New to the game? Do this to not get broke and avoid gear wall.

If you prefer self found gameplay on purpose this thread is not for you.
If however you are not afraid of some occasional trade ( and i mean it _occasional_, not constant) this thread can save you from misery.

When you kill monsters they drop crappy rares. The more Item Rarity/Quantity on your gear the more they drop so try to have some on you, but until end game do not focus on this.

So you sell these crappy rares to a vendor and get alterations. You can buy Jeweler Orb for 2 alterations at vendor. You can buy Fusing Orb for 4 Jeweler Orb at vendor. So it's 8 alteration per fusing.

Now you have Alterations, Jewelers and Fusings. How to spend them wisely? Do not spend them on craft blindly. crafting 4L for 20 fusings is a bad decision when ppl sell them for 1 fusing. You will need to spend them on craft only when you beat merciless and start maps.

In the process of your leveling to about level 48 (middle of cruel) you can feel perfectly fine with blue items you get with transmutes and few alterations. Plus some ocasional Rare drops.
The only exception to this rule are weapons and one 4L. Do yourself a favor and buy yourself some nice unique low level weapon at level 30-35. It will cost you around 4 fusings because a lot of ppl have them and they only usefull for leveling so everybody sell them. See what uniqs there are at http://en.pathofexilewiki.com/wiki/Unique_Items Then just browse trade chat for the one you need or write there 'WTB #Uniq name# for 4 fusings'

You will need one 4L for your main attack skill and to get it buy yourself white 4L helm, gloves or boots and just transmute them. Sometimes you can see them at vendor if you check eack vendor after each levelup. But most easy way is to buy them in trade chat for 1 fusing.
Just write there 'WTB 4L low level White Gloves/Boots/Helm for 1 fusing'. Don't buy 4L armor as you will often change it to have better defence but you can easily sacrifice defence from smaller slot for a 4L till level 50. If you see you can affor it instead buy yourself a 4L Goldrim for 6-8 fusings. It's a low level unique helm that gives you +30-40 all elem resists and you will wear it till merciless easily.

In this setup you will level to level 48-50, you will save a lot of fusings, and it's now a time to do some intense shoping. Just do yourself a favor and STOP PLAYING for a day. For just one day. And spend this time to shop. You should by now know what you need. If you got some good currency drops while youre leveled you can and should buy yourself 5L chest, the chest will cost you around 40 fusings (5 gcp or 20 chaos). If not stick to 4L on your other slots until you can afford it. Buy yourself a good weapon, spend around 10 fusings on it. Buy gear that cap your resists, have some life/mana and have some rarity. As a guideline: a piece of gear with 3 good (not godly just good) stats (for example 60 life,30 to some resist,15 rarity) will cost you around 6 fusings each.
Use http://poe.xyz.is/ to find the gear you need and try to contact ppl in game. If you gear yourself at this stage meriless won't be a crazy wall and you will be able to do some maps until you will need to ever shop for something else or start actually crafting.

I hope this helps.

P.S. To successifully use poe.xyz.is follow these advices http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/386474

Up until about level 50, maybe 60, I didn't realise you could trade up alts and most of the time couldn't be bothered going to town to sell items for what I thought was pretty useless for me.

Must have lost so many fusings worth of alts.

Yeah, I learned this lesson the hard way. Badly needed an upgrade in Merciless -> found a 6S bow -> wasted all my fusings (& jews & alts) to try to 5-link it -> ended up with a 4-link bow that was practically the same (in terms of DPS) that I had before.

For that kind of currency wasted I could buy much better gear.

The lesson is: don't craft, because its mostly a waste. Trading is always a better option, which means you are practically forced to "play the trading game", which is bad (imo).

Trading game is to sit all day long in game and buy low/sell high. This is not what i advice.
What i advice is to spent specific amount of time at specific moments of leveling to buy (not buy and sell) the gear you need.
You can play for a month and spend only 2 days for trading. I don't call this trading game.
As to crafting it is not broken it is just for endgame gear. All that you need to do maps can be bought for a reasonable price. But to do them fast and easy you will need to start crafting at some point, or spend heap or exalteds to buy from ppl that crafted that for you.

Best way to avoid the gear wall in this game?

Step 1: Make your character a build that operates well regardless of your gear.

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gilrad wrote:

Best way to avoid the gear wall in this game?

Step 1: Make your character a build that operates well regardless of your gear.

I think idea wasn't about builds gear dependency. It's just an information for new players what to do with currency. Information that tells that it is better to buy middle game gear instead of crafting yourself.

I sell lots of stuff to vendor because on my lvl equipment I looted most of the times worse then I have. Ex: Armour for 59 lvl with +60 life +30 fire res +60% Armour. But back to my 59-th lvl it was a dream.

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gilrad wrote:

Best way to avoid the gear wall in this game?

Step 1: Make your character a build that operates well regardless of your gear.

You do know there's that thing called "freedom of choise" right? Most ppl use it to express themselves and get enjoyment in their lives with it.

Thank you Xavier for your helpful article!

This is good advice, nothing most players wont learn eventually but better to learn before u bust yourself poor on trying to craft than after!

Bump. Since I'm trying to sell some middle game gear it is better to me that my potential customers haven't wasted all their currency on useless craft :)