Strongbox = Currency Depletion Mechanic

Strongbox's in their current state appear to be a game mechanic specifically designed to produce a long term house-win in a House-Vs-Player scenario. It's very simple in fact: Give the players a mechanic which drains their currency over long periods of time in exchange for an occasional carrot on the stick. I get it, PoE2 must control inflation, but can GGG find a better currency wasting scenario to trick players into burning their currency?

I'm over 1,100 hours into this game with many characters between 93 and 96, and if I am being blatantly honest, I have yet to produce a single good drop on chests. I've tried it with maps in 900% waystone find range with ultra rarity, rarity stacking, stat stacker bot friends tagging along, etc. The chests simply don't drop. Over a long period of time, you will always lose to the house chasing chests and wasting atlas passives on them. Zero point in wasting time on them.

Here's what they actually do:

Initiation:
A cause to spend currency on upgrading chests, and you'll typically never get that currency back. Write it off as a loss immediately because you're not getting that currency back. It's ok though, the chest just cost you 2 Exalts, and a regal orb to upgrade.

Outcome A:
Oops, you beat it. I guess that wasn't supposed to happen because the game didn't reward anything worthwhile. Better luck chasing that carrot on a stick next time, sucker!

Outcome B:
Oops, you got 1 shotted by a random mob throwing a David and Goliath stone with his sling, you're going to need more than 3200 combined life + energy shield and max resist, 62 chaos resist, 96 levels, and $450 worth of equipment to survive those. Start over, and btw, grab your XP you lost. Time waster was a success.

Outcome C:
Congrats on your unique drop. Let's go ID the low quality version you just found. Awww, nope. Trash again. Time to chase another carrot, maybe it will be chest #2529 that will drop something resembling an end-game item.

Im running strongboxes on my atlas tree and im getting good enough loot I would say.

Also theres a pretty easy fix. If you dont feel its worth to use exalts on your strongboxes then dont do it.

Over a mil gold alone on rolladex lock combo unique strongbox chances, I'm sincerely happy it's working out for you. It would be great if it worked for me, but I was being genuine in my post. Could be total luck of the draw, math is lying to me over long periods of data acquisition, and it's all very much worth it after all. I can only provide my perspective, and like I said, over 1,100 hrs and they are a total waste of time+currency on my end.

Dont need to 6mod every strongbox. Ive gotten divines / greater jewellers from blue strongboxes.

Alch / regal / leave as magic are what I do normally.

3.2k hit pool is a little squishy if running t15s imo.

I assume by rolodex unique strongbox you mean Ventnor's Trove. The thing you should know about Ventnor's Trove is that it's a big gamble, as every time opening it is completely random. You might get 10 divs or you might get 20 identify scrolls. Or anything inbetween. Spending more to roll again does not increase odds of a better reward.

This is a unique strongbox, though. You can't generalize feedback about the strongbox system by your experience with one strongbox. Of course Ventnor's is a wash. You're playing the lottery there.

@Richmix#1062: "You're playing the lottery there," is a great analogy in this case. I believe that's precisely the issue!! Think of the time it takes to acquire the gold for Ventor's Assumed Failure chest. You really believe cranking out 10x-20x game worth of gold only to be given a 1/250 amazing find in a chest is progress for a character, or a good investment which should not be looked at closer by GGG? The exalts and regal orbs required to roll the lvl 81-82 items coming out of 20x endgame tier and upgraded waystones is fairly on par with the currency exchange gold cost for crafting mats. That's assuming you have a great loot filter of course! So, you take that assumed 20 game stretch with the costs for currency exchange generally allowing the player to balance on gold as they run those games and upgrade gear along the way. Insert Ventor's Assumed Failure chest and you can assume with the, "Lottery," mentality, you're going to be down currency for sure in an effort to get a single item for the same price of (20 games/ 2-3 great items you found along the way).

In nearly every conceivable scenario other than the occasional random data aberration, you as the player end up in a currency + time-loss scenario by opening Ventors Assumed Failure. You're better off on both currency and time loss if you simply skip every single one you find.

I will admit: Yes, you can win the lottery. The reason it's a big pay day however is because a lot of other people had to lose. Millions of losses. Playing the lottery is a poor time investment choice as a player if you ask me.

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1Cor12Three#1248 написал:

@Richmix#1062
In nearly every conceivable scenario other than the occasional random data aberration, you as the player end up in a currency + time-loss scenario by opening Ventors Assumed Failure. You're better off on both currency and time loss if you simply skip every single one you find.

Fundanebtally disagree. Ventors only require gold to open and theres really nothing else to spend gold on at endgame.

Unless you were going to buy 100,000 identify scrolls with that 2mil, you're not losing anything.

@Direfell
If you are trading items to craft up end-game top tier gear as you loot and play, you'll go through gold relatively quickly. I can burn through a mil balancing 15-20 runs after crafting costs and Alva are considered. I do find great gear, so not complaining, but it costs a lot to float.

I'm just going out on a limb here and guessing you $$ purchased the majority of whatever you have, or you are a one to two character type player (which is totally OK).

Just my gut feelings from doing some strongboxes.

You shouldn't be burning a ton of currency to max out strong boxes.

You should be generally upping them to rare if they spawn below it, but not often if at all spending exalts on them.

If you're investing so much currency in something you're well past the point of diminishing returns vs. the cost, you've realized this, and you keep doing this, that's 100% on you.

Can't blame this one on GGG.

I am very happy with stronboxes and learned my lesson to not spend ex on them and I profit more often than not. As blood mage with overflow hp 6k/3k and 3.1k es there are certain mod combinations on maps I'll never run or I die.