into a room, looking at the loot as my mob kills everything and continue on. The gameplay enjoyment seems to be coming from my character build choices rather then the actual game play of my character on the map.

Passive skill tree: Initially it seemed daunting, and there is so much going on with adding gems, ascendancy classes, etc etc. that it gets hard to figure out. However, I for the most part enjoy it. I love the idea that I can literally build into any path I wanted, though it's not ideal. One complaint however, is that many "nodes" feel pointless. I think it's a symptom of the game overall likely. I know the 10% bonus to whatever is going to be important later on but it feels like I have so many of the same thing, that it's something I have to pick for my build to work, rather then something interesting I want to pick. I would prefer if all the numbers were scaled way down and all the % buffs etc were eliminated or drastically reduced and replaced with actual interesting adjustments to game play instead. It doesn't mean anything to me that my thing does 5k dmg now instead of 4.5k dmg or whatever. All I really need is that my thing does enough dmg to be meaningful to that thing. Otherwise give me meaningful options that are interesting to pick from.

Loot/Gear: I both like and loath this. I think it's very interesting to have skills built into gems which level and can be moved around. Really cool idea. However, there are way to many items dropping on the ground (unless I need something for animated weapon) that are just more visual clutter and causing accidental clicks on wrong things. Also, the item levels seem odd. Common and Magical are simply junk in your way with the odd exception of something perhaps having more slots you might need. Rare even feels like junk more often then not at this point. Even when I get unique items that are exactly suited to my character, they don't feel very impressive to me. I usually like gear hording and crafting, but here, especially with harvest, it feels like the game is all about crafting gear, yet I need to go to five different area's to do it (crafting bench, harvest, currency items, menagerie, and some much less common special crafting options like special npc's etc.) And all but the final one is not challenging to access or acquire, making it feel more or less like an annoyance that all of it cannot just be in one place. Like why not let me just make the grove into a hideout so I can move the crafting bench and stash in. I can use the damn teleporter to get there from the grove anyways, it would just be much cleaner if I could at least reduce the annoyance of travel time and bouncing between instances of things.

Skill Gems: As said above, making my spells (cough) skills I mean into gems is a really cool idea I like. And in act 1, where these skills mostly came from quest rewards, I remember mentioning to a friend of mine who was also trying the game with me, that which skill gem you picked was rather important as it kind of determined to route you built your character. Now I have just finished act 3, and half a page in my stash is filled with piles of these gems, many of which are doubles. I still don't mind seeing them, but they don't have that same feel of being special as they did in the first act. I think that's a shame. Make them more rare so the players choices have a greater impact.

Final Thoughts: Currently, I am interested enough to continue to have a desire to play this game. I am disappointed however that it doesn't seem to be very good for co-op play with my friend. The game feels to easy for two players to want to play together. In fact, I wish I could choose to play at an instance difficulty that was harder for myself (maybe a slider to set me as if I am playing with 2 extra players in my group even though I am solo or something)

Impossible to be nice, this league got so many bugs that it's just impossible to list them all ! ( portal disappear when u enter the grove, ghosts mobs and boss, autoplant only works if u have seeds in inventory etc...)
Harvest mechanics is so annoying, there are too many mechanics in this game now, i'll leave this game if harvest is in the core game, i wish d4 was already here, Are you preparing his arrival with such crap ideas or do u keep ur good ideas for poe 2 ?

Hello! I've been around on and off since Beta and have many t-shirts signed by Chris in my closet.:-D

My feedback, both general and specific to Harvest:

Vulcan Engine (graphics):
- This is a major improvement, even on Beta. It plays very smoothly and it's more fun to play using this engine. It is by far the most important meta-improvement you could make to your game. Way to go! :-D

Music and sound:
- Great as ever! Please let us use the recent Angel/Demon trailer music in our hideouts!

General gameplay:
- The game gets more complex with each new addition (obviously) but it may get TOO complex to new and returning players, which is at times my case.
- The Atlas now is very messy! How the heck should I do it? Which map should I go at this moment? There are too many slots and mechanics with little to no explanation. In Standard, when I try to run maps, I often get messages stating issues with running said maps and no further explanation, which makes me worried about which map should I be running — but again, no hint. Please reconsider how to present the Atlas and make it more intuitive.

Harvest
- The Harvest League, so far, is very great fun! Its mechanics are a bit complex for anyone just wanting to kill monsters (you always do that, GGG...), but I guess it's intuitive enough to build your garden for the average player. The "auto-seed" buttons are great help.
- The crafting options are FANTASTIC for those leveling up a character from LV1, which is my case! You have a lot of control over your character's gear and you feel both more powerful and well-rounded while leveling up. This is great, because you don't have to level up very high to feel powerful and like a true hero/villain, which is how I believe it should be. Way to go!

I would rather be playing Synthesis than Harvest league.

Game has been decent fun. First play through, and occasionally asking questions of people (who are moderately helpful on average). In act 8 atm. On the whole the game seems on the easy side. There was a difficulty spike in act 4-5, then some issues at the start of act 6 until I pointedly upgraded my resistances. The issues in 4-5 may've been cuz I hadn't upgraded my gear enough. It's been fairly easy since then.
I tend to mention problems more than things that were right, simply because they spring to mind easier.

My build and gameplay really haven't changed much over the levels; I settled on a build pretty early simply because it's the equipment I had and it looked straightforward to play, and of the early skill gems I'd tried it seemed best. My primary skill gems have little changed since level, 20 or so (maybe earlier, not sure really). I've gotten some better support gems for them, and now items have more sockets, but the core gameplay is the same. It's also gotten even more one-shot oriented with the improved support gems; now most regular mobs just die to the opening attack, as do many of the blue and some of the more special ones. Many of the yellow (rare?) ones die in 2 hits, or one + bleed, so I don't even bother bringing up the totem for them like I used to. While it's satisfying to smash and see stuff die, it does get a bit repetitive.

When I looked around elsewhere a bit; it seems like it's easy to end up overleveling in your first game simply when trying to get all quests done, and doing a bit of exploring/being uncertain about paths and ordering and such. It does seem like I'm above the listed 'level' of an area quite frequently.

I've enjoyed the plotline; there's a few minor nuisances: sometimes the voices seem quiet/hard to understand, but at other times they're quite clear. It seems to happen more often with the minor NPCs that they're not talking loud enough or something; I've adjusted audio settings, and that made it a bit better, but it's still quite a problem at time. Some NPCs I just read the text in full because the audio is too quiet to hear. It's like its being sent to a low priority sound channel because the music is a higher priority or something, I dunno. On some of the less important NPCs the voice acting felt weak. It also seems like if I took the time to listen to all the NPCs commentary on each issue, the game would take twice as long, as going through zones is fairly quick.

I've been accumulating gear in the stash, I'm not sure how much of it is actually useful though; like I look at these cards and some of them seem rather unremarkable: that the items they give can just be found in general often enough. I've put some 'currency' items in the stash because they were clogging my inventory too much making it hard to pick up items. For awhile I didn't have any loot filter, so I could look at and learn the items better; since then I've put on the default loot filter, which cuts down on the clutter a lot and seems to do a fine job. Though there was never a clear/easy explanation of what exactly it does.

Leveling up gems is often a bit unsatisfying, in that I don't really "see" the improvement. A box comes up and you click on it, but often one level isn't that palpable a difference, and most of hte time I don't even look to see what the numbers are, so I don't even know to what extent its supposed to be getting better.

On the passive tree, I couldn't find a "totals" section which says how much I have of any given modifier. There are some things on which I have so many different ones that its' hard to know what the total I'm getting is; like how much +% damage for two handed weapons, or for maces, or how much plus life %. Cuz there's just so many different passives affecting them; I wish there was an easy to find sum total of them. It's been fun exploring the tree though, and pondering where to go. I mostly just go to the closest thing which looks like a good fit for my build or that I feel I need.

When I've died, the info was often rather unsatisfying; that is, I might die in one shots or very quickly to a boss, and have no info on what actually killed me, or what damage type it is. Often the graphics were'nt so clear about what resistance would be relevant against the attack, so I was simply left uncertain how to adjust a build. Not that it mattered much since the game allows you to just rapid charge bosses until they're dead. It often feels like things ar ea bit too one-shotty for me; that is most things either don't hurt at all, or kill me in 1-2 seconds.

The systems for building/improving yoru own gear with the found items are great fun, and I much enjoyed doing that, and being able to tweak gear and try different things. Though I do seem to accumulate currency and essences much faster than I expend them.

My primary basis of comparison is that I played a lot of diablo2 in years past; d2 tended to be harder, and to have more earlier things that could be difficult/pose a threat. Some of those bosses were very dangerous, though iirc they didn't tend to one shot you so much; there was more time for healing potions to kick in, or to recognize that you needed to run.


edit: I just figured out why my prophecies screen was nearly full; some of them required me to go back to specific zones from earlier acts. and now I've got one that requires me to do something with a unique weapon that my char wouldn't normally use; I'm not sure if I just keep it in my inventory waiting for the event or what, I'll just look it up.

This is my 2nd league that I have been in, delirium being the first. After going through it for a couple of weeks, I can honestly say I hate this league. You nerfed normal drop rates for supplies/currency we needed and created a crafting system to try to replace the lost currency. I only know this because my clan mates and streamers were mentioning how resources were tight and sustain was really bad compared to other leagues. The harvest crafting does not replace the lost currency at all and made this league very difficult for a newer player like me to enjoy. I will wait a few weeks and hopefully you guys revert the drop rates back to what they were in past leagues. If not, I'm definitely not continuing this league.

Harvest League Feedback:

I was a little slow getting to this new league but the long and short of it is: so far I hate it.

Going to the garden is an annoying break in game play that offers next to nothing.

There are a few good crafting options (the socket linking is nice and removes a very hated grind from the game for me) but the mini game of getting the higher level seeds to grow is just tedious, the UI is cluttered and claustrophobic, and it just doesn't seem worth the hassle.

I love POE, I've played it a lot over the years, and this is hands down my most hated league to date. I really hope it does not make it into the main game.