On your marks, get set, go! Race season 12 (Emberwake) in Path of Exile

Hey everyone! It's Friday, so I know that you are all in a fantastic mood, assuming that you have a weekend to look forward to. I know that weekends are rapidly becoming irrelevant, especially to those who are cursed with working in a service industry. Regardless, Friday has always had that special feeling about it to me. Perhaps it's a holdover from being a student and longing for the freedom that the weekend brought. Maybe? Whatever! I'm not here to wax philosophical on the psychological implication of comfort days. Let's talk about games!

So, although I am loathe to pen another article about Path of Exile, it seems that it will just have to do. I'm a pretty big believer in writing about things that you care about or are in  your area of expertise, and well, lately I've been eating, breathing, and sleeping this game. I was brainstorming ideas for new Youtube vids and came up with the idea of basically vlogging my efforts during the current race season. So today I'm going to explain a little bit about what racing actually is in Path of Exile. Spoiler; It's fun!

Well played, GGG, well played...

Every few months, Path of Exile releases new "challenge leagues." These leagues are fresh economies where players must start from scratch and build up new empires. Sounds like a terrible idea, right? Well, the catch is that these new leagues have features and changes that are not implemented into the core game yet. So it's basically a very clever way for Grinding Gears Games to fool us into pseudo beta testing an unfinished product. Sometimes, after the challenge leagues the new content makes it into the game as a core feature. Other times, only pieces of the new content make it in. It really depends on the community reaction during the leagues. Also during these challenge leagues, they will have what is called a "race season." Thursday marked the start of the Emberwake racing season. Prior to this season, they've always been called by numerical names, i.e. Season one, Season two. However, this season marks a departure from that naming convention. I suppose this is to highlight the signature feature of this league, fire.

Speaking back towards what racing actually is, the races are (usually) timed events in which fresh characters compete against each other within certain guidelines. For example, a race might be something like 30 minute Endless Ledge. What this means is that the player will have thirty minutes of time to get a character class of their choosing to the highest level they can running the zone Ledge repeatedly. When you finish clearing one ledge and get to the zone exit, you immediately start at the beginning of a new one. You receive points when you finish based on the things that you achieved during the thirty minute timer. Unless you are a very seasoned racer, the majority of the points you get will often come from attaining a certain level. If you hit level 10, you might get 3 race season points. Hit level 15 and maybe the number goes up to 5. You get the point. You can also get points for being the first accomplish certain objectives. If you are the first person to kill a boss in a race, you will almost certainly be given an extra couple of points. If you happen to be in the top 20 in levels for your class at the end, you will be awarded extra points. The race season is kept fresh by having a wide variety of different race events that go on at different times.

In this race season, Emberwake, there are a total of 120 race events scheduled. Yes, 120 events
spread out over the course of a one month period. Now, I'm sure you're thinking, "Why would anyone want to devote such a large amount of time to always making fresh characters?" The simple answer is this: rewards! Each race season comes with it's own set of rewards that you can get for accruing a certain amount of points over the course of that season. Some of the rewards are very easy to get to and even a very casual racer could get them racing only a few times, however, other rewards will be challenging for even the best. The rewards are even more desirable because they are alternate art versions of items that are in the game. So not only can you get some of the nicer items in the game, but they will also come with artwork that may never be available in game again. This can seriously affect the price of these items on the market.

I've ran a few races this league so far, and I'm planning on running a good deal more and documenting my efforts with videos on Youtube. So far, I haven't done very well, but for being new to racing, I think I'm doing fine. Have you ever thought about racing before? If you've raced before, what were your experiences with it? Let me know in the comments section below! Have a great weekend!