The newest Path of Exile season, or league, is a great example of why you should never look at how other players are faring in a loot-based action RPG. Once you see what life is like when the RNG gods are generous, all you will know is pure envy.
A handful of lucky players are posting their loot hauls from the new genesis tree introduced in Path of Exile’s latest expansion, Keepers of the Flame. Basically, it’s a freaky, haunted tree that gives birth to powerful items based on preferences you set. It’s only been a few days since it launched and players are swimming in the kind of loot you’d usually have to grind long hours for.
pathofexile from r/pathofexile/comments/1om7okr/x21_divine_drop_from_tree
For context: Finding 20 Divine Orbs on day three of the league skyrockets you into millionaire status if you like to trade with other players. And even if you don’t trade, Divine Orbs have the unique ability to reroll the value of the mods on your item, which can be very powerful when there’s one that isn’t quite perfect enough for your inner min-maxer.
There’s also a chance the tree can drop rare unique items, like this well-known belt Reddit user Ylliade managed to spawn. You can also find uniques with mods on them that only show up if the tree makes them.
Meanwhile, everyone else is responding to these finds with jealousy and questions about how they set up their tree. I hate to say it, but I don’t think copying their build is going to make the Divines drop any faster. I’ve played enough RPGs to know that sometimes you’re not the chosen one.
The chances of any of this happening for you are slim, mostly because the skill tree that helps curate your spoils has no guarantees. You can tell it to roll for rare currency and give it a small percentage chance to drop them in a full stack, but the rest is up to good old RNG. But it’s one novel example of how powerful this new mechanic can be if you set it up right and can accept lower-tier, but still useful items.
If you aren’t aiming quite as high, the tree is just as good for printing out high-value gear while you’re playing through the campaign. Most areas will have big hands sticking out of the ground that will cause monsters to spawn in. Defeating enough of them before a timer expires rewards you with some loot, but it also feeds you the blood you can feed to the tree for items. It’s pretty easy to suck up a bunch of this tree juice as you play, which you can then go and use to spawn items that you’d normally never see before reaching the endgame.
I clearly picked a great time to start playing PoE in earnest after dumping hundreds of hours into Path of Exile 2. It’s the season of giving and it’s all thanks to this weird tree that keeps coughing up loot. It’s so lucrative that it kind of feels like it should be nerfed, but Grinding Gear Games hasn’t touched it in the few hotfixes it’s already put out. And I doubt it wants to ruin the fun players are having as they line up to see if today is their lucky day.
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