Your playbook looks a lot different after losing your MVP. Wandering from Rite to Rite offers moments of clarity as you reflect on recent events, but spending time with characters on and off the field weaves dependency with social familiarity. As your performance with an ally improves, there’s an equally-increasing urge to free them. Some are more of an open book than others, but every Rite provides enlightenment to those who participate. Mastery over one’s internalized personal struggles augments their abilities during the Rites to be much more intimidating, and those in opposition are no exception. Using one companion too often, however, can inflict them with banishment sickness, preventing their participation in the next Rite. The narrative implications derived from your actions directly affects gameplay, and your creed is constantly questioned POE currency trade.

Do they deserve to be free? Are you continuing an exile’s sentence simply because you like them? Knowing that you might perform better with one teammate could increase the chances of granting someone else their freedom, but at what point is instruction considered servitude?

Maybe you’re too afraid to lose, and that’s okay. Losing can provide its own sense of stained solace. At least you get to keep your friends around. Maybe you’ll feel a glint of happiness for a character you admire on an opposing team, or, perhaps, the outcome will birth a new vendetta. Either way, it’s hard to shake the feeling that you let someone down. Forfeiting your athletic aptitude for the sake of a character’s story arc is a big ask and affects everyone around them — including you. Indecision has no place here; not out in the Downside, and certainly not on the path towards ascension. You must choose. You must fight. Win or lose, your attempt is necessary to progress.

After losing three games in a row, choosing what to say to my triumvirate became a delicate process, involving layers of word puzzles to craft a customized dialogue. How they responded to what I said was outside of my control, but, as a Reader, words are my jurisdiction. One by one, the team walked by and offered me their perspective. Pyre’s second-person storytelling shines brightest in these moments. While my speech stoked the team’s fire for the next Rite, I made myself feel better for losing. For better or worse, my actions directly affected these characters without controlling them at all cheap POE currency.