How can you level up fast?

This is my 3'rd char now and everytime i get to around level 54 cruel, i start dying a lot so i dont level up, is it even possible to complete this game without buying stuff from the shop? I tried really hard but i cant seem to progress beyond level 54 or so,monsters kill me all the time, how can i progress to a high level so i can upgrade my skill tree? I level so slow,there must be a trick to level fast?

Yeah, there are two trick to fast levelling, one is to skip annoying areas and catch up in ones that are easy to farm and have good monster density like ledge, city of sarn or dried lake. The second trick is to use skills that are simple and strong during early-mid game, switching to your endgame setup later on, when all the pieces fall together.

If you also want to do it self-found it's recommended to use skills that use own damage as base so they improve with level instead of scaling weapon damage so you don't have to upgrade your weapon, that includes all spells, skills like explosive arrow and elemental attackers. It's also doubly important to manage your priorities well:
1. From cruel difficulty onward cap your resists at all times, very important though some builds don't really have to do it if you know what to watch out for. Still, you don't have enough experience for that yet so it's better to just be on the safe side.
2. Always try to have adequate life pool for your level, this is extremely important as no amount of defenses can cover for low buffer, you need to be capable of taking a hit or two even if you're so strong everything dies at a glance, which in your case isn't true anyway.
3. As stated already, your skill should be functional in a 4-link and with minimal damage scaling, the usual newcomer mistake is to spend all passive points on damage, you do get some but those are mostly pass-through nodes or really juicy clusters, most of your power should come from support gems.

And there are other things self-found players do, you can get usable weapons with vendor recipes if your luck is poor, levelling Elreon and Haku should be a priority so you can craft additional resists on armor and jewelry, and you could also farm normal aqueducts for humility cards to get a Tabula.

i'm embarrassed to say but i didnt really understand much of what you said...i am new to this game only started last month,could you break all that down to simple newb terms?

My life is real low, under 1500, but if i put all on life i cant progress on other things...this is why i need to level faster so i can put more on life but i dont know how since i level so slow, i play 5 hours and level 1 or 2 maybe

"

i'm embarrassed to say but i didnt really understand much of what you said...i am new to this game only started last month,could you break all that down to simple newb terms?

Don't be, it's no trouble at all.

The first part should be clear enough, there are areas with no clear path and with few and annoying monsters, good examples are warehouses in act3, sceptre of god and most of act 4. What you want to catch up are simple levels with a lot of cannon fodder.

By endgame setup I mean the gear, gem and skill configuration you plan to settle on. Often it won't work because you need to stack a certain stat high enough (cast on crit or reactive blocker builds), you need the right number of gem links (also cast on crit) or specific items (usually uniques, Myolner or Oro are a good example). That means the setup will work poorly in early-mid game or not at all so you need to use something else, for example the aforementioned Myolner or CoC builds will level as regular casters and switch over once they are able to.

Self-found obviously means no trading, it's popular as additional level of challenge because trading makes gearing up trivial. Not really recommended for beginners, just getting a few items will make it a lot easier.

By capping resists I mean pushing fire, cold and lightning to 75%, on cruel you will get a -20% penalty and in merciless it will be -60%, you can take some resist passives on tree early on if you're having trouble with that and respec out of them later on when you take care of it with gear. Chaos resistance can usually be ignored, if you got the gearing headroom you can stack that too but it's not a hard requirement.

Speaking of which, another beginner mistake is to use too many uniques, they usually lack core stats (life and resists), which you ideally want on every piece of gear that can have them, in as high as possible rolls.

Your life pool is indeed very low, at that point in game you would need around 2500, that is accomplished by having good life rolls on most of your gear and taking a lot of life passives on tree. Not kidding here, take them all, pick the bloody tree clean.

Which leads us to skill part, your main damage skill will need to function with minimal investment on tree, no exotic keystone combinations, capping crit chance or whatnot, you need a simple workhorse setup. It would ideally need to function in a 4-link but you can farm divination cards for Tabula Rasa in Aqueducts act4 if you need more links. Of course, it needs to be scaled properly, you can't scale physical damage and use elemental bows, for example.

Elreon and Haku are masters you probably already encountered, I recommend using Elreon's hideout because he's easier to level, as you level him you will expand your hideout to invite more masters for their daily quests.

You can set your profile to public in settings so we can see your current character, see if it's salvageable.

RaizQT explains speed leveling in detail with a very cheap and solid build:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NsSZSDSVWQ

Ride a party or Zerg through to Maps/ Merciless Dried Lake with one character. Your intake of Items for twinking or trading for orbs will jump dramatically. Once you have some better gear (and if you're into trading, some more orbs to spend) your next character will be much stronger. And the next, and the next, and so on.

While you are gaining experience in the game, prioritize life in the tree. My general concept is kind of like this. Plan out your tree in advance. While leveling, spend about 1/3 of points on travel, 1/3 of points on life and the rest on build defining nodes. I tend to assign points such that I travel to life clusters along my build tree and take some damage/build nodes when my damage is too low. A dead hero can't kill monsters.

It is crucial to have your resistances capped by merciless, but that is hard to do in the beginning when you don't have much gear or orbs to spend. Trust me, once you start farming Lake/maps things change a lot.

Get a loot filter.

Pick up three linked red-blue-green items to trade for Chromes.

Level your masters to at least level 7. The currency discounts and crafting mods make a HUGE difference. Being able to add a life roll or elemental resist to an item is crucial to surviving.

If you want, hit me up in game and I'll master craft some items for you for free or for cost/dicount if it is too much.

I probably have some twinking gear laying around I could give you too.


Good luck!

wolf

Thanks for the help everyone...i managed to get my life up to 2100 from 1500 but it didnt make any difference at all,maybe something else is wrong? i unhidden my chars can someone please look at my level 55 ranger and tell me what i'm doing wrong? Also is the ranger one of the harder chars to play? i got to merciless act 1 with my witch with only 1200 life

Thanks for unhiding those. It is easy to see what you are doing wrong. Your skills aren't linked to your support gems. The support gems need to be in linked sockets to a skill to affect it.
Here is an example of some support gems that are linked to a skill gem:

See the links between the sockets?

You can use an orb of fusing to get more links on your armour.

Thanks i didnt know about that, is this char salvagable to progress or should i start a new char and what class would you recommend?