How to start playing?

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- What if you do not find what you are looking for? Does that force you to change your build mid game?

- What character should I start out with? They are seem the same, just on different parts of the attributes tree.

- In the beginner guide, it is highly recommended I do not craft. If so, do I just play and hope for a good item to drop?

- Generally, how should I start with the game? Im guessing play the quests, and for the best? Not sure if there is anything a new player should do to get really quick into the game. I am looking forward to the expansion too!

To some extent, yes you will have to adapt your plans based on what you find, especially early on. If you plan things out properly, you should at least get most of the skill gems you need eventually and many of the support gems. In the expansion, it will be even easier to get all of the ones you need. Whatever you can't find on your own, you should be able to trade for fairly easily as well. As for equipment, some basic leveling items will be cheap and worth getting, but it may not always be worth trading for everything so early on. This is where you might just have to work with whatever you can find. And after all, you are someone who has just survived a shipwreck in a strange land, so it makes some sense that you might have to start off struggling to survive by any means necessary.

There are 2 main differences between the classes; where they start on the skill tree and which gems they receive as quest rewards. Figure out what type of build you want to play and pick the class that works best based on those. In the long term, the starting position on the tree is the more important factor since as I mentioned, you can eventually trade for any gems you don't get from quests or find.

I'd say at least don't craft until you know what all the different currency types are worth, how often they drop, and what the odds are for getting the result you need. Before then, yeah, hope for good drops, trade for what you need, and above all, don't plan out a character that NEEDS anything too specific, Some builds will require a particular unique item to even work at all, while others can work with just about anything as long as you end up with a decent combination of stats.

The best way to start playing is...just start playing. Experiment a bit and have fun and don't worry if your first few characters don't work out so well. Learn what works and what doesn't. And realize that you'll be starting over a lot anyway. And that things will change with each new major update. You can also look through the class forums and find build guides there.

About the tip you read that you shouldnt craft as a begginer:

In this game there is no "money" as you might have already seen. But as players we want to have a baseline to know how much an item is worth. So this is where "orbs" come in.

Orbs are currency items that allow you to craft items in certain ways. They will drop for you sometimes and you should take them.
As a begginer I tell you that you must try to NOT use this orbs until you get more experience with the game. Some of them are incredibly valuable and even the common ones can give you profits later if you mass them.

Most new players end up using them when is it not worth it to, and in the long term they never get to mass enough wealth to continue foward. Sometimes you will get really lucky with an Eternal Orb drop for example, and you end up using it thinking that it is a common thing to happen.


Like the other posters said, I commend you to search in the internet whenever you want to know some info. The PoE wiki is really well made (in my opinion), there are a lot of tools that are free and really usefull (tons of online calculators and poe.trade) and in these forums there are a ton of guides on how to play or on specific fail-proof builds that you may want to try.


With this game you will find that there are tons of possibilities, just keep on searching and thinking and you may beat Uber-Atziri one day :D

Dear all, many thanks for the tips and advice! Really appreciate the help!

A follow up question after starting to play is, what items should I keep and what items should I vendor? I am assuming vendor white and blue items, but keep the yellow items. Is this correct?

Cheers all!! xoxo

Mostly you leave stuff on the ground.
In theory, you're not spending that much time at lower levels and are pushing content hard. It's not even worth the time to stop for white items when you can be playing the game. (Of course, there are always a few exceptions or qualifications to everything I say here, but let's keep things simple.)

You can vendor unidentified items for tansmmutation shards, which is really the most effective way to get wisdom scrolls early on when you don't have any. Transumation shards and orbs vendor for more Wisdom scrolls than white items do.

You can also identify and vendor items for Alteration shards. Make no mistake about it, in large enough quantities, Alterations are in demand and valuable. So don't overlook them. They actually matter. Generally, your scrolls are best spent on yellows.