- Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Client and Server Options
- Options Menu
- Login Gateway
- Leagues
- Challenge Leagues
- Chat Channels
- Item Systems
- Equipment
- Affixes
- Rarities
- Item Level
- Sockets and Links
- Quality Bonus
- Gearing Strategy
- Gems
- Gem Linking
- Quality Bonus
- Currency
- Currency Tiers
- Crafting
- Looting
- Vendor Recipes
- General Looting Tips
- Equipment
- Questline Progression
- Quests and Quest Rewards
- Levelling Strategy
- Act 1
- Act 2
- Act 3
- Handy Levelling Vendor Recipes
- Community
- Trading
- How to Trade via Poe.xyz.is
- How to Set-up a Shop via Procurement
- Partying and Instances
- Guilds
- Trading
- Builds
- FAQ
- Tips and Tricks
PoE (Path of Exile) is such a deep game that after more than a year of play I can confidently say I have yet to know all about it. I only hope that I know enough to be able to show you the ropes. As an MMO-ARPG, PoE focuses heavily on the theoretical and technical aspects of gameplay, creating a rich metagame and the need for such a long beginner's guide. So you'll be in for the long-haul with this game, so drink deep or taste not the fruits of your efforts. In other words, you better read this guide and play for a long time cause it takes awhile for the game to become enjoyable.
(Feel free to contact me by tuning into my stream at twitch.tv/noperative or dropping a PM or whispering me in-game with my IGN "Noperative". I can offer a lot of specific help that I can't do inside a general beginner guide.)
Options Menu
We can start with our basic meta-game customization since key inputs and information display are extremely crucial. A few customizations will greatly improve your quality of life in PoE:
Graphics
- Using Fullscreen will improve FPS
- VSync ON if you notice screen tearing, OFF if you notice framerate drop
- Runescape mode: lowering texture quality below medium for really bad computers
- Screen Shake OFF
Sound
- Mute when in Background OFF if you want to hear whisper notifications ingame
UI
- Show Corner Map ON
- Always Highlight ON
- Show Full Descriptions ON
- Show Life/Mana Levels ON
- Show Mini-Life Bars on Allies/Enemies ON
- To learn more about the item filter setting, look here. There are also some premade filters at the end that you can use.
Input
Be familiar with the locations of these keys:
- Attack in Place (recommended that you use this liberally when playing)
- Highlight Items/Objects
- Toggle Highlighting
- Open/Close Map
- Toggle Performance Statistics (this will show ping, framerate, etc)
Streaming
- Link POE account to Twitch Account and log-in to access twitch chat in-game
- Client is poor streaming service, it is recommended to stream with dedicated client
In addition, it is recommended that you examine your various menus when you get into game (Getting used to your Character, Inventory and Map screens will be very useful).
Login Gateway
Right off the bat you should notice that the login client will allow you to select your ‘Gateway’. This is in no-way related to any kind of server-based isolation that some other MMOs have, you can freely connect with people across the globe although your ping will be related to your gateway. If you are using the Steam Client, you should already be given authentication while you will need to log-in normally using the regular Client.
Leagues
After you log-in, you will be brought to your character selection screen. When selecting ‘Create Character’ you will be brought to a selection of different character types and also a selection of ‘League’ at the bottom left.
Your league selection is important because the ‘Gateway’ does not separate characters in PoE, only the 'League' you choose will separate players.
PoE starts with 2 base leagues: Standard (colloquially known as Softcore or SC) and Hardcore (HC). There is no difference in base-mechanics or difficulty between these two leagues. The main difference that separates them is the fact that dying in Hardcore League will transfer your character to Standard League. You also possess a ‘Stash’ in the game that basically acts as your bank and is separated by league. If you die in Hardcore, your character and equipped gear will be transferred to Standard, however future Hardcore characters will retain access to the Hardcore stash, which will not get transferred.
Challenge Leagues
Besides the base leagues, PoE introduces branch leagues every 4 months. These are referred to as the Challenge Leagues. Challenge Leagues are on separate servers and ladders, presenting a fresh economy and ladder for players to play and enjoy .
Each Challenge League is based off the existing permanent leagues, there will be a Standard Challenge and a Hardcore Challenge league during each cycle. When Challenge leagues end, they will merge with their corresponding league. If you had a character on a Challenge League, he will be transferred to the permanent leagues. Your stash tabs will appear as ‘Remove-Only’ tabs in your permanent stash. Nothing will be lost when Challenge Leagues end, so there is no risk in joining the Challenge Leagues. If you die in the Hardcore Challenge League, you will still be sent to the Permanent Standard League.
Chat Channels
Local Chat: Applies to all characters currently in your instance
#Global Chat: Applies to all players on the server currently in the channel (type ‘/global #’ to join a channel of that number).
$Trade Chat: Applies to all players on the server currently in the trade channel (type /trade # to join a channel of that number)
%Party Chat: Applies to all players currently in your party
@Whisper Chat: Applies to the account with that character if online, regardless of server (type @name to whisper a character)
&Guild Chat: Applies to all players in your guild, regardless of server
^Twitch Chat: Applies to twitch chat if you are streaming
For more information about the chat console, click here.
Affixes
Affixes determine the strength of an item. Whether you get bonus damage on your weapon, extra cold resistance on your helmet or movement speed on your boots is determined by what affixes are randomly rolled on your specific gear. Getting well-rolled affixes in good combinations is key to succeeding in PoE.
Affixes are separated in 2 ways:
- There are 2 pools of affixes, the prefixes and the suffixes. An item of Magic rarity can have 1 of each, while a Rare item will have up to 3 of each.
- Item level will determine the range a particular affix can roll. Higher item level gear will allow you to get better stats on it. More on this in the next section.
More detailed information on the affixes can be found here
Rarities
Equipment is determined through the base item and the number of enchants/mods (known as affixes from here on out) on it.
There are 4 rarity tiers for items:
- Normal (White) (no affixes)
- Magic (Blue) (2 affixes)
- Rare (Yellow) (3-6 affixes)
- Unique (Red) (unique affixes)
In addition, quest items are green and only serve to complete quest requirements.
As you can probably figure out, the more valuable in-game equipment will be either Rare or Unique rarity. It is best to pick these ones up whenever possible, though low level items will end up being sold to the NPC vendor usually.
Item Level
A hidden mechanic in PoE that affects the viability of any equipment that you can find, limiting the possible mods and sockets/links available to you. It is not easy or intuitive to discover, but is critical in understanding the item system of PoE.
To check item level, type /itemlevel while you are holding an item on your cursor. If you are in a trade window, holding ALT will reveal itemlevel.
Item level is determined by the level of the area that the item is dropped. Magic monsters will drop +1 to this level, while Rare and Unique monsters will drop +2 to this level.
Item level is independent of the actual shown level of an item.
In general, higher tiers of item mods will not appear unless the item has a high enough item level. In addition, you cannot add more sockets to gear unless there is enough. This means that lower Item Level gear will have much lower potential than high Item Level gear.
To take maximum advantage of item level, you should be farming at the highest level areas possible for the best possible affixes to appear on gear.
More information on itemlevel can be found here.
Sockets and Links
With the exception of accessories, all equipment found in PoE will possess sockets that can hold skill gems. Skill gems will not be usable unless they are socketed into equipped gear. You are also able to link sockets together so that the skill gems in linked sockets are able to interact with each other. More on this later.
Possible socket number is determined by item level, links are only limited by the sockets and are not directly affected by item level.
Sockets are also colored to correspond with particular stat polarities. Red sockets are Strength- and Armor-related, Green sockets are Dexterity- and Evasion-related and Blue sockets are Intelligence and Energy Shield-related. Keep in mind that this means an item with a high Strength requirement will likely roll many Red sockets compared to Green and Blue, for example.
Quality Bonus
Using a type of currency, it is possible to add up to 20% quality to gear. Quality on Weapons will increase the final physical damage values (it will not affect elemental or spell damage on wands even if that seems intuitive) while Quality on Armour will increase the final armour/evasion/energy-shield values. In addition, Quality can be consumed by an Orb of Fusing or Jeweller's Orb to improve socketing and linking results.
Gearing Strategy
Gearing Priorities:
1) Life on Gear
2) Resists on Gear
3) Enough links to use skills
4) Enough damage to kill monsters
5) High Armour/Evasion/Energy-Shield Values
Monster damage is often predictable and manageable with high resistance values and a high life pool. High burst damage usually comes in 2 forms: elemental damage and heavy physical crits. The former is largely solved by maintaining capped (75%) resistance values and both problems can be handled with a large life pool. If you can get both high resistances and high life, you will be golden.
In addition, your skills and flasks are balanced against the mob levels. You should be constantly making sure your skills and flasks are up to date, they give the most value when they are high level.
Your skill tree doesn't confer any specific skills and is actually a passive tree. Your actual skills come from the skill gems that you can socket into your gear.
Skill Gems come with their own colors and stat/level requirements as well so you will need to keep that in mind when using skill gems. Levelling a skill gem will make your skill stronger, but will increase the stat/level requirement and sometimes the mana cost as well. It is important to make sure you can keep up with these requirements so that you can get your skills stronger and stronger.
Gem Linking
There are two types of Gems, Skills Gems which confer active skills and Support Gems which augment linked Skills. Support Gems also possess their own colors, costs and requirements so they further complicate the skill system.
It is important to note that you cannot support any skill gem with any support gem, very strict requirements must be met. Generally, you want to make sure that the keywords listed on your gems match up properly, or else the support gems will not be able to support the skill gems.
There's is a lot of flexibility in linking gems. Sometimes you will have a main attacking skill that is heavily linked while other skills will act as supporting skills and only share one or two links between them.
Example of how Skills are Linked
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Quality Bonus
Just like on equipment, you are able to add quality to skill gems. Unlike equipment, quality bonuses are not consistent and will often depend on the gem itself. You would need to look up each gem specifically to learn what quality will improve on each skill gem.
Currency in this game is not handled with gold or anything of that type, but a materials bartering system. Monsters will drop gold/tan-coloured items typically called currency items. Many possess an innate currency value but they also have a use for item crafting. For example the Regal Orb can be worth X amount of Chaos Orbs but also can be used to upgrade an item from magic rarity to rare rarity. Therefore each currency will have different economic values often related to their usage and rarity.
Currency Tiers
I won't give ratios between the currencies but it is helpful to sort currencies by value and liquidity. A lower-tier of currency may be worth more than a higher tier but you should keep in mind liquidity is an important factor when trading with other players.
God-Tier
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The rarest and highest value currency item in the game. It eclipses the networth of most of the playerbase.
High-Tier
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Very high value in the end-game. Used extremely often for trading high- and mid-end items. Recommended to save and use for trading.
Mid-Tier
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Moderate value in large amounts. Used often for low- and mid-end items. It is recommended to save them in large amounts to trade in bulk. Using small amounts for personal crafting is not bad.
Low-Tier
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Currency that is rarely used for trading, usually people will try to buy these by the hundreds rather than accepting one or two due to how easy they are to get. A lot of people will just keep a few stacks of these currencies to use on their own items rather than going through the effort of selling them.
Crafting
Currency has the dual purpose of being used directly in the crafting system. There is no NPC required Your currency is used directly on the item in the crafting process. It is highly recommended that you do not attempt crafting. It is a very difficult and RNG-based process.
Crafting with low-level currencies is fairly safe, provided that you do not need to use large amounts of currencies to achieve your results. Practices often include:
- Using Chromatic Orbs to change the color of sockets to fit your gem arrangements
- Using Jeweler's Orbs to increase the number of sockets on equipment (please note item level)
- Using Fusing Orbs to link sockets together to fit your gem arrangements (Note: Linking 5 or 6 sockets together is extremely difficult)
- Using Glassblower's Baubles, Blacksmith's Whetstones and Armorer's Scraps to improve the quality on gear
Loot is probably the biggest calling card for PoE. It is exhilarating to find and incredibly valuable item at the end of a long day and you feel a rush to play more, find more, loot more. However at the same time it is confusing and intricate, leaving many confused of what to pick up and what to keep.
Vendor Recipes
By selling specific items to an NPC, you are able to receive specific currencies and items. This is known as a vendor recipe and is the main way to acquire currency by selling gear to an NPC.
A list of vendor recipes can be found here.
List of Popular and Efficient Vendor Recipes
- Under 10% quality Gems totaling 40% quality (Ex. 5 gems of 8% quality each) -> 1 Gemcutter's Prism
- Equipment with a red, blue and green socket all linked -> 1 Chromatic Orb
- Items with 6 sockets -> 7 Jeweler's Orbs
- 1 full set of rare (itemlevel 60+) items for every item slot -> 1 Chaos Orb (2 Chaos Orb if all items are not identified)
- 1 Stone Hammer/Rock Breaker/Gavel with 20% quality + 1 Map -> 1 Cartographer's Chisel
- 7 Vaal Skill Gems + 1 Vaal Sacrifice Fragment -> 1 Vaal Orb
General Looting Tips
- Pick up Unique items (red/brown text)
- Pick up quality flasks and gems - you can sell quality gems to other people if they are over 10% quality. Low quality gems and quality flasks can be saved to sell at the vendor NPC for Gemcutter's Prisms (trading currency) and Glassblower's Baubles (for your own flasks).
- Pick up all rares and ID them. They will sell to the vendor for Alteration Shards which will build up to Orbs of Alteration which can be traded in bulk or used. Some rare items may be usable or tradable.
- Pick up items with at least 3 linked sockets and R, G, B sockets. These will vendor for a Chromatic Orb which can be sold in bulk to players or used for yourself
- Pick up items with 6 sockets. These can be sold for 7 Jeweller's Orbs which can be traded in bulk or used on your own gear.
- Pick up items with 5 and 6 linked sockets. These are quite valuable and you should use them yourself or sell them to others for currency.
- Pick up all currency unless you are too lazy to.
Path of Exile follows a typical ARPG style story progression, if you are familiar with the likes of the Diablo and Torchlight series. You progress through zones split into Acts (Act 1, Act 2, Act 3 ... so on) and after finishing the story you will move up in difficulty (Normal, Cruel Merciless) and repeat the story a few more times.
Note: There is 1 town per act. Players will often refer to the towns in shorthand like "a1n" (Act 1 Normal Difficulty's Town) for example.
Aside from the main storyline, you will see a variety of side areas that include optional quests that will reward you with extra gear/gems and respec points.
Quests and Quest Rewards
You can retroactively complete quests in PoE if you have already met the requirements prior to talking to a quest NPC. For example, if you have slain a quest monster before you were requested to kill it, the NPC will give you the quest reward anyway. Therefore you are safe progressing at whatever speed you wish since you can return to town and complete your quests at any time you want.
Quests do not reward EXP.
Quest Rewards can range from extra skill gems, equipment, skill points and a few miscellaneous items. For more information, click here.
Levelling Strategy
PoE can be broken up into 2 parts: the Main Storyline required for plot progression and the side areas that can be completed for bonus rewards and achievements.
The main storyline offers enough EXP to progress without any additional sidezones. Completing sidezones will offer extra EXP and benefits that may prove useful, but you do not need to do any of them.
The sufficient EXP for progression can be gained from killing large packs and elite mobs only. It is not recommended to kill small packs that are more trouble than they are worth or full-clear zones.
Elite packs consist of:
- Blue-Named Monsters (Magic)
- Yellow-Named Monsters (Rare)
- Brown-Named Monsters (Unique)
Elite monsters give extra items, exp and are considerably stronger than regular mobs. It is always recommended to kill them to keep up in drops and exp but they may warrant skipping if they are too strong.
Later on the the game it is required to repeat zones in order to keep up. Resetting zones to farm them can be done by holding CTRL while entering the zone and creating a new instance.
Things to watch out for:
- Early on, several monsters will possess very high physical damage output. The armoured, bipedal Rhoa bird will charge at you, the Goatmen will jump on you with leap slams and the mid-boss Brutus deals very high damage with all his attacks. High HP (250+ for normal) is recommended.
- Later on, in Merveil's Caverns you will need to prepare some elemental resistance. The act-boss Merveil will deal cold damage while her minions in the cave will deal a mix of cold/lightning damage with fire damage exploding spawn
Things to watch out for:
- Elemental undead possess a multitude of spells and elemental attacks that can melt down anyone with low resistances. They will appear in the Chamber of Sins, The Crypt and the Ancient Pyramid. Get some lightning resistance for the Chamber of Sins and try to round out all the other resistances before you make your way through the Ancient Pyramid.
- Some higher health (400+ for normal) and decent AOE coverage is needed for the Weaver's Chambers lest you be swarmed with spider mobs.
- The Bandit Lords quest involves fighting 3 different bandit lords. All 3 are difficult but the most unique aspect of the fight is that they will heal to full HP if you try to teleport out, meaning that you need to be able to kill them in one go.
Things to watch out for:
- The mini-boss Perpetus hides in the Slums. If you aggro him, he is a quick and deadly physical caster who throws Ethereal Knives and Bear Traps. Traps will lock you in place so it makes the situation even more perilous.
- The Voidbearers are strange flaming animals that shoot streams of fire out of their mouth. Large packs will incinerate even the toughest characters. Even though the Docks is a good farming spot, high fire resistance is necessary.
- The humanoid Undying come with 2 very dangerous variations: The Undying Grappler explodes in a huge radius when allies are killed while the Alchemist will through poisonous bombs from afar.
- The later zones will feature some more deadly Blackguards that will charge you and cast Lightning Thorns. If you hit a mob with lightning thorns, you will take a bunch of reflected lightning damage.
- Mid-Boss Piety and Act-Boss Dominus and several other dangerous mobs primarily deal lightning damage, so high lightning resistance is required throughout the act. In addition, high fire and cold resistance is recommended for the boss fights as well. Try to get high health as well (1000+ for normal).
Things to watch out for:
- Voll deals primarily lightning damage, Kaom deals primarily fire damage and Daresso deals primarily cold damage. Adjust your resistances accordingly, it is good to start capping (75%) them as well.
- The later zones have a large amount of Bleeding damage, rolling a flask with Staunching is recommended to prevent dying to bleed. Physical damage is very prevalent throughout the act as well, high health and armour/evasion is very important to survive the zones.
- There is a heavy emphasis on boss fights in the later half of the act. Having a strong single-target attack and good mobility for dodging is recommended. Capping out all your resistances is also required.
Handy Levelling Vendor Recipes
While the results do not shine end-game, there are a couple of very convenient recipes that can produce good magic items for levelling.
A vendor recipe can be activated by selling the items to any NPC vendor, instead of getting regular items you will instead get whatever the recipe creates.
- 1 Iron Ring + 1 Red/Blue/Green Gem -> 1 Ruby/Sapphire/Topaz Ring
- 3 Flasks of the same level (Ex. 3 Small Life Flasks, any rarity) -> Next level Flask
- 1 White Boots + 1 Orb of Augmentation + 1 Quicksilver Flask -> Magic Boots with 10% Movement Speed
- 1 Magic Staff/Scepter/Wand + 1 Orb of Alteration + 1 Ruby/Sapphire/Topaz Ring -> Magic Staff/Scepter/Wand with +1 to Fire/Cold/Lightning Gems (good for casters)
- 1 Weapon + 1 Granite/Ruby/Sapphire/Topaz Flask -> 1 Magic Weapon with +Physical/Fire/Cold/Lightning damage (good for attackers)
- 1 Weapon + 1 Rustic Sash + 1 Blacksmith Whetstone -> 1 Magic Weapon with Increased Physical Damage (amount depends on rarity of rustic sash, good for attackers)
- 1 Dagger/Scepter/Staff/Wand + 1 Chain Belt + 1 Blacksmith Whetstone -> 1 Magic Dagger/Scepter/Staff/Wand with Increased Spell Damage (amount depends on rarity of chain belt, good for casters)
Trading
Trading, despite being a crucial part of the game, is a pretty big pain in the ass. There are a few important limitations for trading that you need to know about:
- You must be in the same instance to trade items
- Due to the nature of the currency system, item prices are not set in stone, for better or for worse
So early on you will not be trading at all (not that you should need to at such a low level) and later on you will need to do a lot of bush-beating to actually get a trade going. You will often need to whisper a potential buyer or seller and haggle prices before inviting them to a party and joining their hideout. Only then can you actually conduct the trade.
Most of the time people will opt to buy skill gems early on for an Orb of Alchemy or a few Orbs of Alteration. This should be the extent of your early-game trading. Other than that, most items are not worth selling nor buying below the 60s, so just vendor items until then.
Once you reach higher levels, you will begin to utilize the forums (where you are reading this) as a shopping medium for both buying and selling.
Poe.trade: the Current Forum Trading Site
How to Trade via Poe.trade
- Select your League, Check "Online Only" and "Buyout Only"
- Set your item requirements
- Search for items
- Click "Verify" on an item to make sure it is still up for trade
- Whisper the player in-game, request to purchase his item at his price (haggling is possible, but unlikely)
- Invite, or get invited to, the party
- Go to their hideout
- Commence trade
How to Set-Up a Shop via Procurement
- Procurement is a program that acts as a shop management assistant for players, along with various other features. It is 100% safe unless the developer has decided to go rogue.
- Alternatively Acquisition is a new streamlined program that focuses completely on shop management, it is gotten much attention due to it's ease of use and high speed. Also safe.
- Login to Procurement/Acquisition
- Set prices on your items (recommended)
- Go to the trading section, copy the shop code
- Navigate to the proper forum section on the official forums
- Make a new thread, paste the shop code here
- Periodically bump your shop thread to trigger Poe.trade indexing
- Set yourself to online status here
- Commence trades with people who whisper you in-game.
Partying and Instances
Instances in PoE last anywhere from 8-15 minutes. This is primarily to conserve processing power on the servers.
It has been said before, but if you hold CTRL while clicking on an entrance, you will open an instance selection screen where you can join existing instances or create a new instance. The ctrl+click is also useful for partying and trading, as it will show you existing zones of that area that contain your party members.
By checking the town NPC or pressing S to bring up your social tab, you should be able to see a party bulletin with public parties available. Usually the main purpose is just to kill a particular boss or dungeon in the safety of a group so if you want to rush acts it will be a good idea to hop between parties to progress.
If you have any friends, you can invite them to your party through your friend list (also accessed through the social tab 'S').
Guild
The Guild system is essentially a permanent party system. You can gather friends that you party with together often to speed up the inviting process as well as share a chat channel that spans across the servers. In addition, you can use microtransactions to add a Guild Stash, a server-wide stash that is shared by all guild members.
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