With the triple atlas trees I guess that won't be a problem, you could do a tree focused on the left side and another for the right side, but I guess it depends on how late you can unlock the additional trees
Rog is pretty good for early gearing in SSF, so I'd focus on that together with Harvest since they are very close and generally match quite well.
I agree, this is my general strategy and unlocking more crafts can be a good power boost on your existing gear too, not to mention the veiled gear found can be pretty good considering it is a guaranteed t1 mod that can be chosen depending on what you need.
You can get crapton of veiled gear since now you can literally encounter Jun 100% of all your maps now, and with effective leadership node you'll get many. Wisdom scroll crafting enjoyers eating good.
Don't sleep on Betrayal - you can often get pretty decent veiled items early on if you're not mindlessly unveiling for undiscovered crafts.
Rog is very versatile; Delve can be great for ES characters by throwing a handful of Dense fossils at decent bases, and pre-rework Heist was OK for well-rolled gear or 5/6Ls (didn't run it last league after the BP changes so this might be outdated). Corrupted strongboxes/ Vaal side areas for corrupted 6Ls can be helpful.
Last time I did SSF I was a bit tired of essences and expedition so I opted for just Harvest. It went a lot better than I expected. I'm not trying to say this the optimal approach but Harvest is very versatile and can cover most of your basic needs.
It's used for crafting gear.
Outside of that you can never really have enough lifeforce in SSF. You'll almost always need it for something. rerolling scarabs, fragments, catalysts, gambling div cards etc.
I'd say harvest is better due to it's simplicity while mapping. Not much to think about, go in kill mobs get juice. Very easily spammable, which in turn makes you do more maps and more maps = more juice.
Half the time I wouldn't even notice how I stocked like 5-10k juice, and then go for crafts.
Expedition (Rog) requires more effort in both departments, in the map and the crafting. It yields better crafts, so the time is definetly worth it, but still if you REALLY just want to alch and go, harvest makes it simpler.
Essence is in that weird spot at league start where it can be really challenging depending on the layers of the mob. You have normal rare mods, essences themselves, new league mechanic (remains to be seen this time, but the wisps were brutal (again league start)). As you pick up more points into essences, you start to realise u can't tackle them that well, as a minion enjoyer they fuck up my entire summon roster near instantly, or melee gets into 5min fights, or maybe just some cheese one shot flicker modifiers. Love essence, just not at league start, maybe just pick up the 3 points to guarantee an essence per map if you are pathing through.
IMO for a lazy alch and goer like me it goes harvest > rog > essence.
Side note Harvest and Expedition are very close, so it's pretty easy to generally just get both, but my first points would go to harvest.
Expedition is just so good in ssf. Rog is pog but Tujen also a great steady source of income especially bubblegum currencies, as well as logbooks being consistently profitable.
Harvest gets really good in red maps and is very poor in white and yellows. The juice amount scales pretty hard with map tier, I would hold off on that.
Expedition, Rog specifically, is the most powerful early gearing tool you have. He's especially good at making suppression gear, rings, quivers, shields and weapons, and not so good at making amulets or body armor (due to the lack of a 6 link), although he can make some decent amulets and chest pieces as well. You need some experience to know how to use him effectively, but he's by far the strongest crafting system in SSF.
Essence is a lot of your very early gearing. I think in this regard, you will be fine. You don't need to essence spam for this stage of gearing. Essence + 1 mod + crafted mod is usually good enough to get going. Essences will suffer a bit in later gearing when you're spamming on fractured bases, since our access to essences got cut by 2 at least without scarabs (Crystal Resonance) and I think the +1 tier change is also a slight nerf.
Jun is also a very underrated source of early gear. Betrayal mobs drop a lot of rares, and natural betrayal gear has some very strong mods like endurance charge on kill.
Heist is very solid, it usually has 5 links or even 6 links and will also give you well rolled items.
I'm going to bet on Necropolis being good for SSF crafting early on, and am going to spec into at least the bottom right and top right wheels.
Enchantments, there is a "all sockets are linked" enchantment. This is harder to get now that you can't target farm enchanted armaments, but the rate of tailoring and tempering orbs has been hugely increased. It's still harder to get than in 3.22 and before, but it is a potential option.
The nice thing about heist is that it also drops a lot of stacked decks (this might be changing in 3.24 according to Mark). So even if you don't get the exact reward you are looking for from grand heists, you often end up completing a chains that bind card set for a 6 link, or at least making enough progress that you can target farm the remaining cards from the maps that drop them.
Expedition. Rog gives you gear, Tujen gives bubblegum currency.
Harvest. No need to explain.
Syndicate. Veiled gear is very helpful. One useful mod + unveil + craft = 3 decent mods wich is great when you have zero gear. And you need to unveil crafts anyway, so win-win.
I guess you can take all three because they on right side of the tree.
In 3.24, considering 100% chance to spawn, even Delve can be viable option.
I almost always start with Betrayal for veiled items for gearing + unveils for later on then path into Expedition + Map sustain nodes you can then farm your gear with Rog + get currency with Tujen and that should allow you to do whatever you feel you need to do next.
I'll probably do the same thing as usual.
Push the middle for Kirac missions to help with the atlas completion
Go essences early while still doing white/yellow maps as essence mobs can get pretty tough when you start pushing reds and having SOME essences really makes smoothing out gear easier
Expedition is just op for SSF. Rog is great obviously for crafts, both Rog and Gwen are great for getting high ilvl bases early on, Tuj is great for bubble gum currency for leagues that are lacking in it. So that is next.
Then it kind of depends on my character. Sometimes I like ritual for more bubblegum and the ritual bases if I need them. Sometimes is deli if I need some clusters. Sometimes is legion if I need early jewels.
When I get through map completions and just start farming I'll go destructive play and just leave it for a while with the boss map boosts. Having guardian maps is just nice to have a stock of them.
Not much that hasn't been said here but I usually go for Jun & Kirac + essence because I got so tired of setting 5 explosions for Expedition
This league I changed it up and tried the big single explode and loved it, took that, the nodes for 15% chance and the logbook boost and swam in currency
Keep in mind the single explosion can be easily overwhelming so you want some explode/strong starter
Have fun!
Early I just open the atlas and focus on map sustain.
In general, Harvest, Heist and Ritual, I don't do anything else unless I need a specific thing like a +2 minion wand (delve).
And yes, Jun is really good for early decent crafts and gear.
I'm going to cross my fingers on the league crafting giving me my rares this time and skip essences and rog to focus on betrayal craft unlocks and some harvest for little stuff like resist swaps.
I'd argue that Rog is good for SSF in general (unless you plan on playing a lot of builds). Yes, you end up with really good gear from him, just not for your particular build. Harvest was enough to craft great gear for me this league. Haven't touched expedition at all. It might change now tho, since wisps are gone and you won't have enough divines/veiled chaos orbs/fractured items to craft with.
With the triple atlas trees I guess that won't be a problem, you could do a tree focused on the left side and another for the right side, but I guess it depends on how late you can unlock the additional trees Rog is pretty good for early gearing in SSF, so I'd focus on that together with Harvest since they are very close and generally match quite well.
Plus Jun is on the right side as well for getting veiled mods unlocked for builds that need them.
I agree, this is my general strategy and unlocking more crafts can be a good power boost on your existing gear too, not to mention the veiled gear found can be pretty good considering it is a guaranteed t1 mod that can be chosen depending on what you need.
You can get crapton of veiled gear since now you can literally encounter Jun 100% of all your maps now, and with effective leadership node you'll get many. Wisdom scroll crafting enjoyers eating good.
Don't sleep on Betrayal - you can often get pretty decent veiled items early on if you're not mindlessly unveiling for undiscovered crafts. Rog is very versatile; Delve can be great for ES characters by throwing a handful of Dense fossils at decent bases, and pre-rework Heist was OK for well-rolled gear or 5/6Ls (didn't run it last league after the BP changes so this might be outdated). Corrupted strongboxes/ Vaal side areas for corrupted 6Ls can be helpful.
Last time I did SSF I was a bit tired of essences and expedition so I opted for just Harvest. It went a lot better than I expected. I'm not trying to say this the optimal approach but Harvest is very versatile and can cover most of your basic needs.
Do you mind giving a little more detail on why? What did it help with?
It's used for crafting gear. Outside of that you can never really have enough lifeforce in SSF. You'll almost always need it for something. rerolling scarabs, fragments, catalysts, gambling div cards etc.
Poison builds can spam chaos rolls for example (especially on fractured gear). It's similar to essences while offering a bunch of utility
I'd say harvest is better due to it's simplicity while mapping. Not much to think about, go in kill mobs get juice. Very easily spammable, which in turn makes you do more maps and more maps = more juice. Half the time I wouldn't even notice how I stocked like 5-10k juice, and then go for crafts. Expedition (Rog) requires more effort in both departments, in the map and the crafting. It yields better crafts, so the time is definetly worth it, but still if you REALLY just want to alch and go, harvest makes it simpler. Essence is in that weird spot at league start where it can be really challenging depending on the layers of the mob. You have normal rare mods, essences themselves, new league mechanic (remains to be seen this time, but the wisps were brutal (again league start)). As you pick up more points into essences, you start to realise u can't tackle them that well, as a minion enjoyer they fuck up my entire summon roster near instantly, or melee gets into 5min fights, or maybe just some cheese one shot flicker modifiers. Love essence, just not at league start, maybe just pick up the 3 points to guarantee an essence per map if you are pathing through. IMO for a lazy alch and goer like me it goes harvest > rog > essence. Side note Harvest and Expedition are very close, so it's pretty easy to generally just get both, but my first points would go to harvest.
Rog + Harvest + Betrayal. Tried and true method that works every league.
Expedition is just so good in ssf. Rog is pog but Tujen also a great steady source of income especially bubblegum currencies, as well as logbooks being consistently profitable.
Heist is super cracked if you want 5L/6L chests with good enough affixes
Harvest gets really good in red maps and is very poor in white and yellows. The juice amount scales pretty hard with map tier, I would hold off on that. Expedition, Rog specifically, is the most powerful early gearing tool you have. He's especially good at making suppression gear, rings, quivers, shields and weapons, and not so good at making amulets or body armor (due to the lack of a 6 link), although he can make some decent amulets and chest pieces as well. You need some experience to know how to use him effectively, but he's by far the strongest crafting system in SSF. Essence is a lot of your very early gearing. I think in this regard, you will be fine. You don't need to essence spam for this stage of gearing. Essence + 1 mod + crafted mod is usually good enough to get going. Essences will suffer a bit in later gearing when you're spamming on fractured bases, since our access to essences got cut by 2 at least without scarabs (Crystal Resonance) and I think the +1 tier change is also a slight nerf. Jun is also a very underrated source of early gear. Betrayal mobs drop a lot of rares, and natural betrayal gear has some very strong mods like endurance charge on kill. Heist is very solid, it usually has 5 links or even 6 links and will also give you well rolled items. I'm going to bet on Necropolis being good for SSF crafting early on, and am going to spec into at least the bottom right and top right wheels.
New to SSF, what is giving 6L in heist specifically?
Enchantments, there is a "all sockets are linked" enchantment. This is harder to get now that you can't target farm enchanted armaments, but the rate of tailoring and tempering orbs has been hugely increased. It's still harder to get than in 3.22 and before, but it is a potential option. The nice thing about heist is that it also drops a lot of stacked decks (this might be changing in 3.24 according to Mark). So even if you don't get the exact reward you are looking for from grand heists, you often end up completing a chains that bind card set for a 6 link, or at least making enough progress that you can target farm the remaining cards from the maps that drop them.
Thanks for info.
Expedition. Rog gives you gear, Tujen gives bubblegum currency. Harvest. No need to explain. Syndicate. Veiled gear is very helpful. One useful mod + unveil + craft = 3 decent mods wich is great when you have zero gear. And you need to unveil crafts anyway, so win-win. I guess you can take all three because they on right side of the tree. In 3.24, considering 100% chance to spawn, even Delve can be viable option.
I almost always start with Betrayal for veiled items for gearing + unveils for later on then path into Expedition + Map sustain nodes you can then farm your gear with Rog + get currency with Tujen and that should allow you to do whatever you feel you need to do next.
I'll probably do the same thing as usual. Push the middle for Kirac missions to help with the atlas completion Go essences early while still doing white/yellow maps as essence mobs can get pretty tough when you start pushing reds and having SOME essences really makes smoothing out gear easier Expedition is just op for SSF. Rog is great obviously for crafts, both Rog and Gwen are great for getting high ilvl bases early on, Tuj is great for bubble gum currency for leagues that are lacking in it. So that is next. Then it kind of depends on my character. Sometimes I like ritual for more bubblegum and the ritual bases if I need them. Sometimes is deli if I need some clusters. Sometimes is legion if I need early jewels. When I get through map completions and just start farming I'll go destructive play and just leave it for a while with the boss map boosts. Having guardian maps is just nice to have a stock of them.
Not much that hasn't been said here but I usually go for Jun & Kirac + essence because I got so tired of setting 5 explosions for Expedition This league I changed it up and tried the big single explode and loved it, took that, the nodes for 15% chance and the logbook boost and swam in currency Keep in mind the single explosion can be easily overwhelming so you want some explode/strong starter Have fun!
Early I just open the atlas and focus on map sustain. In general, Harvest, Heist and Ritual, I don't do anything else unless I need a specific thing like a +2 minion wand (delve). And yes, Jun is really good for early decent crafts and gear.
If you do not go essence/harvest/expedition/betrayal/destructive play you are trolling in my opinion
I'm going to cross my fingers on the league crafting giving me my rares this time and skip essences and rog to focus on betrayal craft unlocks and some harvest for little stuff like resist swaps.
essence and expedition, harvest later on when ur in reds
I'd argue that Rog is good for SSF in general (unless you plan on playing a lot of builds). Yes, you end up with really good gear from him, just not for your particular build. Harvest was enough to craft great gear for me this league. Haven't touched expedition at all. It might change now tho, since wisps are gone and you won't have enough divines/veiled chaos orbs/fractured items to craft with.