New player PoE1 experience Settlers feedback
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Preface:
I started with PoE2 early access Dec 2024 and played PoE1 Settlers league for the first time around Jan/Feb 2025. I went in following a build guide with some shared knowledge from PoE2, but many systems I am unfamiliar with. This post highlights specific aspects I feel caused headaches or could be better. 1. No distinguishable pictures/icons for skill gem items. Compared to PoE2 where skill gems have their skill icons clearly visible on the gem, all PoE1 skill gems are too abstract. All I see are colored gems with shapes, nothing to catch my eye, which is why I never take notice or interest in any gem unless I specifically heard of the name or am looking for it. Skills get diluted down to just text. This holds me back when picking a new skill to build around or finding a build guide for. 2. Vendor recipes is TOO hidden. There is no info in-game. It is all experimentation. Given how complex the system can be, no one will be able to make full use of this system without looking it up. Starting out, I was constantly referring to a cheatsheet to see what I could recipe with. I feel this system is fairly strong early on, but it is locked behind online research. 3. Equipment NPCs feel like a trap. Early on, they feel super expensive when you have basically nothing. Mid-campaign and on, they have very little use because all your upgrade are off the ground. They only feel like a safety net for when you have no weapon or something. 4. Old league contents are hard to find the mechanic names for. This is all the league content that exist prior to the new league mechanics like breach, abyss, etc. Playing through the campaign and into maps, you interact with them a few times before you allocate atlas passive towards it. It was very hard for me to figure out the name of the league mechanic so I can look it up online. I dug through many pages on the wiki to eventually figure out I was interacting with the Abyss league mechanic. As a new player, I only had "vines mechanic" to go off of. 5. Sanctum does not feel designed for PoE1 Having experience Sanctum first in PoE2 as Trials of Sekhema, I felt this system fit well with PoE2's slower pacing. Playing it for the first time in Act 10 where it is introduced, this system feels like it was not designed for PoE1. The screen clutter plus needing to avoid taking damage makes it a real struggle. Avoiding getting hit is antithetical to screen clutter that PoE1 devolves into either from your builds or the enemy attacks. It felt fine in PoE2 because of the slower pace, attack windups, and less screen clutter. 6. Gear influence and affix coloring are hard to figure out This is the same problem as #4 with league content. In maps, when I start to find influenced/synthesized/fractured items, they were very confusing to figure out. I had a hard time translating "gear glowing a certain color" or "affix is a certain color" into text I could look up with. There are still some effects on equipment that I cannot figure out what makes it special. 7. Affix text should be colored distinctly Suggestion to color certain affix text to make it easier to identify instead of everything being the same color. For example, "Fire Damage" = orange, "Life" = red, "Cold resistance" = teal. For reference, look up the "Grim Dawn rainbow filter mod" which does what I am describing. It makes it much easier to spot "Life" affix at a glance rather than reading line-by-line. 8. Endgame stash management is incredibly time-consuming as F2P This involves paid stashes so I am not expecting any changes here. At endgame, I feel the item limitations were designed to really push players to purchase stash tabs, particularly the low stack size like 20 chaos orbs per slot or the unstackable offering to the goddess. The number of items is so high that it feels designed to take up more space (many types of chisels, many divination cards, all the various eldritch currencies). It somewhat feels designed to be an inconvenience so they can sell you stash tabs. This also applies to PoE2 with the new socketables/ritual stash tabs where it feels like "create the problem, sell the solution". In PoE1, the silver lining would be breach/legion/ritual are all included in the fragments stash tab and expedition/heist have their own dedicated stash given. Last edited by Leezurli#0616 on Jun 10, 2025, 11:32:28 PM Last bumped on Jun 11, 2025, 9:12:36 AM
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UP!
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I think you're asking for quality of life stuff that people have been asking for, for sometime.
But I also just don't agree with you on your assessment of sanctum. I'm tired of people complaining about it. It's a piece of content that is optional. You don't have to do it. And there are ways to make it viable if you make builds for it. Just like if you make builds for ubers. This game was intended, originally, to have lots of rerolls. You'd make a character to farm for another character, etc. If you want to do sanctum then make a build for it. There are so many builds for sanctum that are cheap, quick to make, and work well enough. You can drop 20 hours into the game on a character and have a sanctum viable build for the rest of a league. The bosses are not particularly hard either. It's literally one of the easiest pieces of content in the game if you just make a build for it. This game is freaking huge. It's a hobby game. Just like in Magic The Gathering, you can't play every deck and every great card in one match. You can't win every time. Just like Warhammer 40k, you can't mix your armies. It's a very big game. If you want to do everything, then be prepared to have multiple builds for everything. It fits just fine as far as i'm concerned. Delve, Heist, and Sanctum are all mini games with rewards. Just like mini games in zelda or a final fantasy RPG |
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" I understand. I have no intention of hating it and those that do enjoy running it should fight to keep it the way they want it. I ran sanctum once for one whole floor on my first character at the first opportunity the quest was presented to me to unlock it. I entered with some knowledge of how the system works having experienced it as the Trials of Sekhema in PoE2. I mentioned this system in particular as it stood out as a "this feels like it gets significantly worse the more you speed up" as I felt the design doesn't fit well with the many zoom zoom playstyles that PoE1 is known for. Of course, this only covers my inexperienced first run not knowing what to look for and such so I may be fine if I really dig deep and learn through experience. Other mini games you mentioned I don't see the same issue happening. I enjoyed Delve (felt my speed was bottlenecked by the enemy wave spawns though), Heist felt meh, and Sanctum I already detailed above. Like you said, there is tons of content so I don't have to like all of them. I wanted to articulate that what I felt about Sanctum wasn't like/dislike, but more so confusion about the design. Last edited by Leezurli#0616 on Jun 10, 2025, 11:31:35 PM
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Trying to imagine coming to this game from PoE2, as a new player, I can see most of your points, and would even agree with most of them.
Vendor recipes are quite arcane & draconian. I think this is an almost intentional vibe that was quite common in the 90s & early 2000s, but for a game in the 2020s it feels out of place. I'm with you 100% on NPC gear. The stash issues... well, I give them the benfit of the doubt. It is a F2P game, after all, I can't fault them for making their money somehow. But that doesn't mean I disagree with you. On Sanctum I couldn't agree more. I hated the mechanic on PoE1, couldn't believe they were serious. Then I played PoE2 and saw what an awesome idea it is. This mechanic belongs in PoE2, but I'd like to see a rework too, to better suit 1's pacing. Where I disagree is on the icons/mechanic names/affix colours. As much as I find the perenial "git gud" chorus to be quite tedious, I don't actually think there is a clear, concise, well-organised solution to any of these things without sacrificing the complexity or confusing long term players who are used to it the way it is. If you love the game, you'll learn them, even get used to them. If you're not that into it, then it doesn't much matter what a mechanic is called, or if it takes you a couple extra seconds to identify the affix or influence. All in all, I agree with you on most of it but think it might just take some time to get used to PoE1's quirks for UI issues. Just my take, as I'm lurking the forums for conversations about 3.26 changes lately. Welcome to the game, by the way! |
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" Great insights! Clearer skill gem icons, better in-game vendor info, and improved affix visuals would help new players a lot. Also, stash management feels restrictive for F2P players. |
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