This shit makes me pull out my hair.

I almost wish GGG would have like a tutorial on currency that players have to watch before they can play.

The *brilliant* thing about the economy in this game is that you can start to accrue currency from act 1 normal if you're smart about drops.

Always pick up rgb linked items. Every 12ish chromes is worth a chaos.

ID and vend rares for alt and alch shards. Every 12ish alts is worth a chaos.

Get a chaos or two and you can buy your *own* leveling weapon to rocket you through the levels.

end of cruel-merc is hard even if your not new

All my chars even with uniques/some gear/etc have a hard time and die alot
I think the only char that didn't really die alot was my tank

Path of Life nodes
Path of Desync

As they say, "to each his own."

For me personally, I really enjoyed the fact that this game was brutally hard in merciless on my first go through. Games like Diablo, you'd have to be half way f'ing retarded not to be able to make it through all three diffs with ease on your first go through. Path of Exile though gives people something that most other games don't.

Believe me, when you get through the game, get a few decent drops, and get a character build that can farm maps, you'll learn to appreciate the first go through experience for what it was. After that, it's kind of just an item grind to be honest.

"

I think the only char that didn't really die alot was my tank

Wow, what wise words. lmao

The hard part of this game for me, is picking the next build I will be playing. If you pick one that is expensive you won't be able to do shit.
Pick a cheap one, like a Flame Totem Magic Finder, to get you items to go further.
If you don't know how to play, well, LEARN2PLAY, it's not the game's fault.

Unfortunately this game is for hard core gamers only. Casual players are driven away. Either you roll up your sleeves and totally dig in, or you never get anywhere in this game.

This game is pretty typical in that it caters to a small minority of players, mostly the elite top players. All you have to do is look at race results to see where the player base is. The levels in races drop off real fast. The bulk of the racers are probably at 1/2 to 2/3 the level of the top racers. That's where the player base is. Yet the game caters to that top echelon.

If you don't want to be a hard core no-life, you just need to ignore the top players and don't measure yourself by what they do. Just play the way you enjoy. If you hit a wall, there is no reason why you need to keep bashing your head against it. Just start a new character.

Look at the wall as end of the game. All games have a max you can get to where the game is over. You can look at poe as a game with a variable end point. It might end in late cruel, or late merc. Or it might end when grinding maps gives so much diminishing returns that it doesn't seem worth it any more. A few players make it to level 100. But sooner or later it's time to start a new character.

The game has replay value. It's not really the kind of game where you keep playing one character. So instead of bashing your head against the wall, just roll a new character. I've been playing this game for almost a year now. Not even counting race characters and mules, I've probably rolled at least 50 characters. But there are still lots of builds I want to try. I might only play them into act 2 normal, or take them to merc.

In a year I only have one character that's done maps, and not very many of them. I'd rather start a new character and fight my way down twilight than run maps.

Forget the guides. Just start rolling characters and see what you like. Fill your stash with leveling gear for new rolls and just start experimenting. That's the appeal of the short leagues and races. It's about replay value.

I rerolled and started several characters until I finally understood the game mechanics and whats going on overall. In the meantime I accumulated some nice items I found and saved them in my stash for my next characters so they can level up much more easily.
This is not diablo 3 where you expect that your first character will be superstrong later on and that you make only 1 -2 characters. I had probably like 40 characters so far and currently I have somewhat over 20... This game is mainly about rerolling characters and trying new builds. It is not for the casual majority.

Just watch videos of 2-4 hour races.

They start with nothing and reach almost the same level as you got to in 2 weeks in a few hours. You can do the same.
Learn to "abuse the game" : start two one level chars, so you can kick start your new char with Fire Trap, extra HP potions and a coral ring or two. Then you are good until level 30ish.

Don't think of that one character as "the game". PoE is your account the shared stash connected to that account is your game. To that account you have several characters, some huge failures, some ok, and some characters who might actually reach map-quality. Added bonus is GGG giving you full respec a couple of times a year.

Reaching level 50+ should have given you a couple of orbs totalling at least 5-10 chaos orbs. Those can be traded for -excellent- leveling gear for your next char. By "excellent" I mean end-game viable gear. Of course not Shavronne's, Mjölner, Void Batteries and such, but second or third tier end-game gear.

It took me 4x80+ level chars to finally get my first really good build!
That happened yesterday when I finally got myself a 5L Lightning Coil + a "cheap" ring with int/dex/light res!. That would be almost 3 years of playing before my first good guild *cries* =D

I'm going to recount my early experiences in POE, I think you'll recognize some of the things you're doing wrong and I hope it inspires you to do better with your next character :)


My first character was an ice nova witch, before ice nova got buffed and before heralds. That character got stuck at the imperial gardens of act 3 cruel.

I did one thing right: my tree was efficient in grabbing nodes, I would not build it much differently now.

I did several things wrong:
1) I used a skill that at the time was considered useless for dps. I should have looked up the skill feedback on the forums, or atleast made sure that there existed effective builds using this skill before trying to make one.
2) I played selffound: loot in the higher levels in POE is abysmal, the vast majority of stuff that drops is completely unusable, this imo is caused by poor design choices. So if at certain time my leveling character gets stuck now, I buy some awesome leveling equipment for 1alch/1fus/1chaos. Playing selffound is possible, but it requires in depth knowledge of the game and is very build limiting, or extremely grindy.
3) I used my currency (jewels+fuses mostly) to craft while leveling. This is a very big and common mistake in POE. Currency is much more efficient when it's used to buy stuff from other players. Nowadays I never jewel+fuse leveling or temporary equipment anymore. The only crafting I do when leveling, is alching (not on my first league character) or transmuting 4l or 5l items, when that slot needs an upgrade. Not all slots need links either, for example, my level 60ish marauder in torment has a 300 pdps mace with 2s/2l.
4) I did not put enough importance on hitpoints (maximum life) when chosing items to wear.


As my second character I made a block scion (mostly duelist nodes) intended to use wings of entropy, back before this build got really popular in temp leagues because of atziri. Of my 4 mistakes only one remained:
1) I had found a tanky wings of entropy build and was roughly basing my build on it.
2) I no longer played selffound and bought cheap upgrades when I needed.
3) I STILL COULD NOT RESIST WASTING MY MONEY ON CRAFTING, and I was thus unable to afford my wings of entropy right away when I could use it. My build was stuck for a bit because of lack of dps, and I found it unworthy of bringing into maps because I could not pull my own weight. I farmed a bit, was able to afford decent weapons and leveled to low 70s in maps.
4) I knew max life saves lives.


My 3rd character was a tanky scion incinerator, this was my first character that I got to level 80+:
1) I more or less followed a very popular incinerate build guide.
2) I bought 2 universally recommended leveling items for the build, both already linked since the sellers had used them themselves for leveling.
3) Since I had decent leveling items from the previous 2 characters, I could no longer give in to temptation to craft, enabling me to save up money and buy the (still cheap) endgame stuff needed to get into higher level maps. Since I was using a spell for dps, I was no longer limited by needing money to buy a good weapon.



More concrete: as a first build I would recommend any tanky caster build, life based, requiring as few uniques as possible. If the build requires a unique, check poe.trade if there are enough available online and if the price is not too steep (say 1ex max).

PoE never forgives, and has no mercy. Ever.

If it is too frustrating to you, I'd just quit. You have to like this kind of "torture", because in reality, PoE is really a torture. But some poeple like it as it is.

To counter the "you need items before you start a character" I have my Templar in the new challenge league, who I leveled up to 86, withone any gear to start with. Find currency, use recipes, trade, craft. I also did no follow any build, and made one when I was playing - as someone have mentioned already, when I died I looked at my setup and tried to make it better. I ended up with decent (I think) build, which can now do maps without much of a problem. (this character fight in melee).

About uniques - there is nothing wrong building with uniques in mind. But if those uniques cost more than 5c (on average), don't expect your first character to be able to get them.

It takes shitload of time to understand how this game works, and if there is problem anywhere, I'd say game does really poor job explaining itself. Mods, the way damage is calculated, resistances, skill interactions. Hell, even minions are described poor as fuck. For long, I did not know that you can link "attack" support gems with minions. And honestly, it would help a lot, if things were explained IN-GAME instead of forums or wikis. There is nothing "Hardcore" about it. In game knowledge base, with wordings, gems and all that other shit explained.

The first time I got into the game I picked the Ranger, imagined that I could live with her like I did with Amazon back in D2. All went wrong and I deleted her at lvl 42, reroll another Marauder, then another Marauder... I think it took me around 20 days to get to Act 3 Merciless cuz I was blinded as shit with all the currencies, item mods and passives (honestly, who would call it passive tree? It's a fucking passive FOREST!) But after that things became good, and I learned a little then a little day by day.

And I'm a casual gamer really, not some kind of "utter psychopath" you've mentioned. POE just requires more patient than usual.But I do think that GGG should imply some kind of tutorial for newbie, rather than force them to spent tons of time digging the forum for instructions.