There is a mountain called Path of Exile 2. There are a lot of ways up this mountain. Some ways are faster. Some ways are slower.
Some paths simply do not lead to the top.
The first step in climbing is deciding at all that you want to climb. It’s an invisible choice, in the context of the game, but it’s a choice. It is one of many choices, and it is the first step, but it is not the first choice. That choice was made back when you first made your character, and selected which class you wanted.
Path of Exile was also a mountain, but it was a slightly harsher one. Maybe not more difficult, but less accepting of certain types of mistakes. Path of Exile 2 is kinder than its prequel. Respeccing is much easier—but there is no option to change class.
If you decide that as a monk, you simply cannot climb this mountain, I’m sorry. Leave the base-camp. You’re going to have to make a new character and walk there again.
You don’t give up everything though. You’ll still have all the items and currency you got on the way up, so your second trek to endgame will be faster. More importantly, you’ll have the knowledge.
Let’s talk about that knowledge. Path of Exile 2 is a very popular mountain. There are a lot of maps of the mountain, and it’s your choice if you want to use them. Frankly, it can seem foolish not to. The mountain is big, and there are a million terrifying choices to make. What equipment should I bring? What path should I take? What skills, what support skills, what meta support skills? How do I manage the trees, specifically the passive skill, atlas skill, and sub-atlas skill trees?
Personally, I haven’t looked anything up yet. That doesn’t mean I haven’t learned anything from the community. Sometimes on my trek I’ll encounter fellow hikers, far further along than I am, and I’ll glean information about what they’re doing from observation.
I ran into a lot of players also playing Witches with 50% of their health reserved, telling me that they picked certain nodes on the ascendancy class. Those nodes seemed to be working well for them, so I decided to try them out.
I witnessed their entourages of arsonist skeletons, ascending the mountain beside them. So I turned off some auras, and called up some more shambling pyromaniacs of my own.
Sure, I’m not looking up a guide. But I’m using the trade websites, swapping my exalted orbs for alchemy orbs at favorable rates. I’m climbing by myself, but I’m absolutely not alone.
The result is that progress is slow. By numerical standards, I’m maybe a third of the way to the top. By practical standards, I suspect I’m less than a tenth of the way there. Map tier 6/15, after 80 hours.
But I’m still climbing.
Perhaps calling it the top is a bit of misnomer. Maybe it’s just a peak.
My “biggest” achievement in the original Path of Exile was getting a single kill on the end game boss called Uber Elder. It took probably dozens of hours to get there, and a massive number of attempts (less than 20, so mechanically, not the hardest boss I’ve ever fought). But probably the most hours to actually do the fight.
That’s because while Path of Exile wasn’t an incredibly hard game, it was an incredibly punishing one. Die, and you lose 10% progress to the next level. In the endgame, you got six attempts at each boss or fight and then it’s game over.
As a fight, Uber Elder was incredibly punishing in many ways. You have to fight the two hardest bosses in the game at once. But the main reason it took dozens of hours was because getting to that fight required a specific set of items, and getting those items required another specific set of items, and getting those…
You get the point. It’s turtles all the way down. And to be clear, once you use those items to start the fight, they’re gone, win or lose.
I don’t know how rare beating that boss even is. I beat it once. There are probably folks who have done it hundreds of times.
Path of Exile 2 is even more punishing, at least right now. You get one attempt. Die a single time, and you’re kicked out, back to your hideout with chunk of experience gone, and no recourse.
Better luck next time.
Except… luck probably isn’t the reason you died. Not really. When I die, it’s usually because I’m less cautious than I should be. I was a little too greedy, a little too reckless, not paying quite enough attention. Then, a slip, and suddenly I am tumbling back down the mountain, the last 30 minutes of progress wiped out.
It’s then that I’m tempted to look up a guide, to find a map. But I don’t really want to. A math quiz when you’ve been given the answer key is an exercise is scribing, and nothing more. For better, or more likely worse, I want to earn my success. When my enemies fall, I want it to because I outplayed them. More realistically, I want it to be because I solved the puzzle the game developer set in front me.
I want to climb the mountain myself. If that means I never reach the peak, so be it.