This week we interviewed one of our most renowned guide-makers, Engineering Eternity! He has contributed a plethora of valuable video guides for new and existing players alike and has helped thousands of exiles make their way in Wraeclast.

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

Thank you very much for the opportunity Bex! My name is Brian, also known as Engineering Eternity, and I am a 25 year old Path of Exile enthusiast. Not addicted. Nope.

You are well-known in the Path of Exile community foremost as an author of the various video guides, particularly the Beginner's Guide series. Where did your desire to help new players come from and why did you choose the format you did?

This is a common question many people have asked me. It comes from a combination of things, but mainly it was all my friends and their ineptitude with learning and playing Path of Exile after I introduced them to it. There would be non-stop repeat questions and it was so hard to verbalize all of the different mechanics of the game to them without well laid out visuals and examples (and it is understandable with how complex and hidden many of the mechanics in Path of Exile are). So I would always try and look around for a comprehensive newcomers guide for them, but many of them were outdated or didn’t cover all the important topics, which lead to more confusion. So I figured, why not make my own? I have played thousands of hours since open beta and I should be capable of making my own full-fledged ‘Beginner’s Guide’! With that I set out to cover all the topics a new player wanted to learn about in an order that made sense, and hopefully make it as patch independent as possible.

Since I had a decent background in self taught video editing and really enjoyed it, making classy movies with my friends all through middle school and working for the media crew in high school, I figured why not get back into working with those tools again to make the guide enjoyable to watch visually and audibly. Along with this, I decided it would be best to script everything out before making the guide. So since I had it written out too, it made the most sense to include that script with it so people can either just read the guide, watch it or both!

How much time goes into making your typical video, from concepting the video, to writing a script, to making the final edit?

Even after getting more streamlined with the process, as you can see in my How I Make a Guide video, it still takes me a long time to create a full guide video. Each video is different and I can sort of break them down into three main categories: Build Guides, Boss Guides & General Guides.

Build Guides have gotten a nice templatization to them allowing me to reuse many assets rather than having to start anew each video. They are also based around playing knowledge rather than researched information. After I have put the time in playing and leveling the build, these guides generally take me 8-10 hours to create from writing the script, creating animations, gathering footage, voice over and final editing.

Boss Guides can vary depending on the complexity of the boss. These videos have some templatization to them since I have made so many of them, but generally I have new animations due to the time spacing between them. These videos also require research, play experience, damage testing and calculations. I generally have specific characters I use for these to gather boss damage values and reverse calculate from captured footage health loss vs my mitigation chain. That in-itself takes a long time ensuring I get valid data. In the end, they take around 15-25 hours to complete.

General Guides sort of encompass all the rest of the guides, such as Endgame Guides, Mechanics, Leveling Guides and more. Most of these have no templatization, so I have to create everything new based on the guide. Some of these require lots of research, like the Life Leech Guide, while others like the Leveling Series require a lot of play experience. These can vary highly in their completion time, but I would say the longest of these were the Making Currency and Labyrinth Guide, each easily taking easily 35+ hours.

What was the most challenging part of creating these videos?

The most challenging thing to me is ensuring that I get all of the data that I need for the guide correctly displayed and communicated to the viewer. You only have so much screen space and you don’t want to overwhelm the viewer. This means I have to find the balance of information to show, verbalize or both and then the pace of information. It varies from guide to guide, but there are certainly guides that are just overwhelming in their content, such as the Defensive Layers Guide, and require multiple viewings or readings.

Which video of yours are you most proud of and why?

This is a tough decision here, playing favorites. I’m probably most proud of the Labyrinth Guide, even though it has some typos! It adds character! The reason being is I sort of cover all my guide topics within this one. It has leveling, boss, mechanics and build advice in it! However, I think this spot will soon be overtaken with some of my future projects...

What is the most complicated yet interesting boss / mechanic that you've made a video about?

I have to give this title to Uber Elder. This is currently one of the most complicated and toughest fights mechanically in the base game and making a guide for it was very difficult. Not only because gathering the damage data from the bosses was complex, but getting all the right move examples, move orders and actual recommendations for what to do during the fight was tough! It was also complicated in how to display all this information within the guide on screen as I moved through the phases. There are so many variables to it, that there were many tough calls, but with the help of DonTheCrown, I think the guide was a success and was quite comprehensive.

Aside from creating videos, you are also a streamer. How long have you been streaming for? How did you get into it?

After creating the Beginner’s Guide series and posting it to the Path of Exile Forums and Reddit, my Youtube Channel took off way faster than I expected. Many people started asking if I streamed and I didn’t originally plan on it. I didn’t even expect to be creating any more videos past that series! Since there was so much interest in it, I figured I could take this opportunity to stream and help people out with live interaction along with the video guides. So I shortly thereafter began my streaming career with the EngineeringEternity handle at the start of Legacy League back in March of 2017. And now after ~1.5 years of streaming my top tier gameplay to all you lovely folk, I have managed to just get Partnership on Twitch!

Congratulations on your partnership! That's awesome! What can people expect from your stream? What kind of schedule do you follow?

Oh man, well, my stream is quite different from my video guides as there is no script! Everything unfolds live! You get to hear my mispronunciations, idioms, the silly interactions with my qualified moderators and of course see my beautiful face! I am much more relaxed than I appear in my professional videos and have a very colored sense of humor (think Bill Burr). I like to take it easy on stream, enjoy some Path of Exile and hear what interesting things everyone has been up to in game or in real life! If you like what you are reading here, you can generally always find me streaming Monday through Thursday starting around 5 pm EST and ending somewhere around 10 pm EST.

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

I think like most of us Path of Exile veterans we came to the game through the one and only Kripparrian. I watched him on and off through his later World of Warcraft days and upon tuning in one fateful day, I saw him playing this gritty, dark, isometric action game that completely caught my attention. Not long after I was immersed in the complexity of the game and captivated by his spreadsheet analysis of different skills, choices and mechanics. Being an engineer in the making, this was the perfect game for me.

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

I was hooked the moment I booted up the game, picked that Marauder, snagged a Ground Slam gem and opened that sprawling passive tree back in Open Beta. The most memorable moments during that time were definitely farming Act 2 Fellshrine in a 6 man party with people always yelling “STICK TO THE ROAD”.

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

The best highlights for me were definitely getting a Headhunter as a drop back in Legacy League and not 24 hours later chancing Skyforth boots! And the best part of it all, was those were the exact items I needed for the current build I was on!

However, more recently, I would have to say that my favorite highlight was my girlfriend Amy giving me a Haircut on stream. We reached an arbitrary subscriber goal on Twitch and thus Amy was allowed to cut my hair how she pleased, with no prior experience cutting another person’s hair! Even still, the hairdresser I saw the next day said she did better than most of the licensed people she has hired!

What is the most challenging part of creating a solid build-guide?

Creating the builds for build guides is the toughest part of this task. Since there are so many people playing, so many ways to view public accounts and see top players, it is tough to be inventive and original while still providing a solid build to complete content. I do my best to never look at these sources, and create builds that I truly enjoy and that can be made by others without mirrors worth of investment (because even I don’t play that way). Though, as my Twitch moderators love to remind me, I have had many failed builds that don’t make it to the build guide process! Other than creating the build, making the guide is quite straightforward and I make sure to cover the strengths and weaknesses of the build clearly within it.

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

Contrary to popular belief, streaming and creating videos is not my full time job! I have a dual degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and work as a full time Software Engineer! So as you can imagine, the time I have available around that is tight. Streaming and producing video guides is basically a second Full Time job, so I generally spend as much free time as I can justify working on those too.

What hobbies or interests do you have outside of streaming?

Outside of my ‘two’ jobs, I try and spend a lot of time doing a whole slew of things outside of staring at pixels. I am very much an engineer and ‘handyman’ at heart and always building and creating my own things, such as my oak computer desk, water cooled PC or custom drawer bed frame. On top of my own creations, I also work closely with my dad on various projects, such as rebuilding our Lake House, which I currently live at. Each day I get to enjoy the majestic view … of my computer screen. As I am on a lake, I am of course an avid Boater and Fisherman, enjoying early spring bed fishing or some wild river wading fly fishing. Although, I think Chris would be very upset to hear that I haven't even got out to go Bass fishing all summer, but worry not! I will be out there this winter Ice Fishing as much as possible to make up for it. All in all, I enjoy and do so many different things aside from what I’ve mentioned, that it would be too long a list to put here.

How much pressure is involved in being a streamer and a content creator? How do you manage it?

This is a tough topic to disseminate to anyone that doesn’t stream or produce public content on a schedule. You would think that playing a video game and making videos on it would be quite easy, but in actuality, it puts a lot of pressure on you as you have another expectation of performance. Not only do you have to concern yourself with being consistent, but also providing quality and informationally correct content to hundreds or thousands of people. Unlike a normal job where you can work with some coworkers and talk directly with your boss, here you are ultimately self-employed and working for hundreds or thousands of bosses, trying to satisfy as many of them as possible!

For me, this requires basically another Full Time job’s worth of effort due to the amount of research, producing and editing required for the streams and guides I provide. I truly enjoy creating the guides, helping out people and seeing the success of others from my content, thus I continue to put in this work to keep the content flowing. I generally try and spend a reasonable amount of my free time (read weekends) working on these guides to keep a somewhat consistent schedule, but real life always comes first and breaks are required!

I do find it hard to gauge how much stress I am under, as I am so relaxed about most everything; but, if you stop by my stream you can see a small bald patch in the right side of my beard that cropped up randomly a few months ago and this could be a good gauge on that stress.

What do you see as the future of streaming/content creation and where do you feel you fit into that?

I certainly think it will continue to grow rapidly with how accessible it is to the public and how many revenue streams are available within it. I see myself continuing my work streaming and creating guides as a secondary job until it is no longer feasible within my schedule or, dare I say it, the end of Path of Exile! I love the interactions I get with the community and the joy I get from hitting that upload button on each guide, knowing that I will help at least one person out and tilt someone off their seats by ‘stealing their idea’.

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

I tell people this all the time and I think that is important to do what you want to do in the game. Don’t let other people tell you to play the game differently if you find some interaction that is fun. That is what this game is all about! It is not just about efficiency and who has the most currency, it is a game designed for you to have fun! The most fun I have ever had in Path of Exile is going in blind to new things and learning them as I go, bringing you that ‘aha!’ moment which feels so rewarding.

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

As many of the great streamers and content creators before me have said, keep creating content you enjoy and make sure that you are consistent with it. The best advice beyond that I can give is you should try to create something new or get into a niche that has not been covered to death. The most important thing of it all, is to make sure to do it well. Put 100% of your effort into it, provide clean presentation and ensure your provided information is correct. Just with that, you can stand out from much of the other content.

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

There are honestly so many people that I have interacted with, watched and followed over the years it’s tough to pick! I would have to say hands down that Mathil, CuteDog_, RaizQT, ZiggyD, Empyrian and just about every big Path of Exile streamer has given me a huge amount of support on Twitch with hosts, raids and speaking about me whenever a new player is looking for a solid guide.

Aside from the big kids on the block, many others have given me a lot of support in guide creation and information. DonTheCrown, Karvarousku, PoeLab & Suitsizesmall are some great guys that have helped me out immensely in that regard.

Whenever I want a crazy or inventive build, I always have to check out what Woolfio and eirikeiken are up to.

And finally, I have to keep an eye on my doppelganger, Octavian, to ensure that he is keeping up appearances. Can’t have him going off the rails now.

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

I am currently in the works of creating a complete guide series about The Atlas with fellow content creator Karvarousku. This guide will ultimately be the equivalent of my Beginner’s Guide Series, but for the endgame content of Path of Exile. It is already growing to be longer in script length than the Beginner’s Guide Series, and is certainly going to be more grandiose than it! I am very excited to start editing work on this guide series and can’t wait to see the reactions to it! I hope to have it released at or before the next League release in December. If you wish to see me gathering data, recording footage or editing this guide, feel free to come on over to my Twitch to hang out and hassle me about when it’ll be done!

Other than this major series, I will be creating small guides in the interim when I can. One possibly including a prized THICC JUGG Tank that has gone through a full TLC remaster.

Again, I am greatly appreciative of all the support you guys have given me and hope to continue the work I started for as long as possible. Starting this game, I never thought I would grow to love it this much and never did I think I would end up being interviewed by GGG!

Thanks for the interview Bex and everyone at GGG for creating such a great game!

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Thank you so much for participating in the interview! If you want to follow Engineering Eternity, check out his YouTube Channel and Twitch.