During Delve, Empyrian has been part of a team pushing the Delve leaderboards to get to the darkest depths of the Azurite Mine. In addition to streaming their adventures, they also achieved many milestones like being the first group to reach Depth 3,000. We interviewed Empyrian to find out more about his life streaming and how his team achieved these feats.

Hi Empyrian, thank you for taking part in the interview! Please introduce yourself.

Hi, I'm Empyrian, a 28 year old full time streamer from Hungary. I also make some highlights of fun stuff that happens on stream for my YouTube channel.

How long have you been streaming for? How did you get into it?

I've been streaming for almost 4 years. I got my Twitch partnership 44 months ago, after pushing Diablo 3 group rank 1s on the leaderboards (as well as some solo Barbarian play early on). I initially started streaming our Wildstar raids so that we could look at what went wrong on the wipes but then Diablo Season 1 started and I started getting 5-30 viewers and I thought this could turn into something more.

What can people expect from your stream? What kind of schedule do you follow?

I usually play Path of Exile for a month or two each league and do variety games for a month or two after. I don't have a very strict schedule but I usually try to stream afternoon/evening EU hours, sometimes pushing into the late night and then every few weeks I mess up my sleep schedule and stream US hours for a few days to correct :D

How and when did you find out about Path of Exile?

I first saw Path of Exile on Kripparrian's stream but I was too invested in playing other games with friends that I didn't give it a serious try. Some years later I returned and played Nemesis league on Hardcore and died in Act 2 to a Corrupting Blood rare mob. More years later after playing through 7 and a half seasons of Diablo 3 I needed a change. After playing the last week of Essence league to try and learn the basics of the game I started in Breach league 'properly', 2 years ago. I have played (and streamed) 4000+ hours of it since.

What was the moment that got you hooked on the game?

I don't think I have a single moment but the constant discovery of new game systems and finding out how those game systems interact with each other was an awesome process. (Using orbs you found on the ground to modify the 'endgame' you're playing, for example.) Also the fact that at any moment you can find something extremely rare and expensive that could be traded for and/or be used to gear out new characters was really exciting to me.

What are the top highlights from your time streaming Path of Exile?

• Attempting to create a Shaped Bisco's Collar amulet in Abyss league.
• Learning about player interaction via the Socializing Help-panel in game was fun.
• Vaaling 36 Headhunters in Harbinger league.
• And of course reaching depth 3000 in Delve has to be up there.

During Delve, you have been part of a group that's pushed the top of the leaderboards and hit many milestones. What was the most memorable moment of this venture?

Our entire team getting demolished by a single Snow Wolf in depth 1269 which somehow ended up being the number 1 Path of Exile clip of all time on Twitch.

How much did your team contribute to your success in Delve - both in gameplay and keeping you motivated?

I enjoy playing Action RPGs in a group setting where we all work towards a goal, put everything else aside and focus on whatever we need to do to most efficiently achieve that goal. Playing Path of Exile like this with the group I joined for Delve has been some of the most rewarding and satisfying gaming experiences of my life. It kept us motivated every day and it was absolutely a group effort. Huge shoutout to my team, happy to have met every single one of them and I'm glad our interests aligned so closely this league!

How much pre-planning went into your initial strategy and push in Delve?

We had a few practice sessions so we can level somewhat efficiently and our plan was to farm as much currency as we can in the first week (which is the most important part of the league for that) so we can spend the rest of the time focusing entirely on pushing delves. Some of the rest of the team already played together in previous leagues so we had a good idea of who is going to play what build. Delves, however, kept challenging us as we went deeper and deeper so we had to adjust every single day.

What was your daily schedule like while you were pushing the leaderboard?

After the first week where people took days off and used up the two weekends to play 16 hours a day, we went back to our regular days and played 4-8 hours when everyone was available. All of this time was used pushing Delves and farming sulphite for said Delves as fast as possible.

Outside of these hours when everyone could play, we would sit on Discord for 1-4 hours a day and talk about/test what other build modifications we could try and do to make the runs smoother. These 'theorycrafting sessions' used to be something I never really cared about in the past but this league I felt it so directly impacted our gameplay that I started enjoying them very much.

What did you enjoy most about the Delve League?

The fact that there is a reason to further optimize your character beyond one-shotting entire screens of Tier 16 maps was really exciting. Having multiple options to progress down in Delves by choosing different routes (as opposed to the opening-a-random-riftkey-and-hoping-for-a-good-layout Diablo 3 style system) was quite refreshing as well.

What was the most difficult aspect of the Delve League?

Unfortunately our roadblocks were mostly server/instance related issues. We had to path around Harbingers, Perandus and one type of Abyss encounter because after a few minutes of fighting it the instance would crash every time. Good news for everyone else though, these were all fixed the day after we reached 3000 (completely understandably so, they only affected a handful of people who were below 1000 depths.)

Is streaming your full time job? If so, what were you doing for work prior to streaming?

Yes, I've been doing it full time for almost 4 years. Before that I worked online in affiliate marketing as well as some random menial student jobs during university. I went to school for English (translation/interpretation minor) but I didn't finish my degree.

What hobbies or interests do you have outside of streaming?

Content creation takes up almost all of my time but in my opinion that's a tradeoff for having a 'job' I greatly enjoy doing. When I do get some extra time, I use it to watch sci-fi movies and TV shows and discover new music.

How has your life changed from before you were streaming until now? What role has streaming played in that transition?

It didn't change much in a sense that I always spent a lot of time playing video games but sharing the experience with others and interacting with hundreds (or even thousands) of people daily makes it much more interesting and fulfilling. You never know what memes you'll read the next day in Twitch chat or in the Youtube comments.

What is one thing you think every Path of Exile player should hear?

It's not impossible to sustain maps and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Invest more into them and you'll get more back.

There are many new streamers looking to make their way in the Path of Exile community. What advice do you have for them?

Find your niche and enjoy yourself. There are so many ways to play Path of Exile. Find out what's most fun for you and have fun with it. In my opinion very few people watch Path of Exile purely for the gameplay, so there is big room for your personality to shine as long as you have something semi-interesting in the background.

Are there any new streamers you want to give a shout-out to?

My teammate and DPS this league, Dahun used to be an Overwatch pro and now streams Path of Exile and other games. Always a chill stream. Also my good friend Faye we played a lot of games together in the past few years and I'm sure we'll play a lot more in the coming ones.

Do you have any projects on the horizon you want to share with the community?

I'll be playing a bunch of different games in the coming weeks until the next Path of Exile league, including but not limited to, Borderlands 2, Divinity 2, Dying Light and more.

I only use Twitter for social media and I don't overdo it either so if you want to know when I'm going live or upload a new video or what game I'll be playing next, that's the place to check.

I also edit my own highlights for Youtube so if something cool happens on stream it's probably going to end up there for the people who don't have time to watch the streams live.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, I'm really happy to be doing what I'm doing and I'm grateful for the opportunity to do an official interview! -͜ -

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Thanks so much for participating in the interview! Congratulations to you and your team's success in Path of Exile: Delve!