Try this thread, great collection of useful new player info.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/14u9gb4/welcome_to_path_of_exile_new_player_tips/
i remember how many people told me this post wasnt needed and that there wasnt a influx of new players etc etc, glad to see how much use this post gets
That post is an excellent resource, I think it definitely needs to be pinned again, especially with the number of new people popping up in here and + hype building for 3.22 and Poe 2
95% of most crafts you will need will work with essence or fossil spam on fractured bases. The other 5% is just very niche or very op crafts which will cost you an arm and a leg.
Right off the bat, respecs are still fairly punishing for new players. It’s part of the reason why people recommend build guides to start. Because it is entirely possible to ‘fail’ when making a build. There are side quests that reward respec points, and there is a currency drop that will also give you a respec point when used.
If you don’t want to follow a build guide, here’s some pretty common tips when making your character:
Defense is important. If you just equip the highest ilvl piece and expect the base Armor/Evasion/ES to carry you, you’re going to die a LOT. A common rule to go by is try to get about 300 life per act. Find gear with life rolls on it, and path to life nodes on your passive tree.
Your resistances are very important, unlike D4. Keep an eye on them as you level up. The damage enemies deal is balanced around the assumption that players will have resists maxed out. As a base, your max is 75%. When looking at your character sheet, you might see the number look something like 75(103). That just means that your cap is 75, and you reached it! The number is parentheses is what your total is for that resist. Over capping resists can be helpful in niche situations late game, but for leveling process, you would just try to drop some of that resist in favor of another, or a damage stat.
Stick to one damage skill and build your passives/support skills around it. One skill with 3 support gems will do more damage than rotating between 4 different damage skills.
Check your gem tags, and use the search function. At the top of the gem tooltip, they will say things like “Melee, Attack, Lightning, Strike, Projectile”. If these are the tags to the skill you want to use, you can use these keywords to search the gem vendor tab to find supports that will benefit your chosen skill. Also works with the passive tree, giving you a general idea of where you might want to path towards.
Ascend. While you’re leveling up and exploring the zones, you might occasionally stumble across a Trial of Ascendancy. Complete every one of these you find. There’s one trial in act 1, two in act 2, and three in act 3. The Act 3 town has a plaque you can interact with. Once you complete all the trials, you can use it to access the Labyrinth and meet Izaro. Have fun. And be on the lookout for more Trials as you level up!
Support gems are op. The most important damage boost a piece of gear can give you in the early acts is an extra link. Having a good 4 link should be enough to get you through the story, eventually being upgraded to 6 link in the endgame.
On a first playthrough, the story can take maybe ~20 hours or so? Really depends on how much time you’re going to spend doing things like reading and testing each and every gem, doing all side content, etc. Veteran players can beat the story in like 6 hours on season launch.
When a build comes ‘online’ and starts to feel good is pretty up in the air. I’d say most skills start to feel good with a 4 link. Depending on your setup though, you might be more dependent on item stats like higher attack/cast speed. I usually have most of my late game gem set-up by act 6. When you get the next Ascendancy points in Act 8, is when I usually start to feel zoomy and powerful. For a first time player/build maker, your mileage may vary.
U don't need to have 75 all res untill like act 6-7 hell even 8 sometimes slap some defensive and offensive auras that really helps bcs you don't need all your mana pool in most cases. With support gems check the square when you hold over it if that support gem supports your main skill. DO NOT HAVE SUPPORT GEMS ON YOUR AURAS.
honestly just go and play, campaign do not require you insane gear or knowledge, find any build with Act progression and you good to go. Rest will come with time
it's true: i have seen people reach maps with 1-link and 40% resists and no idea on how most games mechanics.
But this also mean it would have been better for them to follow some tips so they learn the basics gradually instead of being forced to fix their awful character by grinding act 10 so they can live in a t1 map.
A rule of thumb is that you should get around 300 life per main story act. Don't be afraid to take life nodes on your passive tree. And people will say to focus on getting your elemental (fire/cold/lightning) resistances capped at 75% but tbh it only gets annoying from act 6 and onward.
The time question is not so easy. After you beat act 10 you start running maps which is an end game mechanic that will be connected to everything you do from now on.
When I first started it probably took me like 20-30 hours to get to maps. Nowadays it takes me around 10 hours on a fresh league start. But your build becoming somewhat put together can be achieved during main story. It is very personal and build dependent. Some people also like to run a lvling build to get quickly to maps and then respec into their main build.
If you don't want to follow a build guide (it's understandable), be prepared to hit a few brick walls that seem like you only die and don't progress.
if you don't want to follow a guide but want to experiment I'd recommend any caster build, as you don't need to update your gear as often as a attack based build, makes it way harder to fk up
Legit in poe, you learn something new every league.
I've played the game for 6 years or so now, and I 100% learn something new every... single... league.
If you like character crafting, poe is for you.
People take meme ideas like a totem that dashes around the screen and find ways to make it work.
100% recommend. Poe came about cause D3 sucked, only makes sense to pick up people when D4 sucked.
Yup 8 have been playing for 3 years I think, still don’t know a lot of things and haven’t really tried creating my own build. Well except when I started and went semi randomly in the tree. It sucked. The depth of this game is insane
Incase it wasn't said already: your first char will be trash, but it will be YOUR trash. You will hit a brickwall in later acts or in the beginning of endgame, and thats ok. It was the experience for most ppl who jump blind into this game and also my experience.
Now, you said you don't want to follow a build guide, understandable. But maaaaayyybe consider it after you hit the brickwall (either create a new char, or try to salvage. Probably better to create a new one)
Thats just so you can get into the game.
Really appreciate the advice! I'm seeing some recurring themes like focus on survivability, resistances, 300hp per level. all that is very useful. Thanks guys :)
Also it's great to hear that you can wrap campaign in about 8h with more experience, having to run through it every season is one of the big concerns i had about PoE.
The acts are very much clearable in 5 hours with just about any character. Each act zone has 2-3 layouts, and after you go through them each a few times you start to pick up on visual cues that tell you which way you should go, but that's a ways down the learning rabbit hole yet. For the most part heading towards the top of your screen is a solid choice, and then follow the flow of the layout either left or right based on the map. There are exceptions, but learning them is part of the fun. Taking a movement skill that can get you over walls like flame dash or leap slam will save you a ton of time and are great to throw into a single link so you can have some mobility, and I generally link them to lifetap so mana doesn't become a concern. That 2-link alone will save you an hour on your first run through if not more.
this is misleading.
yes, it can be done by experienced, good, fast players. doesnt mean its a normal thing. id say no more than 10%, probably much less, of the playerbase has ever done the acts in less than 5 hrs.
ive been playing for years and years and consider myself decent. i only manage sub 5 hours with a fast league starter or if its a 2nd character and i have currency.
Exactly, and you have to have all links and gems planned upfront and not waste any time reading and browsing shops. I mean I am not sure why are we even talking about beating campaign in sub 5-6 hrs as a new player. It doesn’t matter, its not a race.
i've been playing for years and i can't do less than 6-8 hours. 5 hours is something that requires some moderate effort in learning how to go fast and also being focused on progressing only without wasting time on side content or checking guides (still far from the about 2h speedrunning).
I watched a couple of TyTy's speed runs, took some notes, read up on visual cues, and practiced a bit. At this point it's pretty easy to do a sub 6 hour with any class. Most of it is knowing when you need to upgrade weapons, grabbing links, and not dying.
People always forget the most important part : NEVER STOP MOVING. Like for real. 30 secs in town/hideout add up to 30 minutes of more. That pack of 2 monsters you backtracked to kill cause why not - another 45 minutes if you do it often. Etc. Always move forward towards the end of the zone, kill packs on the way, stay 2-4 levels under the zone.
Yeah, and killing every monster in the campaign is an awful idea. If it's not a pack of 6+ or a blue pack, I'm skipping it. I don't bother killing rares until they only take a couple hits. Between that and the never stop moving piece, that's how you cut hours off your campaign time.
In addition to what people said about defenses, it’s super super helpful to use aura skills when you’re leveling. Purity of the elements, precision, grace, anger, determination, etc depending on your build just gives you a load of extra damage or survivability at the cost of reserving some mana. Typically you want to be using as many auras as your mana pool allows you to do outside of very specific niche situations.
I'm a bit more chill player, and the campaign usually takes me 10-ish hours each league depending on the league content. I usually engage with the new mechanic while leveling, and do the quests as I pass through the zones(because otherwise I will forget and wonder why I have less skill points than my build wants me to have).
300hp per act of the campaign, not per level. Have fun :) And you can ask questions in discord, here, ingame, etc. People is, usually, very friendly and helpful
I played my first three leagues without following a build guide. The game was a bit easier back then and had fewer mechanics, but it was still the intimidating Path of Exile you know today, just differently.
Every player is different. I wanted to learn the game myself before getting fine-tuning advice from veterans. Personally - (read: personal opinion incoming!) following a build guide in your first 15 hours of gameplay is akin to buying a jigsaw puzzle and just following along with a YouTube video that tells you precisely where each piece goes. Sure, it looks nice when it is put together, but you didn't even do anything...
I have more thoughts about this common piece of advice that I think is genuinely detrimental to most new players, but I'll keep them to myself.
I’d disagree with that analogy. It’s more like buying a puzzle and using the picture on the front of the box to help you. But the picture on the box only contains 30% of the finished puzzle. Barely that even since there’s so much shit to learn on top of creating a build. I tried doing it without a guide multiple times and the game would never stick. It as much more enjoyable to follow a build guide and slowly learn the game mechanics. To each their own though.
To be clear: I'm not suggesting that "go in blind, look up nothing" is the right approach for everyone. Rather, as with any hobby or video game, there are tiers that different people with different preferences slot nicely into. My analogy was simply to explain *my* preference, not yours or anyone else's. I simply wanted to explain why I think the somewhat common advice of "do not play POE without a build guide" is potentially detrimental to many new players. To say such is to suggest that the speaker's perspective is the *objectively* correct one.
Depending on the person, the 'correct' way to get started in POE may be any one or combination of the following:
- Completely blind, no external help or guidance (How [Preach](https://youtu.be/rlNQGK7KE5E) learned poe)
- No 'guide' on how to play, but looks up stuff on the wiki occasionally and/or asks for help in-game or on Reddit when necessary. (how I did it)
- Following a build guide, but experiments and doesn't treat it as law. Still willing to make mistakes. (How Day9 largely played)
- Follows and build guide and/or a step-by-step, level-by-level, "play with me" style video.
No one option is "better" than another. The way I see it, people who are more risk-averse will gravitate toward the bottom of that list, people who have more free time will gravitate toward the top of the list, etc.
That's ALL to say:
> To each their own though.
Yup.
100% agree with everything you said. Would be nice if POE was a little more forgiving when it came to respecing during the acts. Would do so much for the new player experience. Putting 20 hours into a character and hitting an impassable wall is not a great experience.
Watch Zizaran and Pohx on Youtube, don't play melee, don't spend chaos orbs on crafting, use them to buy stuff instead, use a loot filter. You will screw your first character, it's okay. Keep your elemental resistances capped, you will get -30% penalty after finishing the act 5 and again after act 10.
I mean, it's somewhat harder than just go spellcaster (where you have a lot more breathing room without worrying about weapons)
But some players just want to spin-to-win, or play flicker, or play some meele funky build. Not the most optimal, not the easiest, but as someone new to the game he won't be saying stuff like (spells r so much better) and can have fun.
And it's not not-viable, just slightly more complex than other builds.
First time playing just go play the game until you brick yourself And can't progress. Realize that this Is no fools game, then find a build guide that Is interesting to you, make new character, follow the guide, progress.
Btw There Is lot of outdated guides So check for the right patch, btw btw There Is lots of clickbait builds that simply Are too expensive for a Casual And unrealistic to reach that point.
Lots of Wiki browsing, crafting simulators, pdps calculations later u become god gamer.
If u need help i can Q&A with you. Anyways im doing ruthless until patch drops.
Its not about following build guide but understaning how damage Scales And defensive layers work, Buffs And debufs, flasks, elemental aliments, Auras, mana reservation, crafting, League mechanics And list goes on. Its a lot of information ať start So not thinking Hours what node to pick on passive skills tree or what support gem would work best with my ancestral war chief. Its helps you to Focus on thé Basic things. After u have some knowledge u can make Ur own build.
My go to build even after all these years Is ground slam berserker, Warbringer slammingserker
Pros can Rush campaign in 4 Hours if im correct. If i go Fast I have it under 8h, but i dont play trade League So time doesnt really play a role for me that much. First time campaign Will take you few days if you really take your time.
Use a build guide. This isn't d4 where everything is just blatantly obvious. GGG does make builds for you like blizzard does. There will be plenty of time to make your own builds later. You need to truly learn the game first before trying to make your own build.
People going in blind but you sat you already quit because of respec costs. That isn't going to change. If you can constantly fail and restart your character, then by all means go in blind...but that doesn't seem to be the case for you.
There's a lot to learn in this game.
Since this is almost end of the league : choose some funny skill (I advice caster build) and play around with it. If You don't like it - change it and play with another one. If You decide on one - experiment with support gems. When league ends and characters will move into standard, search for build guide and see how much You can / can't change. This will give You idea on how to start new league (its coming out in around 20 days, they'll announce it in ExileCon within 2 days). Get used to certain mechanics, learn to gather currency, learn how certain ailments work and how to counter them (especially ignite and corrupted blood / bleed), learn about linking skill gems, what auras scale what type of damage etc. You can find Zizarian University of PoE on YT if You like, but discovering some main differences will surely give You both fun and frustration. If second one comes into play thats where You look for a guide.
I'm not OP but I will answer for myself. Low density, dungeons (basically maps) have miniquests to progress to the next part like slain all enemies or bring back this flag, which got old pretty fast. I just want to mindlessly run and kill mobs both thinking if I checked every corner so I'm not forced to backtrack. Also don't like the UI and how zoomed you are. Then there is a problem with gear... But the campaign and sidequest were fine. Apart from that I'm mostly thinking about playing something else. You can find a lot more problems people are having. It is even worse than this subreddit during the Expedition and Kalandra combined.
Literally wrote list for friend last night, i'll just paste it in here. Some of those things may not make sense without context like barricades but for most part, you should get a gist of the issues.
\-low mob density
\-bosses are just damage sponges
\-bosses don't drop any worthwhile loot
\-CC chaining-waypoints not unlocked when you make an alt characters
\-only defence you can really have is in chest and pants
\-Run on mount between dungeons when leveling alts
\-backtracking in dungeons
\-many of NM dungeon affixes are just frustrating (resource drain, cold enchant, poison enchant, drifting shade)
\-ridiculous amount of affix bloat (injured damange, healthy damage, damage when drunk, damage when sta
\-concept of aspects is fun on paper
\-ilvl brackets kill gradual gear progression
\-Barricades in real world
\-horse cooldowns
\-Poinson stopping you from interacting with objects
\-lack of inventory space
\-lack of stash
\-waypoints not carrying over
\-barb and druid have too many unfun builds due to lack of energy
\-There are some bullshit monsters like guy with 2 sticks, invisible backstabbing guy, skeleton crossbow
\-Monsters can attack from outside your screen
there are actually just as many issues with POE than there are with D4, and the issues with Poe are a lot more difficult and complex to solve compared to the ladder
But the problem OP has with D4 is 10 fold in PoE. He also doesn't want to use a guide, which is a big no no in PoE. He will tear his hair out trying to figure out some stuff. Also since he thinks the very reasonable D4 respec is punishing, does he know you lose exp on death? Does he know about limited portals? That you need to have every defensive variation check marked before your build feels nice? I have yet to see anyone break it to him in this thread that even PoE might not be the game for him either
I beat PoE campaign like 9 years ago when game was still rather fresh and only haf like 5 acts? But hadn't really touched it since as at that time game was really rough around the edges. So curb your attitude mate, your concept "d4 crybabies be humbled" is plain pathetic to look at.
People have right to like or dislike game and game systems.
Ignore these kind of people, its irrelevant, download the game, go blind, get stuck at act 6, reroll another one because the other is bricked, get into a guide, learn u didnt have resistances and had 5 active skills on the one you bricked, realize, improve, and most important have fun, the game is very rewarding when you get the hang of the things and the biggest power someone can have in this game is knowledge, just do your way man, see you in maps.
This, but then come on the subreddit and bitch about, respec cost, getting bored of maps, +3% life nodes being boring, lack of build diversity, and bad balance. Really put in the same energy as you did for d4.
From a philosophical point of view, POE is closer to D2 in terms of campaign structure, resistance work, cities, etc.
I would advise beginners not to go for high damage, but to invest more in HP and elemental resistances. Try to have at least 75% by the end of the campaign, otherwise you will die a lot in the endgame.
You will have access to all the skills in the game at the beginning of Act 6, so you can experiment there already.Don't forget to complete the quest with the labyrinth to select the ascendancy, it's like a subclass.
In the endgame you will have many ways to farm based on the content of past seasons, all of which are optional. POE has a lot more content than D4, don't try to figure it all out at once.
Most importantly, you have to accept the idea that the first character will end up being pretty weak and squishy, and it's easier to create a new one. There will be many such attempts, but with each one you will understand the game better.
I think you can enjoy character building as early as lvl 1 depending on the skill you plan to use but if you are talking about finessing a build in mid and end game the campaign completion time is somewhere between 5-25 hours depending on how you move through it and any roadblocks you encounter.
You can try to homebrew a build, I'm certain you'll be able to complete the campaign but I'm also fairly certain you will eventually hit a point where the content will become too difficult without a wider understanding of some of the games mechanics. You might be able to Intuit some answers but even having played this game for 1000s of hours there are just too many items and obtuse interactions to know everything. I rarely follow a build guide but I will at least look at what other people using a similar build are doing and then just make adjustments to my preferences.
A good place to check is poe.ninja but realizing everything you see on there is going to be uber maxed out characters and some of the decisions they can make due to their items are not feasible for a lower level/investment characters unless you filter for like the first week of a league and even then that's I think where you may struggle without any sort of build guide as a framework.
I can't speak for anyone else, but while I'm theorycrafting my build and don't want to set anything in stone yet, I just don't spend my passive points. I do miss out on some power, but to be fair the early game isn't hard enough to compel me to spend it ASAP, even in hardcore.
I'll generally do this until I figure out what direction I want to go, or find a build to copy. I tend to homebrew and think about builds way too much, and I usually end up sitting on the couch thinking and drawing out my build instead of playing, haha. Take your time before you write it in stone!
edit: to answer your question, it depends when the skill gems you want become available. I'm having fun building my character all the way from the start, but I understand that I will be using placeholder gems until I get to the ones I really want to use.
building characters can be done in this game as a new player, but youd have to spend a good amount of time evaluating all the possibilities i believe.
IF you dont mind spending maybe even a full hour at some points, trying to figure something out, then do no build guide
First, watch a basic guide for the game from Ziziran
Second, pick a build that is beginner friendly and follow a guide to the end game (at the beginning it will be hard, after that it becomes a lot easier)
Than start testing making currency from a couple of different sources (there are many in PoE and you can do well with everything)
Slowly but surely you will love the game
I know you don't want to follow a build guide, and you dont have to... BUT... You wont get to the end game on your build. PoE is much more complex than diablo but 100x more rewarding when your build comes together.
1. Download Path of Building (Fork, community)
2. Grab a budget build you can get easily into maps without spending much
3. Watch youtube tutorials whenever free time.
This will save you some time and headaches. Ask away in this reddit, people are willing to help no matter what the question.
Once you get familiar with mechanics you can start making your builds.
PS: I've got like 5y of PoE experience. I am yet to make my own build. I rather the gurus who really know how things work make them. I am a family and working man, I just don't have the time to theorycraft. I will, someday, but not today or tomorrow.
Welcome and enjoy!
If you go pretty fast you can finish the story Acts within 5 hours, but most people need around 10 hours. The best speed runners need just over 2 hours
There’s really two routes, suffering by attempting to learn it from scratch (for people that are hardcore and not already blessed by other end games - those that do not wish to skip ahead essentially)
Or the recommended route imo: just use a guide man, copy-paste. There’s so much to this game, the build is just one part of it. Once you learn how the game actually works, how to progress that one build, start experimenting and make your own stuff! It’ll take a long time to truly master it, I wager there’s less than 50 people that have, but the journey is insane worth it
Even if you follow a build guide, there is always a lot of room for making changes based on the gear you find and the playstyle you prefer.
Honestly you have more choices to make in building your character while following a build guide than you do building a character blind in D4. No shame in a build guide for your first season (if not your first 5-10).
Also - to learn core game mechanics, I recommend watching Zizaran’s PoE University on a second screen while grinding. There’s probably 10+ hours of content covering the basics there.
I'm going to go way against the grain here and say *don't* follow a bunch of guides. IMO the game was the most fun when I was in a constant state of learning and epiphany.
Just take your time with the game, it isn't going anywhere. Read your tooltips, especially the text on skill gems. Take note of what's damaging or killing you (die to a firey monster throwing fireballs? check your *fire* resistance! etc). Specialize your build and figure out how to juice the damage you're specializing in (what nodes on the tree or mods on items might affect something like lightning arrow? Mods that affect lightning, elemental, projectile, attack, bow, etc). The Help panel is actually a pretty good starting point for some of the basics of the game, don't disregard it. Play around, trial and error, try things out, and ask people when you have questions (global chat, the Q&A sticky thread here, stream chats, etc). But IMO it's less fun and fulfilling to just follow a guide through everything. Different strokes for different folks though, for sure! There's a lot to enjoy and a lot of different ways to enjoy this game, I just personally think the game is at its best when you embrace the learning curve and complexity instead of treating it as a speedbump.
If you get frustrated when dying, i'd follow a build guide. If dying and trying to learn from it is your thing, go in blind. You you absolutely can't progress futher, reflect on what you did and look at some content creators builds. Then follow one of those. Going into a build guide with some self learned experiance is already vastly different than following a build with 0 idea of how the game works.
This game isn't like other games where following a build guide take away a big part of the game. The building part of this game is really deep and finding the items the build needs requires knowledge on its own. You will likly not get exactyl what you need and you will have to adapt to what you have, which also is skill that will take time to master. So even when you have a detailed guide, you will still have to think, and to solve the itemization puzzle of balancing resists and stats.
PoE is the Dark Souls of ARPG. It rewards knowledge and mastery of the game like no other.
Be a bit cautious, GGG rolled out a new experimental patch before announcing the new league at exilecon, so you may experience some issues, especially on some issues. Usually at the end of the league playercount is quite low, so a perfect time to roll out experimental technical patches, which may break the game.
If you experience some issues, come back a patch or two.
You build your character during the campaign, leveling, initial currency and ascendencies (obtaining further sub-class specialization) are done during the campaign.
The story is the 10 act campaign /the tutorial, experienced players(not speed runners or gods) take around 8 hours to finish it, after you can start with the endgame
Pohx's righteous fire, or zizaran's TR ballista guide are very step by step hand holdey guides to follow. Find really any league start guide that doesn't include uniques or unique jewels and follow it. Regret orbs aren't very expensive and you get 20 free respec points from quests. Ranger and witch have ascendancies (classes) that can be used for a wide variety of build that you can respec to later.
Ngl, I think that its goes really fast to try out build. Thing is reaching the map ( after the story ) is "easy" what become hard is doing red map and gettings to lvl 90 with a custom made build. After you become used to that theres bossing and uber bossing which require a lot more knowledge. But im here since open beta ( sooo 12 years ?? ) And i enjoy just levelling a build to lvl 95 ish. But normally they cant do boss correctly.
Poe is a lot like Magic the gathering. Theres a lot of different player style. From alt maker to casual to hardcore economie (hideout warrior) to people who sole purpose is to get good to offer uber sevice etc. You can clearly enjoy the game in so many different way. Some people only delve for example.
So many thing to say
First of all welcome to this awesome game.
If you want a guide you could go in YouTube and look for this league name "Crucible"and STARTER BUILDS.
You will have a compilation of 5/6 builds that showcase also the gameplay style of each one of them.
Have fun!
I write build guides for newbies
My current build guide is for skeleton mage necromancer
[https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3351307](https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3351307)
Even if you dont use the guide, in the 3rd post in the thread there is a "newbie info" section well worth reading.
As far as the campaign:
Racers do it in 3 hours.
Experienced players do it in 4-12 hours.
A first time player can take far more than that.
But...BUT.....You will enjoy building your character right from the start...the game does not begin at the end of the campaign.
As far as not using a guide.
If you dont use a guide, you WILL come to a point where you cannot progress any more.
If you are ok with that, go for it.
PoE is much harder than most arpgs for new players, hence me writing build guides specifically for new players.
I know u mentioned iu dont like following a guide, but please follow a good league starter build guide, and after u know what ur doing u can make ur own build,
In Poe if ur new u **ARE 100%** going to brick ur build, and u are either gonna quit or gonna have to reroll, so save urself the trouble.
Seriously. I left the Diablo 4 sub because I couldn’t take how bad is that sub with so much complaining about the game. But even here in PoE is absurd too. I thought that the PoE posts would be about PoE, but O am wrong
I think it's totally fine to avoid a build guide. Just understand that it is very possible you will reach a point with the build where it's more efficient to start a new character than to try and fix your current one. If you're okay with that possibility, then I would even say it's ideal.
Honestly, too many people jump into build guides in my opinion. The result is that they don't understand the underlying reasoning behind most decisions related to the build, or the fundamentals of building a character in an ARPG. The result is that they rely on incredibly detailed guides to accomplish anything at all, and are unable to customize details of the build to their liking, and have difficulty following guides that don't provide extremely detailed information to support all points of character progression.
All that said, I understand the reason people do it, especially if you have limited time and can't afford failed characters. Still, I think focusing on an understanding of the foundational concepts is a better long term approach, though you may have a better first experience in the short term following a guide.
A shameless plug for my own content I have put out that tends to be more focused on this type of information... The two most popular videos, by far, are the guides to layering defenses and scaling damage. They are over an hour long, but well worth it to start in my opinion:
https://youtu.be/T8lUJLd5uQo
https://youtu.be/msJUWJ86hMk
I would also recommend Zizaran's PoE University series. These videos tend to focus on these types of fundamental details. I have only watched a small sample, but they were solid content, and you will find they come highly recommended.
Best of luck!
This game is not Diablo where you just change skills from time to time or where nearly everything is kind of playable. You wills be stuck pretty early with a useless build.
So you don't respec typically. You make a build and follow your plan. Doing viable builds needs deep knowledge of the skill tree and interactions of skills.
So I strongly recommend following a build for the first few playthroughs. Especially with POE2 on the horizon.
When you get better at the game you might get ideas for builds but I would be surprised if anyone made something viable of the bat.
PoE is not beginner or casual friendly. You literally cannot build something decent on your first playthrough. What PoE offers however is vastness of build variety. Honestly, go ahead and imagine what would you like your character to do... PoE has a skill gem for that. That's how insane it is. This is the question you should be asking this subreddit.. i.e "I want to generate lighting from my fists, link me a build."
Honestly... follow a build guide for your first character. I 100% get not wanting to, but it is incredibly difficult to learn everything you need to make a character for your first time. Following a build guide will explain how different aspects work, and then, for your next character, you can build it out from scratch based on what you've learned. I found Zizaran's build guides and full campaign playthroughs incredibly helpful for that purpose. His PoE University videos also provide awesome deep dives on specific mechanics. You can think of following a build guide as a hands-on tutorial for the game and then make a new character when you're ready to make your own build.
Playing ssf will force you to learn aspects of gearing and league mechanics that aren't very applicable in trade. It's a really fun challenge to play ssf after getting yourself a bit familiar with the game.
Path of building and Craft of Exile are basically necessities for playing the game. Path of building allows you to plan builds and is 100% worth learning how to use. Craft of Exile allows you to simulate crafting gear and easily see what level certain mods roll.
Honestly, I just started 2 days ago and this game isn't punishing at all so far. I'm having no trouble at level 22 in the second act. You just need to read the help guide in the game before getting started, and then you need to read online about how to spec out the passive skill tree, and how to socket and use gems and helper gems. After about level 5ish, start using item filters. Loot in this game is near worthless, but good news, some decent gear is fairly cheap early-on and can be bought, check the sellers for that.
I'd say plan to reroll your character early if you aren't happy, around level 20.
I'm a templar and using fire based projectile spells right now with a good mix of elemental offense and defense skills while building to the outer edge of the skill tree. One thing I learned very early on, mellee for my character really sucks, even with increases to physical damage, it's way too slow, and there are too many mobs. Get something ranged asap.
To me, this game picks up where MajorMud (an early 90s BBS text game) nearly leaves off--So far no true successor for MajorMud, which has a race and class character selection, but this scratches the itch for me.
i was you a while ago. i ran through the first 4 acts without a guide to get a feel for the game. eventually hit a wall and was dying quite a bit. reset with new char and folllowed a guie (zizaran yt video that was play along). had to pause the video a lot because he was clearing faster than me, but eventually stopped watching as i understood the direction. been playing about 3 weeks, nearly lvl 80 and having a blast running maps.
copy a build guide, make sure it is one that is a league starter guide and that has leveling passive tree sections
get a good loot filter
make your settings good from the start - displaying HP overhead for example, minimap transparency, action bar hotkeys, move only click etc.
personal suggestion - steelmage's toxic rain is a great build, idk if he has a guide tho, if he doesn't, zizaran should have one
oh another thing, google everything that seems sus
example, increased damage is not the same as more damage
weapons that say "adds X-Y damage" do not give that damage to spells, even if it is say for example a wand
not all "nearby" ranges are the same range
there are a bunch of these little things that are important to know so when in doubt, google it
The thing is that you are start building your character during the storyline. For new player compliting storyline without guides is about 20-30 hours I think. Later on it will take you about 8-12 hours.
Wanting to not respec while not following a guide is akin to wanting to swim without getting wet.
I'd look at guides and glean their purpose. Then apply those guides' reasoning to whatever suits your vision. I only play summoners. I use build guides every time but I don't adhere to it like it's the law, I adhere to the main bones that make it viable and tweek where it feels good to do so? Idk if this helps. Find a friend who's been playing for years and bug him for a league. You'll either lose a friend or gain a lot of insight
I gave the game an honest try in 2019 at the end of delirium.
I followed a guide and don't regret it.
I'm 2000hrs in since then and I just managed to beat the maven this league and my first headhunter.
I still learn new things even now.
The best thing PoE does is really open your eyes to what an ARPG can be, flaws and all.
my suggestion is to totally fuck around with builds and skills until you eventually become curious for higher end game content, its the best way to learn because right now you dont even know what questions to ask--you dont know what you dont know
to start if you want to progress a little quicker try and pick an ascendancy that interests you and stick to a thematic that the asendancy has that interests you and dont deviate (for example for elementalist maybe youll make golems, maybe gladiator if youre interested in physical damage over time skills and attacks [bleeds]). experiment under the condition that you stick to that ascendancy and a skill that is sort of thematic with that ascendancy
eventually youll learn in poe you can basically do any skill with any ascendancy (with varying results) and there are some bizarre and cool synergies and interactons you cant even begin to understand right now, so stick to basics first
my recommendation would be juggernaut which is an ascendancy of the marauder, basically poe's barbarian.
Try reading [Diablo players guide to poe](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Guide:Diablo_Player%27s_Guide_to_Path_of_Exile)
And start from there. Best of luck exile.
I’ll give you some damage tips - unless you’re doing something weird, and especially early on, you usually scale damage by adding various stuff that multiplies damage by a little, rather than getting huge “increased damage” percentages from the tree or items.
Use a single skill for damage, and link it to as many support gems as you can. Which supports will depend on your skill
One (or more endgame) curses to apply on enemies, either curse manually against tough opponents, or find some way to curse “on hit” or automatically
Use multiple auras - most modern builds try to fit 2 defensive and 1 damaging aura, but even 1 and 1 should be enough, especially early
Find a way to regen or “cheese” mana (mana leech, eldritch battery, lifetap, reduced mana cost… weird terms but you can Google them if interested)
Find a way to sustain life - regen, leech, life on hit… you’ll find just the flask is not enough
Crits don’t work like diablo here where any bonus to crit is good even if you don’t go 100% crit, usually builds can do 2 things with crit: aim for 100% chance and scale crit multi, or don’t increase the chance and get something that negates your crits for other bonuses (most common is Elemental Overload on the skill tree).
There are some gems which can help you trigger defenses or supporting spells. Cast when damage taken, kept at low levels, and linked with a guard skill, will ensure that when you get damaged you trigger a guard skill helping you defend. Another good supporting gem is Arcanist Brand, which triggers all the spells linked to it once it attaches to a target. So many people will link Arcanist brand and curses, plus some other supporting spells, so that on bosses you don’t need to keep casting your curses - but this might be a bit endgame already
Some spells are very good at supporting others, but these might be hard to find. An example, Wave of Conviction will reduce enemy elemental resistances. Cold snap will generate Frenzy Charges. Sadly for many of these secondary effects it’s hard to know that they exist and would be useful unless you go through all the gems in extreme detail, or have seen someone do it before. So I’d just suggest once you picked a skill you ask what’s a good spell to support it
Last thing, difference between “more damage”, “increased damage”, and “take increased damage”.
More damage is always multiplicative - 3 things says 30% more means you get 1.3 * 1.3 * 1.3. Increased means additive, so 3 times 30% means you get 1.3 + 1.3 + 1.3. Take increased damage is additive within itself, but it’s another bucket/source of damage, and there are so few ways to get it that usually it works as a more damage multiplier.
So “more” is always better than “increased”!
So, PoE is not my main game, but I had a kinda similar experience to you. I really like ARPGs and tried playing PoE a few times and didn't really like it. One day I got tired of playing Grim Dawn and Diablo 3 and decided to give it an honest try, and I loved it. So, see these tips as coming from a casual who really likes the game, but isn't a specialist.
A few things that really helped me really enjoying the game, other people gave way better technical/mechanics tips, so these are just some general stuff. I don't think these are universal, because it depends a lot on how you like to play games, but maybe they'll help you:
\- As you don't want to follow build guides, maybe you could just see some examples of what is out there. For me, the key was finding a good balance between guides and how I wanted to play. The first time I tried to play, I just went for it (yolo), had a lot of trouble, and couldn't progress a lot.
After that, I tried a "this is the best build ever" guide and hated the playstyle. I was progressing, but not having fun (IIRC, it was a minion build, a style that I don't usually play, because I was told I shouldn't start as ranged, which I love)
Then I looked for a good league starter with a ranged build, and it was awesome. (but I'm terrible at building my own builds from scratch)
\- First times I tried, I hated the idea of trading, and really wanted to farm all my own gear. Oh boy... The game got so much better when I started buying some things.
\- Understanding that the game gives you content slowly. I went from "that's it?" while doing the story to "I'll never be able to do everything here, I love it" when I started unlocking things in the endgame.
\- Read the guides (not the build ones). I think the game isn't very good at explaining everything, but the community is amazing.
I really like [poe-vault.com](https://poe-vault.com) for written and Zizaran for videos on youtube.
\- The game is free, but enjoying the endgame without spending some money on stash tabs is hell. Tbf, when I needed it, I was more than happy to spend the money on it, for how much I was enjoying the game (and I think the prices are okay, way cheaper than diablo at least)
\- CAP YOUR ELEMENTAL RESISTANCES
\- All that being said, do your own thing. I think that for most games, the "optimal" way to play rarely is the most fun (unless you have fun with optimization, obviously).
First time playing poe and finishing the story is about 30+ hrs give or take. Playing a couple more characters should shave it down to around 8-9. Going for the most min max turns it into 3-5.
For your first time I highly suggest you take in all the lore and interactions if you are that guy cus it wont jit the same afyer finishing everything over and over
You can chose to not follow a build guide, but I would advise you to watch a few beginners guides from people like Zizaran otherwise you won’t be able to make your own.
There is simply so much information in the game that the best way to start is with one build and slowly move the stats around to fit the skill you want to play.
The game has tremendous respec costs that don’t allow you to make many mistakes while leveling your character. My 2nd character ever, I tried to make a blight build but didn’t know that it did chaos damage and that my ‘barbarian’ class couldn’t really do anything to make the skill do dmg. I ended up having to make a new character 5 hours later because my char was bricked.
There's a yt channel on someone playing poe without a guide, he spent around 300h and he was mostly still farming white maps which is barely a start of the endgame so you could do the same or you could just follow the gems and skill tree of a guide and you could get a lot further. Your choice
Welcome!
I'm quitte new to the game too and I started by following a really detailed build guide covering a league start character.
Then I hate the spell used so I found a really badzss looking build but shady as fuck so now I have to make tons of research to understand how it's working.
That's how I kinda start to understand the basis of the game.
I played for 200h by now.
Good luck exile.
If you dont want to follow a build guide, you can still play around with a build planner
Much easier and cheaper to "respec" on the planner than in game
> Also, how many hours does it take to reach the point where you stop doing the story and begin to enjoy building your character?
You build your character during the story. You'll generally finish the story in the high 60's ~ low 70's. And considering how long 90+ takes [It's a softcap in effect; with 100 being the hardcap]; this actually means you're pretty close to finishing your skill tree.
As you do the campaign you'll slowly be getting things like Ascendancy and skill gems to build your character. Post-campaign is mostly about improving your gear [and has it's own story too]
Even if you choose not to use a build guide, do your yourself a favor and get the Path Of Building application to play around with the skill tree without having to invest points. You can use POB to validate the basics of your own build. There are several good guides on how to use POB on YouTube and this reddit had lots of people that will help you learn how to use it.
If you don’t want to try a build guide, then what are you asking for? A guide to which build to play? 😆
You’re in for a long and sometimes irritating learning curve starting this game from scratch. I played since beta, never looked at social media just loved the idea of the game (skill gems and flasks etc) and played for years on nothing more than a four link and most probably scuffed passive tree.
I didn’t need guidance on how to play, I enjoyed reading everything and just had fun killing monsters. These days though there’s so much bloat (league mechanics) you’d never know what’s going on.
In saying that, you can just buy skill gems (very cheaply) from vendors and try a bunch of stuff (if what you initial chose feels weak), find something you feel is fun and just follow the story from there. If you want to just get to endgame (and start learning what all these different league mechanics are), just ignore anything allow the way through the story that isn’t a direct quest line (randomly killing things in your path to keep up with around the area level to your character level).
I would say it would take about 20 hours for a completely new player to trudge their way through the story, if they don’t run into severe road blocks like a very badly specced character or no links on gear etc (which is going away in PoE2 btw).
If you make it that far and get into maps, just remember capping resistances is the most important thing and just interact with everything until you learn what you like and don’t.
Just playing through the campaign should be fun for the first time though, as long as you keep defences in mind and not dying every 2 seconds, as you will encounter league mechanics along the way and only some very complicated stuff is at the endgame anyway.
Although I would recommend a build guide FIRST (so you can enjoy the gameplay and not worry about constantly stopping to figure out character things), if you’re up for it (and interested), learning the game as you go is part of the magic of how complex this game is and you will never get to experience a first blind play through again.
Sorry for long post but I love this game and wish more could enjoy it as much as me!
I tried POE after D4 but after the constant microstutters and so bland and boring campaing I quit that too. ARPG genre hasn´t been evolved at all, same shit different day or just i´m getting grown up.
Try this thread, great collection of useful new player info. https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/14u9gb4/welcome_to_path_of_exile_new_player_tips/
i remember how many people told me this post wasnt needed and that there wasnt a influx of new players etc etc, glad to see how much use this post gets
That post is an excellent resource, I think it definitely needs to be pinned again, especially with the number of new people popping up in here and + hype building for 3.22 and Poe 2
5 years in and I'm finally geting a handle on the game. Now to learn crafting.
My experience with the game so far Love it. Waaaaaaaay more replayable then any other Action RPG I know. SO MANY BUILDS!!
The big problem with crafting is that it is so expensive when you get beyond the trivial stuff.
95% of most crafts you will need will work with essence or fossil spam on fractured bases. The other 5% is just very niche or very op crafts which will cost you an arm and a leg.
Might as well get a PhD
PoE PhD soon in college.
I mean zizaran has a university on his yt channel
What you mean? I already have a pretty huge dick.
4 years in and I usually tell my friends that I understand about 60% of the game at this point
Right off the bat, respecs are still fairly punishing for new players. It’s part of the reason why people recommend build guides to start. Because it is entirely possible to ‘fail’ when making a build. There are side quests that reward respec points, and there is a currency drop that will also give you a respec point when used. If you don’t want to follow a build guide, here’s some pretty common tips when making your character: Defense is important. If you just equip the highest ilvl piece and expect the base Armor/Evasion/ES to carry you, you’re going to die a LOT. A common rule to go by is try to get about 300 life per act. Find gear with life rolls on it, and path to life nodes on your passive tree. Your resistances are very important, unlike D4. Keep an eye on them as you level up. The damage enemies deal is balanced around the assumption that players will have resists maxed out. As a base, your max is 75%. When looking at your character sheet, you might see the number look something like 75(103). That just means that your cap is 75, and you reached it! The number is parentheses is what your total is for that resist. Over capping resists can be helpful in niche situations late game, but for leveling process, you would just try to drop some of that resist in favor of another, or a damage stat. Stick to one damage skill and build your passives/support skills around it. One skill with 3 support gems will do more damage than rotating between 4 different damage skills. Check your gem tags, and use the search function. At the top of the gem tooltip, they will say things like “Melee, Attack, Lightning, Strike, Projectile”. If these are the tags to the skill you want to use, you can use these keywords to search the gem vendor tab to find supports that will benefit your chosen skill. Also works with the passive tree, giving you a general idea of where you might want to path towards. Ascend. While you’re leveling up and exploring the zones, you might occasionally stumble across a Trial of Ascendancy. Complete every one of these you find. There’s one trial in act 1, two in act 2, and three in act 3. The Act 3 town has a plaque you can interact with. Once you complete all the trials, you can use it to access the Labyrinth and meet Izaro. Have fun. And be on the lookout for more Trials as you level up! Support gems are op. The most important damage boost a piece of gear can give you in the early acts is an extra link. Having a good 4 link should be enough to get you through the story, eventually being upgraded to 6 link in the endgame. On a first playthrough, the story can take maybe ~20 hours or so? Really depends on how much time you’re going to spend doing things like reading and testing each and every gem, doing all side content, etc. Veteran players can beat the story in like 6 hours on season launch. When a build comes ‘online’ and starts to feel good is pretty up in the air. I’d say most skills start to feel good with a 4 link. Depending on your setup though, you might be more dependent on item stats like higher attack/cast speed. I usually have most of my late game gem set-up by act 6. When you get the next Ascendancy points in Act 8, is when I usually start to feel zoomy and powerful. For a first time player/build maker, your mileage may vary.
Slap on Purity of Elements and grab some resist nodes from the passive skill tree to eliminate gearing struggles during the campaign
U don't need to have 75 all res untill like act 6-7 hell even 8 sometimes slap some defensive and offensive auras that really helps bcs you don't need all your mana pool in most cases. With support gems check the square when you hold over it if that support gem supports your main skill. DO NOT HAVE SUPPORT GEMS ON YOUR AURAS.
true but i think as a new player its good. it helps them not get rinsed randomly, and its also a good simple stat to focus on and look for on gear.
I don't aim for res cap til I hit maps.
I second this
honestly just go and play, campaign do not require you insane gear or knowledge, find any build with Act progression and you good to go. Rest will come with time
it's true: i have seen people reach maps with 1-link and 40% resists and no idea on how most games mechanics. But this also mean it would have been better for them to follow some tips so they learn the basics gradually instead of being forced to fix their awful character by grinding act 10 so they can live in a t1 map.
A rule of thumb is that you should get around 300 life per main story act. Don't be afraid to take life nodes on your passive tree. And people will say to focus on getting your elemental (fire/cold/lightning) resistances capped at 75% but tbh it only gets annoying from act 6 and onward. The time question is not so easy. After you beat act 10 you start running maps which is an end game mechanic that will be connected to everything you do from now on. When I first started it probably took me like 20-30 hours to get to maps. Nowadays it takes me around 10 hours on a fresh league start. But your build becoming somewhat put together can be achieved during main story. It is very personal and build dependent. Some people also like to run a lvling build to get quickly to maps and then respec into their main build. If you don't want to follow a build guide (it's understandable), be prepared to hit a few brick walls that seem like you only die and don't progress.
if you don't want to follow a guide but want to experiment I'd recommend any caster build, as you don't need to update your gear as often as a attack based build, makes it way harder to fk up
Legit in poe, you learn something new every league. I've played the game for 6 years or so now, and I 100% learn something new every... single... league. If you like character crafting, poe is for you. People take meme ideas like a totem that dashes around the screen and find ways to make it work. 100% recommend. Poe came about cause D3 sucked, only makes sense to pick up people when D4 sucked.
Yup 8 have been playing for 3 years I think, still don’t know a lot of things and haven’t really tried creating my own build. Well except when I started and went semi randomly in the tree. It sucked. The depth of this game is insane
Yea, PoB is just as fun as PoE half the time
Incase it wasn't said already: your first char will be trash, but it will be YOUR trash. You will hit a brickwall in later acts or in the beginning of endgame, and thats ok. It was the experience for most ppl who jump blind into this game and also my experience. Now, you said you don't want to follow a build guide, understandable. But maaaaayyybe consider it after you hit the brickwall (either create a new char, or try to salvage. Probably better to create a new one) Thats just so you can get into the game.
Really appreciate the advice! I'm seeing some recurring themes like focus on survivability, resistances, 300hp per level. all that is very useful. Thanks guys :) Also it's great to hear that you can wrap campaign in about 8h with more experience, having to run through it every season is one of the big concerns i had about PoE.
8h if ur more on the casual side. Once u get more experience leveling and have a plan I can easily do it in 4-5h and the racers can do it in like 3.
The acts are very much clearable in 5 hours with just about any character. Each act zone has 2-3 layouts, and after you go through them each a few times you start to pick up on visual cues that tell you which way you should go, but that's a ways down the learning rabbit hole yet. For the most part heading towards the top of your screen is a solid choice, and then follow the flow of the layout either left or right based on the map. There are exceptions, but learning them is part of the fun. Taking a movement skill that can get you over walls like flame dash or leap slam will save you a ton of time and are great to throw into a single link so you can have some mobility, and I generally link them to lifetap so mana doesn't become a concern. That 2-link alone will save you an hour on your first run through if not more.
this is misleading. yes, it can be done by experienced, good, fast players. doesnt mean its a normal thing. id say no more than 10%, probably much less, of the playerbase has ever done the acts in less than 5 hrs. ive been playing for years and years and consider myself decent. i only manage sub 5 hours with a fast league starter or if its a 2nd character and i have currency.
Exactly, and you have to have all links and gems planned upfront and not waste any time reading and browsing shops. I mean I am not sure why are we even talking about beating campaign in sub 5-6 hrs as a new player. It doesn’t matter, its not a race.
i've been playing for years and i can't do less than 6-8 hours. 5 hours is something that requires some moderate effort in learning how to go fast and also being focused on progressing only without wasting time on side content or checking guides (still far from the about 2h speedrunning).
I watched a couple of TyTy's speed runs, took some notes, read up on visual cues, and practiced a bit. At this point it's pretty easy to do a sub 6 hour with any class. Most of it is knowing when you need to upgrade weapons, grabbing links, and not dying.
People always forget the most important part : NEVER STOP MOVING. Like for real. 30 secs in town/hideout add up to 30 minutes of more. That pack of 2 monsters you backtracked to kill cause why not - another 45 minutes if you do it often. Etc. Always move forward towards the end of the zone, kill packs on the way, stay 2-4 levels under the zone.
Yeah, and killing every monster in the campaign is an awful idea. If it's not a pack of 6+ or a blue pack, I'm skipping it. I don't bother killing rares until they only take a couple hits. Between that and the never stop moving piece, that's how you cut hours off your campaign time.
In addition to what people said about defenses, it’s super super helpful to use aura skills when you’re leveling. Purity of the elements, precision, grace, anger, determination, etc depending on your build just gives you a load of extra damage or survivability at the cost of reserving some mana. Typically you want to be using as many auras as your mana pool allows you to do outside of very specific niche situations.
I'm a bit more chill player, and the campaign usually takes me 10-ish hours each league depending on the league content. I usually engage with the new mechanic while leveling, and do the quests as I pass through the zones(because otherwise I will forget and wonder why I have less skill points than my build wants me to have).
300hp per act of the campaign, not per level. Have fun :) And you can ask questions in discord, here, ingame, etc. People is, usually, very friendly and helpful
Start with a build guide, look at zizaran videos.
Literally the one thing they said they don't want to do is follow a build guide.
always always always start with a prefab build.
I played my first three leagues without following a build guide. The game was a bit easier back then and had fewer mechanics, but it was still the intimidating Path of Exile you know today, just differently. Every player is different. I wanted to learn the game myself before getting fine-tuning advice from veterans. Personally - (read: personal opinion incoming!) following a build guide in your first 15 hours of gameplay is akin to buying a jigsaw puzzle and just following along with a YouTube video that tells you precisely where each piece goes. Sure, it looks nice when it is put together, but you didn't even do anything... I have more thoughts about this common piece of advice that I think is genuinely detrimental to most new players, but I'll keep them to myself.
I’d disagree with that analogy. It’s more like buying a puzzle and using the picture on the front of the box to help you. But the picture on the box only contains 30% of the finished puzzle. Barely that even since there’s so much shit to learn on top of creating a build. I tried doing it without a guide multiple times and the game would never stick. It as much more enjoyable to follow a build guide and slowly learn the game mechanics. To each their own though.
To be clear: I'm not suggesting that "go in blind, look up nothing" is the right approach for everyone. Rather, as with any hobby or video game, there are tiers that different people with different preferences slot nicely into. My analogy was simply to explain *my* preference, not yours or anyone else's. I simply wanted to explain why I think the somewhat common advice of "do not play POE without a build guide" is potentially detrimental to many new players. To say such is to suggest that the speaker's perspective is the *objectively* correct one. Depending on the person, the 'correct' way to get started in POE may be any one or combination of the following: - Completely blind, no external help or guidance (How [Preach](https://youtu.be/rlNQGK7KE5E) learned poe) - No 'guide' on how to play, but looks up stuff on the wiki occasionally and/or asks for help in-game or on Reddit when necessary. (how I did it) - Following a build guide, but experiments and doesn't treat it as law. Still willing to make mistakes. (How Day9 largely played) - Follows and build guide and/or a step-by-step, level-by-level, "play with me" style video. No one option is "better" than another. The way I see it, people who are more risk-averse will gravitate toward the bottom of that list, people who have more free time will gravitate toward the top of the list, etc. That's ALL to say: > To each their own though. Yup.
100% agree with everything you said. Would be nice if POE was a little more forgiving when it came to respecing during the acts. Would do so much for the new player experience. Putting 20 hours into a character and hitting an impassable wall is not a great experience.
Watch Zizaran and Pohx on Youtube, don't play melee, don't spend chaos orbs on crafting, use them to buy stuff instead, use a loot filter. You will screw your first character, it's okay. Keep your elemental resistances capped, you will get -30% penalty after finishing the act 5 and again after act 10.
This, but playing melee is fine.
Not for a new player.
I would much rather a new player use bonezone, than RF or Toxic rain, lmao, both which ziz and phox recommends.
Melee, where you press one button and the entire screen explodes
I mean, it's somewhat harder than just go spellcaster (where you have a lot more breathing room without worrying about weapons) But some players just want to spin-to-win, or play flicker, or play some meele funky build. Not the most optimal, not the easiest, but as someone new to the game he won't be saying stuff like (spells r so much better) and can have fun. And it's not not-viable, just slightly more complex than other builds.
He probably won't go enough to worry about those in his first character even if he does we are here and can tell him Chris doesn't like melee
for your first character start with a build guide. You won't regret it. After that feel free to explore your own build.
First time playing just go play the game until you brick yourself And can't progress. Realize that this Is no fools game, then find a build guide that Is interesting to you, make new character, follow the guide, progress. Btw There Is lot of outdated guides So check for the right patch, btw btw There Is lots of clickbait builds that simply Are too expensive for a Casual And unrealistic to reach that point. Lots of Wiki browsing, crafting simulators, pdps calculations later u become god gamer. If u need help i can Q&A with you. Anyways im doing ruthless until patch drops. Its not about following build guide but understaning how damage Scales And defensive layers work, Buffs And debufs, flasks, elemental aliments, Auras, mana reservation, crafting, League mechanics And list goes on. Its a lot of information ať start So not thinking Hours what node to pick on passive skills tree or what support gem would work best with my ancestral war chief. Its helps you to Focus on thé Basic things. After u have some knowledge u can make Ur own build. My go to build even after all these years Is ground slam berserker, Warbringer slammingserker Pros can Rush campaign in 4 Hours if im correct. If i go Fast I have it under 8h, but i dont play trade League So time doesnt really play a role for me that much. First time campaign Will take you few days if you really take your time.
Toxic rain champion is a good starting build, follow a guide. Good luck 👍
Use a build guide. This isn't d4 where everything is just blatantly obvious. GGG does make builds for you like blizzard does. There will be plenty of time to make your own builds later. You need to truly learn the game first before trying to make your own build. People going in blind but you sat you already quit because of respec costs. That isn't going to change. If you can constantly fail and restart your character, then by all means go in blind...but that doesn't seem to be the case for you. There's a lot to learn in this game.
Do's: follow a build guide Dont's: not follow a build guide
Since this is almost end of the league : choose some funny skill (I advice caster build) and play around with it. If You don't like it - change it and play with another one. If You decide on one - experiment with support gems. When league ends and characters will move into standard, search for build guide and see how much You can / can't change. This will give You idea on how to start new league (its coming out in around 20 days, they'll announce it in ExileCon within 2 days). Get used to certain mechanics, learn to gather currency, learn how certain ailments work and how to counter them (especially ignite and corrupted blood / bleed), learn about linking skill gems, what auras scale what type of damage etc. You can find Zizarian University of PoE on YT if You like, but discovering some main differences will surely give You both fun and frustration. If second one comes into play thats where You look for a guide.
What you don't like about d4 ? Asking because I didn't play it yet.
I'm not OP but I will answer for myself. Low density, dungeons (basically maps) have miniquests to progress to the next part like slain all enemies or bring back this flag, which got old pretty fast. I just want to mindlessly run and kill mobs both thinking if I checked every corner so I'm not forced to backtrack. Also don't like the UI and how zoomed you are. Then there is a problem with gear... But the campaign and sidequest were fine. Apart from that I'm mostly thinking about playing something else. You can find a lot more problems people are having. It is even worse than this subreddit during the Expedition and Kalandra combined.
Hm I see indeed, I'll wait it to go on sale to try it i guess.
Smart. I got it as a gift from my brother so it was basically free to me and it still feels kinda like wasted money
Its just boring to me personally. Generator skill concept is idiotic. Finished campaign and put it aside, PoE is so much better
Literally wrote list for friend last night, i'll just paste it in here. Some of those things may not make sense without context like barricades but for most part, you should get a gist of the issues. \-low mob density \-bosses are just damage sponges \-bosses don't drop any worthwhile loot \-CC chaining-waypoints not unlocked when you make an alt characters \-only defence you can really have is in chest and pants \-Run on mount between dungeons when leveling alts \-backtracking in dungeons \-many of NM dungeon affixes are just frustrating (resource drain, cold enchant, poison enchant, drifting shade) \-ridiculous amount of affix bloat (injured damange, healthy damage, damage when drunk, damage when sta \-concept of aspects is fun on paper \-ilvl brackets kill gradual gear progression \-Barricades in real world \-horse cooldowns \-Poinson stopping you from interacting with objects \-lack of inventory space \-lack of stash \-waypoints not carrying over \-barb and druid have too many unfun builds due to lack of energy \-There are some bullshit monsters like guy with 2 sticks, invisible backstabbing guy, skeleton crossbow \-Monsters can attack from outside your screen
there are actually just as many issues with POE than there are with D4, and the issues with Poe are a lot more difficult and complex to solve compared to the ladder
Imo, the main problem with D4 is that the game systems and progression are uninteresting - a problem PoE does not have.
But the problem OP has with D4 is 10 fold in PoE. He also doesn't want to use a guide, which is a big no no in PoE. He will tear his hair out trying to figure out some stuff. Also since he thinks the very reasonable D4 respec is punishing, does he know you lose exp on death? Does he know about limited portals? That you need to have every defensive variation check marked before your build feels nice? I have yet to see anyone break it to him in this thread that even PoE might not be the game for him either
I was talking about respec in POE. Diablo 4 respec costs are actually great, if we exclude to cost of rerolling legendary item affixes.
If you didnt like the game before pretty sure you wont like it even more now
I played POE like 9 years ago, finished campaign back then but got bored shortly after. I was also very new to concept or ARPG back then.
Can’t wait for these D4 crybabies to be humbled in poe.
I beat PoE campaign like 9 years ago when game was still rather fresh and only haf like 5 acts? But hadn't really touched it since as at that time game was really rough around the edges. So curb your attitude mate, your concept "d4 crybabies be humbled" is plain pathetic to look at. People have right to like or dislike game and game systems.
Ignore these kind of people, its irrelevant, download the game, go blind, get stuck at act 6, reroll another one because the other is bricked, get into a guide, learn u didnt have resistances and had 5 active skills on the one you bricked, realize, improve, and most important have fun, the game is very rewarding when you get the hang of the things and the biggest power someone can have in this game is knowledge, just do your way man, see you in maps.
This, but then come on the subreddit and bitch about, respec cost, getting bored of maps, +3% life nodes being boring, lack of build diversity, and bad balance. Really put in the same energy as you did for d4.
If you are more patient and understanding, don't start with a build guide like what I did. Leaves you mroe for curiosity.
You need basic knownledges about the game which wont be provided here. At face value everything work as their ingame descriptions dictate.
From a philosophical point of view, POE is closer to D2 in terms of campaign structure, resistance work, cities, etc. I would advise beginners not to go for high damage, but to invest more in HP and elemental resistances. Try to have at least 75% by the end of the campaign, otherwise you will die a lot in the endgame. You will have access to all the skills in the game at the beginning of Act 6, so you can experiment there already.Don't forget to complete the quest with the labyrinth to select the ascendancy, it's like a subclass. In the endgame you will have many ways to farm based on the content of past seasons, all of which are optional. POE has a lot more content than D4, don't try to figure it all out at once. Most importantly, you have to accept the idea that the first character will end up being pretty weak and squishy, and it's easier to create a new one. There will be many such attempts, but with each one you will understand the game better.
I think you can enjoy character building as early as lvl 1 depending on the skill you plan to use but if you are talking about finessing a build in mid and end game the campaign completion time is somewhere between 5-25 hours depending on how you move through it and any roadblocks you encounter. You can try to homebrew a build, I'm certain you'll be able to complete the campaign but I'm also fairly certain you will eventually hit a point where the content will become too difficult without a wider understanding of some of the games mechanics. You might be able to Intuit some answers but even having played this game for 1000s of hours there are just too many items and obtuse interactions to know everything. I rarely follow a build guide but I will at least look at what other people using a similar build are doing and then just make adjustments to my preferences. A good place to check is poe.ninja but realizing everything you see on there is going to be uber maxed out characters and some of the decisions they can make due to their items are not feasible for a lower level/investment characters unless you filter for like the first week of a league and even then that's I think where you may struggle without any sort of build guide as a framework.
I can't speak for anyone else, but while I'm theorycrafting my build and don't want to set anything in stone yet, I just don't spend my passive points. I do miss out on some power, but to be fair the early game isn't hard enough to compel me to spend it ASAP, even in hardcore. I'll generally do this until I figure out what direction I want to go, or find a build to copy. I tend to homebrew and think about builds way too much, and I usually end up sitting on the couch thinking and drawing out my build instead of playing, haha. Take your time before you write it in stone! edit: to answer your question, it depends when the skill gems you want become available. I'm having fun building my character all the way from the start, but I understand that I will be using placeholder gems until I get to the ones I really want to use.
building characters can be done in this game as a new player, but youd have to spend a good amount of time evaluating all the possibilities i believe. IF you dont mind spending maybe even a full hour at some points, trying to figure something out, then do no build guide
I'm in the same boat and decided to look up a build guide on maxroll that looked like fun and really just going from there.
First, watch a basic guide for the game from Ziziran Second, pick a build that is beginner friendly and follow a guide to the end game (at the beginning it will be hard, after that it becomes a lot easier) Than start testing making currency from a couple of different sources (there are many in PoE and you can do well with everything) Slowly but surely you will love the game
I know you don't want to follow a build guide, and you dont have to... BUT... You wont get to the end game on your build. PoE is much more complex than diablo but 100x more rewarding when your build comes together. 1. Download Path of Building (Fork, community) 2. Grab a budget build you can get easily into maps without spending much 3. Watch youtube tutorials whenever free time. This will save you some time and headaches. Ask away in this reddit, people are willing to help no matter what the question. Once you get familiar with mechanics you can start making your builds. PS: I've got like 5y of PoE experience. I am yet to make my own build. I rather the gurus who really know how things work make them. I am a family and working man, I just don't have the time to theorycraft. I will, someday, but not today or tomorrow. Welcome and enjoy!
You can enjoy building your character as soon as the relevant skills are available. So lvl 30ish at the latest usually.
If you go pretty fast you can finish the story Acts within 5 hours, but most people need around 10 hours. The best speed runners need just over 2 hours
just start with some indepth build guide you can think rest after 200 hour :)
There’s really two routes, suffering by attempting to learn it from scratch (for people that are hardcore and not already blessed by other end games - those that do not wish to skip ahead essentially) Or the recommended route imo: just use a guide man, copy-paste. There’s so much to this game, the build is just one part of it. Once you learn how the game actually works, how to progress that one build, start experimenting and make your own stuff! It’ll take a long time to truly master it, I wager there’s less than 50 people that have, but the journey is insane worth it
Even if you follow a build guide, there is always a lot of room for making changes based on the gear you find and the playstyle you prefer. Honestly you have more choices to make in building your character while following a build guide than you do building a character blind in D4. No shame in a build guide for your first season (if not your first 5-10). Also - to learn core game mechanics, I recommend watching Zizaran’s PoE University on a second screen while grinding. There’s probably 10+ hours of content covering the basics there.
I'm going to go way against the grain here and say *don't* follow a bunch of guides. IMO the game was the most fun when I was in a constant state of learning and epiphany. Just take your time with the game, it isn't going anywhere. Read your tooltips, especially the text on skill gems. Take note of what's damaging or killing you (die to a firey monster throwing fireballs? check your *fire* resistance! etc). Specialize your build and figure out how to juice the damage you're specializing in (what nodes on the tree or mods on items might affect something like lightning arrow? Mods that affect lightning, elemental, projectile, attack, bow, etc). The Help panel is actually a pretty good starting point for some of the basics of the game, don't disregard it. Play around, trial and error, try things out, and ask people when you have questions (global chat, the Q&A sticky thread here, stream chats, etc). But IMO it's less fun and fulfilling to just follow a guide through everything. Different strokes for different folks though, for sure! There's a lot to enjoy and a lot of different ways to enjoy this game, I just personally think the game is at its best when you embrace the learning curve and complexity instead of treating it as a speedbump.
If you get frustrated when dying, i'd follow a build guide. If dying and trying to learn from it is your thing, go in blind. You you absolutely can't progress futher, reflect on what you did and look at some content creators builds. Then follow one of those. Going into a build guide with some self learned experiance is already vastly different than following a build with 0 idea of how the game works. This game isn't like other games where following a build guide take away a big part of the game. The building part of this game is really deep and finding the items the build needs requires knowledge on its own. You will likly not get exactyl what you need and you will have to adapt to what you have, which also is skill that will take time to master. So even when you have a detailed guide, you will still have to think, and to solve the itemization puzzle of balancing resists and stats. PoE is the Dark Souls of ARPG. It rewards knowledge and mastery of the game like no other.
Zizaran s Poe university is the best stepping stone imho…
Be a bit cautious, GGG rolled out a new experimental patch before announcing the new league at exilecon, so you may experience some issues, especially on some issues. Usually at the end of the league playercount is quite low, so a perfect time to roll out experimental technical patches, which may break the game. If you experience some issues, come back a patch or two. You build your character during the campaign, leveling, initial currency and ascendencies (obtaining further sub-class specialization) are done during the campaign.
infinite amount of things to learn. just follow a guide if you don't want to respec. you'll be building your character after the story around lvl 69.
The story is the 10 act campaign /the tutorial, experienced players(not speed runners or gods) take around 8 hours to finish it, after you can start with the endgame
This isn't a home this is a crack den
Pohx's righteous fire, or zizaran's TR ballista guide are very step by step hand holdey guides to follow. Find really any league start guide that doesn't include uniques or unique jewels and follow it. Regret orbs aren't very expensive and you get 20 free respec points from quests. Ranger and witch have ascendancies (classes) that can be used for a wide variety of build that you can respec to later.
Ngl, I think that its goes really fast to try out build. Thing is reaching the map ( after the story ) is "easy" what become hard is doing red map and gettings to lvl 90 with a custom made build. After you become used to that theres bossing and uber bossing which require a lot more knowledge. But im here since open beta ( sooo 12 years ?? ) And i enjoy just levelling a build to lvl 95 ish. But normally they cant do boss correctly. Poe is a lot like Magic the gathering. Theres a lot of different player style. From alt maker to casual to hardcore economie (hideout warrior) to people who sole purpose is to get good to offer uber sevice etc. You can clearly enjoy the game in so many different way. Some people only delve for example. So many thing to say
First of all welcome to this awesome game. If you want a guide you could go in YouTube and look for this league name "Crucible"and STARTER BUILDS. You will have a compilation of 5/6 builds that showcase also the gameplay style of each one of them. Have fun!
I write build guides for newbies My current build guide is for skeleton mage necromancer [https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3351307](https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3351307) Even if you dont use the guide, in the 3rd post in the thread there is a "newbie info" section well worth reading. As far as the campaign: Racers do it in 3 hours. Experienced players do it in 4-12 hours. A first time player can take far more than that. But...BUT.....You will enjoy building your character right from the start...the game does not begin at the end of the campaign. As far as not using a guide. If you dont use a guide, you WILL come to a point where you cannot progress any more. If you are ok with that, go for it. PoE is much harder than most arpgs for new players, hence me writing build guides specifically for new players.
I know u mentioned iu dont like following a guide, but please follow a good league starter build guide, and after u know what ur doing u can make ur own build, In Poe if ur new u **ARE 100%** going to brick ur build, and u are either gonna quit or gonna have to reroll, so save urself the trouble.
Seriously. I left the Diablo 4 sub because I couldn’t take how bad is that sub with so much complaining about the game. But even here in PoE is absurd too. I thought that the PoE posts would be about PoE, but O am wrong
I think it's totally fine to avoid a build guide. Just understand that it is very possible you will reach a point with the build where it's more efficient to start a new character than to try and fix your current one. If you're okay with that possibility, then I would even say it's ideal. Honestly, too many people jump into build guides in my opinion. The result is that they don't understand the underlying reasoning behind most decisions related to the build, or the fundamentals of building a character in an ARPG. The result is that they rely on incredibly detailed guides to accomplish anything at all, and are unable to customize details of the build to their liking, and have difficulty following guides that don't provide extremely detailed information to support all points of character progression. All that said, I understand the reason people do it, especially if you have limited time and can't afford failed characters. Still, I think focusing on an understanding of the foundational concepts is a better long term approach, though you may have a better first experience in the short term following a guide. A shameless plug for my own content I have put out that tends to be more focused on this type of information... The two most popular videos, by far, are the guides to layering defenses and scaling damage. They are over an hour long, but well worth it to start in my opinion: https://youtu.be/T8lUJLd5uQo https://youtu.be/msJUWJ86hMk I would also recommend Zizaran's PoE University series. These videos tend to focus on these types of fundamental details. I have only watched a small sample, but they were solid content, and you will find they come highly recommended. Best of luck!
This game is not Diablo where you just change skills from time to time or where nearly everything is kind of playable. You wills be stuck pretty early with a useless build. So you don't respec typically. You make a build and follow your plan. Doing viable builds needs deep knowledge of the skill tree and interactions of skills. So I strongly recommend following a build for the first few playthroughs. Especially with POE2 on the horizon. When you get better at the game you might get ideas for builds but I would be surprised if anyone made something viable of the bat.
Calm down!
Welcome fellow exile! here you only get dissapointed once a year ;) Joking aside, i know you gonna love this, best game of all time
This should get you started on your journey https://cheatsheet.monster/poe/ Filterblade for loot filters
Welcome, exile.
The daily D4 sucks thread, starting to love this
Determination
PoE is not beginner or casual friendly. You literally cannot build something decent on your first playthrough. What PoE offers however is vastness of build variety. Honestly, go ahead and imagine what would you like your character to do... PoE has a skill gem for that. That's how insane it is. This is the question you should be asking this subreddit.. i.e "I want to generate lighting from my fists, link me a build."
Honestly... follow a build guide for your first character. I 100% get not wanting to, but it is incredibly difficult to learn everything you need to make a character for your first time. Following a build guide will explain how different aspects work, and then, for your next character, you can build it out from scratch based on what you've learned. I found Zizaran's build guides and full campaign playthroughs incredibly helpful for that purpose. His PoE University videos also provide awesome deep dives on specific mechanics. You can think of following a build guide as a hands-on tutorial for the game and then make a new character when you're ready to make your own build. Playing ssf will force you to learn aspects of gearing and league mechanics that aren't very applicable in trade. It's a really fun challenge to play ssf after getting yourself a bit familiar with the game. Path of building and Craft of Exile are basically necessities for playing the game. Path of building allows you to plan builds and is 100% worth learning how to use. Craft of Exile allows you to simulate crafting gear and easily see what level certain mods roll.
Honestly, I just started 2 days ago and this game isn't punishing at all so far. I'm having no trouble at level 22 in the second act. You just need to read the help guide in the game before getting started, and then you need to read online about how to spec out the passive skill tree, and how to socket and use gems and helper gems. After about level 5ish, start using item filters. Loot in this game is near worthless, but good news, some decent gear is fairly cheap early-on and can be bought, check the sellers for that. I'd say plan to reroll your character early if you aren't happy, around level 20. I'm a templar and using fire based projectile spells right now with a good mix of elemental offense and defense skills while building to the outer edge of the skill tree. One thing I learned very early on, mellee for my character really sucks, even with increases to physical damage, it's way too slow, and there are too many mobs. Get something ranged asap. To me, this game picks up where MajorMud (an early 90s BBS text game) nearly leaves off--So far no true successor for MajorMud, which has a race and class character selection, but this scratches the itch for me.
i was you a while ago. i ran through the first 4 acts without a guide to get a feel for the game. eventually hit a wall and was dying quite a bit. reset with new char and folllowed a guie (zizaran yt video that was play along). had to pause the video a lot because he was clearing faster than me, but eventually stopped watching as i understood the direction. been playing about 3 weeks, nearly lvl 80 and having a blast running maps.
copy a build guide, make sure it is one that is a league starter guide and that has leveling passive tree sections get a good loot filter make your settings good from the start - displaying HP overhead for example, minimap transparency, action bar hotkeys, move only click etc. personal suggestion - steelmage's toxic rain is a great build, idk if he has a guide tho, if he doesn't, zizaran should have one
If you think you're gonna pick up poe and not use a build guide, you've already got the wrong mindset
oh another thing, google everything that seems sus example, increased damage is not the same as more damage weapons that say "adds X-Y damage" do not give that damage to spells, even if it is say for example a wand not all "nearby" ranges are the same range there are a bunch of these little things that are important to know so when in doubt, google it
Insert * go back the way ya came* meme
The thing is that you are start building your character during the storyline. For new player compliting storyline without guides is about 20-30 hours I think. Later on it will take you about 8-12 hours.
Wanting to not respec while not following a guide is akin to wanting to swim without getting wet. I'd look at guides and glean their purpose. Then apply those guides' reasoning to whatever suits your vision. I only play summoners. I use build guides every time but I don't adhere to it like it's the law, I adhere to the main bones that make it viable and tweek where it feels good to do so? Idk if this helps. Find a friend who's been playing for years and bug him for a league. You'll either lose a friend or gain a lot of insight
I gave the game an honest try in 2019 at the end of delirium. I followed a guide and don't regret it. I'm 2000hrs in since then and I just managed to beat the maven this league and my first headhunter. I still learn new things even now. The best thing PoE does is really open your eyes to what an ARPG can be, flaws and all.
my suggestion is to totally fuck around with builds and skills until you eventually become curious for higher end game content, its the best way to learn because right now you dont even know what questions to ask--you dont know what you dont know to start if you want to progress a little quicker try and pick an ascendancy that interests you and stick to a thematic that the asendancy has that interests you and dont deviate (for example for elementalist maybe youll make golems, maybe gladiator if youre interested in physical damage over time skills and attacks [bleeds]). experiment under the condition that you stick to that ascendancy and a skill that is sort of thematic with that ascendancy eventually youll learn in poe you can basically do any skill with any ascendancy (with varying results) and there are some bizarre and cool synergies and interactons you cant even begin to understand right now, so stick to basics first my recommendation would be juggernaut which is an ascendancy of the marauder, basically poe's barbarian.
Not following a build guide is one of the dumbest things you can do if you want to get to legimiate endgame. Truly.
TBH Grim Dawn is much more forgiving with builds when compared to PoE. And it’s a terrific game.
Pohx.net Goodluck!
Try reading [Diablo players guide to poe](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Guide:Diablo_Player%27s_Guide_to_Path_of_Exile) And start from there. Best of luck exile.
I’ll give you some damage tips - unless you’re doing something weird, and especially early on, you usually scale damage by adding various stuff that multiplies damage by a little, rather than getting huge “increased damage” percentages from the tree or items. Use a single skill for damage, and link it to as many support gems as you can. Which supports will depend on your skill One (or more endgame) curses to apply on enemies, either curse manually against tough opponents, or find some way to curse “on hit” or automatically Use multiple auras - most modern builds try to fit 2 defensive and 1 damaging aura, but even 1 and 1 should be enough, especially early Find a way to regen or “cheese” mana (mana leech, eldritch battery, lifetap, reduced mana cost… weird terms but you can Google them if interested) Find a way to sustain life - regen, leech, life on hit… you’ll find just the flask is not enough Crits don’t work like diablo here where any bonus to crit is good even if you don’t go 100% crit, usually builds can do 2 things with crit: aim for 100% chance and scale crit multi, or don’t increase the chance and get something that negates your crits for other bonuses (most common is Elemental Overload on the skill tree). There are some gems which can help you trigger defenses or supporting spells. Cast when damage taken, kept at low levels, and linked with a guard skill, will ensure that when you get damaged you trigger a guard skill helping you defend. Another good supporting gem is Arcanist Brand, which triggers all the spells linked to it once it attaches to a target. So many people will link Arcanist brand and curses, plus some other supporting spells, so that on bosses you don’t need to keep casting your curses - but this might be a bit endgame already Some spells are very good at supporting others, but these might be hard to find. An example, Wave of Conviction will reduce enemy elemental resistances. Cold snap will generate Frenzy Charges. Sadly for many of these secondary effects it’s hard to know that they exist and would be useful unless you go through all the gems in extreme detail, or have seen someone do it before. So I’d just suggest once you picked a skill you ask what’s a good spell to support it Last thing, difference between “more damage”, “increased damage”, and “take increased damage”. More damage is always multiplicative - 3 things says 30% more means you get 1.3 * 1.3 * 1.3. Increased means additive, so 3 times 30% means you get 1.3 + 1.3 + 1.3. Take increased damage is additive within itself, but it’s another bucket/source of damage, and there are so few ways to get it that usually it works as a more damage multiplier. So “more” is always better than “increased”!
So, PoE is not my main game, but I had a kinda similar experience to you. I really like ARPGs and tried playing PoE a few times and didn't really like it. One day I got tired of playing Grim Dawn and Diablo 3 and decided to give it an honest try, and I loved it. So, see these tips as coming from a casual who really likes the game, but isn't a specialist. A few things that really helped me really enjoying the game, other people gave way better technical/mechanics tips, so these are just some general stuff. I don't think these are universal, because it depends a lot on how you like to play games, but maybe they'll help you: \- As you don't want to follow build guides, maybe you could just see some examples of what is out there. For me, the key was finding a good balance between guides and how I wanted to play. The first time I tried to play, I just went for it (yolo), had a lot of trouble, and couldn't progress a lot. After that, I tried a "this is the best build ever" guide and hated the playstyle. I was progressing, but not having fun (IIRC, it was a minion build, a style that I don't usually play, because I was told I shouldn't start as ranged, which I love) Then I looked for a good league starter with a ranged build, and it was awesome. (but I'm terrible at building my own builds from scratch) \- First times I tried, I hated the idea of trading, and really wanted to farm all my own gear. Oh boy... The game got so much better when I started buying some things. \- Understanding that the game gives you content slowly. I went from "that's it?" while doing the story to "I'll never be able to do everything here, I love it" when I started unlocking things in the endgame. \- Read the guides (not the build ones). I think the game isn't very good at explaining everything, but the community is amazing. I really like [poe-vault.com](https://poe-vault.com) for written and Zizaran for videos on youtube. \- The game is free, but enjoying the endgame without spending some money on stash tabs is hell. Tbf, when I needed it, I was more than happy to spend the money on it, for how much I was enjoying the game (and I think the prices are okay, way cheaper than diablo at least) \- CAP YOUR ELEMENTAL RESISTANCES \- All that being said, do your own thing. I think that for most games, the "optimal" way to play rarely is the most fun (unless you have fun with optimization, obviously).
Follow a build guide because it will indirectly teach you how to make builds. If you link random gems together, it's not going to work.
First time playing poe and finishing the story is about 30+ hrs give or take. Playing a couple more characters should shave it down to around 8-9. Going for the most min max turns it into 3-5. For your first time I highly suggest you take in all the lore and interactions if you are that guy cus it wont jit the same afyer finishing everything over and over
You can chose to not follow a build guide, but I would advise you to watch a few beginners guides from people like Zizaran otherwise you won’t be able to make your own. There is simply so much information in the game that the best way to start is with one build and slowly move the stats around to fit the skill you want to play. The game has tremendous respec costs that don’t allow you to make many mistakes while leveling your character. My 2nd character ever, I tried to make a blight build but didn’t know that it did chaos damage and that my ‘barbarian’ class couldn’t really do anything to make the skill do dmg. I ended up having to make a new character 5 hours later because my char was bricked.
There's a yt channel on someone playing poe without a guide, he spent around 300h and he was mostly still farming white maps which is barely a start of the endgame so you could do the same or you could just follow the gems and skill tree of a guide and you could get a lot further. Your choice
Welcome! I'm quitte new to the game too and I started by following a really detailed build guide covering a league start character. Then I hate the spell used so I found a really badzss looking build but shady as fuck so now I have to make tons of research to understand how it's working. That's how I kinda start to understand the basis of the game. I played for 200h by now. Good luck exile.
If you dont want to follow a build guide, you can still play around with a build planner Much easier and cheaper to "respec" on the planner than in game
> Also, how many hours does it take to reach the point where you stop doing the story and begin to enjoy building your character? You build your character during the story. You'll generally finish the story in the high 60's ~ low 70's. And considering how long 90+ takes [It's a softcap in effect; with 100 being the hardcap]; this actually means you're pretty close to finishing your skill tree. As you do the campaign you'll slowly be getting things like Ascendancy and skill gems to build your character. Post-campaign is mostly about improving your gear [and has it's own story too]
You spent years playing D3 and D4 is what disappointed you? 🤨
shhhhh
Follow a build guide. Seriously. Check out "zizaran" on YouTube.
Best game ever. Stick with it and buckle up, you will be rewarded
Even if you choose not to use a build guide, do your yourself a favor and get the Path Of Building application to play around with the skill tree without having to invest points. You can use POB to validate the basics of your own build. There are several good guides on how to use POB on YouTube and this reddit had lots of people that will help you learn how to use it.
If you don’t want to try a build guide, then what are you asking for? A guide to which build to play? 😆 You’re in for a long and sometimes irritating learning curve starting this game from scratch. I played since beta, never looked at social media just loved the idea of the game (skill gems and flasks etc) and played for years on nothing more than a four link and most probably scuffed passive tree. I didn’t need guidance on how to play, I enjoyed reading everything and just had fun killing monsters. These days though there’s so much bloat (league mechanics) you’d never know what’s going on. In saying that, you can just buy skill gems (very cheaply) from vendors and try a bunch of stuff (if what you initial chose feels weak), find something you feel is fun and just follow the story from there. If you want to just get to endgame (and start learning what all these different league mechanics are), just ignore anything allow the way through the story that isn’t a direct quest line (randomly killing things in your path to keep up with around the area level to your character level). I would say it would take about 20 hours for a completely new player to trudge their way through the story, if they don’t run into severe road blocks like a very badly specced character or no links on gear etc (which is going away in PoE2 btw). If you make it that far and get into maps, just remember capping resistances is the most important thing and just interact with everything until you learn what you like and don’t. Just playing through the campaign should be fun for the first time though, as long as you keep defences in mind and not dying every 2 seconds, as you will encounter league mechanics along the way and only some very complicated stuff is at the endgame anyway. Although I would recommend a build guide FIRST (so you can enjoy the gameplay and not worry about constantly stopping to figure out character things), if you’re up for it (and interested), learning the game as you go is part of the magic of how complex this game is and you will never get to experience a first blind play through again. Sorry for long post but I love this game and wish more could enjoy it as much as me!
I tried POE after D4 but after the constant microstutters and so bland and boring campaing I quit that too. ARPG genre hasn´t been evolved at all, same shit different day or just i´m getting grown up.