How To Not Suck - An In-Depth Beginner's Guide [UPDATED 3.20 2023]

UPDATED 05 December 2022

The game has had a tumultuous year, with the devs basically taking a giant dump over the playerbase and expecting us to eat it and thank them. When they realized how bad they messed up, they started doing damage control, and walked back the large majority of bad things. So, in other words, the game is actually in a good state as we head into this next league.

Some good starter builds that are current and viable:
NOTE: These builds use a program called Path of Building[github.com] that is very useful for planning out how skill trees and items interact. I highly recommend that you download the program so that you can copy-paste build codes in and see exactly how you should make your character. And you can trust this program - the creator got hired on as a game dev.

Enki's Arc Witch[www.pathofexile.com]
This build has been featured in this guide on-and-off since, like, 2015. Enki has faithfully kept it updated and balanced, and has already updated it for the new league. This is not the strongest build, but it is super beginner-friendly, and it is super reliable. I mean, the forum thread has over 2000 pages of comments. Even if this Steam guide dies, this build will probably survive as long as PoE does. Classic spellcaster build. Simple. Best choice if you're brand new.

"Warbringer" Slamming Berserker[www.pathofexile.com]
Melee isn't in the best spot right now, but as a noob it can be good due to Fortify Support, which gives some big defensive bonuses. I recommend using this support gem at all costs because it makes your noobish experience more comfortable. This build probably cannot take down endgame bosses, but can probably do most endgame content quickly and cheaply. Worry about boss farming when you've played some more.

Lightning Trap Saboteur[www.pathofexile.com]
This is a more complicated build. Ideal for someone who has played through the campaign at least once already. This is what I am personally league starting in 3.20. It's quite strong and I recommend it because the large damage means you can invest in more defense, earlier, and with very low budget. But, you must read this guide carefully. Trappers are a variant of spellcaster who throw traps that will only detonate if enemies touch them. Obviously, you throw the traps at the enemies.

Path of Exile is a very difficult game for someone new to it. Here are your most important bits of advice, if you want to have a good time on your first playthrough, and not feel like you're biting on granite:

1. Follow a build guide as closely as possible. Do not deviate. "Oh maybe it would work better if I-" no it wouldn't, stop. Listen to the build guide.
2. 90%+ of beginners put too much investment in offense, and not enough in defense. Be in the 10% who are cautious.
3. When you reach the endgame, don't worry about streamers, youtube videos, etc saying "ZOMG 1 BILLION CHAOS PER HOUR" clickbait ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. You need hundreds if not thousands of hours to do that. Keep it simple, just run basic endgame stuff and have fun, your beginner-friendly build guide should carry you.

I assume that I don't need to tell you how to pick up a weapon and hit things with it. That is all I am going to assume. Feel free to skip past section headers if you feel you have a firm grasp of the information it pertains to.

Alright, square one. Skill gems. Path of Exile has a unique skill system where skills are contained in items called gems. Skill gems, along with their support gems, are then inserted into some of your gear pieces, before you can use them. To deal sufficient damage, you want to maximize the number of support gems you have linked to your skill gem. The typical limit is one skill gem plus five support gems.

6-link armors are difficult to create. As a new player, I recommend you sell your Orbs of Fusing, instead of trying to 5-link or 6-link an item. Buy the item already linked instead (it's often cheaper this way).

Gems all come in a certain color, and to use them, you need the sockets on your items to have a corresponding color. Armor and Strength are red, Evasion and Dexterity are green, and Energy Shield and Intelligence are blue. You can change the colors on an item with a chromatic orb. Note that some items may be very difficult to get the correct colors on, i.e. getting 5 green sockets on an item that only requires strength.

The passive skill tree can easily overwhelm an unprepared noob like yourself. After a couple thousand hours it's not so intimidating, but until then, just follow what other people tell you. This is NOT a forgiving game, and you can very easily brick your character by choosing the wrong skill nodes, since changing them requires spending Orbs of Regret.

THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART: Focus on defense defense defense. You want as much life as possible from your skill tree. If you think you have enough defense, you probably don't. Do NOT go for Chaos Innoculation or Eldritch Battery until you know what you are doing.

After ensuring that you have lots-o-life, next comes damage. Depending on your build, you're going to need lots of damage and maybe crit. Your build guide should help you out here.

I strongly recommend reading and following a build guide for your first couple characters. I don't personally agree with many popular "noob builds" and their choices, but they are without doubt better than whatever terrifying skill tree you are planning. A lot of people say screwing up a character is part of learning the game, but I say that's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and dying a lot sucks. I wish I had had someone to tell me how to do it right on my first character.

Alright, nice job following everything I said above to the letter. You probably didn't, but whatever. In any case, good gear should be a bit of a cushion for when your character crashes and burns. If you have high life, maxed out resistances, and a good DPS weapon or spell damage weapon, even if your character kinda sucks balls it probably won't get one shotted. This should be your order of importance on what to have on gear.

1. REQUIRED uniques (this means items that the build CAN NOT function without)
   
2. Resistances (135% total in each element, see the section on game difficulty levels as to why)
   
3. As high life as possible
   
4. ES if you are running an ES build.
   
5. A high DPS weapon or high spell damage wand/sceptre/dagger
   
6. Movement speed on boots
   
7. A 5-link
   
8. Good jewels
   
9. A 6-link

I think that about sums it up. For reference, on Gloves and Boots, it is perfectly fine to craft on life at a crafting bench (explained in another section) as the mods obtained there are close to the maximum on those items. Otherwise, look for high life gear or buy it off of the website discussed below. This website[www.pathofexile.com] may be the single most important tool not in the game itself. It facilitates item searching, trading, currency exchanging, price checking, and much more. I ALWAYS have three tabs of this website open in my browser, even when not playing. It is so influential in trading and finding items for your character that it truly deserves a place in the Basics section.

Check the site out, explore what it does, and bookmark the hell out of it. Try to use Online Only when you are searching for items, it will save you a lot of time. You can also bulk trade items such as currency, maps, etc here[www.pathofexile.com].

That about covers it for the true basics. If you're still reading, you should have a marginally better experience now, but you should definitely read on to really get the hang of things. Most sections aren't as long as this one.

If you're reading this guide, you probably are still going through the campaign or just finished it. To many, the campaign is cool, and they honestly enjoy spending 100+ hours in the game before maps. Not me. I like to get through this part fast. So, here are some tips on how to shorten that sometimes-painful leveling process.

Biggest mistake noobs make is clearing each entire area. This is entirely unnecessary and just wastes time. Run through the area to your objective or destination, and kill only monsters that are in your way. You will level up at a fine rate doing this, so don't worry about that. This is the biggest time-waster of all. You don't have to kill enemies. They're probably slower than you. Running past them can save time and protect you when your defenses are too low. Skilled players usually kill enough packs to keep their quicksilver flask(s) going, and nothing more. On your first run-through you should probably do all quests just to understand the story and experience the full game. After that, work to remember which quests give skill points or are required to progress in the story, and which ones do neither. This may take a couple run-throughs, but once you know what to do and what not to do, you'll get through the campaign much faster. (Hint: the Fetid Pool quest is an example of one you should NOT do, as it only gives respec points, but the Dweller of the Deep quest you SHOULD do, as that one gives a skill point). You can also use the command /passives in the game chat to determine if you missed any quests that give skill points. Also, get a pair of boots with movement speed as soon as you can. A pair of Wanderlust is always an excellent choice, and they are cheap.

Alright, so here's the thing. This game is not like a Bob Ross painting-- that is to say, there is a wrong way to play PoE. Having major mistakes in your passive tree will basically make the game terrible for you, so you're going to want to play a build made by someone who already knows what they are doing. Most builds are located in the POE Forums[www.pathofexile.com]. I've linked a few recommended builds above, but almost anything labeled "budget" or "beginner friendly" is a good place to start.

Also, you probably want to download a program called Path of Building[github.com]. This program, made by a guy who would later be hired by GGG to become a game dev because this program was so detailed and good, can help you to plan out your skill tree, items, skill gem setups, and more. It's also something that all build guides now incorporate through a copy-pasted build code that allows you to see the details of what the guide is saying. Definitely download PoB and use it to figure stuff out.

As they often go hand in hand, I am merging trading and crafting into one supersection. Deal with it, nerd. In any case, POE has one of the most advanced systems of crafting and trading I've ever seen in a video game, and you can do most things in POE as you can in real life in regards to money.

There is no gold in Path of Exile. Instead, the Orbs are used as currency, with Chaos Orbs and Divine Orbs being the primary baseline currencies (Exalted Orb was once the second main currency, but in 2022, Divine Orb took its place). Note that RMT services, through which players can buy in game currency with real money, are absolutely, permanently, and strictly prohibited and using such a service even once WILL result in a permanent ban on your account and the loss of all purchased items.

Back to the orbs. POE has an ingenious economic system in that it manages to curb inflation by providing a purpose and use for each and every type of orb. A chaos orb will randomly alter a rare item. An exalted orb will add a mod to a rare item. A jeweller's orb changes the number of sockets on an item. Each type of orb does something different, and so inflation is kept contained. However, that isn't to say that the market doesn't fluctuate. The most expensive currency item is and always will be the Mirror of Kalandra.

Orbs will tell you what they do when you hover over them. As a new player, I recommend you save your currency: one chaos will buy you a lot more than using it on an item will get you.

Path of Exile has a fairly in-depth crafting system. In addition to orbs that modify items, you also have crafting benches that can craft specific mods onto your items (for a price). This can be useful if you have an item with a few nice stats and want something else on, like a life roll or some resistance on an already decent item. These crafting recipes can be found throughout the game world and in maps, but some can only be unlocked by completing encounters with Betrayal characters who start to appear in Act 9.

Another important way you can craft items is through fossils. Fossils can be found in Niko's Azurite mine in hidden areas, and make your items more likely to roll certain types of mods, including a few super-good exclusive mods. It can be tricky finding the right combos of mods to make the kind of item you want, but learning this system can be good for crafting gear for yourself and for a profit.

Some items have influence. Influence (from one of Shaper/Elder/Baran/Drox/Veritania/Al-Hezmin) allows your item to roll some special mods that are not available without that influence. Some of these are very rare and powerful, such as rings that apply a curse on hit, or a helmet that adds lots of damage to your spells. Not every influenced item is valuable or a good crafting base.

An alternative source of influence is the Searing Exarch and the Eater of Worlds, whose influences can both be on the same item, but these two are mutually exclusive to the previous list. These are easier to craft with because they only add implicit modifiers to items, AKA there is less risk involved, and you only improve an already-good item.

Check out the Basics section for information about the pathofexile.com trading system. Can not stress enough how important it is. If you're going to spend any money at all on this game, it should be on some Premium Stash Tabs. These tabs allow you to price your items and sell them on the trading site automatically - something very important if you want to trade effectively. Most people consider buying a couple of these stash tabs to be essential (and the only required purchase for the game).

After that, you can check prices on the trade site and list your stuff accordingly, or ask Global for easy but potentially inaccurate information.

Try to avoid using the in-game trade chat. It is full of people who are going to give you a bad deal. I recommend avoiding the in-game trade chat until you have hundreds of hours of experience and instinctively know what things are worth.

After you have progressed through the storyline three times (yeah, it sucks, but they've said they're gonna shorten it a bit) you will unlock maps. Map content is very different from the main story areas, as they are items, and like other items, can be crafted with orbs. This means that although maps are significantly more dangerous than other areas, and higher level, they drop much more items and much better items in general.

Your first maps will be Tier 1 maps that you find late in the campaign. These are fairly tame, simple maps that will be your first landing platform for higher tiers. Alternatively, you could buy yourself a bunch of lower maps, as tier 1-5 maps are very cheap. Coming from the main areas, these shouldn't be too much harder.

Low tier maps are much easier than high tier ones. Don't be surprised if your build can coast on tier 3 maps and struggle at tier 6! Maps go up to tier 16 (area level 83).

Delve League introduced the Azurite mine, an infinitely deep mine with good rewards that can go all the way up to tier 16 (area level 83). Running through areas in Delve costs Sulphite, which can only be found in maps. Whenever you have a lot of sulphite saved up, run some delves, as they are as good or better than maps as far as content farming. If you choose to play temporary 3-4 month leagues, which I do recommend, they will have some form of content for you to play that typically manifests in every map you run. These vary widely but in general they are designed to be well worth your time, so that each temporary league feels distinct and rewarding.

Under construction. Lots changed since the last version of this guide. Absolutely nothing mentioned previously was still relevant.

Incursion League introduced, well, incursions. These are short areas that contain dense packs of monsters that you must kill quickly to keep the area open. Killing one of two bosses in the area changes how that Room will appear in the Temple. Complete enough of these Room areas and you can unlock a run through the Temple of Atzoatl, an ancient Vaal temple with lots of loot and an end boss fight that drops great items.

Upgrading rooms grants better rewards, but sometimes, it might be better to swap the room to a different type of a lower tier. In general, tier 3 rooms will have good rewards and sometimes a very good crafting item.

In general, you should always open as many rooms as possible (do this by opening the passages in each Incursion area you encounter to attach one area to other unlocked areas). Also, your top priority should always be to unlock the topmost room and boss fight. One important thing to note is that the Temple will always be the area level of the highest incursion that you did. So, if you do just one incursion in a T15 map and all the rest in T4 maps, then the Temple will stay at the highest level.

You can sell your Temple Chronicle for currency, to other players. Certain top-tier rooms are very valuable. Learn which ones these are, and this can be a great noob moneymaker.

Einhar wants to go on a hunting trip with you. When he pops into your map, he spawns a few extra packs of monsters with super-powerful rares in charge of them. One or two of those rares will be a "red beast" that can be tougher than the map boss. Fortunately, Einhar himself is a powerful ally, and will help you fight.

Bringing the powerful beasts down to low HP allows Einhar to ensnare them. They will be teleported out to the Menagerie, which can be accessed from the waypoint system. In the Menagerie, you fight the beasts once more in a closed arena, and upon killing them you reap a variety of rewards.

Also, Einhar has by far the best voice actor in the game.

Immortal Syndicate missions are widely regarded as the most boring and tedious of the Master missions, but also potentially the most important. Setting up the Syndicate sections in certain ways allows you to receive special rewards from them after reaching 100% intel on the safehouse. Each syndicate member in each section grants different rewards. Some are much better than others.

However, none of that matters nearly as much as veiled items. Veiled items drop identified, but with a shimmering mod that can be revealed by talking to Jun. Unveiling this modification usually creates a less-than stellar item, but unveiling the same mod multiple times allows it to be crafted in the hideout. This includes many crucial modifiers!

For a quick reference on which Syndicate member is best in which section, check out this page[www.poelab.com].

Niko is my favorite master, because he lets you access the Azurite Mine. The Mine is a massive dungeon with tons of great loot, and is probably the fastest leveling in the game outside of some advanced strategies.

Getting the most voltaxic sulphite out of every Niko encounter means running the highest possible tier maps with the highest possible item quantity. Niko grants more sulphite per map tier, but the quantity of sulphite is also determined by the map quantity roll. So, if you have a white map Niko mission available, do not use it on a random tier 2 map. Use it on a tier 5 map that has been chiseled to 20 quality and then alchemy'd.

Kirac is a nice man who gives you extra maps to run. Everybody likes him.

Path of Exile is a PvE game at heart, and has strong co-op features. This includes an in-depth guild system to help and share with others, and public or private parties so you can play co-op with people.

Guilds primarily function to promote doing maps together, sharing items, and providing a close community for players. Most guilds will have a TeamSpeak or equivalent server for voice chat, but all can chat with a special, private guild chat channel. There are many guilds open to new players and willing to help them out, take a look through them here[www.pathofexile.com].

Some guilds, such as mine, may not allow newer players. However, you'll do just fine in one of the larger or more accepting guilds out there. There are plenty.

I do not like public parties. I generally avoid them whenever possible. That said, they do have some merit and my distaste for them is merely personal preference.

Public parties can be found at the town notice boards in every difficulty, and typically include people going through the main story or farming an area such as the Dried Lake. If your character or build is lacking, these people may help carry you. However, you should be careful about which parties you join. I refuse to join parties that do not use Permanent Allocation, which when enabled means that all loot that drops for you is only accessible by you, until you portal out of the area. If you're going to join a public party and are concerned about keeping stuff that drops for you, I would only join exclusively Permanent Allocation parties if I were you (denoted by a green hand icon on the town board).

The top party is short allocation, the middle is Free for All, and the bottom is Permanent (denoted by the icon).

Chances are you are poor and need some chaos to get your character working right. Fear not, because there are multiple ezpz ways of farming up currency to get that nifty thing you want. Expect to do it a lot though, as after all the developers are called "Grinding [for] Gear Games"

With time, you will come to understand my failings an intuition about how much an item might be worth. Until then, and then on for convenience, you can use a tool like PoE Overlay[github.com] to get a rough estimate of what things might be worth.

Running maps is good. You get free item quantity (well not free but ez to get quantity) and rarity, and often better drops than in story areas. Higher level maps can drop better stuff, and also allow you to use the profitable altars and/or Maven influence, which greatly increases your profitability. There are a variety of mapping strategies revolving around different Atlas passive tree specs, but as a newbie, focus on just completing more maps and content, rather than trying to do it all efficiently. You'll figure out what you like in time. There are a variety of things in this game that experienced players tend to avoid because, if you know what you are doing, they are not very efficient. As a new player, these can be great because they're consistent, easy, and don't require much investment.

Azurite mine: farming for fossils and resonators isn't very popular nowadays. Crafters like me will buy these items in the dozens or hundreds, and the more you can sell us at once, the more we will pay per item. A primitive chaotic resonator might be worth 1 chaos by itself, but a bundle of 100 of them is probably worth 150 chaos or more. The most basic strategy here is to maximize the amount of azurite you find, and then use that azurite to buy resonators from Niko. And, of course, you also get all the normal monster drops, all the fossils, all the stuff from special mine nodes, and so on. Good newbie farming location.

Uber Lab: If you have a build which is tankier and/or has more life regen, farming the Uber Lab can be a good moneymaker. The profitable things are either the enchants you can get, or the items you can get from chests at the end. Therefore, you should clear the lab as fast as possible, except (maybe) to get extra keys for chests. Use poelab.com for your daily layouts. You will get faster at this very quickly if you want to farm it.

Heist: Heist is something that experienced players absolutely 100% do farm, but it's a good idea for you, too. The content here is a bit more difficult, especially at the high levels. However, you get a good amount of control over your rewards, rewards are generally good, and you can get some disgustingly valuable things from your Blueprints. Heist is most profitable if you spend a lot of time doing it, even buying contracts from other players.

There are some bosses in the game that can be continuously farmed for certain items and profit. I'd recommend against going for these as a new player, as it is not cheap to do these runs and they can be easily failed with a poor build or little experience. It honestly surprises me and most experienced players how many people know about neither the chaos recipe nor the jeweller's orb trade-in. These are key to making money, and might end up being the bulk of your farming profit

Basically, the chaos recipe is as follows: you collect a chest armor, a pair of gloves, boots, a helmet, two rings, an amulet, a belt, and either a two-handed weapon or two one-handers. All of these must be rare and unidentified (no wisdom scroll used on them). All items must be item level 60 or above (press alt while hovering over an item to see ilvl). Trade all of those in to the vendor and you will receive two chaos orbs. Now that may seem like a lot for two chaos but think about it: you could get all ingredients in one or two maps, and those items would probably be utter garbage anyways. This is especially strong early in a league when you're trying to get a currency base established. If you like, you can do this recipe with items ilvl 75 and above for two regal orbs, but I don't recommend this because regals are often worth less than chaos. You can also use identified rare items, to see if any of them will roll into a valuable item, but you will only get 1 chaos for those sets. Statistically, it is most worth it to do unidentified chaos recipe sets.

Additionally, the second most important recipe to know about is the 6-socket recipe. This one is simple: find a 6-socket item, sell it to a vendor. You now have 7 jewellers orbs. That is almost 1 chaos for a single garbage white item. Works with weapons and body armor, no links required. Always always ALWAYS pick them up.

Loot filters are important to highlight valuable items and filter out trash that you don't need. Not everything your loot filter shows may be valuable at all times, but you're not going to see at least 3/4 of the trash you wouldn't want to pick up (or more, if you make your filter more strict). The most widely-used filter is created by Neversink and has its own website[filterblade.xyz] to customize the filter, test it out, and determine how much strictness you want. As a new player, you should probably start with the "Regular" or "Semi-Strict" option.

The Labyrinth allows you to unlock Ascendancy classes, which are important and strong skills specific to each starting character that enable an entire new level of player power.

To complete the Labyrinth on each difficulty, you'll first need to do the Trials of Ascendancy. These are found in the less-used areas of the main story, and each one focuses on one of the types of trap you will encounter in the Labyrinth.

• The Lower Prison (Act 1)
  
• The Crypt Level 1 (Act 2)
  
• The Chamber of Sins Level 2 (Act 2)
  
• The Crematorium (Act 3)
  
• The Catacombs (Act 3)
  
• The Hedge Maze (Act 3)
  
• The Prison (Act 6)
  
• The Crypt (Act 7)
  
• The Chamber of Sins Level 2 (Act 7)
  
• The Bath House (Act 8)
  
• The Tunnel (Act 9)
  
• The Ossuary (Act 10)

You can do them as you reach them, or come back and do them later. I prefer the latter option but it is up to you. The Labyrinth itself can be tricky, but with a good enough build you should be able to do it. Avoid the traps, and you generally want to only go through rooms that you have to in order to reach the next Aspirant's Trial. The Labyrinth layouts are posted daily at the website http://www.poelab.com

In the Aspirant's Trials, you will face off against Izaro, who can be pretty hard. Can't really say much here other than that you should probably run in circles to mitigate how many times he hits you. The form where he dual-wields swords is particularly dangerous.

Once you start doing maps, you will begin seeing a new set of Trials of Ascendancy. Complete one, get an Offering tablet, and you can access the Uber Lab. You may need to hire a carry to complete this, or wait until your character is higher level. Farming the Uber Labyrinth can actually make you some pretty great money. Your biggest source of profit will probably be from helmet enchants. You can either choose a unique helmet that can become super valuable with a rare enchant, or go with an influenced helmet that can have a much wider range of enchants to become valuable (but never be SUPER expensive). You also get lots of good loot from the chests at the end of the Lab, so be sure to get those (and the treasure keys that go to them) as much as possible. You can also, usually at the start of a league, carry people through for a price. The first couple days you might be able to charge a larger fee, but usually the going rate is for the person getting carried to supply the Offering to the Goddess that is required to open the Uber Lab, and for you to keep all the loot from the chests at the end.