So my last couple weeks have been a bit all over the place….
I originally planned to continue my Building in Starbound mini-series but I’ve come up against a couple
things that I feel are important. First
of all, I don’t have that many resources available to me, especially with the
recent update I’ve had to get back to my Homebase to work from my
foundations. It’s been a bit all over
the place so I felt that I couldn’t really do something to the quality I was
looking for with it. I did look into
using my older Terraria save, but there are a couple functions that I much
prefer in Starbound such as augmenting existing blocks into something else e.g.
glass block with frame for a window.
There has also been the factor of some things I’ve found
quite interesting recently and of course it’s much easier to write about
something you’re enjoying rather than half-arsing it. I do want to return to it in the future but I
think I should spend some time re-educating myself about the practice of
drawing building features before trying to replicate it in a virtual
world. In the mean-time, I have topics
outline for the next couple weeks so should get back on schedule quickly.
Without further to do, let’s talk about Path of Exile….
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| My first character from PoE. Rather under-powered in comparison to my current play-through. Screenshot taken 17/5/2015 |
I originally played PoE early 2013 coming off of playing
Torchlight and getting a lot of enjoyment out of it. ARPG’s had never been a genre I had played in
the past, but by this point it was becoming a genre I could see myself playing
for years to come. I played a Templar
which is a character that can naturally fit between the physical strength and
magical caster to which I took a tanky ‘sword and board’ approach with
elemental melee attacks. I got a lot of
enjoyment out of it, but it lost my interest in the later levels as it started
to take a decent amount of time to clear mobs and I kinda wasn’t as tanky as I
once thought. Since then, I have become more
aware of the game’s mechanics and with the announcement of the expansion the
game has perked my interest once again.
This time however, I wanted to take a different approach.
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| My current Templar with much higher dps while still keeping similar hp. Screenshot taken 17/5/2015 |
I watched videos on the game from YouTubers such as ZiggyD,
trawled the wiki and used the PoEBuilder to see how one can tailor a character
and after playing through a couple new characters in ‘softcore’ I decided to go
for it and make a character in the ongoing (or previous depending when you read
this) Hardcore 1 month league. I made a
Templar again, but this time I looked to use projectile magic with buffs and
totem summon with a nice mixture of stats for both defence and offense. I was aware of the resistance reduction
during the difficulties so planned accordingly, focused strongly on a core set
of skills rather than lots of different ones and built regeneration to make
sure that I wouldn’t be held back too often in terms of efficiency. At the time of writing this, I’m half way
into act 2 on Cruel difficulty and although I’ve had a couple close calls (~5%
hp or less) I’m still holding on. To the
well versed PoE player, this isn’t anything special, but for me this means a
lot as it took something to want to play in a mode where everything’s on the
line. Being cautious in the hardcore
league has made my take on certain situations a bit slower, but as a by-product
of this I have been able to take in the surroundings and see how much is going
on as you traverse the landscape. One
such place was the Lunaris Temple with particular mention of level 3.
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| Gold detail, smooth decor and sewers of blood throughout the lower Lunaris Temple. Screenshot taken 17/5/2015 |
Lunaris is a place of contrast at heart within the bleakness
of Wraeclast. With grand walkways and
golden motifs wrapped in quality cloths accenting the bold colours it gives the
impression of a once powerful empire holding residence. As you descend thou, you see Piety’s work
(the boss of this location) created from a swarm of bodies and the blood runs
dark red throughout its sewer system that perfectly back-up the array of
miscreated beings that look to attack you as you progress through the
area. The gold and cloth are still
there, it’s just being saturated by the blood creating a contrast that makes a
piece of architecture seem so bleak and disgraceful have its own beauty. This contrast is a narrative of architecture
that has taken the building materials, the cladding and the décor and made
something new of it. Darkness, grit and
grey can seem boring in many games but in the right hands (like with
architecture) so much can still be done with its aesthetic.
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| Finer things in life within the Lunaris Temple. Screenshot taken 17/5/2015 |
Being someone who finds Brutalism a fascinating time of
architectural design, I very much hold this opinion that this bleakness can
inspire and morph into something special.
Brutalism is often regarded as concrete
monstrosities due to their concrete construction and greyish look, but
through human interaction it has its own appeal. Places like the Barbican Centre in London
encapsulate this by being grey and concrete while adding different levels of
high-rise, gardens, water and larger form walkways than your average tower
block.
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| Barbican Centre, London. Photograph taken 14/02/2010 |
That being said, I wanted to find a piece of real-world
architecture that encapsulates the Lunaris level 3 map and I feel that this
does it…
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| A bone chandelier at the Sedlec Ossuary. Image from Wikipedia 18/5/2015 |
The Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic is a piece of
architecture that makes bleakness and morbidity beautiful as it creates art
through its bone collection. Its chandelier,
candelabra’s fixtures and various other items are all made from bones of the
dead to around 40,000 remains (if Wikipedia is to be believed, unfortunately I’m
not sure on the number myself I thought it was closer to 20,000). On the surface, this place may seem outrageous
or morbid, but its architecture has gone beyond its walls and created a
narrative from it, much like Lunaris. It’s
in the nature of the ARPG to focus on the mob pulls and skill affects, but if
you find yourself running through PoE anytime soon, take a second to look at
the environment and think about what it portrays about what you’re doing and
where you may be going. I hope you found
this interesting and good luck to those who choose to take the jump into a hardcore
mode for the first time.
Let’s hope my Templar stays alive up to the end of Cruel at
least. -60% resistances is gonna be a
bit of a bastard to deal with….
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