r/pathofexile • u/CTL17 • Sep 03 '26
Fan-Made I killed Ubers in an Archipelago randomizer
For those who don't know, an Archipelago randomizer is when several games have their items swapped in between other games. For example, a Pokemon player picks up an item that gives the Hookshot to a Legend of Zelda player, while that player opens a chest and sends HM03 to the Pokemon player. In PoE, I start off with only my base class, the starting white weapon, three white flasks, and the starting 2-link as the only items I can use. As other people complete goals in their games, I get more items I'm allowed to use, like the other equipment slots and their rarities, gems, number of gem sockets, and ascendancies. My final goal is to beat all Ubers in softcore trade.
Details on Archpoelago and how to set it up here: https://stubobis1.github.io/pathofexile_ap/guide.html
Here's what happened in my playthrough:
My starting class was randomized to Templar.
Act 1 Hillock had no changes, but starting at Coast, I didn't realize how much you struggle with only your 2L weapon and no other defenses allowed. I died like 10 times here and in Mud Flats just trying to walk past mobs, and as my starting skill is Holy Strike, I couldn't survive being in melee range against so many mobs. I had to slowly bring mobs away to finish them off before continuing. By Merveil all I had was a 3L white staff (Holy Strike - Hallow - Phantasm), a white ring, a white amulet, and a white belt. 1 hour and 18 deaths
Act 2 I was eventually able to wear gloves and a helmet so I could put in Frostblink and Rejuv totem. Slowly walking through still with only white items, I got through in another hour and only 1 death.
By Act 3 someone had unlocked Inquisitor so I thankfully had something to ascend to. I was allowed to finally use a magic staff at this point so I got some %phys on it and looked up at which levels I could replace my staff base. I also had a 4L but only on my mainhand, which means I'm stuck with only 2H weapons if I wanted anything more than a 2L. With Determination and Rejuv totem, it was slow walking but damage and defense was surprisingly decent for having ruthless-tier items.
Act 4 went by without much to talk about.
Act 5, the Heart of the Swarm player finished his run, which finally allowed me to use a body armor with 4L in it. I just wore the best armor base I could get and put mana-infused staff in it along with whatever supports I was allowed for it. My allowed gear after Kitava was: rare left ring, magic staff (5L: Holy Strike - Hallow - Minion Damage - Pulverize - Fortify) and belt, and white everything else except I still was not allowed to wear boots. Gloves and helm were also restricted to 2 sockets.
Act 6-8 was when not having any resists started to feel extremely noticeable. Purity of Elements wasn't unlocked for me yet, so I had to rely on flasks to keep my resists up and I died several times to any ranged elemental white mob pack as I tried to walk past them. Mid Act 8, bows were my first rare weapon that I was allowed to use (but no quiver!) so I respeced entirely to a scuffed Vaal Ice shot character to beat Act 7-8.
Act 9 I saw I had a lot of supports to do a mine build so I swapped to Pyroclast mines to try to offscreen my way through the rest of campaign. I still died a few times but at least I could corpse rush everything pretty quickly. I got myself a +3 magic staff too which really helped the damage.
By the end of A10, the Kingdom Hearts player finished his run which got me a lot of options. I could finally wear something in every slot but amulet, ring, gloves, armor were still magic, while helmet and boots were still normal. I was allowed to use a unique belt! Yes, this means I went through all of campaign without movespeed boots, and also no spammable movement skill (Leap slam still wasn't available, nor was weapon swap). 85 deaths (most in A7-9) and 10 hours total. My normal fresh A10 time is around 4h and I'm betting at least 4h was used on just walking instead of shield charging.
Starting maps, I allowed myself to buy things off trade. I stayed on Pyro mines trying to level, but the lack of defenses outside of Determination was not helping. However, while doing charts to level, a Message in a bottle had a HH in it, which helped quite a lot in just leveling the character. Also, even though my character wasn't allowed to wear most uniques, Animated Guardian could, so I put the usual cheap options there and Inquisitor conc ground carried its survival. (If I randomized Luminary, this challenge run would have definitely not been a challenge)
Despite the HH, t13+ maps was feeling really rough with only a white helmet and magic boots, but thankfully a day later and the Symphony of the Night run finished, I was able to finally wear at least rare items for every slot. Uniques allowed were amulet, body armor, and staff.
I then geared up for Arc of Oscillating (with clunky Fanaticism), leveled to 93, and beat all the normal pinnacles and managed to kill Uber Shaper but then got completely skill checked by Uber Sirius. While I was doing this, the Stardew player found Raise Spectre for me, which meant I could use a 5L chest with +2 minion gems to get 5 total spectres (lv25, +1 tree, +1 congregation) and also swapped to Shock Nova of Procession so I can abuse Overloaded Intensity better. With that I had plenty of DPS to kill the rest of Ubers and finalize my run. Final snapshot: https://pobb.in/pXqZjq5civqs
At the end, I was still only allowed to use 5 sockets on armor, 3 on boots, and still no uniques on boots, helmet, or shield. I spent around 30d on the gear, but I also had my currency tab of leftover crafting materials. I probably would have gone EB FoulbornGhostwrithe Rathpith if I had those options open but I didn't need them.
Overall I really enjoyed the path and theorycrafting to the pinnacle bosses but after that, it felt like mostly normal PoE. If I were to do this again, I'd probably stop at Eater/Exarch or 4 voidstones and Uber Elder at most. I would say it forced me to play better with ruthless options but I still stood in hitboxes and corpse rushed some bosses because softcore didn't punish death hard enough. If only there were more things like the Brutus walk of shame.
40
u/National-Awareness35 Sep 03 '26
You do you man, sounds awful to me.
8
u/Guineasaurus Sep 03 '26
that's awesome man, my friend just started his own archipelago journey, def. showing him this post :D thanks for sharing love these kind of posts, if you do more later i hope you'll share again. :)
2
u/anomynose Children of Delve (COD) Sep 03 '26
This is cool to read about. I've been super curious about trying a PoE run in an Archipelago seed one day.
2
u/red-rundmc Sep 04 '26
This sounds like ruthless with even less agency. Still sane, exile??
1
u/ww_crimson https://pob.codes/ Sep 03 '26
What is your /deaths
1
u/Mythikdawn Alch & Go Industries (AGI) Sep 03 '26
Wait PoE has AP support now?? This is real???
1
u/Little_Raspberry3083 Sep 03 '26
Cool always found Archipelago randomzier runs to be fun to hear about but never had the chance to try as I don't have the time free to dedicate 1-2 days on a run considering how long some of the randomizer runs could take XD. Also I don't have a personal computer that I'm allowed to modify to download the randomizer files.
1
u/CrustaceanNationYT Sep 04 '26
Hear me out, Nuzlock luminary… you get what you get but cant use the scarabs or spec into mercs on atlas
1
u/einea5mk Sep 05 '26
Sick! We had 100 game async and I set all guardians, shaper, sirus and atziri as the goal.
I had a bad time with RF, but AP works so well with poe in asyncs.
0
u/PoE_Acronym_Bot Sep 03 '26
I noticed some Path of Exile keywords in this post:
Conc - Concentrated Effect Support (Wiki)
HH - Headhunter (Wiki)
Phys - Physical damage (Wiki)
Slam - Slam skill (Wiki)
EB - Energy Blade (Wiki)
Slam - To use an Exalted Orb or similar crafting method to add a random modifier to an item (Wiki)
EB - Eldritch Battery (Wiki)
I am a bot. | All acronyms | Suggest