Any tips for a newbie (still waiting for dowload's finish tho)

Hey,
first of all, I'd like to say hello to all of the PoE players - I'm glad to join your community. Thing I'm addressing you with is like the title says - do you have some tips for early stage/beginning, and if so, would you like to share your knowledge with a newbie like me? I'm sorry if this topic already exists, but I'm still unfamiliar with this forum's layout, it may take me a while to dig in a little bit more, so please be patient :)

Regards,
Rinzler

Id recommend to go in on a character blind with only the knowledge of the skill you want to use. IMO you will learn about the game much faster by screwing up yourself rather then following a cookie cutter guide. Youll probably screw up the character but learn more in the long run.

Pay attention to the help popups. They explain skills, links, sockets vendor recipes and many more important things. Get used to looking at the wiki page. Different words for item or skill mods have vastly different meanings. Easy example being 'more' and ''less' modifiers vs 'increased' and 'decreased' modifiers.

More and less being multiplicative and increased and decreased being additive.

Above all else have fun and play the way you want to play.

Don't fucking beg that's my tip to you.

Hi,

Welcome!

While some are overpowered, Uniques are intended to be build-enablers; the intention is that you’ll have a lot of rare items equipped, and whichever Uniques complement your build. If you played D3 before PoE (as I did), you’ll need to adjust your expectations of items a bit.

Resistances are capped at 75%, and as you’re leveling up you’ll want to work on making sure you have them in a good spot - jewellery can be great for this. Chaos Resistance is a special case - if you don’t have (much) negative Chaos Resistance, you’ll probably be fine.

The game is both complex and convoluted. You’ve the choice between creating your own build which will almost certainly abruptly hit a brick wall in progression, or to follow a build guide. Which you do is a matter of personal preference - ignore anyone trying to tell you which is “best”.

It’s by-and-large an excellent F2P game, however if you’re going to play for a long time you’ll want some premium tabs. They go on a four day “weekend” sale every three weeks. Don’t buy any until you’re sure you’re interested in the game - but don’t buy cosmetic stuff before stash tabs.

Both archers and casters are in a good place. As a general rule if you choose to be melee you’re making life harder than it needs to be. It isn’t impossible by any means, but it offers no advantages which make up for inferior damage uptime and additional damage taken.

Path of Exile is a cyclical game. Every three months there is a new challenge league with new content which only new characters can play in. Every six months there’s a new expansion. People typically show up, try the new stuff, then fall off after a month or two until the next update.

The community team is the best there is in the industry full stop imo. A news post every weekday in the Announcements section of the forum. Memes. Regularly interacting with the community - albeit more so on the /r/PathOfExile subreddit then here on the forum. GGG are based in New Zealand, so if you’re in the States or Euroland™ you probably won’t see their posts ‘til the next day.

The game can have optimisation problems - GGG are an indie dev who follow a pretty fierce content release schedule, and you have to be willing to take the good with the bad. Bugs can be missed, new stuff can hit your framerate. Server problems are rare but not unheard of.

So... like I said, welcome! Hope you like the game. Keep a link to the wiki handy. You’ll need it.

Read Sarnos post, its worth reading. Then read it again.

Find a decent guild and ask for help.

Realise these forums are actually a nasty place full of assholes who like nothing more than treating you like shit. Most of these assholes get more currency in each league than you or I will ever see.

Realise there are still some nice people here, but you will have to work to find them.

Understand there are many different ways to play the game. Some flip and Trade, others like to kill stuff.

Play the way you like, your first few characters will suck. Follow a guide and learn the game. Know you wont get to end game the first few tries, unless your a cookiecutter build.

If your actually a NZ or Australian player send me a pm and ill introduce you to a guild that might help you.

Cheers,
Matt.

Play yourself, learn yourself, don't beg, learn to price items yourself, spend time analyzing on what you're doing and building.

Hi, welcome. My advice is to just play and experiment. Download and install a loot filter - the game will drop a lot of trash which you can just ignore.

Also make good use of the wiki, you will learn a lot about mechanics just googling things like "poe blade flurry" and having a quick read. There is a big learning curve to this game but it is the only ARPG I've played that I've stuck with for more than a few weeks.

Look up Engineering Eternity on youtube - guy has a solid beginner guide video series, and his stuff is very nicely structured\easy to understand and learn.

Overall, i'd say the best advice would be to take it slow. PoE's learning curve is more like a learning cliff, and it's easy to get overwhelmed with information that you might not even need yet.
The less expirience you have with diablo-style games, the slower your pace should be, IMO.

I'm a quick learner and I've some experience with rpgs etc, so don't worry. I managed to reach level 15 Dualist with dual wielding fighting style, however I'm not really sure if I should focus on evasive or straight armor params. I haven't been killed so far (except this only one time when I got caught off guard by a sneaky spike trap, because I was focusing rather on husks lurking about in the nearest area, instead of a giant 2m long spikes coming out of the floor) - the only real challange was Brutus, who kicked my ass badly until I've finally put him down.

Technical question - should I invest a little bit more in the ranged attacks (I have to admit it do the trick with many mobs, especially exploding hounds), or just focus on my main combat skills and use it rather as a support long-range weapon for luring single enemies and finishing them off later?

Now the major thing - main weapons/gear. Due to the fact I'm using dual wielding, I don't really care about any kind of shield, buckler, etc. But I'm quiet concerned about using two Battered Foils with a special gem which allows me to make a forward charge leap - from the other hand, I've recently obtained a unique (I suppose) skinning knife - Goredrill, which was quiet devastating against 5-7 lvl enemies. However, after getting my ass smited by a glowing four leg garbage after leaving prison and landing at the Emperor's Road, I realized that I need something with a much bigger kick. Any suggestions (dual-wielding preferred)?

Cheers.

My suggestions for you:

1. Decide what you want to do, then stick with it. A dual swords wielding projectile caster that also summons minions and uses totem attacks will have it really hard in Act 5 already. This game does not reward jack of all trade characters. If you use a skill that does lightning damage, focus on lightning and elemental damage, points in other damage types will mostly be wasted. Some hybrid builds are of course possible, but you have to know what you are doing.

2. Invest in defenses, too, not just offense. This mostly concerns life. At level 90, you should have total % increased life of around 180-200 for normal characters, which means you have to get around 20% inc life every 10 levels. Also, all those inc life nodes are worth much less if you don't have good base life. You can get + maximum life mods on gear, and good rolls there can make the difference between 4000 and 5500 total life pool with the same % increased life stats.

3. Study the flasks. There are many different utility flasks, and some of them are very powerful, for example Stibnite Flask or Basalt Flask. They can also have additional mods, which are very useful, for example "of Staunching", which stops bleeding, or "of Warding", which removes curses. The right flask at the right time is often the difference between life and death.

4. Don't be afraid of failure. Your first character will probably fail. It's no shame if you can't finish the story on your first character. The game has complex rules that are mostly not even explained ingame (although the new help system reduces this problem a bit), so it either takes a long time to learn them, or you have to consult external sources such as build guides and the wiki. I bet 90% of players don't fully understand how leech works, for example.