What are your self found "rules"?

Interested in giving self found a go. Seems pretty fun and doable, and would offer a new set of accomplishments to get.

Not sure what limitations I should put on myself though, or how I would do it.

I for sure won't trade or party, but some other grey areas..

- Should 2 self found characters be able to share gear?
- Is sharing a hideout (masters) with other characters cheating in a way?

I think I'd prefer no sharing of anything. Just 1 character, 1 hideout. However, I have some microtransactions that make me not want to make a new account for this.

So, what do you self found players do? What rules and limitations do you place, or not place? Also, does sharing gear/hideouts between characters detract from the experience or not really?

For me it's pretty simple, I just play the game as if it was offline. So trading between my chars is fair game, I just don't trade or party with others.

Ok that's not entirely true, before I had a currency tab I made a bit of pocket money selling chromatics for chaos, but that was only because I didn't have the room in my stash for all the chroms I was finding.

If you want to get a totally fresh start on a new character, without spoiling your old progress, just wait until the prophecy league starts.

I've played a lot of self-found and find it very enjoyable. And much harder, and much, much slower. :)

Early on, I gave up the idea of being isolationist, e.g. I do allow sharing of items between my characters. I like making lots of characters and if I couldn't share stuff inbetween them it would be too punishing. For me that is, not saying it's how you should feel.

I did also try the new account approach, but gave up on that because of stash tabs.. I'm a spoiled packrat, playing with 4 tabs makes me want to hurt myself. ;) Also, as you already mention: lack of MTX isn't fun.

Most enjoyable self-found I think is when a new league starts. Create one character and go full retard with it. There's something really rewarding about starting from scratch, for sure. I tend to start all new characters in temp leagues, and use Standard later on for fine tuning and tweaking.

Lately I've relaxed the self-found aspect a bit, and do some trading for currencies mostly. Like, trading off chromatics for chaos, stuff like that. Mapping gets expensive and I got tired of always running out of currency. This is cheating of course, I confess. Still try to avoid buying gear, even though I've bought some stuff to speed things up. Feels bad, yeah. I've grown too lazy.

The most important part of self-found I think is planning your build, and never plan on needing certain items. Adapt on the fly, build dynamically around what you find. I find that part of the process very enjoyable, and sometimes truly challenging. This really is a huge part of the game that "normal" players never get to see. To avoid hitting that gear wall too often I tend to play many characters, slowly improving over time. It just helps me alleviate boredom when RNG is against me - your mileage may vary. :)

Good luck, hope you find it fun!

I play account-wide self-found. Sharing things between my own characters is okay, and my alts often use low-level uniques I've found previously while leveling. I do play with friends sometimes, but not in public parties and I prefer to make my progress solo.

Lately I've bent the rules a bit and attempted to sell some items through a public stash tab, but the results have been lackluster so far. I'll never buy items, because I feel that would make getting good items too easy.

Pretty simple for me; I don't trade or party with others (unless they're SF too). I can still use items I find from my other characters though.

GGG have actually been really slowly making the game feel very nice for SSF players. For example, last patch they made all magic item affixes provide at least 1 Alteration Shard, and boosted the amount of Alchemy Shards from some affixes. This actually really helps as I pick up all rares and a lot more magics than most people.

A rule I'd like to implement is "fair softcore deaths mean you must delete that character". I don't play HC because I've died to stupid things like lag or failed Flame Dashes (where they show the line of fire indicating you SHOULD'VE dashed away, but you just appear back in the same spot you started).

Playing SSF and not dying pretty much solves all speed meta "issues" people have with PoE. You have to play carefully; you have to know what items to use and how to craft efficiently; and you can't expect a 6L except for Tabula, which has defensive downsides that are important when you're pseudo-HC.

Highly recommend to everyone, especially those who are sick of the speed meta.

I play alone, almost entirely self found but I trade occasionally.

my motivation? playing alone is fine. not a big fan of the social
organization... waiting on people, rotating etc...

load her up, run some maps, logoff.

hard to start a league self found. I literally starve for alch's
during league unless I trade for them. solo self found alch's
are your bread and butter. (gots ta 5 item vendor alched jewlery until
you gets whats you needs.)

I never play with anyone so intraparty trade is not an issue I have to worry about.

Rules are no trade anyway so it wouldn't make a difference.

My characters share i.e. whole stash is available

Game today is really SF friendly with vendor gems and masters and humility card.

The only trade i do is for gems that I don't have ( no quality gems ) untill i level bunch of the other classes , and all my characters can use the whole stash at any point of the league for twinking etc.

I used to only play solo self found (from closed beta, until autumn 2015). I shared all my gear among characters, and in fact finding uniques would often trigger a new build as it now was within reach.

With careful and patient playing, I managed to 6-link both Voll's Protector and Lightning Coil. I also managed to chance a Voll's Devotion in a Zana map. It was fun to collect all the agates and scourings needed.

Now I "like" to trade a bit, as I felt I needed to change my game a bit, just bought myself a legacy Mjölnir the other day, which I always wanted to own when playing self found.