New Player Body Armour Upgrade Advice?

Question: I’m a new player trying EE’s BF Block Gladiator Build and my current body armour is a 4L 33% life Belly of the Beast (Belly was a lucky drop and was recommended in the build guide). What’s a good strategy for upgrading my body armour?

More info:
I’m a relatively new player (~6 weeks), and I’ve saved up ~230 Chaos and ~290 Alchs, I’ve never seen an Exalted Orb in game, and I’m doing maps at around tier 8 (pretty easily as long as I don’t attempt unidentified maps; I should have no trouble moving up some when the maps drop; I’ve never bought/traded a map from another player). For my first character I did my own build and it went pretty well but I didn’t know what I was doing and it was not optimized for endgame; so I made this new character and I’m trying out Engineering Eternity’s Blade Flurry Block Gladiator build. It's a dual wield build, so the only opportunity for a 6L is the body armour.

Build Info: Video Guide - Written Guide - Passives

It recommended Belly of the Beast body armour, and I got one with a 33% life roll in a lucky drop on my first character. I four-linked it myself (was hoping for 6L at the time of course, but didn’t happen). I’ve been focused on getting more flat life on all my rare gear (everything but unique weapons and Belly of the Beast) without losing resistance cap, and have made it up to 5,000 life. It’s an evasion- and block-based build, so it’s not a terrible thing to have a little armour and high life on my body armour for when I do get hit.

At this point I’m wondering what a good strategy would be for upgrading my body armour. My endgame goals are primarily high tier mapping, but I’d also like to be able to do boss fights, and this build promises sufficient single-target damage for that. I’d like to do Uber lab once for ascendancies once I find all the trials portals, but I’ve read scary things about it and I don’t plan to try to farm it (unless I make a Juggernaut -- another character).

Things I’m doing now:

- Saving up currency (but I’m only at 386 Jeweler’s and 123 Fusings)
- Doing daily missions and buying Jeweler’s Orbs and Fusing from the vendors
- Getting small life upgrades on my rares
- Running maps, and using Chaos and Regal recipes for unidentified rares

Things I’m considering for upgrading my body armour:

- Buying a 6L Belly of the Beast looks impossibly expensive
- Buying an evasion-based 6L rare with a high life roll and decent evasion and resistance rolls looks impossibly expensive
- Trying to trade Chaos and Alchs for Jeweler’s and Fusings to make my own 6L (I’ve never even traded currency for currency with other players before, no experience with that). How many should I have saved up before I attempt this?
- Making my own 5L instead, and abandoning the 6L idea until if/when I’m filthy rich. How much should I have saved up to attempt this?
- Buying a Belly of the Beast with a higher life roll as a crafting base instead of my 33% life one

Any advice from people who’ve been through this many times before?

I would recommend simply saving up for a 6 link belly. At your financial state, it would be incredibly risky to try to 6 link it and will likely result in a 'im quitting poe because fusing rng is rng post'.

That is, unless there are other gear slots where significant gear gains can be made.
The biggest gain you can do for yourself is leveling to level 90 for free power and this should be possible even without the 6 link belly and on T10 or lower maps.

Bear in mind for most content you don't *NEED* a 6-link.

Currently you are halfway to a 6-link Belly in terms of currency and I assume its price will come down a little as the league continues.

If your are getting on fine with your 4-link Belly you can keep grinding with that until you can afford a 6-link.

Personally, I normally just buy a 5-link and are happy with that but then I seldom get beyond T10-11 maps so take that with a grain of salt.

Go buy the card "Emperor of Purity", should be about 2c each, 7 of them can turned into a 6L holy chainmail, then use a deafening essence of greed on it , the essence should sell for 15c, total invest about 30c and you get a 120+ max life 6L chest, use that until you get a 6L belly, you can save up to 1500 fusings, or try your luck manually link it, it's up to you then.

A 6L holy chainmail from emperor of purity is almost always the best starter chest for melee builds, even very early in the league, for a 6L total cost is still less than one exalt.

Thanks guys.

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I would recommend simply saving up for a 6 link belly.

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you are halfway to a 6-link Belly in terms of currency and I assume its price will come down a little as the league continues

Sounds like good advice. I’ve been able to get surprisingly good gear for almost every slot for about 1-10c each with enough searching on poe.trade. My one big investment was my main hand weapon, but that was something like 16-22c (forget exactly). Trying to get any body armour upgrade has seemed unattainably expensive by comparison. But it’s a good point that I’m actually halfway there, and the price may come down. I saw a good 6L Belly on poe.trade for 460c today. It was sold within 10 minutes of being posted, but I saw it there briefly and whispered the guy (I didn’t have enough anyway, but tried to make an offer of basically everything I have) and he told me it was sold. Anyway, that suggests it’s possible and gives me a rough target to shoot for.

I’m also hoping my currency generation rate will go up as I do higher tier maps, but I’m not sure it works that way.

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The biggest gain you can do for yourself is leveling to level 90 for free power and this should be possible even without the 6 link belly and on T10 or lower maps.

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Bear in mind for most content you don't *NEED* a 6-link...If your are getting on fine with your 4-link Belly you can keep grinding with that until you can afford a 6-link.

That’s good to know. Yeah I haven’t hit a wall yet. I did my first T10 maps today, and I had a few deaths on bad affixes, but it went better than I expected and I even cleared a “86% extra damage as fire” + elemental weakness affixes map which wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I can’t one-shot map bosses like some people, but damage seems good most of the time, and got a little boost recently as I started working in Frenzy some on bosses, just enough to maintain the buff at max count. I got my first T11 map drop, so we’ll see how that goes. I expect you guys are right that I can just keep going until I have enough currency to get a good 6L, and I should try to remember to be patient with that process, and it’s probably cheaper/faster than crafting unless I got really lucky with RNG while crafting.

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Go buy the card "Emperor of Purity", should be about 2c each, 7 of them can turned into a 6L holy chainmail, then use a deafening essence of greed on it , the essence should sell for 15c, total invest about 30c and you get a 120+ max life 6L chest, use that until you get a 6L belly

That’s a neat trick. I’ll admit I haven’t put any significant effort into figuring out what’s possible with divination cards and essences. There are so many different ones. And there’s so much in this game, it’s kind of overwhelming when you’re new.

Thanks for sharing that recipe. I haven’t purchased anything for it yet, but I checked out the card and the essence on both the wiki and poe.trade (prices were exactly what you said). I also tried just putting the evasion and resistance expectation aside and put in 100 life body armour 6L max buyout 30c to compare, and there were some for roughly the same price, I think with higher ilevel but I’m not sure that really matters. Most of the ones with semi-decent stats were corrupted and didn’t match the colors I need, but there seemed to be some possibilities for around that price. I’ll keep looking and weighing my options.

To those who replied in this thread: just wanted to let you know that I farmed some more, saved up, and finally bought a 6L Belly with 40% life yesterday morning. Had some currency left over. Thanks for the advice.

The guy I bought it from said in another league or two that will be like 2 hours of farming. For me it took weeks as a new player. I am getting a little faster, but nothing like some of the experienced players given what they post for currency generation rate, or when I see some of them play on video. Still a lot to learn...