Character in question:

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/nagnazul/characters?characterName=Pinitowns

This is the furthest I've ever gone in PoE - my previous record was a level 88 Necromancer that made it to red maps before quitting, following a build but having no real clue of what the build was doing or why it was strong.

This time, I just sort of made a character without a plan in mind other than "big melee 2H dude", loosely planning on going for Cyclone (because that seems to be the popular melee skill) but didn't have any build guide. Heck, I wasn't planning on playing that much - just playing "until I got bored".

I didn't have access to Cyclone early on, and since I wasn't following any kind of guide, I just kind of picked whatever sounded/looked cool. I put passive points wherever, used whatever gems I found on the floor or got as quest reward, barely skimming the tooltips each time. One early quest offered a gem called "Earthshatter" - hey that sounds cool, let's take it. Let's put points into stuff, okay, 2-handed weapons it is. Oh, there are some mace nodes, I'm using a mace, guess I'm a mace build now. Playing "blind" - no planning or guides, just do whatever seems fun - was so much more enjoyable than following a guide and doing everything "correctly". (Sadly the game starts shitting on you for doing this in the end-game - Atziri's reflect, end-game bosses, dumb watchstone mechanics, content that you have to "pay" resources to access)

Trading was easily my least favorite part of PoE, and a big part of why I stopped playing my previous characters. SSF is far and away the more fun and rewarding way to play the game - I craft my own gear, I look up how to find and do things, I use currency instead of giving it to more experienced players, I hunt down upgrades and I get excited when things drop that I can use. I spent an hour messing around in PoB when I found a Thread of Hope, and realized I could place it in a good spot to hit 5 notables for my build. I actually six-linked my gear myself for the first time.

Fast forward 200 hours, a big chunk of it spent obsessing over build and gear details in PoB, I've collected every single watchstone, beaten Atziri (first by using Ancestral Warchief - fuck reflect, that was awful and slow - the second time by wearing two reflect-negating influenced rings I found/crafted - suck it Atziri), I've rage-uninstalled the game after losing 60% of my XP bar to chain deaths, I've re-installed it the next morning because I'm hopelessly addicted, I've made every dumb mistake possible to make:

-Open map portals and immediately double back to go open the syndicate safehouse portals - this kills the map

-Harvest seeds while in a map, portal back to hideout to get horticrafting stations from stash to store crafts and go to the garden through the hideout waypoint - this kills the crafts

-Die while in garden in a map, immediately panic after respawn and type /harvest to return to garden - again, this kills the garden

-I ran white maps for a full day, placing my watchstones in the "storage" UI on the left side of the atlas screen, because, heck, that slot glows when I pick up the stone, surely that's where it goes, right? I can't put it anywhere else, let's just keep playing. Man, I can't seem to get any high-level maps, I guess I'm supposed to upgrade my maps by vendoring them three at a time? Man, this is tougher than I remember

-I hit the "migrate" button on my character to move it to the trade league so I could give my co-worker a cool jewel I found. I freaked the fuck out afterwards when I realized I had apparently lost everything - my garden was gone, my stash was gone, my atlas was gone, my delve mine, my syndicate board, everything was gone. I sent a panicked email to customer support and figured "well, guess I fucked up, time to stop playing". (Spoiler: the button I wanted was "Migrate all", not "Migrate". This is probably the worst bit of UX in PoE, in a game that has a lot of really bad UX.)

-I ran a Forge of the Phoenix map not knowing anything about what I was getting into, and got my ass handed to me a full six times by the boss. This was the point where I stopped going into content blind, and I still wish the game didn't punish players so heavily for not knowing the content. It's a weird and jarring transition when bosses go from "Big pile of hit points with some voice lines" to "OKAY now some of these big flashes of color and particles will one-shot you, I'M NOT SAYING WHICH THO"

I started researching boss mechanics before doing them, and Sirus was pretty scary - tons of mechanics, tons of attacks, and if I lose, I have to re-do all this shit again before I can take another shot?

And the A8 version is a really big jump in difficulty?

I crafted myself a "immune to corrupted blood" jewel by vaaling some of the dozens of crappy crimson jewels I had stashed (hoarding pays off!) and finally hit the desired implicit after some ~40 vaal orbs.

My first Sirus, at A5, was actually pretty smooth - it would've been deathless, if not for the fact that I wanted to test "hm, does this big black swirling void hurt me more if I go deeper into it YES IT DOES FUCK". Turns out I was tanky enough to shrug off most of his attacks, and with some maneuvering I killed him, proudly getting a useless awakened gem for my efforts.

Then A6 came around, and I killed that too.

Then A7.

And finally A8 - the big step up in difficulty. I was nervous - had stayed up late grinding all the conquerors to get this done.

I go in, corrupted blood jewel equipped, with my special chaos-protecting-enchanted flask I saved for boss fights.

Turns out I can't shrug off his attacks anymore - he hits HARD. And he does this nasty slowing/freezing effect that I don't have enough flask charges to clear. His attacks take me down to 10-20% life each time, and I'm wildly mashing the Enduring Cry button to restore my health as soon as my character can act again.

Phase one goes by, no deaths, no real issue. He hits hard, but I can do this.

Then phase two - a single misstep, and I go down to zero health. FUCK.

Ah well, I wasn't planning on leveling up anyways. Can't expect to beat the hard bosses without dying, right? Just gotta kill him in six portals, I'm already a third of the way into his health bar, this should be doable, right?

Go in, get slowed, frozen, die without doing any damage.

FUCK.

Genuinely nervous now - I get that feeling when you start losing in game, like a vice closing in around you, every step you take reduces your chances of winning, and I imagine the frustration and disappointment of losing and having to re-start all over again. I don't want to lose. It's two in the morning, and I really, really don't want to lose.

Go in, do a bit of damage. Die.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. What could I be doing better? I six-linked my chest just for this, I have the best gear I could be wearing...Hm, I still have a crappy crafted mod on my weapon, let's upgrade that to speed, maybe it'll help...Maybe I could move a few gems around...

And maybe it did help - I did some damage, got him down another phase, but mis-stepped and died.

Two portals left now. This is it - I can't fuck up anymore. My heart is pounding, I'm very carefully watching his every mode, waiting for him to commit to an attack I can tank before attacking, staying mobile the entire time...

Come on...

His health bar barely has a fucking sliver left...

My Ancestral Warchief has Culling Strike on it, fucking hit it, kill him, die goddamnit...

I'm just clicking Ancestral Warchief from half a screen away, dodging projectiles as best as I can, when finally he goes down.

I was sweating, shaking, breathing heavily, I could feel my heart in my chest - I picked up everything I could without looking at any of it, portalled out to put it in my stash and then went back for the rest - using the final portal.

Thank God.

His drops were actually really really good:

-Awakener's Orb (I'm excited to use this, although I don't know what for yet)

-Awakened Melee Splash, completely useless for me

-Some unique watchstone

-His unique gloves which I promptly bricked without getting a single corrupted implicit :(

I'm really proud of making it this far - playing SSF has forced me to actually play the game and engage with the mechanics, rather than just buying everything from more experienced players. Making my own build has been much more fun than "okay now buy a weapon of THIS BASE TYPE with THIS MOD AND THAT MOD and SOCKET THESE THREE GEMS". I understand the game's systems much better, I have lots of projects in flight, and I honestly don't know if I'll ever be able to enjoy the game if the garden goes away - seedcrafting gear is by far the best system for improving gear in the game, and playing without it would really suck.

I'm also hopelessly addicted - right now I'm just running red maps, trying to play it safe so I can hit 96, farming seeds to finish my crafting projects, building up that garden boss and completing the Atlas.

TL;DR: I beat Sirus on A8 as an SSF newbie, and I wanted to share.

Thanks for reading!