Path of Exile: Tapping Out

The other day while running daily quests in guild I accidentally started one before everyone showed up. I'd meant to click to walk past the quest giver but instead clicked on the quest giver and that started things up. I told them I have a hard time accurately clicking things and Lino mused that accurately clicking things was pretty much the entirety of Path of Exile. While not a perfect assessment of the game it is a pretty good summary and one would wonder why I'd want to play it if I can't click accurately.

I can do things to make it so I do click more accurately. I can grip the mouse tighter and try to make sharper movements. I end up doing the same sort of thing in League of Legends, actually, when I play a champion that requires a lot of precise clicking like Ezreal. Ezreal is probably my favourite champion and certainly the one I'm best at playing, but I can't play him over and over again without my hand starting to hurt from the extra effort I have to put in to controlling the mouse. Which is fine, I guess, since I'll just play someone easier to control to get a break.

In Path of Exile it isn't that simple since it takes many days to level a new character up and pretty much every character needs to click precisely to collect the relevant loot even if they're a summoner and never cast any spells. I leveled someone who uses arc so I didn't need to click on monsters (if you cast arc and there's an enemy anywhere in range it will auto target that enemy) but I still need to click accurately to move around and collect loot. And I'm still holding down right click to cast that arc spell. So my hand is in full on 'be awesome' mode the entire time I'm playing. And if I can only play Ezreal for an hour or two without needing a break what does it say about my plan of playing PoE 10 hours a day for the next two months in order to max my reputation with all 8 masters?

It says the plan is horrendous is what it says. But I didn't want to believe that, so I pushed on regardless. This weekend my body decided to give out. My back, shoulders, neck, and right arm all seized up a fair bit. I could no longer bend my wrist back and it hurt to even press down on a key to type. Path of Exile blew my arm out, and it is not good.

I went out and bought a cold pack, and a wrist support thingy, and some muscle relaxant drugs. I've spent the last couple days not playing PoE, and not playing much at all, and pretty much just being bored. The League of Legends World Championships have been on so I watched those. I watched the WWE PPV. I've watched a bunch of movies. And now I've started rewatching the first season of Heroes. I'm feeling better in that I didn't need to take any drugs today, and I can turn my neck without it hurting, and I don't have a fever anymore. My wrist still hurts a bit, but I can move it around fine and can use the computer in bursts.

So... Probably no long term harm done. But the idea that I could possibly do the challenges in Path of Exile is out the window. Maybe I'll try to play again for shorter periods of time once my wrist really feels all better. Maybe I won't, because I'm pretty sure I have no self control and I will blow myself out again if I give myself the chance to do so. Time will tell, I guess. Time will tell.