My journey to level 90 with four stash tabs

I have been playing POE ftp for three years and can say 4 stash tabs and are enough with careful stash management. I've never gotten a char to level 90 but that is because I play on a toaster and am a casual. If I had died only half as often, last leagues char would have made it to level 90.
If you impose SSF as well, you are restricting yourself in a few other ways, but without it you can essentially use the player market as extra stash at a fairly small loss.
Some general tips I use:
Vendor all uniques worth 1c or less, just buy it if you need a specific one. With SSF I assume you made a build that doesn't require any specific unique. Same for rares unless they are jewelry.
Use the player market to exchange low value currency like chromes into chaos. I guess with SSF just stop collecting them at some point, you never need that many anyway. You can still use the full chain from transmutes to fuses.
Store only very few skill gems, and put them in item slots, so they take zero extra space.
Once you stop running t1 maps, make full use of the 3 -> 1 recipe to upgrade all maps that are lower tier than you currently run.
Div cards and essences will take some space but even both together easily fit into one stash tab.
Don't try to be too organized, eventually most things will be everywhere. But with 4 tabs it won't take too long to find something, the search function is excellent, too.

Started with normal labyrinth today. I had skipped most of the trials while leveling (simply because I hadn't run into them) so I had to do those first. At level 42 they were a breeze. Catacombs had a strongbox of complexity which dropped a 6-socket item. It was of a wrong base type so I vendored it for jeweler's orbs.

The labyrinth was easy too. None of those long spike trap gauntlets I dislike. Too bad leaguestones didn't work there. I botched the first mechanic and left two of the conduits standing (flames and storm), but Izaro was still a total pushover in the later phases. I ascended to slayer and took Endless Hunger.

Among the loot from the labyrinth were boots with movement speed, life and an appropriate base type. It's only 15% but better than nothing.

With the labyrinth completed I entered cruel difficulty with beyond, ambush and perandus leaguestones active. The amount of beyond spawns was underwhelming.

In the early areas of act 1 I found 4-link gloves of an appropriate base type, which I essenced with a weeping essence of greed. I found some other gear upgrades as well, with the net result of slightly lower life but much improved resistances.

A Perandus chest in the Coast contained Shavronne's Pace. I briefly considered using them because of the high movement speed bonus, but they lacked life and resistances so I decided against it.

A trade request interrupted me so I handled that and disabled my 1 alch trading tabs so that any future interruptions would at least be for higher value items.

At this point I remembered that I had increased my reputation with Haku to level 3 in normal act 4, so I created a coastal hideout. I invited Elreon along as well and did both of their dailies.

A beyond mob called Murderlord caused a bit of a chuckle. Unfortunately I didn't think of taking a screenshot until it was already dead.

Fire Fury dropped a Vaal Caress. Not half bad, but unfortunately they only had a single socket and I wasn't about to spend my jewelers and fusings this early.

Upper Prison had a vaal area whose boss dropped an Ashrend, and the vaal vessel contained a sacrifice at dawn. Nice enough stats, but unfortunately the sockets were bad again.

A strongbox in Upper Prison dropped a blessed orb.

Towards the end of act 1 I activated a talisman leaguestone. Aside from beyond, I think that's the only league I hadn't experienced up to this point. It wasn't quite as interesting as beyond.

I killed Merveil at level 46, 11 hours 14 minutes /played, and continued to act 2.

Southern Forest was conductive to rampage thanks to the large and frequent packs of apes. A perandus chest and some strongboxes helped too. I got a 464 kill streak by running through the entire area.

In the old fields I encountered a stone circle and upgraded some talismans to tier 2. I was lucky enough to have it drop as rare even though only one or two of the used tier 1 talismans were rare.

Vaal ruins had a vaal side area. How appropriate. It dropped another sacrifice at dawn.

In the caverns I had breach, beyond and nemesis leaguestones active. The breach was intense. I think it was my first breach on cruel and the number of enemies seemed much larger than on normal. The indoor environment made it especially hazardous as I couldn't easily reposition myself. I decided to remove the beyond leaguestone for the final area of act 2 and use it in a less hazardous combination later.

Vaal Oversoul was vanquished in short order. I was level 50, with 13 hours 2 minutes /played.



Here's the planned tree for level 90. I've edited this to the initial post as well.

I likely won't play any more today as I have some other things to do.

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Arrowneous wrote:

Haven't played Barrage yet (so many skills, so little lifetime to try them all). Is it a good bow skill? Is it better than Frostblades? I got it early and thought "haven't tried a cold build in years" so my duelist will be a cold melee build (at least for now).

Based on my experience so far barrage seems like a decent single-target skill. Its many hits will build up leech stacks quickly, although on the flipside the leech will be over sooner and I won't get to enjoy the slayer ascendancy effects so much.

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quarague wrote:

With SSF I assume you made a build that doesn't require any specific unique.

Indeed I'm not counting on having any specific uniques. There are a few that would be useful if I find them, but I can live without if I don't.

This is not my first SSF character either. I've always played this way and made fairly successful characters in prophecy (level 92, cleared T15 maps) and essence (level 93, cleared T15 maps). My perandus character was a bit lackluster, only getting to level 80 and T7 maps, but likely could have been salvaged with some effort. In standard I've made a couple of builds relying on the unique items I've found in the leagues. Those have been fun too, but the level of fun is comparable to the more generic league characters.

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databeaver wrote:

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dfajardo1 wrote:

Is it really that hard to play the game with only 4 Stash Tabs?

That's what I want to find out. All of the pay-to-win complainers certainly make it sound hard.

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dfajardo1 wrote:

I got to 90 with just the 4 and had no problems at all. Not to mention 2 other chars at 87-88 with the max stashes.

There isn't such a thing as max stash tabs. I have 52. Some people have 300+.

My bad, I meant, the 4 initial tabs you start with, not the actual maximum amount of tabs you can have.

Not a big deal. I've had 4 stash tabs since beta. I rarely sell anything unless it's 5+ c mid league anyway and I'm on ssf hc. In fact I know heaps of people who play with regular tabs. Didn't think it was that big of a thing to make an entire thread "oh look at me, I have 4 regular tabs" such a challenge.

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databeaver wrote:

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Arrowneous wrote:

Haven't played Barrage yet (so many skills, so little lifetime to try them all). Is it a good bow skill? Is it better than Frostblades? I got it early and thought "haven't tried a cold build in years" so my duelist will be a cold melee build (at least for now).

Based on my experience so far barrage seems like a decent single-target skill. Its many hits will build up leech stacks quickly, although on the flipside the leech will be over sooner and I won't get to enjoy the slayer ascendancy effects so much.

"

quarague wrote:

With SSF I assume you made a build that doesn't require any specific unique.

Indeed I'm not counting on having any specific uniques. There are a few that would be useful if I find them, but I can live without if I don't.

This is not my first SSF character either. I've always played this way and made fairly successful characters in prophecy (level 92, cleared T15 maps) and essence (level 93, cleared T15 maps). My perandus character was a bit lackluster, only getting to level 80 and T7 maps, but likely could have been salvaged with some effort. In standard I've made a couple of builds relying on the unique items I've found in the leagues. Those have been fun too, but the level of fun is comparable to the more generic league characters.

2 thumbs up. I always like hearing how others are planning their new league build and how they're progressing with it (good or bad).

Frostblades take a bit of practice to get to work at maximum effectiveness. I can't just point in the general vicinity of a pack and fire like I can with Blade Flurry. FrostBlades functions best when I target the closest creature in the pack and then the arc of blades that blasts out the back of the targeted creature can hit most of the others in the pack. Using Herald of Ice and Hatred Aura to maximize my cold damage is a big help. So is my use of Ancestral Protector totem (another skill I've never used). Having another target other than my exile for the mobs to go after is a big help to staying on the offensive to move through the zones fast. Right now (still in Normal) I can't decide if Vigilant Strike or Dual Strike is best for single target. VS has the desired Fortify but DS can stun twice. Fortunately right now I don't need to make that decision of which one to drop.

Keep us informed. :)

I dropped Duel Strike in favor of Vigilant Strike, the Fortify is more important for melee tank. Assigning VS to left and FB to right mouse buttons if I get the timing right I can alternate between the two and freeze sword the creatures dead fast. Looks Like cast speed and critical strike is going to the most important to try and max (in addition to life and leeching as always of course). So far SSF is moving smoothly but its very early so just about any build will work.

Note: Here's hoping the one handed weapon buffs are going to make melee not suck (or at least not as much). FrostBlades is another head scratcher like Blade Flurry in that it's a ranged attack skill yet GGG has it classified as melee. Another go figure why GGG did that.

Not too much time to play today but I did complete most of cruel act 3. Now it's getting late so I'll post a proper update tomorrow after finishing act 3.

It is entirely possible to play with 4 stash. I didn't buy any stash until I decided that creating mules were too troublesome. Not sure why there are people who think playing with 4 stash is a challenge. It's only when you want to horde stuff when it become a challenge.

1 stash for currency
1 stash for maps
1 stash for chaos recipe
1 stash for uniques