When did PoE "click" for you?

I tried to get into the game two times in 2010s, but every time it overwhelmed me. Then in 2018 Incursion league hit at around the same time the new D3 season hit. Initially I wanted to continue playing D3 that I started only a few months prior to this, but then I got curious to actually give PoE - the praised king of ARPGs - a final honest try. And so I did.

I read that it's hard to play without build guides so I found a friendly one - Enki's Arc. The build carried me through the campaign without much friction, but of course not without deaths. Took me 30 hours to clear the campaign because as with any new ARPG or game in general I explored every corner of the map, did every side quest, no rush.

At that time I already saw how glorious the game is, but it really clicked when I ran my first few maps. Blasting them just felt so amazing and so much dopamine, and I was amazed at the various content encounters there - Breach, Essences, Abyss, Incursions, Strongboxes.

Even though I did not have any need for stash tabs then I went and instantly spent some money on that starter supporter's pack or whatever it is called to show devs some appreciation for their work and of course for my own convenience too.

7 years later? Still not freaking bored. Not even a bit. Even though I do take some time off between leagues to play other games and have skipped some leagues alltogether.

I had 2 click moments.

The first was when I downloaded this game almost 11 years ago. I had no idea what I was doing. I was stumbling around in the dark with a ranger using a bow & throwing traps. I loved it. Been hooked ever since.

I think my main click moment came during Hesit. I got my first level 100 Char & an ancient orb blessed me with a Headhunter, not once, but twice.

Thanks for the post & reminding me!

hoho when I first started.

January of 2013. Big D2 player. Played every single mod (no exaggeration), played Titan Quest and all the "in-between" diablo clones. Played Diablo 3.

And then PoE hit me like a ton of amazing bricks. Every single aspect of the game was incredible: the passive tree, the customization, the gearing, the skills themselves, the currency system, the trading system (it was way more cumbersome back then, but still worked), the way you buff skills.

There just wasn't, and still isn't, anything else like it on the market or in the genre.


I get its not this kind of thread, but I hate when I hear people saying they were "overwhelmed" or that it was too hard to get into. I understand "to each their own", but it simply isn't all that complicated. It only LOOKS complicated on the very surface. The game itself, for the most part, works like any other arpg. As long as you devote a little bit of thought, you can figure out how it all works on your own. And quickly at that. It DOES require more thought than most other arpgs that "force" you into linear pathways much of the time, but that is also what makes PoE unique and great.

There's this expectation that you should be able to beat everything right away that newer PoE players seem to have that makes absolutely no sense to me. Perhaps its the fact that they grew up on things like D3 and not D2, where the games were akin to reading a children's book as an adult. It took me multiple years to get my first mirror tier item, more years for me to craft one myself. And that is absolutely fantastic. My first builds were unoptimized messes....but over time (talking multiple early "leagues") I got better and better, because like anything else in life you get out of it what you put into it.

I played beta one sitting and quit. Found the monsters dumb (fighting giant chickens, roaches and monkey)

Tried again just before the 10 act expansion (wanted to try the tarditional 4 act format before it was gone).

Got bore and quit after ran on one map.

Tried 3rd time, 10 act expansion. Played to end game red map first char. Make a second char to try new build,, the a third that finally beat then the hardest boss Shaper. Felt good.

From them, I played on and off for about 1,5k hours.

I’ve got over 7500 hours in PoE, and I’ll let you know when it finally “clicks” for me. 😄

But seriously—I'm still learning. The real turning point for me was when I stopped relying entirely on build guides and started crafting my own characters. I still use PoB to plan things out, but now I can make meaningful adjustments based on the gear I have, how many points I’ve got to work with, and what content I’m aiming for.

Getting there took deliberate effort. I think it was just before 3.14 (Harvest) that I made the decision to actually start learning league mechanics—one at a time. I’d usually focus on the current league plus one older mechanic that had recently gone core. Over time, that added up, and I became a lot more self-reliant.

i saw kripp streaming closed beta and it looked rly cool, and then it went into open beta and i loved it from day 1.


i was never a chore at the start, it was never unclicked. tbh the easier they made the game the more throw away things became, the more entitled i felt and the more minor things started to feel like a chore.

Not sure when I first heard of POE, but it came up when I was searching the internet in late 2013/early 2014 or so for a game to play after playing FATE and Torchlight. The description said that you needed millions of shards of a currency to trade up to get the highest currency. I thought that was stupid so I didn't download the game. So much regret! Fast forward a year and I came across POE again and downloaded it in June 2015 just before Tempest League started. The first couple years/leagues were tough. I had no idea what I was doing, but somehow ground out characters to lvl 90-91 doing practically no damage.

POE "clicked" for me in Breach League. I dropped a Shav's, learned how to trade, and looked at build guides for the first time because what I was doing wasn't working. I dropped a Surrender shield, too, sold the Shav's to gear up a Blade Flurry Gladiator and started melting content for the first time (back when Poison double/triple dipped). I was absolutely hooked. The creator of the build guide (thanks again Icaros!!!) was amazingly patient and helpful with all my questions on the forum so I learned WHY the build worked, not just blindly following a guide. I've played every league since!

Ward loop. No other arpg had anything like it. Finally getting it to work properly was like figuring out a complex puzzle.