Act1 difficulty

2600 hours in PoE 1 — best game ever. I understand this may just not be the game for me, but:

When you reach around mid Act 2, your build starts to come together and it begins to feel good — better and better the further you go.

But this Act 1 difficulty is absolutely crazy to me.

If the point of the game is high difficulty, then why isn’t that difficulty from mid Act 2 onwards?

And if the difficulty at the end of the campaign / early maps is the correct difficulty (which I hope it is), then why is Act 1 so insanely hard?

It’s kind of the same problem as RoA’s Act 1 in PoE 1. Why scare people off in Act 1 when that’s not what the game actually feels like at all?

I’ve tried for three days now to “just do it,” push through, and get to the fun part — but it just pisses me off and I log out. I can’t do it. Killing every pack slowly and safely… f that.

Skill issue, as the haters say. Whatever.

Honestly? The game feels a bit too easy. I still miss the 0.1 balance. I’m still at Act 2 so I’m going to hold judgement until I finish the campaign.

Part of the issue is skill power is not the same across all the weapons. You have wave clearing gems contagion and essence drain, lightning arrow ect by level 10 and then you go to maces and get get some slow slam or crossbows where it takes 4 seconds for a grenade to explode.


I've learned at this point if you want to get past the early game until you can get to an ascendancy then you should 100% just go with whatever weapon has the best skills to clear that works around your passives tree.

The game has problems with this. There's like 3 builds that are very good at clear starting around say level 6 and they tend to go through the campaign pretty well. Also your alts will be good at Act1 since you'll have so many resources to make their starting skills great (no level restriction on gem supports or links).

The problem is then trying to league start as any of the non-blaster builds is very painful most of the time. The only way to overcome it is by pure luck of getting a good weapon, or by just gritting your teeth and getting through it until you get access to your higher level skills that will let you clear better. You can try to increase the odds by checking the vendor all the time but that is tedious.

IMO the crux of the problem is the non-meta starts simply have no real way to deal with the amount of monsters the game starts throwing at you very early. You need to be able to deal lots of good AOE as soon as possible or you're screwed.

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Henkiii#4452 wrote:

2600 hours in PoE 1 — best game ever. I understand this may just not be the game for me, but:

When you reach around mid Act 2, your build starts to come together and it begins to feel good — better and better the further you go.

But this Act 1 difficulty is absolutely crazy to me.

If the point of the game is high difficulty, then why isn’t that difficulty from mid Act 2 onwards?

And if the difficulty at the end of the campaign / early maps is the correct difficulty (which I hope it is), then why is Act 1 so insanely hard?

It’s kind of the same problem as RoA’s Act 1 in PoE 1. Why scare people off in Act 1 when that’s not what the game actually feels like at all?

I’ve tried for three days now to “just do it,” push through, and get to the fun part — but it just pisses me off and I log out. I can’t do it. Killing every pack slowly and safely… f that.

Skill issue, as the haters say. Whatever.

my personal opinion is that you have not cracked the code and see the matrix.

first time i did the act one one year ago, i had similar thoughts like yourself on why the game is so difficult.

after i beat the game after lots of deaths, things become easier on my second and subsequent characters.

after you crack the code and "see" the light and become better at the game, you will realise that all the bosses in this game is just a joke, waiting to be slaughtered by yourself.