Yeah RF is an amazing mapper but not a great bosser. Sometimes I’ll make two builds. One to blast through mapping and one to nuke down bosses.

Or you can use Explosive Arrow which currently does everything well lol

The nice thing with Path of Exile is that you can always play next league and try out other content and systems.

I’d suggest picking one or two systems and just really learning those each league instead of attempting everything all at once.

Recently beat Lies of P.

I am a huge souls fan, and Elden Ring is probably my favorite game of all time.

I was expecting Lies of P to be a competent souls knockoff, but it’s so much more than that.

It has some issues, sure. But I really think the game is superb. I am beyond excited to see what they do next in the genre. They got so many things right.

Steam Deck is excellent for work travel. Easy to set up and play in bed at a hotel.

If you want a turn based RPG, OctoPath Traveler 2 is a really excellent option.

I really like Divinity Original Sin 2, but this game is far better in almost every way. It definitely feels like an evolution.

Pretty much a perfect summary, well said.

The short version:

• Game is good, came out at the right time, had a lot of hype and lived up to the hype

Longer details:

• The game is just really well made. It’s extremely fun, very polished (except for a few weird bugs), and complete
• It has a massive IP tied to it. This game had impossible levels of hype and it met those expectations somehow
• The recent D&D movie was a large success, and D&D in general has been the most popular it has ever been lately
• Divinity OS 2 Definitive Edition was very well received, people trust Larian to deliver a good product
• People are sharing this game with their friends. They had a strong marketing push as well as really strong word of mouth
• Final Fantasy 16 left a lot of us wanting a more traditional RPG after FF16 was anything but traditional
• We currently live in an era of games like Diablo 4 which ask for a $70 price tag, and then also have a paid battle pass and paid cosmetics. This game came out at $60 content complete with no additional microtransactions. Ultimately that makes this game much easier to reccomend to people.

On Windows 11 with an Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU I’ve had better luck with DX11 at the moment.

Vulkan has been slightly less stable for me overall, and has had more visual glitches.

Meanwhile DX11 has been largely flawless on my system.

I think if you’re using an AMD system Vulkan may be slightly better. But it definitely feels like DX11 is the current “default” option for a reason.

I completely agree with this take.

I have my gaming desktop, gaming laptop, and Steam deck.

My gaming desktop is my strong preference. It’s powerful, I built it myself, and it can handle basically everything I can throw at it.

My gaming laptop is really nice for travel, where I can’t bring my desktop. I was working at a job that was like 30% travel, lots of flying. It was nice to have in the hotel to get some gaming in.

On shorter/busier work trips though, I’d usually opt for just taking my iPad and Steam Deck. It’s a bit more limited in terms of what’s available, but the Steam Deck is a super capable machine. The Steam Deck also didn’t exist when I started traveling originally.

I really love how Last Epoch approaches skills. Feels like the near perfect balance between casual and complex.

I wish the game felt a little bit more polished and refined overall, but they have a very strong foundation to work from.

I feel the same way. I’m currently working through heavensword and it just feels like there’s so much filler.

Half the time I feel like missions were just put into the expansion to pad out the game time because most of the epic stuff doesn’t happen until later.

I find myself skipping a lot of the dialog and just watching a recap on YouTube later.

I enjoyed the campaign of Diablo 4, but as you mentioned the game has a serious lack of depth.

It became especially obvious to me once I hit the endgame and realized there just wasn’t that much to do.

In Path of Exile especially there is so much depth and content around the endgame that it feels like there’s almost too much to do.

I don’t think Diablo 4 is bad, but I do think it’s far too casual. The combat is satisfying and the graphics are great. But the skill tree and RPG systems are massively lacking.

So once you complete the campaign you will begin maps. There are 3 tiers of maps, you have white, then yellow, then red. I consider mapping to be the endgame.

If this is your first build, the endgame will be rather punishing and you might not make it very far. It took me until my third character roughly before I was able to successfully push into red maps and beyond. There are special bosses to hunt down, and all the side content like Heist and Delve are very rewarding and fun.

Additionally you get another passive tree that allows you to customize your mapping experience however you want. Zizaran has a really nice video going over the endgame. It’s quite long, but very helpful. https://youtu.be/uf4wnvkS-mI

It takes awhile for Path of Exile to truly click. I think it’s the best ARPG ever made, but the initial learning curve is pretty steep. Things really open up in the endgame. And we have Path of Exile 2 right around the corner which is awesome.