Struggles of a New Player in Path of Exile: Navigating Endgame Challenges and Currency Farming

As a new player in both POE and POE2, I find the endgame very challenging and quite confusing—not because the monsters are too strong or because I die a lot, but because, as a casual player, I struggle to effectively farm Rifts or Delirium. Whether I’m playing Warrior, Ranger, Sorceress, or Monk with normal builds (or ones I’ve created myself), I can barely progress. For example, I usually can’t keep Rifts open for more than 12 seconds because I lack the clear speed to kill enough enemies in time.

In Delirium or Rifts, I also often get loot that feels like Act 1 drops. This seems to happen because I’m not wearing gear with +300 rarity. However, if I do equip such gear, I die within a minute because I lack resistances. I can’t afford the really expensive gear with +450 rarity and good resistances because I don’t earn enough currency. Even when I kill bosses, they mostly drop blue and yellow items that are below my level and practically worthless.

To give you some perspective: right now, I’m running with +100 rarity and get around 2 exalted orbs every third map, which takes me 10–15 minutes. If I switch to +300 rarity gear, I get 4 exalted orbs per map, but I have to run low-tier maps to survive. These maps, however, don’t give me experience or help me progress toward T15 maps.

I’ve played for 220 hours now, and it feels like if I stick to my own builds without high rarity gear, I can’t get far in terms of currency. Unfortunately, the gear I need to improve costs 2–5 divine orbs (or more), and after all this time, I’ve managed to collect just 100 exalted orbs and 1 divine orb. While that’s decent, I expected more progress after 200 hours. Not an excessive amount, but at least enough to afford something useful without feeling forced to follow a meta build that clears the whole map with a left-click while stacking +400 rarity.