[2023] Divination Card Stories - Justified Ambition

Today, we wanted to share a story from one of our supporters about their Divination Card, "Justified Ambition"! Inspired by the Synthesis League and added in the Siege of the Atlas Expansion, blah2k6 expands on their design choices for the card's reward and flavour. Check it out!



I have always been a fan of ARPG/Hack&Slay type of games - looting and leveling is just my thing. After having spent almost a decade of playing Diablo 2, I got first contact with Path of Exile during the closed beta in January 2013. At the time I didn't really get hooked and quit the game around level 40.

It took until 2016 when me and some of my Diablo 2 friends were giving Path of Exile another shot. The game was a lot more advanced, Ascendancies were just introduced and there was a lot to learn about the game. Here we are now, 7 years later and I played every single league since Perandus.

One league that particularly stood out to me was Synthesis. Not because of the mechanic itself, but especially because of the voice lines, the music, the whole atmosphere created. So when I purchased the possibility to design a divination card I knew it had to be something around Synthesis league. As I play a lot of SSF and getting access to Synthesis content can be quite difficult I really wanted there to be an additional way to obtain the Synthesis unique maps. I was also very happy to see that it drops from Conquerors and I was able to fill multiple sets of the card in SSF last league.

One particular moment that stuck from Synthesis league was the cut-scene where the player finds out that Cavas (Synthesis League NPC) is actually High Templar Venarius. I wanted the art of the divination card to resemble this cut-scene and was very impressed with the result.

I struggled a bit with an appropriate name and flavor text for the card and was not that happy with what I came up with by myself. Luckily the designers came back with this great suggestion that I really liked. High Templar Venarius was a very ambitious person who had the mindset: the end justified the means. He wanted to save Wraeclast at all costs even if it meant torturing Valdo Caesarius (The Shaper) and threatening to kill his daughter Zana.

I also like the fact that the card has different outcomes and you can end up getting "the jackpot" (Cortex). It has become a well established meme in my guild to post a Cortex resulting from a set of these cards in guild chat followed by a German message thanking me ("danke Robin").