ShakCentral's Path of Exile For Everyone
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A Reference for the Rest of Us!
Are you looking for a game that has a long record of success but still has something fresh to offer? Do you want a game with incredible depth that also has a welcoming community? Welcome to Path of Exile! This guide will take you all the way from account creation to defeating the end-game bosses. Whether you’re looking for a grindy game with tough content, a game that rewards deep mechanical knowledge with powerful crafted items, or you just want to spin in circles attacking monsters 15 times a second, you'll find what you need inside! Discover how to: ✔️ Install the game and set up keybinds, loot filters, and tweak your UI ✔️ Pick a class and build and truly play anything you can think of ✔️ Use powerful third-party tools to enhance every aspect of the game ✔️ Start from scratch, complete the campaign, and cruise into end-game ...and more! If you have questions about Path of Exile or just want to hang out with other PoE players, my Discord is very active and is a good place to learn: https://discord.gg/tkzCFtN. Foreword
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My Other Guides
The main thing I do in PoE is play Vortex. I wrote Vortex For Dummies, and can usually be found discussing Cold DoT builds or streaming various variations on the build. As I’ll mention further down in the guide, Vortex has a very particular playstyle, but is one of the best starter builds you could choose (hint hint). Along with a guildmate I also maintain the Group Progression Guides, a series of guides in various detail that help groups (especially duos) level efficiently through the story. Here is a link to the Hub, where you can find links to all of the guide versions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EDeOs_B0135pQwFFC6K88Wyn1MOxaYn2bIiusqcFL0c. I'll discuss group play in Part 4. My first two guides were a Vortex guide (Not For Dummies) and the first For Dummies guide, Tornado Shot For Dummies. Neither have been updated since the 3.8 league due to T-Shot nerfs and the re-worked Vortex For Dummies gaining popularity. About the Author I began playing Path of Exile in 2013. After a several years on and off, I returned to PoE around 2017 and have been playing regularly since. I streamed Path of Exile content for a while on Twitch, especially my participation in the “Kammell” races in 2018/19, and after an extended break while my family began foster care, I have returned to streaming recently and hope to continue doing so. I love writing, and am excited to contribute to the community in this way. I enjoy playing spell builds and fondly remember the days of clearing Merciless Dried Lake with Vaal Spark in 30 seconds flat. Dedication To Enki, whose Arc guide inspires me in my content creation, writing, and dedication to the game. Also to Engineering Eternity, whose Path of Exile: Beginners Guide series has also greatly inspired and influenced my writing, particularly this guide. Why Make A Path of Exile New Player Guide? Path of Exile is intimidating. Whether you’re looking at an item with a bunch of circular holes in it, you’ve heard friends talk about corrupting their gear and watching it literally vanish, or you did the thing there you open up the skill tree and have a heart attack… I get it. I’m here to help. My goal is that for new players this guide is the written companion for all things PoE. Whatever you need to know to get your footing in Wraeclast, this is the place for you. Table of Contents
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Part 1: What is Path of Exile?
1.1 - Genre 1.2 - General Playstyle 1.3 - Competitors 1.4 - Temporary Leagues Part 2: Install, Setup, and Options 2.1 - Steam vs Standalone Client 2.2 - Account Creation and Public/Private Characters 2.3 - UI and Graphics Configuration Part 3: Third-Party Tools 3.1 - PoE Wiki 3.2 - Path of Building 3.3 - Filterblade (Loot Filters) 3.4 - Official Trade Site 3.5 - PoEDB and Craft of Exile 3.6 - PoE Lab 3.7 - PoE Ninja and PoE Builds Part 4: Classes, Game Mechanics, and the Skill Tree 4.1 - Skill Tree Preview 4.2 - Classes 4.3 - Ascendancies and the Labyrinth 4.4 - Attributes 4.5 - Gear, Rarity, and Mods 4.6 - Skill Gems and Sockets 4.7 - Currency 4.8 - The Skill Tree Explained Part 5: Playing Through The Story 5.1 - A Brief History Of Story Additions 5.2 - Hideouts 5.3 - Party Play 5.4 - Leveling Guide 5.5 - Story Information, Tips, and Lists Part 6: Maps and Endgame Content 6.1 - What To Do After You Kill Kitava 6.2 - An Introduction to Maps 6.3 - Master Missions 6.4 - End-Game Bosses 6.5 - Alternate Content (HoGM, Atziri, etc) Part 7: League Mechanics Currently In-Game 7.1 - Pre-3.0 7.2 - Post-3.0 Part 8: Path of Exile 2 Part 1: What is Path of Exile?
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1.1 Genre
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Path of Exile is a free Action-RPG made by Grinding Gear Games. Set on the fictional islands of Wraeclast and Oriath, you control a character that has been exiled from Oriath to make a living in the harsh world of Wraeclast. You will kill monsters, find magical items, and modify your character as you grow into a fearsome fighter, ready to take on the gods themselves!
1.2 General Playstyle
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Path of Exile is a loot-based action game. Get basic gear > kill monsters for better gear > equip better gear > kill harder monsters for even better gear.
Generally, Path of Exile characters are typically focused on 1 or 2 damage dealing skills. Where games like World of Warcraft or other arpgs may have more of a rotation-based skill system, Path of Exile rewards you for picking a focused skill and doing everything possible to scale that skill. 1.3 Competitors
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Path of Exile has several competitors in its genre and space. The major competitors are Diablo 3, Grim Dawn, and Wolcen.
Diablo 3 is very visually appealing and crunchy. It has a competitive leaderboard for its end-game grind, Greater Rift levels, and has a large loyal fan base, many of whom have been playing for decades since the original Diablo and D2. Wolcen had a rough launch, but the developers have put in a ton of work on improvements. It was down for almost 48 of its first 72 hours on launch weekend, but consistent updates and quality of life improvements are looking to put the game on sure footing again. Grim Dawn is a game I have very little experience in. As best I could tell after doing some research, it has a cool multi-class system but may suffer from a lack of endgame content in comparison to the other titles. 1.4 Temporary Leagues
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The best thing about Path of Exile is its constantly rotating content. Every 3 months, Grinding Gear Games adds a temporary 3 month-long “league” to the game. In the temporary league (referred to by patch number; in June-August 2020 we’re on patch 3.11 “Harvest” League) everyone starts from the beginning; no stashed items or currency, no gear, nothing. (There’s still an always running Standard league where nothing is reset, but trust me you want to be playing in the temp leagues)
GGG adds a new mechanic to the game in each new league, such as an abyss that snakes across the ground, opening portals for monsters to climb out and fight you, or a garden where you plant seeds into the ground, grow them into maturity, and then fight the monsters that burst out to gain crafting materials. Along with new mechanics, they are constantly balancing and tweaking their unique items and the game’s skills. Launch week for a new league is a big event in the PoE community, with GGG releasing new info each day leading up to launch weekend, where over 100,000 people play at the league launch. It’s insanely fun. In addition to the league content, each league comes with a number of challenges that, when completed, grant players free character cosmetics, such as special wings, helmet, or even portal effects for their portal scrolls. Part 2: Install, Setup, and Options
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2.1 Steam vs Standalone Client
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There are 2 ways to play PoE. If you prefer to use Steam, you can simply search in the Steam store for Path of Exile, install it, and go. However, many experienced players will recommend the standalone client, which can be found here: https://www.pathofexile.com/download. Major patches and especially the temporary league launches discussed earlier are much easier handled through the standalone. You can download ahead of time and you don’t have to wait for Steam to go through its very long "allocating" process. The game is the same no matter which you choose, so choose based on personal preference.
2.2 Account Creation and Public/Private Characters
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You can create a Path of Exile account here: https://www.pathofexile.com/account/create.
One of the great things about PoE's community is that many people are willing to help players who are stuck with their characters. As long as your profile is public, your characters are searchable and other players can view them and help with your questions. I highly recommend going to your account on the website and clicking the "Privacy Settings" below your user avatar. Make sure the private profile button is unchecked so that people can view your characters. Obviously you don't have to do this, but the community is largely helpful and this will allow them to actually help. 2.3 UI and Graphics Configuration
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There are a few options that you definitely want to have enabled or disabled, and a few that you can choose based on personal preference.
 For this section, you definitely want the following: - Screen Shake DISABLD - Auto Center Map ENABLED - Always Show Sockets ENABLD - Map Settings are personal preference. The image shows how I do it. Next:  - You pretty much want this one configured exactly as in the picture. Everything enabled is useful, everything disabled isn't. Next:  The biggest ones here are Showing Advanced Mod Descriptions and managing your loot allocation if you're in a group. The rest are pretty standard options. Part 3: Third-Party Tools
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Path of Exile is a massively complex game. While you can play Path of Exile for years (like I did) without any of the tools in the following sections, you will eventually hit a complexity wall where progression becomes very difficult or obscure without outside help. Some of these tools have seen some form of implementation into the game itself over the years, and obviously the hope is for many of these outside systems to be eventually wrapped into the game itself. You don't have to use all, most, or even some of these tools. Pick and choose the ones that will help you the most, and dabble in the others as needed. The tools are ranked roughly in order of how often the average player would use them and how early in your PoE playing they become relevant. 3.1 PoE Wiki
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Click here to go to the PoE Wiki. This is the starting place for PoE information. Need to know how a gem works, what vendor recipes are available, or where all of the free skill point quests are located? This is the place to be. It's pretty likely that I use the search bar in the PoE wiki as often as I use Google for non-PoE searches. As you play, you'll find yourself looking up item bases, gem information and tags, etc. This site is a goldmine.
3.2 Path of Building
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Click here for a link to the Path of Building install page. In my opinion, Path of Building is the most incredible third party tool that's ever been made for a video game, bar none. PoB, as you'll see it called by nearly everyone, is a tool that allows you to build an entire character inside of it and play around with items, gems, and the skill tree. You can even import actual characters and all of their items and check their current damage and state. This tool is why I suggested making your account public in Part 2. This allows yourself and others to import into PoB.
Between importing builds from forum guides, checking out your own or other characters, and theory crafting new builds, the common inside joke in PoE is that PoB is the real game and PoE is just a distraction. You'll find out soon enough. 3.3 Filterblade (Loot Filters)
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Click here for the Filterblade website. Loot filters are at the heart of the PoE experience. A loot filter is a text file that is loaded into the game and tells the game what kind of loot it should show on the ground, and what it should hide. There is so much loot in this game that not running a loot filter will make the game almost unplayable, as the entire ground can become covered in items. This website, maintained and updated by the incredible NeverSink, makes it easy to get started.
Simply go to the website, adjust the "Strictness" level to your taste (I recommend Regular while leveling, Semi-Strict near the end of the Acts and for early end-game, and Strict or Very Strict for most people in upper end-game content), and use the download tab to get your filter. Inside of the PoE game client, go to your options, and then in the UI tab scroll all the way to the bottom. There is an option to open the folder that contains your loot filters. Simply put the filter in the folder, select the filter in the dropdown menu in-game, and click the reload button to set your filter. Done and done. Here is an image from options of what you're looking for:  3.4 Official Trade Site
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Click here for the official trade site. This is fairly self-explanatory, and just takes some time to get used to the site. This is where you find items listed for sale, buy specialty items like end-game fragments, and trade currency for currency. The official trade site is still relatively new, but it is already miles ahead of the old community-run trade sites. There is a dizzying amount of sorting options for gear, and you can narrow down your search options to find extremely niche gear if needed.
3.5 PoEDB and Craft of Exile
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Click here to view PoEDB. PoEDB is a very useful website, but the main thing that people use it for is its collection of mods and weights. If you click the mod tab and then select any base type of item, you can see the entire list of all of the possible mods that the item could roll, along with approximate weighting. As you get into deeper PoE crafting this website will become extremely useful, but it is not necessary early on.
Click here to view Craft of Exile. This site goes even further down the crafting rabbit hole by letting you run simulations to see just how tough it will be to craft that dream item. This can be a very depressing site, as you run simulations and learn just how much of your currency is about to be drained from your account. Proceed with caution. 3.6 PoE Lab
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Click here for the thing. PoE Lab is incredibly dedicated. They have people running the lab each day to determine the best pathing and routes to help you get through the Labyrinth. I use this every time I run through Uber Lab, and even sometimes in Merciless. It gives notes on Izaro fights and styles, etc. Incredibly useful tool.
Note: I was recently made aware that PoELab runs a Twitch stream in the background of the site. If you don't like this, you can always view the lab layout, right click it, and open it in a new tab and then close PoELab. 3.7 PoE Ninja and PoE Builds
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Click here to view PoE Ninja. PoE Ninja compiles approximate trading rates for items and other currencies in PoE, but its most useful function is that of a build averages tool. By clicking the "builds" button, you can see every single character that is in the top 15,000 of each league. You can sort by basically anything: ascendancy, skills, uniques, etc. You can view items, gem links, and a skill tree heat map to show how common each individual node is among the group of players playing that build. This is a great place to start when choosing your next build.
Click here to view PoE Builds. PoE Builds is the place to go for build guides. You can sort by build type and find hundreds of accomplished forum guides for any type of build you'd want to play. Use it early, use it often. Part 4: Classes, Game Mechanics, and the Skill Tree
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4.1 Skill Tree Preview
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Before I show you this image, you have to promise not to run away screaming. When you're mentally ready, open the spoiler:
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 I know. It's a lot to take in. This is the Path of Exile skill tree. I'll explain it more in a few sections. For now, I just wanted to point out a few things that will help you understand the next few sections. We'll take a deeper dive into the skill tree in a bit. The important bits: - There are approximately 1720 passive skills that can be allocated. Trust me, I basically gave myself arthritis by checking every single node in Path of Building to verify.
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Not Joking
 - Every circle on that tree is a skill point that you can allocate to grow your character. - You start at one of the big red circles I've made, depending on which class you choose. Any character can allocate any node on the tree, but your skill points must connect to each other, i.e. you have to path directly to anything you want. - Every time you level up (and 22-24 times in the campaign for free), you will receive 1 skill point to allocate on the tree. - We will discuss attributes in a few sections, but note for now that Strength nodes are mostly in the Southwest of the tree, Dexterity is mostly in the Southeast, and Intelligence is in the North. That's all you need to know for now to understand the classes and a few other things. We'll come back to the tree shortly. 4.2 Classes
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 There are 7 classes in Path of Exile. New players take note that you'll only see 6 classes available at your initial character selection. The Scion class isn't more or less powerful than the other classes, but she is unlocked in a story event near the end of Act 3 in the campaign. Once unlocked, she is unlocked forever on your account, but be aware that you can't start your PoE career as a Scion. One of the coolest things about PoE is that any character can play any skill. Because the skill tree and skill gems (after Acts 3 & 6) are universally available, there is no limit to which skills can be learned by which class. The main differences between classs are their Ascendancies and their starting spots on the skill tree, explained below and in section 4.3: Marauder The Marauder is the "Strength" class in PoE. Starting in the Southwest segment of the skill tree in the pure strength region, the Marauder is most naturally suited to 2-handed or sword-and-shield melee or fire-based skills and it is almost trivial to make a very tanky build as one of these hulking behemoths. Duelist The Duelist is the Strength / Dexterity hybrid class. Starting in the South segment of the skill tree, the Duelist plays very naturally as either a fast-moving melee attacker or a capable ranged marksman. Ranger The Ranger is the pure Dexterity class. Starting in the Southeast segment of the skill tree, the Ranger is most at home with a bow in her hands. Although typically one of the squishier classes in terms of defense, the Ranger is capable of tremendous damage output and blazing speed. Shadow The Shadow is the Dexterity / Intelligence hybrid class. Starting in the Northeast segment of the skill tree, the Shadow is one of the most "jack-of-all-trades" characters in the game. You will see shadows playing spell builds, crit-based attack builds, poison damage-over-time, and even trap or mine builds. They do it all, and they do it well. Witch The Witch is the Intelligence class in PoE. Starting in the North segment of the skill tree, the Witch is surprisingly perhaps the most tanky character in the game due to the way that defensive mechanics and auras/buffs work. The Witch is the most well-equipped to utilize large amounts of Energy Shield as a main defense, and is the most popular choice for minion based builds. Templar The Templar is the Strength / Intelligence hybrid class in PoE. Starting in the Northwest segment of the skill tree, the pants-less long neck is similar to the Shadow in breadth of builds available. It works well as a summoner, as a pure support, or as a high-burst spellcaster with loads off upfront damage. Scion The Scion is the ultimate hybrid class in PoE. Starting in the dead center of the skill tree, the Scion makes up for a slightly aimless early skill tree by being able to easily get anywhere on the tree and, as you'll see in the next section, can quite literally do anything that the other classes can do, if not quite at their level. 4.3 Ascendancies and the Labyrinth
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 Ascendancies are PoE's way of making classes truly unique. Think of an ascendancy as a class specialization. With the exception of the Scion, which is a semi dual class, each class has 3 ascendancies to pick from. To gain an ascendancy, your character will complete Labyrinth Trials as you progress through the story Acts. Click here to see all of the Trial locations. When your character has completed enough trials, they can access the Lord's Labyrinth. Inside, they will navigate a series of rooms, traps, and boss fights. If you emerge victorious, you will be able to choose an ascendancy and allocate 2 points toward your new specialization. You will do this 4 total times per character, each time gaining points to allocate toward a more powerful version of your ascendancy along with other benefits. The ascendancy summaries are as follows: Marauder The Juggernaut is one of PoE's best tanks. Juggs gain large amounts of armour, life regeneration, physical damage reduction, and endurance charges. In addition, they gain benefits to damage based on how tanky they can become. The Berserker is a big ball of rage. Seriously, he gains Rage as a mechanic by being in combat and can spend it or use it passively for benefits while fighting. A truly all-out fighter, this ascendancy can dish out some incredible damage. The Chieftain is pretty specific. Do you like fire damage? Do you like summoning totems? If your answer is yes to either of those questions, the Chieftain is for you. Utilizing life leech and endurance charges also makes this guy pretty tanky in his own right. Duelist The Slayer is the king of melee life leech. With the ability to become immune to reflected physical damage and a massive amount of leech, the Slayer is surprisingly tanky, but his focus is definitely offensive. Gaining large bonuses for having killed recently, the Slayer can move quickly through content, slicing and dicing with the best. The Gladiator has 2 well defined niches. First, Glads gain huge block bonuses, making them ideal for max-block builds that can be extraordinarily difficult to kill. Additionally, Gladiators utilize bleeding to a large extent, and can make bleeding enemies explode when killed for a huge burst of AoE damage. Super cool ascendancy. The Champion is a well-rounded fighter. He uses mechanics like Taunt and Impale to both become more tanky as well as deal increasingly large amounts of damage as a fight wears on. His benefits can also extend to allies, making him a good teammate to take into battle. Ranger The Deadeye is about projectiles, bleeding, and uh... more projectiles. A very high damage ascendancy, the Deadeye can lay waste to multiple screens worth of enemies at one with a bow in her hands. She can also modify her projectiles to pierce enemies or to chain to nearby enemies on hit. The Raider utilizes a massive array of evasive techniques to stay mobile and wade through enemies as she cuts them to pieces. The Raider is versatile in that most of her benefits can be used by either ranged or melee skills, as well as people who want to play elemental based attacks and not rely on purely physical damage. The Pathfinder is all about the flasks. She has increased effect from flasks, gains charges to them passively, and can even become immune to bleeding without using up a flask mod. The PF also has large bonuses to Chaos damage, and is the premier ascendancy for Chaos-based bow builds. Shadow The Assassin is a focused ascendancy. It revolves around either (or both) Critical Strikes and poison damage, and is absolutely lethal with both. One of the more glass-cannon choices, the Assassin makes up for his low health with a high amount of evasion and elusiveness. Watch your back. The Saboteur is very simple. If you want to play a trap or mine build, the Sabo is your man. If not, you probably want to look elsewhere. One of the best league starting ascendancies, trap and mine builds can deal a shocking amount of single target damage, and no one is better at this than the Saboteur. The Trickster is the very definition of a hybrid. One of the few ascendancies that is most comfortable playing as a mixed life and Energy Shield combination of health, the Trickster has a large amount of recovery options when he gets in a tight spot. With large bonuses to Damage over Time, the Trickster is adept at setting up his damage and then avoiding enemies while they rapidly succumb to his drains. Witch The Necromancer is the most self-explanatory ascendancy. It's based around minions and around providing buffs to both minions, yourself, and allies based on consuming the corpses of the dead monsters around you for various effects. This is an incredibly popular choice, and is very powerful. The Occultist has a full 4 focuses. It can be built to deal a large amount of Cold or Chaos damage over time, it grants a significant chunk of Energy Shield and regen, and it can grant an additional curse. Very powerful (and my personal favorite). The Elementalist is another self-explanatory ascendancy. She wants to deal elemental damage, and it almost a summoner hybrid, as Elementalists also heavily utilize golems in their builds for beneficial effects. If you want to burn, freeze, or shock your enemies, look no further. She can also become immune to elemental reflect. Templar The Inquisitor is also an elemental damage spell caster. However, the Inquis has a much higher focus on critical strikes and less of a focus on ailments than the Elementalist. With buffs to critical strikes and attack and cast speed, the Inquisitor hits hard and fast. The Heirophant is another specialized ascendancy. Much like the Chieftain or the Saboetur, he wants to help you do a few things: use totems, use large amounts of mana as a weapon, or use brand skills. If your build revolves around either of these skills, give the Heiro a good luck; you won't be disappointed. The Guardian The Guardian covers a wide range of playstyles, and you'll find very powerful builds centered around tanking, minions, or pure support through auras. Guardians are the kind of ascendancy that's typically either completely broken or almost unplayed, depending on which patch we're on. With huge buffs to nearby allies and defenses, it's a safe choice for anyone teaming up with a friend. Scion The Ascendant is the true Jack-of-all-Trades. She can allocate pieces of the other class's ascendancies (in a slightly powered-down version) and can even allocate the ascendancy nodes of two different classes. In addition, she can gain the ability to path along the skill tree starting from another class's starting point. She takes some serious planning, but she can be incredibly powerful in the right hands. 4.4 Attributes
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I've tried to come up with a better explanation, but I'm taking this straight from the Attribute page on the wiki, as it does a great job of explaining the concept:
"The three core attributes are Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence. Most equipment, skill gems, and support gems have attribute requirements. A character must meet or exceed an item's attribute requirements in order to use it. Each attribute also provides certain inherent bonuses: Every 10 Strength grants - An additional 5 maximum life - 2% increased melee physical damage Every 10 Dexterity grants - An additional 20 accuracy rating - 2% increased evasion rating Every 10 Intelligence grants - An additional 5 maximum mana - 2% increased maximum energy shield" Most commonly, attributes come into play when a character needs to hit a certain threshold to use a specific item or gem. A Vortex Occultist (shameless plug) is a great example. Vortex builds stack almost entirely Intelligence, but they use a few Dexterity gems with a high Dex requirement, as well as a unique Shield that requires a certain amount of Strength. It can be surprisingly challenging to hit the attribute requirements for specific builds. Keep these in mind as you are assessing your gear needs for the later stages of the game. Note that the majority of the efficient paths through the skill tree are lines of +10 nodes to different attributes. You can often incorporate these travel nodes to either stack more of your desired attribute or to raise up one that you need to hit. In addition, at major intersections on the skill tree, you will often find 2 different +30 nodes that are the opposite attributes of the current travel path. For example, if you're in the North "Intelligence" section of the skill tree, there are intersections where you'll find a +30 Dex node and a +30 Str node. These are incredibly useful for reaching attribute requirements, especially while leveling. Finally, it is very important to understand that attributes directly correspond to the 3 main types of defense in PoE. While there are dozens of ways to mitigate incoming damage or add layers of defense to a build, the 3 main defenses in the game are Armour, Evasion Rating, and Energy shield. Having Elemental Resistances will impact how much elemental damage you take when you are hit, but these 3 defense types determine how often you are hit, and what happens when you are hit by physical damage. - Armour mitigates the damage taken and is tied to Strength. - Evasion Rating makes you less likely to get hit at all and is tied to Dexterity. - Energy Shield grants you an "over shield" effect, allowing you to absorb larger hits, and is tied to Intelligence. We'll discuss this in more detail in the next section. 4.5 Gear, Rarity, and Mods
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Gear Basics
In Path of Exile, characters have 10 total gear slots. They are: - Body Armour - Helmet - Gloves - Boots - Belt - Ring 1 - Ring 2 - Amulet - Weapon Slot 1 - Offhand Weapon Slot (2) The weapon slots can be filled with any of the following: 2 1-handed weapons, 1-Handed Weapon + Shield, 1 2-Handed Weapon, a Bow and a Quiver, or Unarmed (No Weapons; very niche builds only). For most builds, your character will want to focus their gear on one particular defensive type. For instance, a melee character would usually be interested in pure Armour gear, while a ranged attacker would more likely desire Evasion Rating gear. Mixing up defensive gear types is usually fine while leveling, but in the end-game it can leave you without enough defenses in any particular area and is a liability. Flask Basics In addition to their gear, characters have 5 flasks slots. PoE is pretty unique in its consumable healing method, and flasks are absolutely vital to playing PoE. Instead of picking up 1-time-use potions off the ground, flasks are kept permanently until the player replaces them with different flasks. They have a variety of effects, from healing HP or restoring Mana so granting powerful character bonuses such as Onslaught or a huge boost in Armour. Flasks have charges that are spent to use their effects, and then built up again as the player kills monsters. Each monster kill restores a portion of the flask charges, providing a rewarding gameplay loop where the character uses the flasks to kill the monster, which refills the flasks, etc etc. Item Rarity Basics As with many games, PoE uses an item rarity system. Path of Exile does not have "Gear sets", but rather has a very simple system, with only 4 different rarities of gear. The Path of Exile rarities are: White (Common), Blue (Magic), Yellow (Rare), and Orange (Unique). Below is an example of the 4 rarity types. You will likely notice that the complexity of the items scales wildly as you move up the rarity ranks. This is intended, and is part of the way in which you make your character more powerful. All of the blue text on the items are called "mods". Let's talk about them. Item Mod Basics The concept behind item mods in Path of Exile is very simple. An item mod can either be a "prefix" mod or a "suffix" mod. The mod for + maximum life, for instance, is a prefix. For any item that you ever see the line "+__ to Maximum Life", that mod is a prefix. We'll discuss why this matters below. A white item cannot have item mods. It has no space for mods at all; It simply has its inherit defensive properties and that's it. A blue item is "magic". Magic items can have 2 total mods on them; 1 prefix and 1 suffix. This is why prefix and suffix mods matter. All 3 elemental resistances (fire, cold, lightning) are suffix mods. This means that a Blue/Magic item can never have both Fire and Cold resistance as separate mods. A pair of Magic boots can't have Life and increased Movement Speed, as those are both prefixes. A yellow item is "rare". Rare items can have 6 total mods on them; 3 prefixes and 3 suffixes (Note that Jewels are not equippable items, and rare jewels can only have 4 modifiers). This allows for very powerful items to be created or crafted; either weapons with multiple damage mods that stack together, or armour pieces with many defensive mods on them. An orange item is a "unique". Unique items always have the same mods as other same unique items. Most unique items have mods on them that you can't find anywhere else on items in PoE. This is why many builds will revolve around specific uniques, and some uniques can be incredible expensive and rare. Influenced Items Influenced items are much rarer and new players shouldn't even worry about them for a long time. Later on in the end-game, you will start to fight the end-game bosses, and you will receive items that have "influence" on them from a specific end-game boss. Here are a few examples: None of these items are very good, but serve as an example of what influenced gear looks like. Influenced gear can roll mods on it that can't normally be achieved on non-influenced gear. This can lead to some game-alteringly powerful items. 4.6 Skill Gems and Sockets
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Skill gems are at the heart of PoE's "You can play anything" concept. As long as your character can meet the attribute requirements and you have an available socket to place the gem, your character could conceivably swap between melee attacks, ranged skills, and spells with 0 gear changes (don't do this).
Active skills vs Support skills Skill gems come in two variants: Active skills and Support skills. Additionally, skill gems come in 3 main colors, which correspond to a specific attribute. Intelligence based skill gems are blue, dexterity are green, and strength bases skill gems are red. Active skills are gems that you are using to actually do something. Flame Dash, Cleave, and Explosive Arrow are all examples of active skill gems. You click a button, and something happens. Support skills modify active skills, and are the best way to gain significant increases to your damage. One clear example is the active skill Fireball and the support skill Lesser Multiple Projectiles. If you have an unsupported Fireball, it works as you'd expect. You press the Fireball button, and you shoot 1 fireball. However, if you have a Fireball that is supported by Lesser Multiple Projectiles, you press the Fireball button and 3 side-by-side fireballs shoot out. Support skills modify active skills in many different ways. There are supports like Lesser Multiple Projectiles that add projectiles or alternate travel paths to skills, supports that add more (or less) Area of Effect to AoE skills, supports that add to your defenses when you hit an enemy, and many more. Sockets To use skill gems, they must be "socketed" into the gear that your character as equipped. Mouseover the item below. The green socket in the item is where the gems go. As stated above, gems come in 3 main colors, and they must be placed in a socket of that color. Note that there is a much rarer white-colored socket as well as 1 white skill gem, and these simply mean they that can either be filled with any color gem or go in any color socket. We'll discuss items more fully in the next section, but here is the list of equippable item slots and the amount of gems they can hold: Gem Sockets 1-6 : Body Armour, 2-Handed Weapons, Bows 1-4 : Helmets, Gloves, Boots 1-3 : 1-Handed Weapons, Shields 1 : Unset Rings (Other ring types cannot hold any gems) 0 : Belts, Amulets, non-Unset Rings, Quivers There are a few unique items that break some of these rules, but the list above is true for 99.9% of items. Note that an item's max sockets is determined by its item level. For the first couple of acts in the game, it is not even possible for gear to drop with more than 3 sockets. As you progress through the story, you will start to see more and more sockets on gear. Partway through the second half of the story, you will reach the required zone levels where 6 socketed (or linked) gear can start to drop. Links Ignore the text on the item above and look at the sockets. The top two sockets are connected by a diamond-ish shaped connector. This means that those two sockets are linked, while the socket on the bottom right is alone and unconnected. Linked sockets allow for active skill gems to be improved or altered by support gems. In the above item, the blue and green linked sockets would allow for the previously discussed Firebal, a blue gem, to be supported by Lesser Multiple Projectile, a green gem (althought you'd be very unlikely to use a bow for that). In general, the more sockets you can link together, the more power and options you have for your skills. An item with only two or three linked sockets will be much more useful than an item with the full 6 sockets but no links. 4.7 Currency
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If you've played PoE for more than a few minutes, you've probably become confused at where exactly your currency comes from. No monsters have erupted in gold, no quest rewards have granted any kind of cash or shard, and you're wondering what's happening.
One of the best parts about PoE is that the entire currency in the game is the crafting currency you find and the items themselves. There is no separate hoard of gold with which you purchase your items. Those Wisdom Scrolls that you use to identify items? They can be bought or sold in bulk by trading other currency. That Chaos Orb you noticed because your loot filter made a loud noise? You can use it for its listed purpose to reroll a rare piece of gear, or you can trade it for a few Jeweller's Orbs to try and get that new rare wand you found up to 3 sockets. There are a few dozen different kinds of crafting currencies in the game. The trading standard for most items and currency conversions are the Chaos Orb and the Exalted Orb. Most small items and small bulk purchases are done with Chaos Orbs. Exalted Orbs are very, very rare drops and can be worth as much as 175 Chaos Orbs or more. See Part 3 for the Official Trade Wiki, which has a tab specifically for trading currencies. Many temporary leagues have mechanics by which you can easily acquire magic, rare, or even unique gear during the leveling process. The best advice I can give is to save up as much of your crafting currency as possible when you're new. You will replace gear often as you level, and there is rarely a time when you need to use things like Chaos Orbs before the end-game. Get a friend or a guild to help teach you the values of what you have. 4.8 The Skill Tree Explained
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Let's continue the conversation from Section 4.1 and take a bit deeper look at the skill tree.
There are 4 main types of nodes on the tree: small or basic passives, notables, keystones, and jewel sockets. To help us in this section, we'll look at this small slice of the skill tree near the Witch's starting area:  There will be a few images in this section, so they're all in spoiler tags for easy understanding. Let's start with the easy one. See the big empty slot on the bottom right? That's a jewel socket. As you play, you will find Jewels among your loot. These jewels can be crafted like other gear to provide specific benefits to your character. Once you have a jewel that you'd like to use, you can allocate a point into a jewel socket and simply place the jewel inside. Now, here are two examples of a small/basic passive node from this area:
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  (Ignore the wall of text in the "Allocating this node will give you __" section. That only appears in the Path of Building program I took the screenshots from.) Generally speaking, the circular/triangular node clusters throughout the tree share a theme. In the first pic, you can assume that this node cluster is going to revolve around gaining Life and Mana Regeneration. In the second cluster, we see modifiers to Brand skills (a spell that sits on the ground and latches onto nearby enemies). So now what happens if we allocate all of the skill points in these clusters and reach the larger "Notable" skill? Check it out:
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  How sweet is that!? Typically, notables grant a more powerful version of what you gain from the smaller basic passives. In addition, they may have a bonus effect as well, which we see with the life regeneration and the additional brand on the notables. The vast majority of the skill tree is made up of attribute nodes as the main pathing "highways", and clusters of basic and notable passives separate as if they were each a little neighborhood. You may be asking yourself: "What about that huge circle skill from the first picture?" I'm glad you asked:
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 This is a Keystone passive. Like all passives, Keystones only require a single skill point to allocate. Unlike most other basic and notable passives, however, Keystones are meant to be a dramatic change to how your character is played. Mind Over Matter is a good example. It makes your character more tanky by granting you a larger effective life pool, as your incoming damage is partially mitigated by your mana pool. However, the downside is that you can very easily find yourself out of mana after a hit, meaning that not only do the follow-up hits come straight from your life pool, but you don't have any mana left to fight back! Many Keystones work in this way. Upside and downside. Like unique items, many builds are centered around specific keystones. Cold DoT For Everyone: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2661120 Last edited by ShakCentral on Feb 2, 2021, 3:10:50 PM Last bumped on Jan 24, 2021, 11:02:28 AM
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Part 5: Playing Through The Story
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5.1 A Brief History Of Story Additions
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From launch day in 2013 to April 2015, PoE consistend of only 3 Acts. These 3 Acts were combined with 3 different difficulty levels: Normal, Cruel, and Merciless. You would fight through the story on Normal, then again on Cruel, and then on Merciless before becoming high enough level to move into mapping.
In 2015 PoE introduced Act 4 to the game. The 3 difficulties were still in place, and the game remained a 4 Act game for two more years. In August 2017, GGG released an astonishing SIX new Acts into the Path of Exile game, bringing the total to 10 Acts. The Normal/Cruel/Merciless difficulty were removed. Instead, characters now progress through a 10-Act storyline and theoretically will emerge at an appropriate level to begin end-game content. This is the current state of the game today. 5.2 Hideouts
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As you play through the PoE storyline, you will encounter different zones with a potential hideout in them. If you clear out the zone of all monsters, you are rewarded with a tileset to use as a personal hideout. In this hideout, you can manage your stash, invite the Masters and other important NPCs to stay with you (more on Masters later), and run all of your maps in your own personalized area.
You can spend your Master favor from completed missions to purchase decorations and really customize your hideout however you see fit. Some people make hyper efficient layouts so they barely have to walk at all during their end-game grinding. Others spend dozens of hours meticulously crafting beautiful creations; literal getaways from the blood and horrors of Wraeclast. 5.3 Party Play
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Playing with other people in Path of Exile is a good way to increase your loot and have fun together. For each player in a party, the monsters become more difficult, but the amount of loot that drops is also increased. Some teams like to split up and take down maps in half the time. Others utilize "aurabots", where one character stacks up helpful auras for their other teammates, greatly increasing their damage and defenses. No matter how you structure your party, multiplayer can be a fun and rewarding experience in PoE.
For a few years now, I've maintained a guide (that has now become a series of guides) to help teams efficiently move through Acts 1-10 and get into the end-game quickly. If you don't care about following the entire story line, this is a good way to speed yourself into the mapping part of PoE. Click here for the Google Doc Hub that will allow you to select the guide that works best for you. 5.4 Leveling Guide
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If you're brand new to the PoE story, I have a forum post with leveling guides that can be viewed by clicking here. If you're playing Vortex, use the Vortex guide. If not, use the generic leveling guide and insert your own gems as appropriate.
5.5 Story Information, Tips, and Lists
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Free Skill Points and Locations
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There are 22 free skill points given out for accomplishing things throughout Acts 1-10. If you decide to kill all 3 bandits, you will receive an additional 2 skill points. The skill points that can be obtained are as follows:
Act - Zone - Condition A1 - Flooded Depths - Kill The Dweller A1 - Ship Graveyard - Kill Fairgraves A1 - Western Forest (Act 2) - Open Passage (Claim in Act 1) A2 - Forest Encampment - Kill all Bandits (OPTIONAL; Grants 2 skill Points) A3 - Sewers - Collect All 3 Busts (Also gives 2 respec points) A3 - Lunaris 2 - Kill Piety A4 - Mines 2 - Free Deshret (Also gives 2 respec points) A5 - Control Blocks - Get the Miasmeter A5 - Reliquary - Pick up the 3 Relics (Also gives 2 respec points) A6 - Karui Fortress - Kill Tukohama A6 - Wetlands - Kill Ryslatha A6 - Prisoner's Gate - Kill Abberath A7 - Forest Encampment - Kill Ralakesh/Greust A7 - Dread Thicket - Kill Gruthkul A7 - Causeway - Pick up Kishara's Star (Also gives 2 respec points) A8 - Quay - Kill Tolman (Also gives 2 respec points) A8 - Grain Gate - Kill the Legionnaires A8 - High Gardens - Kill Yugul A9 - Oasis - Kill Shakari A9 - Quarry - Kill Kira A10 - Control Blocks - Kill Vilenta A10 - Oriath - Kill Kitava (Grants 2 Skill Points) Free Respec Points and Locations
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There are 20 free respec points given out for accomplishing things throughout Acts 1-10. The respec points that can be obtained are as follows:
Act - Zone - Condition A1 - Fetid Pool - Clear the Zone of ALL Monsters A2 - Crypt 2 - Loot the Golden Hand (Link this item in chat for a good time) A3 - Sewers - Collect All 3 Busts (Also gives a skill point) A4 - Mines 2 - Free Deshret (Also gives a skill point) A5 - Reliquary - Pick up the 3 Relics (Also gives a skill point) A6 - Twilight Strand - Clear the Zone of ALL Monsters A7 - Causeway - Pick up Kishara's Star (Also gives a skill point) A8 - Quay - Kill Tolman (Also gives a skill point) A9 - Foothills - Kill Unique mob and loot Calendar of Fortune A10 - Ossuary - Find the Elixir of Allure Labyrinth Trial Locations
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This formatting is taken straight from the wiki on lab trials, so if it's easier to understand there, click here to view their entry to lab trials.
Normal Lab Trials • The Lower Prison, Act 1, contains spike traps • The Crypt Level 1, Act 2, contains spinning blades • The Chamber of Sins Level 2, Act 2, contains sawblades • The Crematorium, Act 3, contains furnace traps • The Catacombs, Act 3, contains blade sentries • The Imperial Gardens, Act 3, contains dart traps Cruel Lab Trials • The Prison (Act 6), contains spike traps • The Crypt (Act 7), contains spinning blades • The Chamber of Sins Level 2 (Act 7), contains sawblades Merciless Lab Trials • The Bath House, Act 8, contains furnace traps • The Tunnel, Act 9, contains blade sentries • The Ossuary, Act 10, contains dart trap Uber/Eternal Lab Trials Note: These trials are all found randomly in maps. • Trial of Piercing Truth, contains spike traps • Trial of Swirling Fear, contains spinning blades • Trial of Crippling Grief, contains sawblades • Trial of Burning Rage, contains furnace traps • Trial of Lingering Pain, contains blade sentries • Trial of Stinging Doubt, contains dart traps Side Quests Worth Doing
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There are numerous side quests during the PoE campaign that do not progress the storyline or provide skill/refund points. Some of these are useless, but some could be worth doing. Here are a few side quests to consider as you go through the campaign:
Act 1 | Tidal Island | Kill Hailrake | Reward: Quicksilver Flask Act 2 | The Den | Kill The White BEast | Reward: Quicksilver Flask (Can roll Adrenaline mod) Act 6 | Tidal Island | Find Bestel's Manuscript | Reward: Rare Belt or Amulet Act 7 | Broken Bridge | Find Locket | Reward: Utility Flask Act 7 | Northern Forest | Return Greust's Necklace | Reward: Rare Amulet Act 8 | Bath House | Get Wings of Vastiri From Unique Monster | Reward: Unique Jewel Act 10 | Reliquary | Find the Teardrop | Reward: Rare Belt Part 6: Maps and Endgame Content
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6.1 What To Do After You Kill Act 10 Kitava (i.e. Finish the Campaign)
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If you've killed Kitava, let me first say: Congratulations! You'd be surprised how many people never make it this far. Your main goal now should be to prepare your character to move into PoE's endgame content: MAPS!
Before you do any maps, you should make sure that the following things are accomplished: • All free skill points are completed. After Kitava is dead, you can type "/passives" in chat (without the ") to see a list of all the skill point quests. If there are any with a "0" next to their name, that skill point quest has no been completed. Go get it done! • Make sure your first 3 labyrinths are done. If you can do Merciless lab before Kitava dies, do it. The -resists from Kitava will make it a lot harder. Speaking of which... • You need to cap your elemental resistances ASAP. You have -60 from killing Kitava twice, so you need a total of 135% for each resistance on your gear, skill tree, etc to cap it now. This is the most important thing you can do before mapping. • Unless you really know what you're doing or you're playing a meme build, try to be in the neighborhood of 3,000-3,500 Life before entering maps. Give yourself room to take a hit and survive. • If you have any items that you HAVE to have before getting to maps, you can go to the Ruined Square in Act 10, control click the Ossuary, and keep farming new instances and clearing in the square of the Ossuary while you build up currency and collect rare gear bases. • Before you can do any maps, you will need to complete a few quests for Kirac around Oriath. Get those done. When you are in your hideout, you will have a massive map portal by default. You can use the edit hideout button and the mouse scroll wheel on the map device to make it much smaller if you need the space. 6.2 An Introduction to Maps
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Buckle up folks. Mapping in PoE is a huge topic. This guide will not get into specific atlas progression strategies or dive too deep into theory. I am simply going to provide you with an information base on how mapping works on a basic level. Let's get into it.
Map Basics
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Maps are items that you will loot from Monsters and chests that allow you to access endgame content. Placing a map in your map device and activating it will open up 6 portals to a specific tileset/themed area filled with monsters. You enter these portals, kill the monsters, kill the boss, and then leave to place a new map in your hideout device.
Maps have a "tier" associated with them. These tiers run from 1 to 16 and represent the monster level inside of the map. Tier 1 maps are barely more dangerous than the last few zones of Act 10, while Tier 16 maps can provide a challenge for even the toughest builds if not handled carefully. In addition, note that there are a few dozen maps of a "Unique" rarity that all have special rules. Finally, maps can be crafted and modified in order to optimize them for getting the most rewards. We'll discuss how to craft maps, what to look out for, and how to get more out of your maps. Map Tiers
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You'll notice that the symbol etched into each map item has a color to it. Maps of tiers 1-5 are white maps, tiers 6-10 are yellow maps, and tiers 11-16 are red maps.
To understand how maps tiers work and how to get higher tier maps, lets use the following image:
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 For the following discussion, let's pretend that our Atlas only contains the maps in the image (in-game you can press G to see the entire Atlas and how many maps there are). So I've just started mapping and the only map I have in this area is a Tier 1 Beach map. When I am in the Beach map, all white (common) monsters are only capable of dropping maps up to the tier of the current map. We're in a Tier 1 map, so white monsters cannot drop any maps other than tier 1. If we were in a tier 2 map, any white monster could drop a tier 2 or a tier 1. Blue (Magic) monsters can drop maps up to 1 tier higher than the current map tier. So for the picture above, a blue monster in the Beach map could drop Beach, Fungal Hollow, Sulphur Vents, or Armoury. Yellow (Rare) monsters and Orange (Unique) monsters can drop maps up to 2 tiers higher than the current map. If you are new to mapping or PoE, just use this information as-is and play around with mapping for a while. You'll unlock plenty of maps naturally as you go and you'll have fun. Once you have some more experience under your belt, check out the next section. Drop Rules
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Here is where the info gets a bit more... involved. Even though monsters drop +0 / +1 / +2 tier maps according to their rarity, there are rules that determine which specific maps can drop.
The first determination is based on the maps that are "completed" on your atlas. Outside of very niche cases, the only maps that can drop are maps that have previously been completed or maps that are directly adjacent to completed maps. For instance, let's say that we had only ever run the T1 Beach map. While inside the Beach, a Yellow monster drops a Tier 2 map. Again, imagining that the picture above shows the only maps that existed on the atlas, we can see that Fungal Hollow, Sulphur Vents, and Armoury are the only available T2 maps that could drop. Ramparts and Glacier are tier 2, but they're not adjacent to the current map or another completed map. Now let's say we got a Fungal Hollow and completed it. Inside the Fungal Hollow map we get a Sulphur Vents and we run that map next. Inside of Sulphur Vents, if a monster drops a Tier 3 map, it will either be Pen or Vault. They are adjacent to Fungal Hollow, a completed map, and Racecourse (and the Coves map peeking from the left of the image) aren't valid targets. This gets much more complicated when you realize that the image above is just 1 section of 1 Atlas region, and there are 8 regions total. Just remember that regions aren't exclusive - you can receive a map for region A while running a map in region B as long as the drop conditions apply. Atlas Completion
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As you run maps, you may notice on your Atlass map that there's a fraction in the center of the screen. This is referred to as your Atlas completion bonus. While the game provides some details on how it works, there are some common misconceptions that are easy to clear up.
Firstly, in order to add to your atlas completion bonus, a map must be run at a certain rarity. For tier 1-5 maps, the map must be at least blue/magic. For instance, if you run a white, unmodified T1 Beach as your first map, your atlas completion bonus will not increase. However, if you use a Transmutation Orb on it and make it blue, your bonus will be 1/154 after that map. For tier 6-10 maps, you achieve atlas completion if the map is at least yellow/rare. For tiers 11-16, the map must be rare AND corrupted. For unique maps, just complete the map. Note that corrupting(using a Vaal Orb on) a map can yield unpredictable results, and could make the map un-runnable for your build or change it to another map entirely. The 154 simply refers to the total amount of different maps in the game. Ignore that for now. Your bonus is the first part of the fraction. The atlas completion bonus refers to the % chance that any map that drops will drop 1 tier higher (following drop rules). This is easiest to understand if we talk through a few examples. Atlas Completion Bonus Examples
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Let's imagine that our Atlas completion bonus was 50/154 and we are running a tier 5 map. For any map that drops, there is a 50% chance that the map will be upgraded a tier, but ONLY IF IT CAN BE NORMALLY. So if a white monster (which can NEVER drop a +1 tier map; only current tier or lower) drops a tier 5 map, and the 50% chance to upgrade the map "hits" and would normally upgrade the map to tier 6, it will still be a tier 5 because white mobs can never drop +1 tier maps.
However, if you're in a tier 5 and a white mob drops a t4 map, the atlas completion bonus could allow that map to be +1'd into a t5, because it's still able to drop from a white mob in a t5 map. Once you reach 101/154, you start adding to the chance for a map to be upgraded 2 tiers. 6.3 Master Missions
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Who Are the Masters?
As you played through the campaign, you were introduced to most of the Masters. These NPCs work with the players, offering special missions for the player that modify their zones or maps in different ways. As the player completes Master missions, they unlock new crafting options in various ways and also gain "Favor" with that Master, allowing the player to purchase hideout decorations. The Masters are: • Einhar, first encountered in Act 2. Einhar hunts difficult beasts with the player and provides access to the Menagerie where players can fight captured beasts for powerful crafts. • Niko, first seen in Act 4. Niko unearths mounds of Sulphite in the area, giving the player fuel to use in the Azurite Mine as they delve into the earth below Wraeclast, collecting fossils and treasure. • Alva, met in Act 7. Alva provides short instances that briefly let you travel back in time and influence the development of the present day Temple of Atzoatl, which you can then run for rewards. • Jun, whom you meet in Act 9. Jun is investigating the Immortal Syndicate, partially made up of old masters who have betrayed your trust. You will fight them and align them as you wish to infiltrate their safehouses for loot. • Zana, who you will not encounter until tier 3 maps. Her father is also an important part of the PoE storyline (no spoilers here), and she provides you with free maps to run while completing a certain objective. How To Get Master Missions When you kill the boss of a map, you have a 35% chance (7% for each master) to receive a master mission that you can run in a future map. The tier of the map determines the tier of the master mission you get. If you are running white maps, you'll receive "white" master missions that can be applied to any white map; same for yellow and rep tiers of maps. There are a few more ways to build up master missions. Each day at 8pm EST, you are given a master mission for each master. The tier of these free missions correspond to the last tier of map you ran before the 8pm refresh. Additionally, you may have noticed that you have a second fractional bar below your atlas completion bar inside your Atlas screen (Type G in-game). This second progress bar is your Awakening Bonus. To get Awakening Bonus, you'll need to complete maps of a certain tier while having a certain Awakener level (More on Awakener level in 6.4). For every 15 Awakening Bonus you get, you have 1% more chance to gain a master mission after completing a map. 6.4 End-Game Bosses
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The Conquerors
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The Conquerors are PoE's current set of end-game bosses. There are 5 Conquerors in all:
• Al-Hezmin, the Hunter, focused on poison and chaos damage. • Baran, the Crusader, focused on lightning damage and drains. • Drox, the Warlord, focused on reducing incoming damage and dealing physical damage. • Veritania, the Redeemer, focused on cold damage. • Sirus, Awakener of Worlds, who is the final boss of the current Atlas. The good news about the conqueror fights is that there are almost ZERO combined cases across all 5 conquerors where there is unavoidable damage coming at you. Veritania creates a circle of tornados that usually hit you a little bit because her arena shrinks, but other than that, take your time with the conquerors while they are low level and you're new. They don't have a timer on them, so learn their moves, go slow, and you will be rewarded with much easier kills for all of your future encounters. As you continue to run maps, you will begin to discover maps that are influenced by the first 4 Conquerors. They will cover an Atlas region with their influence, and after running a few maps in that region, you will be able to fight that conqueror. They will drop a watchstone, which can be socketed into the citadels in your atlas to increase the tier of the maps in that region. After you've done this enough times and you have 20 total watchstones, you'll start to fight Sirus, the final boss, after every rotation of 4 conqueror fights. There are 32 total watchstones to collect, at which point you have the ability to socket as much as 4 stones in every citadel on your atlas, making your entire Atlas tiers 14-16. This is a bit more advanced, but if you want a guide specifically for advancing your watchstone count efficiently, click here for a great guide on how to do it fast and semi-deterministically. Awakener Level
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As you collect watchstones and socket them into your Atlas citadels, the game's difficulty increases. For every 4 watchstones you socket into your Atlas, you gain an Awakener level. Awakener level increases the difficulty of your maps, but also provides the following benefits:
• Unique Map Boss has 3% more Life • +1% chance for an additional connected Map to drop from Unique Map Boss • +0.5% chance for a Shaper Guardian Map to drop from Unique Map Boss (Tier 14+) • +0.5% chance for an Elder Guardian Map to drop from Unique Map Boss (Tier 14+) • +1% chance for an additional Unique Item to drop from Unique Map Boss • +1% chance for additional Map Currency Item to drop from Unique Map Boss • Increased chance per Awakening Level for the Conquerors of the Atlas to drop additional rewards • 5% increased chance for Influenced Items to drop in Maps influenced by the Conquerors of the Atlas In addition to this, each map has an "Awakening Completion Bonus" for completing that map at a certain tier AND a certain Awakener level. The Awakening Completion Bonus grants the following benefits: • 1% increased effect of Modifiers on non-unique Maps (per 6 Awakening Bonus) • 1% chance to gain an Atlas Mission upon map completion (per 15 Awakening Bonus) If your build can handle it, you should push Awakener Level and Awakening Completion as high as possible to rake in the benefits of high difficulty, but high tier content. Shaper, Elder, and Uber Elder
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Shaper and Elder are end-game bosses who used to be 2 of the 3 final Atlas bosses before the arrival of the Conquerors. Late in the game, you can still access the Shaper and Elder fights along with their own set of guardians. Zana may offer you Shaper or Elder maps in T14 or higher Zana missions, and a high enough Awakener level will allow a chance for Shaper or Elder influenced maps to drop from map bosses. To fight Shaper or Elder, you must defeat their own sets of guardians and assemble their fragments to access their arenas.
Finally, killing Shaper and Elder will grant you pieces toward unlocking the previous Atlas final boss fight: Uber Elder. This fight is still challenging and can drop some valuable loot, primarily because of the difficulty of accessing the fight in the first place. 6.5 Alternate Content (HoGM, Atziri, etc)
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Atziri and Uber Atziri
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As you play through the game, particularly in Vaal side areas, you will collect Sacrifice Fragments. If you put together the 4 fragments (Dusk, Dawn, Noon, Midnight) in your map device, you can access the Atziri fight. This is a mechanically challenging, but not overly difficult fight. You can also collect the Mortal Fragments that drop from Atziri and Divination cards to access the Uber Atziri fight, a much more challenging variant.
Hall of Grandmasters
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The standard advice for HoGM is: If you don't know what you're doing, get someone to carry you through it, or you're just going to donate 60% of your exp to the map. HoGM is filled with PVP-scaled enemies and is intended as a way to remember some of PoE's most influential players and builds. It is extraordinarily difficult, and some builds are actually incapable of running it. Get help or get dead.
Synthesis Maps
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There are 5 attainable maps from the old Synthesis League (more in section 7.2). These maps are
• Altered Distant Memory • Augmented Distant Memory • Rewritten Distant Memory • Twisted Distant Memory • Cortex These maps are doable, but very challenging. They can drop some good loot and are generally pretty valuable, so selling them for profit is also an option. These maps do NOT count toward your Atlas Bonus or Awakening Completion Bonus. Part 7: League Mechanics Currently In-Game
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With each 3-month temporary league, Grinding Gear Games takes a look at the previous league and decided if and how they will incorporate it into the core PoE experience. As a result, there are many kinds of different mechanics on display as you play throughout the game. In this Part, I will discuss previous leagues and if/how they were incorporated into the game as we see them currently. 7.1 Pre-3.0
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Anarchy - Anarchy introduced Rogue Exiles. These player-like characters use active skill gems and are slightly tougher to defeat than rare monsters. They drop a full set of gear when killed, and have become little more than a roadblock in today's game. Nemesis - Nemesis added a modifier to rare monsters. This league still exists on map mods and sometimes in Zana's Map Device modifications. Nemesis is also the only league wherein Headhunder (a game-breakingly powerful item) can naturally drop or be chanced, so people still try a lot. Domination- This league added the shrines that you will see around Wraeclast. These shrines provide buffs to enemies standing around them, and when the player activates the shrine, the buff moves to benefit the player for a set duration. Ambush- This one surprises a lot of people, but Strongboxes haven't always been in PoE. Ambush introduced the boxes, which are still sometimes lucrative today. Beyond- This is one of the big bois. Killing monsters close to each other opens portals that spawn monsters from another dimension, culminating in huge bosses that can be very dangerous. This is one of the strongest mechanics still going, as Beyond is a desirable mod on nearly every map. Bloodlines- You still see this in the purple packs of monsters around Wraeclast. Packs of monsters that share mods. Torment- This is one of the league mechanics that you see the most. Green tormented spirits fly around the map, influencing the enemies thy touch with a special mod, and then climbing "inside" of rare monsters to make them very tough enemies. Perandus- This mechanic has you fighting bright white mosnters for a few waves, and then collecting Perandus coins from a nearby chest. If you can find Cadiro Perandus, he will offer you a random item in exchange for coins. Mostly worthless, he could also offer some very expensive items for very few coins. Basically a big gamble. Prophecy- Collect Silver Coins and trade them to Navali in exchange for prophecies that will affect your maps/areas/enemies at a later time when the conditions are met. Essence- This is one of the most widely encountered former leagues. You will encounter enemies that are frozen with a smaller pack around them. Free the enemies and defeat them to collect their Essences, which can be used to craft items. Breach- Another contender for most popular league of all time, Breach would spawn purple hands that would create a rapidly expanding circle on the ground. Ethereal enemies would rush in from outside the circle, and the player would kill these enemies to collect breach splinters and fight breach bosses. 7.2 Post-3.0
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Harbinger- Still existing, mostly as a later game occurrence, Harbingers spawn enemies that you must kill to damage the Harbinger. They drop currency shards and special crafting orbs that are unique to Harbingers. Abyss- Abyss spawns a snaking wavy line on the ground that ends in an eruption of monsters from beneath the ground. These monsters drop different jewel types and can occasionally lead the player underground toward harder boss fights. Bestiary- The player helps Einhar hunt down and capture challenging beats for his inventory, which can then be used in his menagerie for special crafting options. Incursion- Alva sends the player back in time to briefly alter specific rooms in the present day Temple of Atzoatl. The player can then enter this temple and fight for rewards based on the rooms they have set up previously. Delve- Delve is the best league ever made. The player collects Sulphite for Niko, which they use to power a mine craft further and further below Wraeclast's surface, mining for fossils, resonators, and boss fights. Betrayal- The player helps Jun hunt down members of a secret organization. The player will help them forge bonds, betray each other, and raid their safehouses for loot. Synthesis- A polarizing league that mostly exists now in end-game maps (see section 6.5). Synthesized gear is very rare and can be VERY VERY expensive. Legion- The player spawns monsters that are frozen in time, mid-fight with each other. Break them free for targeted rewards and collect their splinters to access the end-game boss killing event and unlock a 5th slot in your map device. Blight- The player helps Cassia defend from waves of monsters spawning out of portals. They construct towers to help defend, and can drop entire maps of pure portal spawning, tower defense madness with incredible rewards. Click here to view the Blight Helper site. Blight Helper is a simple tool that helps you plan out anointments on your rings, amulets, and blighted maps. You won't use this until the end-game, but it's a nice tool to have for when you need it. Metamorph- The player collects organs from monsters in the map, and assembles them into a Frankenstein-like monster at the end, which the player can (hopefully) kill for lots of loot. Delirium- A fog covers the map, making enemies tougher and spawning new packs. The player will fill up reward bars by killing enemies and seeing how far they can push into the map for better rewards. Harvest- Players collect seeds, plant them in their garden, and "grow" crafts to use on their gear after defeating the monsters that spawn during collection. Heist- The upcoming league. Players go on daring missions to retrieve contraband and plan elaborate Grand Heists to steal lucrative rewards. Part 8: Path of Exile 2
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At this point, I'm going to put a bunch of links in here. More info will be in here as it becomes available. Click here to view the trailer from Exilecon PC Gamer announcement article PC Gamer look at improvements between PoE and PoE2 PoE2 Wiki Info Cold DoT For Everyone: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2661120 Last edited by ShakCentral on Sep 14, 2020, 9:23:31 AM
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Reserved for friends & family
Cold DoT For Everyone: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2661120 Last edited by ShakCentral on Sep 11, 2020, 1:43:00 PM
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This is a really nice idea. Your build guides are quite comprehensive and have been well supported, so I have high hopes that this will be a huge win for beginners and recruiting!
The one suggestion that jumps to mind is maybe adding a segment in your 3rd party section for how-to videos for various more advanced topics - which might include some older league mechanics. For example: how to make currency; how to play the syndicate board; etc. There are some good resources like that but not easy to find w/o a lot of searching. Or maybe you reserve 3rd party tools for things you really need to play the game, like PoB, and have a later section on advanced topics that new players can largely ignore when they first start. Anyway, good luck with this! |
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Good luck Shak.
One thing, Foreward - should be Foreword. Cheers, ~ Adapt, Improvise and Overcome
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Cold DoT For Everyone: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2661120
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" Thank you for the kind words and for your suggestions. There will be an entire Part with a brief discussion of every prior league mechanic, so those will be covered. As for how to make currency, that topic is a bit broad and specific at the same time, and it can vary league-to-league, so I am unlikely to include it in the guide. I do plan, however, on linking guides to complicated mechanics like Harvest planning and the syndicate board. Thanks again! Cold DoT For Everyone: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2661120
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How is the new Exile doing? I think this build may be the most expensive one you have done yet. It will also take a lot more of your time to get through acts to the real game. (But having done two, I can say it is certainly worth the investment.)
Remind me the gender!? Can't recall whether you mentioned at one point. :-) |
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AMAZING!
I have been playing since early 2014, and this is the best newbie guide I have every seen. Just one thing... Add a section on the IN GAME HELP. The in game tutorial page is amazing, and newbies should get used to using it. It has videos, excellent descriptions, etc. | |
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Great work dude! PoE lives of off stuff like this and i love seeing the community make guides like this.
Will def reccomend to newer ppl.Keep up the good work! |
