Tips/Advice For New Players

I've been playing ARPGs on and off since Diablo I back at launch. Played PoE on and off since early beta but it hasn't even really hooked me like the Diablo series, Grim Dawn, etc. Now, I am looking to start a serious character like a Minion Witch or straight caster build. What are the top 10 addons, tools, website, tips/tricks that you would share? I haven't spent any money on anything inside the game FYI.

I rolled a Seasonal Witch and already feel overwhelmed with skill tree or where to even put my stats, which gear to keep, etc. Thanks in advance!

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Cynophilist wrote:

I've been playing ARPGs on and off since Diablo I back at launch. Played PoE on and off since early beta but it hasn't even really hooked me like the Diablo series, Grim Dawn, etc. Now, I am looking to start a serious character like a Minion Witch or straight caster build. What are the top 10 addons, tools, website, tips/tricks that you would share? I haven't spent any money on anything inside the game FYI.

I rolled a Seasonal Witch and already feel overwhelmed with skill tree or where to even put my stats, which gear to keep, etc. Thanks in advance!

Play Necromancer when you rolled a witch. Follow SRS for campaign and early maps, once you snack Dialla's you should transition into Holy Relic of Conviction. Build can do every content ingame and is strong offensive and defensive wise

So,

In general you should be able to wing it through the campaign. You will die, a lot, but you can do it. My first league I just started playing. No guides, no tools and I hit the wall after the campaign.

I would recommend this approach because you will learn more than just following a guide from the start and a guide isn't really needed to get through the campaign, especially if you have experience with arpgs. Don't worry about doing everything right from the get go. The game will do a good job of giving you certain skill gems as you progress. The skill tree is daunting but you won't use most of it. Generally you will want to look for skills that are nearby and slowly build from there.

Know that poe gives you respec points and there is a currency, the regret orb, that can help you respec. This league you can use gold too. Making mistakes is ok. They will help you learn the game more than doing everything right and following a step by step guide.

You can use the search function at the top of the skill tree to look for stats that improve your life or your damage. If you do minions you can type in minion and it will highlight nodes that contain the word minion. Just path to the ones that look good. Don't ignore your defences. HP and resistances are very important. As a general idea of what you are aiming for on your gear and skill tree. You want a good base pool of hit points. Life or energy shield. Approx 400-500 extra per act end. It's not a set in stone type thing but this should be a good enough guideline. You want 75/75/75 elemental resistances by act 6 at the latest. Max those as quickly as you can. Chaos resistance is doable at 0 and isn't super common in the campaign so is less important early on. Also, you will unlock a crafting bench in your hideout as a mission. It is the single most important thing you need to learn to use imo. It will help you add life to items that don't have it or resistances. Your items should either be full of mods or have a crafted mod on it.

Once you finish the campaign you will want to look through the forums of your class ( which will probably be necromancer ) and look for a guide that will help you build your character. The only essential tools for me are a loot filter and path of building. The rest are optional and you will start to discover when you hit the problem that they solve.

Don't get dishearted. Took me approx 1000 hours before I could make a build from scratch and those were very, very mediocre. Also, dying in this game isn't an issue. I have 100's of deaths this league. The game is hard, the learning curve is steep but that comes with depth that the other arpg's just don't have.

If you would prefer a guide there are plenty on here that have in depth trees per level/act that hold your hand from the beginning.

Prefer using gold rather than the free points the campaign gives you or regret orbs (until you have a big enough stockpile of either) because you cannot respecialize the (very expensive) sub-class ('Ascendancy') passive points with gold.

Path of Building is great, but very complex, I wouldn't even search for it until you have completed the campaign with one character, or part 1 with several.

The official wiki is great to understand the sometimes very convoluted PoE1 mechanics with minimum spoilers.

Ruthless leagues are harder, but less overwhelming when it comes to options / mechanics on top of the regular ones in game areas / loot.

Getting increased attack/cast and especially movement speed early on makes the game feel much better. For movement speed, regularly check boots at vendors, there's a bunch of passive nodes Dextward of the tree, and the 'bandits' quest in Act 2 gives the choice of 4 exclusive rewards, one of them being movement speed.

Once you feel like the game is indeed for you, consider spending some money on the First Blood supporter pack. (Should be at the bottom at that store page.)
Gives you a free stash tab in addition to the points.
Spend these points during the stash tab discount weekends that are every 3-5 weeks.
The Currency tab is especially useful. (Look into Affinities for item types.)
Ditto for the Maps tab... once you're actually spending a lot of time post-campaign.
Premium tabs are actually necessary to automatically advertise items on sale on the official trade website.
(In non-Solo-Self-Find Settlers of Kalguur leagues you can also directly use a currency auction house for stackable currencies.)

Biggest thing is don't give up when you hit a wall it happens all the time in arpg and especially in poe. Just take a step back try to figure out the problem and solution then be ready to reroll or respec.

Also I would start watching the hardcore streaming community on twitch they are generally very new player friendly and have great tips and tricks for new players all the time. The sc community on twitch also isn't bad but often times they have builds that are too expensive for a new player to try and copy exactly.