With bleary, tired eyes and a foggy mind that didn't sleep last night due to imagined gameplay instead of dreams, I come to you with a tale of two rangers.

Yesterday was the illustrious event known as @mattclarke's Path of Exile 24hr Hardcore Race and due to waking up at 3:30am, pre-downloading, pre-allocating, and pre-installing the patch I was able to begin within two minutes of the servers being unleashed.

During the last #poecomp, I played a ranger for the first time and I loved it. So, naturally, I decided to play another one!

I have a bad habit of dying at the most inopportune times because of the most silliest reasons. This time, from the moment I named my character, confidence was key. Allow me to introduce you to...:

Who died at level 4. 😂

I would like to stress though that this was beyond my control.

It's a common scapegoat, this thing called "lag." But sometimes it's a true excuse, and no truer was the case than yesterday morning for the first couple of hours after the servers opened.

My normally 30ms ping was all over the place. Sometimes it went as high as 280 -- what I'd get if I were playing on an American server! Eurgh. I'd click to move and the silly woman would stand as still as though I were holding down shift and keep firing for a few seconds before finally getting the hint to move.

It was a disaster.

And she died.

Farewell, young Kaelci the Undying, we barely knew ye.

It was then acknowledged on the Path of Exile twitter:

@thegoliath and myself had a brief whinge and complain about the horrible server status, I went into town to get my son a haircut and some snacks for us both, and then returned home to create...:

Who better lived up to her name. 😁

The game wasn't without problems though. Now it was lagging and stuttering. Bloody impossible.

Despite the torments Path of Exile was putting me through, I decided to try out the new Delirium mirror things and hoped for the best.

I'll be honest -- I had no idea what the heck what was going on or what I was supposed to do. In previous Leagues, I'd clear out the surrounding areas first before daring to activate whatever was new to increase survivability odds...

Was I supposed to just run around aimlessly and hope Spiteful and Furious things would come at me? Was I supposed to run over those bumps on the ground? The black ones did nothing, but the white ones unleashed a few enemies, however they weren't enough to fill up the reward icon.

It took me far too long to realise that absolutely anything you kill while in the delirious mirror fog counted so don't even bother clearing the area first.

Once that realisation hit, I found the mirrors great fun! And VERY REWARDING.

I have never recieved so many legendaries in my entire time playing this game.

But I mentioned just before I was playing through lag and stuttering. It was so bad that when I reached the Siren's cave, I just didn't want to go in. I knew that slippery fishy woman would murder me in seconds.

And then.

Out of no-where.

I had the most BRILLIANT IDEA.

And lo! It was amazing! Everything was better forevermore! And I swiftly recommended that @thegoliath do the same thing. Because dayum, New Zealand is right next door, we were on Australian servers, there's no way we should have such horrible horribleness.

With the lag and stutter magically fixed, it was time to brave Merveil and progress. And the Immortal One proved her Immortality and SURVIVED the treacherous deeps and emerged into the great forest beyond.

It was her time to shine.

She fulfilled prophecies!

She took on many strongboxes and lived to tell the tale!

(In a note to my last #poecomp character a few months ago, a Ranger who died at the ninth hour because of a legendary strongbox overflowing with liquid fire; I did not see a single orange strongbox this time around.)

Mobs of frozen creatures, reawakened and angry, were no problem for this amazing Immortal One.

And she continued to take on every Delirious moment that dared come over her, facing her fears head-on until all were vanquished.

I am proud to proclaim that Kaelci the Immortal is my first ever #poecomp character who remains ALIVE AND WELL after the competition has ended.

She's currently an inch away from Piety's throat, but I didn't want to test my luck. This time I knew I was in a good place to end it for the night and to quit in a timely, sensible manner.

As much as I would've loved to have hit 40, the only way I was going to do that was via the slow, painful, boring grind of areas I'd already done because there was no way I was fighting any more proper bosses and progressing conventionally.

Hell, I didn't even want to open boring WHITE strongboxes.

And so...