Completed all 8 Challenges! Here's my story!

I had one main character I decided to make on Anarchy, it was a physical cleaver. I had a few alternatives but none were played even close to the amount I played my cleaver. When I made this character there weren’t too many of them around and while they were still kind of popular, it was before the recent rush we seen about two months into the leagues. Prior to this character, I had never played melee or a duelist so there was a pretty substantial amount of information I learned while making this cleaver. I played this character solo most of the time but I did run with my brother who was a wander quite a bit toward the end; I also ran a little with a great group of people I met in a Teamspeak server. Overall though, ~70-80% of my grinding was done solo early on.

The clear speed of a cleaver is just incredible; it’s faster than anything else I have ever played. (I haven’t made a CI Discharger, I know) My gear is pretty mediocre (linked below)in my opinion; it’s nothing real great so this was a surprise. I usually ran with ~50% IIR/IIQ in most maps when I was soloing. I ran hundreds of 66-69 trying to build a pool of 70s to start my climb to the top of the map pool. I started the game in standard and quickly learned it was very hard to keep a map pool around so I was determined to not let that happen here. Around this time is where my stance on the challenges flip-flopped and I chanced a Soul Taker which gave me such an adrenaline rush I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I had never found an item that instantly generated so much wealth so this was incredibly exciting to me. I ended up selling this for 20 exalts, so now, I was motivated to try to complete all 8 of the challenges.

On August 12th as I got into my 70 map pool I had about 25 or 30 to start with, my brother had about 25 also. I ended up purchasing an additional 18 level 70 maps for an exalt and 9 71s for an exalt. I honestly thought that would be enough to push me to the top; Long story short, it wasn't. It actually only got me through every 75 map. At this point I was bummed, and I was starting to lose hope because buying the last 4 maps I needed to open was going to cost me around 10 exalts which I couldn't afford and still purchase all the uniques I needed. Nevertheless, I purchased a 76 Creamatorium map for 2 exalt which RNG rewarded me for. I rolled the map for maze and magic monsters and this one map produced 2 Shrines, a Shipyard, a Necropolis, and two 74s. I was amazed and excited again, it was exactly what I needed for the final maps other than Precinct which I got in one of those maps. Maps challenge complete!

Over 70 Map Breakdown: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmiQOpBZR9fudGhpVWI3b3lYbGVPNXl1QVRpSm9PRXc#gid=0
Keep in mind, this is just for the maps I opened. I was taking turns opening maps with my brother, so while I opened over 110, I probably ran about 220 above level 70.

I'd like to remind everyone that I spent very many chaos rolling maps. Sometimes I would spend up to 25 chaos trying to roll certain mods for 1 map in the 71-74 level. I never tried to just run it, always roll maze/larger/magic/pack size.

Going forward, according to a spreadsheet my brother and I wrote up we still needed to generate around 57 exalts of currency to get the Shavs and the rest of the uniques. This was based on Shavs being 33-35 exalt at the time. So while I'm waiting on my brother to get on I decided to run a few scrub maps while he drove home from work. In my first map of the night, a 68 Springs, I chanced a Voltaxic Rift and wow. Same as before, my heart started racing and the adrenaline started flowing. This was about two weeks after the bow was entered into the game so this was a huge gain for me. I ended up getting around 18 exalt for it unlinked. At this point, I had about enough currency to get the rest of the 5 or 6 bigger uniques I needed so I was pretty much there.

My brother and I ended up running maps the rest of the night anyways just because we didn't actually know how much the Voltaxic Rift was worth at this time. So we were pretty much just burning up the rest of the maps I had left over and we ran a 74 Maze. The Maze maps are difficult for my cleaver seeing how a smash would 1-hit me so the boss was tricky but do-able. So here we are on this 74 Maze map where Vaal killed me once with a smash and we eventually finish him off and what drops?

Here is a video of it if you want to watch the Twitch stream my brother had running or you can keep reading to find out; I'm in the black shirt, my brother in white: http://www.twitch.tv/yodenss/c/2879726. :D

Anyways, this put me 25ish exalts over what I calculated for what I needed for the uniques. So thus begun the buying of the uniques and finishing the rest of the challenges. All the rest of the uniques was quite easy since I had extra currency to pay for them. I regretted everything I couldn't cleave on a duelist in the passive tree (200 regrets) which only took an hour or two. I already started all the Ons characters and had them all around level 40 up to this point. So the rest was just grinding out the rest of those levels. I had one RIP on Onslaught, it was a level 11 witch lol. I desynced around a wall and got trapped. Oh well, nothing lost. Here's the breakdown for the what I did for every character:

Witch: Fireball using Searing Touch
Templar/Marauder: Ground Slam. Both identical builds and used the same gear.
Duelist: Cleaver of course :)
Ranger: Cleaved till 40 then switched to Lightning Arrow
Shadow: Cleaver

Overall the Onslaught challenge just took time; they were tedious and boring. You play so safe because you don't want to lose a character but its just boring to do that. Took about 20 hours on each character. The easiest was Fireball Witch by far, hardest was probably Shadow, I don't think it's meant to cleave. Also, I'd like to thank Billy @bigbill19 for the Onslaught help.

That was it! The last thing I had to complete was my last Onslaught character, that put me at 8 challenges! Woohoo! When it comes down to it, it just takes an unbelievably amount of time and effort to complete. Congratulations to all that made it to 8!

I've broke down a TL;DR below

1: Slay the Exiles: just got it by accident, easy.

2: Own the Uniques: Chanced Soul Taker and Voltaxic, found Shavrone"s, BoR, Alpha's Howl, Dream Fragments for some of the bigger ones

Video of the Shavrone's dropping; I'm in the black shirt, my brother in white, it allocates to him but hes helping me complete the challenges: http://www.twitch.tv/yodenss/c/2879726

3: Use currency items: Found eternal, eternal/exalted my armour, rolled dex :S

4: Reach level 60 in Onslaught:
Witch: Fireball using Searing Touch
Templar/Marauder: Ground Slam. Both identical builds and used the same gear.
Duelist: Cleaver of course :)
Ranger: Cleaved till 40 then switched to Lightning Arrow
Shadow: Cleaver

Overall the Onslaught challenge just took time; they were tedious and boring. You play so safe because you don't want to lose a character but its just boring to do that. Took about 20 hours on each character. The easiest was Fireball Witch by far, hardest was probably Shadow, I don't think it's meant to cleave. Also, I'd like to thank Billy @bigbill19 for the Onslaught help.

5: Items From Vendor Recipes: Found Tabula Rasa and vedored it

6: Use each Map: Had a massive pool, lost it all, only made it through the 75 pool; bought a creamatorium map for 2ex, ran it, produced 2 Shrines, a Shipyard, a Necropolis, and two 74s

Over 70 Map Breakdown: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmiQOpBZR9fudGhpVWI3b3lYbGVPNXl1QVRpSm9PRXc#gid=0
Keep in mind, this is just for the maps I opened. I was taking turns opening maps with my brother, so while I opened over 110, I probably ran about 220 above level 70.

7: Full Clears: Took like 2 or maybe 3 days tops...also found an exalt while doing this in the Vaal Pyramid.

8: Allocate the Passives: Found a guy selling 200ish regrets, I bought them, regretted everything I couldn't cleave on a duelist.

Overall, funnest character I've played in PoE so far. Clear speed is incredible, DMG is decent and easy to get, Leap Slam+Faster Attacks+Blood Magic makes crossing large areas very fast. Just fun all around. The alphas howl is the big downfall of my setup, but I really liked the cannot be frozen and it gave me a bit of extra mana to work with; which really helped on half regeneration maps.

/played time was around 22 days, or 550 hours or so.
/deaths is 105


Build: http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgQAAdwEswUtDq0SIBLhFE0UdRjbGS4aOBv6IWAl3yftKLUppS3SMgkyiTqzOtg64TrtPC1AoEOcR35KfU3jU99USVWpV-JY21nzW69ei2BLYIhhUmNwZU1noGz2bmlyqXTtdPF35XgNerh673zZgziE2YTvh3aI8ZAKkFWXtJkrmy2bg565n8uiAKLqpBmmV6eEqW6rxaxZrKqsuq6TtPm18rc-ud29gb6KvqfAGsT2xq7P-NSP3Q3nUudj7DjvDu9O73zv4_Af8i_yRfPd_MX-Cv6P