Nový Hrádek

[ZhangLiLi]

Fate of the Vaal didn't land well for a lot of players at league start, and I was right there with them, wondering why I was wasting time on a temple system that felt like a brick wall instead of a reward engine, even though people kept talking about cheap PoE 2 Items and big payouts from late game.


From Clunky Temple Grind To "Why Is This Allowed"
Early on, the temple idea was cool in the campaign, then the moment you hit maps it turned into homework; you ran a map, dropped into a half-finished layout, poked around for a couple of weak chests, and walked out feeling like you'd just lost ten minutes for a couple of rares and maybe a chaos or two.


Everything flipped when Fubgun showed how busted the Holten reset loop really is; once you see a full temple getting set up in under two minutes, it's hard to go back to slowly grinding map spawns and pretending the old pacing still makes sense.


Living In Holten On A Throwaway Alt
The whole thing hinges on Act 6 Holten acting like a bugged out farm zone; if your character stays under level 74, Vaal packs keep spawning right near the waypoint, so you just log in, sprint a few seconds to the circle, blow up the rares for crystals, and then you actually want to die to keep your XP from creeping too high.


I rolled a quick alt just for this, slapped on some basic gear, and after a couple of runs it felt like the old Quarry loops from PoE 1, only faster and cleaner, no map mods, no atlas tree planning, just a tight little circuit that spits out temple access at a speed the original design clearly never expected.


Snake Layout And Ridiculous Scaling
The part that really sells it is the "Snake" layout; you're not just dropping rooms at random, you're building one long chain from the entrance, constantly steering into Spymaster rooms so you can grab medallions and lock in the structure before you start stacking multipliers everywhere.


Once the chain gets going and you've got a few levels of juice on several key rooms, the effectiveness number shoots into four digits and the screen basically turns into a blinding mess of loot beams; I hit around 50 divines in something like 45 minutes and it felt like I was only half focusing between runs.


Economy Shock And What To Do Now
You can already see the ripple effects across the market, with crystal prices tanking, divines creeping up, and people quietly abusing this while GGG are still on holiday, so if you don't have time to set up a Holten alt or just can't be bothered with the trial and error, some players are topping up with a bit of currency from places like u4gm just to finish a build and rush bosses before the patch hits.