A casual's story

Preface: This is not a discussion thread about who or what is considered casual. It is simply the story of how I learned to play and like PoE and an encouragement for all new players to not be afraid to try it out and to stick with it. Because, taking your time, being patient and learning about the game will eventually make you endgame-ready!


Two days ago, on the 16th, I finally managed to kill the shaper for the first time ever! I have read a few threads where people claim to quit the game because of it's steep learning curve. And I have read lots of threads by people who want nothing more than harbinger league to end already, because they are already superbored. So I decided to give a little "casual" perspective, why a long(er) season is good and what to look for if you're just starting out to play PoE.

I am a father of two children and have a full time job. My playtime in the evenings ranges from a few minutes to up to three hours (sometimes I can squeeze in Zana's daily in the morning around six o'clock). I have been on holidays for the first two weeks after the new league started. My first two weeks of playtime were wasted trying to make a build on my own (sire of shards with arc) so my shaper kill took me about six weeks. This means: a rather old (I am nigh 40 years old) player with a limited time budget can still kill the endboss (Yeah, yeah, Uber-Atziri... will try her once I have the fragments) by playing casually but consistently every evening for about six weeks straight.

Is this still casual? Well, you decide.

But it's obviously not hardcore, 12 hours a day, playing the shit out of the game. Bear in mind that quite some of this time was spent in my hideout, when the children were not sleeping as they were supposed to do, or pondering atlas or maps, reading up on items, using PoB and price-checking on poe.trade.

To maybe help out some people shying away from PoE's steep learning curve, here is some completely biased and subjective advice:

1. Expect to put a lot of time into PoE
I started playing PoE in talisman league. Of course I rolled a character in HC (hey, I am a good player, right?). Made it through the prison, found my first strongbox, opened it without thinking - dead. Not as good a player as I thought... I then rolled a templar (SC) who killed everything with firestorm. Didn't have a clue what to do. So I became bored with using just that one op skill and shelved the game for a loooong time. First impression - rather bland.

In breach league a friend of mine said he was planning to play a little more sincerely, so I started looking up guides and decided to roll a double strike slayer. We made it quite far with our chars, but most of the time I had to play onehandedly since my second arm and shoulder were occupied by our newborn baby that was quite fond of sleeping right there. And I learned that playing PoE without flasks is rather deadly. When my char went up on an enemy and I could outleech the damage I was happy, but in other cases I died where noone would have died when he could have used a flask. Not to mention that on my old PC every time my friend and I popped a breach I lagged out and some seconds later was dead without me knowing why. I made it to T11-T12 and then saw no sense in playing further with bosses killing me in one hit and me not being able to use a flask. Even got a five-link starforge (the build suggested two six-links to really shine, so...) and some rather okayish items, but simply couldn't progress further.

But I had made progress, PoE's mechanics and it's currency system started to grow on me. I was intrigued and since I planned to upgrade my PC anyhow I decided to go all-out on legacy league (when my time allowed it).

On legacy league I was prepared, had the build ready (Sovyn's lazy pally), had all info ready about ancient reliquary keys and the league mechanics, and played whenever I could. I got into trading a little bit more but I mostly play by myself and thus it took me quite some time to finally try the guardians. That's when I realised that: first I wasn't a very good player and: second that the build I had chosen was not the best to try shaper with (please bear in mind that Sovyn nowhere claims his guide to be shaper-viable, that was my own false assumption).
So I switched characters in the middle of the league after having geared my pally with a legacy BoR (10ex) and more really good items. I switched to a whispering ice scion which claimed to be able to do the shaper. Yes, it was, but only if you knew the fight inside out, had the right flasks and used them correctly (I tend to mash all five buttons simultaneously). On the whole I tried shaper seven times this league, buying fragments until I was broke and made it twice to the last phase where the server crashed everytime the shaper summoned his clone. Seems I was not the only one to experience this, so I declared the shaper to be officially dead for me, although I was not really content with how that league had ended for me.

In harbinger I played windz' glacial cascade saboteur after having failed to create a build on my own and was finally able to achieve my goal.

So, on the whole it took me (not counting my first dabbling in talisman league) three leagues and four different rather well geared characters to kill the shaper. Slow? Yes, superslow, but doable. What I want to say is rather simple: Take it slow, learn by doing, make mistakes and focus. You can get there if you hang on.

2. Don't assume you can make a (good) build by yourself
Don't start putting skill points left and right without planning or looking at the greater picture. There are soo many synergies in the game with soo many items, mechanics you don't know about, the boot and helmet enchants....
It is too much for a casual to learn and master them all in a reasonable amount of time and come up with your own build. I tried to make a build working with sire of shards and arc (because I have a mtx for arc). Didn't work because it couldn't work. And if it could work, it would require a hefty amount of tweaking, the resulting character would almost certainly not be strong enough. Streamers and guide authors know the game by heart. Use their
knowledge and profit.

3. Don't play more than one character per league
You simply don't have enough time. It's not enough to level a character to level 80 and expect to kill the endboss. Your gems have to be maxed, your flask setup has to be good, you have to know how the character behaves and feels. If you want to make it, you have to put your effort into ONE character. I tried doing more, didn't work.

4. Don't play HC
Don't. Not for your first, nor your second or third character. Do it, when you know one build inside out. And be careful still. Very careful.

5. Learn to play - git gud
I mentioned above that I am not a very good player. In other games this fact does not become too obvious, because the games are easier than PoE. Play D3, get enough paragon, doesn't matter how good your reflexes are (I played D3 in all seasons and always finished at least the next to last step of the season journey). In PoE you hit a wall when all your gems are maxed, your items are okay and the next upgrade is either a lot of currency away or
locked behind a lucky vaal, and you still will be wrecked by the guardians, by a certain boss, by the shaper or even by a single volatile in a -res vulnerability map.

Also don't expect to play well because you play a good build. Every build needs time to adjust to, to learn the layout of your skills, to be really familiar with it. If you don't give a build that much time to grow on you, then it simply won't grow on you.

BUT if you learn about all this and pay attention, you get better. It's a long process, but it's working. I can now do Atziri deathless, while one league ago I failed my first two attempts at her miserably. I killed the shaper in this league, barely (two portals remaining), but I am convinced that subsequent attempts will be better, since I became better. Play the game and you will get better at it. Easy as that.

6. Learn about trading
Easy to say, hard to master. Nearly everything in PoE can be bought and sold and nearly everything has a worth for someone.
Learn about the recipes (wiki), learn about the affixes (poeaffix), learn about the items (wiki), learn about pricing items (poetrade). If you look up an item on poe.trade and it's worth one alch, ALWAYS click on the provided wiki link to check the rolls of your item. Good rolls can make the difference, Kaom's roots with high life rolls go for high prices, lowlife rolls on corrupted ones gather dust in the stashes because they're so cheap and there are masses of them. A sire of shards is a one-alch item, but I paid an ex for mine since it has perfect rolls. And I don't think that was overpriced. If you put up an item for sale and minutes later are swarmed by buying requests, don't be afraid to take down the item, check again and put it up again for a higher price if reasonable. Don't try to be nice to buyers and stand by your first price, they will make their cut anyway.
I sold a lot more stuff in harbinger league than ever before and still I am quite sure I could have gotten more currency for my stuff. But since time is limited, if you know that your item is worth something and you don't loose all that much currency by pricing it low, I always found it more convenient to sell fast than having to sit on things that do not sell fast or never sell.
Also know that poe.trade does not list stuff by people that are not online. Write down the specifics of an item that you have seen online but didn't have the currency for or the time to buy. Try again another day and at different times. If the seller comes back online, you will get your item eventually. I was hunting for a specific jewel for over a week until the times where I and the seller were online finally met.
Don't be afraid to trade, it's your only way to get a well geared character in a reasonable amount of time.

7. Use a loot filter
Simple, I use neversinks standard, last league's version. Works perfectly. Good loot filters have a built-in safety net to also show items that are special in a new league.

8. Make currency simply by playing
You earn currency by playing the game. It's that simple. All those that complain that they can't earn shit because ... are just not content with the amount of currency they earn in a certain amount of time. I used currency cop to check my earnings for a few days in this league and that got me thinking. Even though I was spending currency for an item and then continued playing, I had increased my currency instead of lowering it. Why was that?
Easy: I tend to pick up a lot of currency items. I do the recipes and I always pick up chromatics, jewellers, six-sockets, etc. By simply using poecurrency you can now convert all your currency items into any other currency item. Need vaal orbs? Check the website. Need chaos quickly? Check the ratios on jeweller, alchs, chromatics, whatever you have. You always can sell something and get the stuff you need. One time I had like 235 chaos and currency cop set the total amount of currency on my tab at over a 1000 chaos, just because - if I wanted - I could convert all other currency items to chaos.
Don't value your stuff by only counting your exalts and chaos, the rest of your stuff is more valuable than you think. Don't expext the game to throw exalts and chaos at you or that ONE item that could be mirrorworthy. That will not happen.

9. Spend your currency wisely
One thing I like so much about PoE is it's currency system. It's quite stable when you know about the usual stuff that happens over the course of a league (e.g. the prices of exalts tend to be really low at the beginning of the league and then start rising, until they again take a dip when people sell them to convert them to chaos when stuff is converted to standard). Don't ever sell to people advertising in trade unless you need currency fast!
It's always at a worse price than you would get when you sold by using poe.trade or poecurrency.
In most cases the revenue from spending currency at least evens out the amount of currency you put in in the first place. Meaning: chisel and alch your yellow and red maps, use your sextants, shape your maps. You don't need to shape your atlas so that certain maps are more common than others. Just play the game with what the game gives you and you will earn a profit!

10. Use PoB
Download it, install it, import your character and profit. And PoB saves you currency! While one league ago I was like "hell, that weapon looks good, 30c, ok I'll buy it and check it out", this league I recreated the item in PoB and checked it's benefits. More often than not I wouldn't know enough about the deeper mechanics of the build I was playing and the item I thought was good didn't benefit my character at all.

11. Use the forum
Don't be afraid to ask. The community in PoE is excellent and far more friendly and helping than the community in D3 (doesn't exist) or WoW (toxic). New players that try to adapt and learn more often receive nice and useful answers than not.


TL:DR Yes, a casual can beat the endgame of PoE. Stick with it, learn by playing, don't be afraid to ask. If I can do it, you can too!

"

Tefson1366 wrote:

In harbinger I played windz' glacial cascade saboteur after having failed to create a build on my own and was finally able to achieve my goal.

So, on the whole it took me (not counting my first dabbling in talisman league) three leagues and four different rather well geared characters to kill the shaper. Slow? Yes, superslow, but doable. What I want to say is rather simple: Take it slow, learn by doing, make mistakes and focus. You can get there if you hang on.

2. Don't assume you can make a (good) build by yourself

Thread TLDR:

Copy builds & strats from other players.

Well yes, some of these people are literally paid to play the game so they're going to know more about it than someone with a day job/school playing an hour or two a day. The game is too complex to "make your own build" right off the bat before you get enough experience with it. If you can't beat the Shaper with a copied build, what makes you think you'd be able to do it with your own, less optimized build ?