How I reached level 100 with only 4 stash tabs

Good days fellow exiles,

It is long time player Deadpeng here who finally managed to hit level 100 on the dawn of a Tuesday morning. I must express how delighted I am to be among the first 1000 level 100 characters in Path of Exile. (even though it is standard league) This is even more so of an achievement as the new experience system makes it twice as hard to go from level 99 to level 100. Not only did I not go bankrupt reaching level 100, I earned a rough profit of 32 exalted orbs through my journey from level 90 to 100.

It is my honor to share my knowledge to benefit the rest of the community by sharing how a non-elite player with only a few exalts and a hectic life to take care of can excel in this game without buying any stash tabs.

I first of all proclaim myself as a non-hardcore player. I am a theoretical physics phD candidate and dedicate most of my time to research work rather than gaming. I have also promised my parents to not spend a single cent on online game services, which was why I never bought a single stash tab despite knowing how difficult businesses are for small gaming enterprises like GGG. (I really love you GGG personels! So sorry) Therefore, I envisioned that I have to be extremely resourceful and calculative to reach level 100 with my limitations since I joined this game four years ago.

Firstly, I direct my attention towards beginners who are reading this post to learn quickly. I admit that I have always been harsh in my comments towards beginners in my other 4000 posts on this forum. This is because I believe in tough love. Path of Exile is such a game that tests a person's willingness to accept reality and being resourceful. Many beginners want to make the best of the builds they dream of yet aim for unrealistic goals, this is the same attitude I had when I first joined this game. This game is so counter-intuitive that the most common build in every RPG-'Sword and Shield fighter'-is actually not a beginner friendly build in this game. To those of you first time trying POE thinking if you should continue with your fighter build after reading this, my answer is 'How I wish I read advice like this when I just started.'

If you just want to have fun in this game and do not care even if you are twenty times slower than other players in the game, by all means go ahead. If you want to get rich in POE, level up faster than others, show off your shining clear all map builds, you cannot be constrained to only follow your own opinions. POE is such a test of one's willingness to change and adapt. In fact, out of 10 beginners I coach, 8 eventually quit because of how mentally unprepared for this game they are. If you are interested, here are my keypoints:

Understand GGG's philosophy Plenty of players find the game tough to adjust to because their builds often stop working due to the constantly changing game from each update. Take note GGG has a fixed philosophy and it is quite clear what can change and not change each update. GGG generally will nerf builds that are considered almost abusive; examples are spark (nerfed twice in fact), facebreaker when it was first introduced (used to work with damage boosting quivers) and cast on death (could be used with any spell even when player is still alive). GGG however will hesitate to target stuff that preserve a certain ideal they have; voll devotion(they do not dare to nerf it because they want to make league-specific items have a special place in this game), multiple projectiles (it preserves the symmetry of players and monsters both benefiting and suffering from multiple projectiles; GGG removed shotgunning reluctantly) and poison (I made a poison build just because I know it is against their philosophy to nerf it)

Spread out your character storage Since I have only four stash tabs, managing storage is really difficult. I challenge those of the opinion that POE is not pay-to-win at all. I have to skip most divination cards and discard valuable crafting bases just to conserve space. Once, I even vendored away a Pledge of Hands in desperation. In fact for every twenty maps I play, I spend the next ten minutes rearranging my storage. For the first time, I am making my character profile public to show everyone how I use all my 25 character slots functionally as storage. Most important note here is to try to avoid picking up stuff of little value and brood over trying to sell them, the time you take to sell them could be spent to farm the currency you would have earned anyway.

Try not to aim for 100 on your first character unless you have extremely trustworthy friends If you have weak internet like mine and are forced to play solo, avoid aiming for level 100 on your first try. How end game mapping works goes like this: If your build cannot survive all map mods, you will spend more currency to roll away the dangerous mods for yourself. You will also die more often because your build does not qualify for these end game maps. The correct way to handle this game is to build several characters until you finally gather enough currency to build an expert but expensive build that can handle anything. While this is being done, you are also gathering the maps necessary to sustain you until level 100.

Why the hell do you have five character tabs full of maps?Well, it is not five but seven because I still have more maps in my stash. Yes. I have a character that can handle all map mods and I simply apply alchemy to every map I play without re-rolling with chaos. My profit margin is so large that I ran out of stash space for chaos orbs and simply wasted them buying more maps to challenge myself.

So what is your build and why does it seem like crap? For those of you checking out my profile right now, the build is not as crappy as it seems and is not very beginner friendly to copy and paste. You need to have the exact jewels to make it work. The passive skilltree is also not the real one I was using as I modified it slightly to reach level 100 safely. Here is how it works-It is a poison miner which deals the highest single target damage in the game currently, undisputed. I however saw that the damage is overkill anyway and decided to make a Scion version. The default Shadow based miner is usually energy shield based as all the mine passive nodes so happen to cluster over all the ES nodes. Some people argue that HP versions can be built on Shadow with the unique item 'Belly of the Beast' but I still see them getting 1 hit KO.

As for mine, I run Stone of Lazhwar with +1 curse to support enfeeble and another curse, followed by Aegis Aurora and Tempest Shield to give me near maximum block. I have all 8 Scion Ascendancy passsive skillpoints and invested half of them into Marauder start for bonus HP to make my HP 6000 while the other half goes into gladiator to bring out the maximum block build. The most important element to make a maximum block Scion comes from a highly undervalued unique item:

With this, my damage mitigation has a total of 8 layers-Lightning coil-enfeeble-armor-maximum block-high HP-fortify-Taste of hate-Endurance charges. If you have more expensive gears than I do, you can actually squeeze out another layer of damage mitigation-Mind over matter. This is how I managed to reach level 100 on a budget build.

Clear speed versus safetyUnderstand that those cool looking high speed clearance builds may not be the best. They clear maps faster than I do but die much often than I do as well. The best build in the game balances offense and defense. For my build, it is slightly more towards the defensive side but with any build you are going to play, always bear this golden rule in mind.

Lastly, learn to make friendsPOE is not an evil sink with everyone trying to rip you off and bully you. There are always sociable and good willed players out to help you. I once could not play any build in a league but someone saved me by donating a Bino's knife to me and opened up several builds to me. Without him, I would not be level 100 today.

That is all I have to say. Hope everyone can achieve in this game better!