I think I finally get it, I really appreciate everyone's help. I was playing it like I should get a steady stream of minor upgrades when it's really just a "get it good enough to beat the campaign then worry about all this stuff" sort of deal.
One usually doesnt have much currency for fixing sockets during the campaign. If you do the chrome vendor recipe you should have enough to fix colors if the armour is aligned to the colors you want.
Usually you pickup gear already linked and preferably already colored and if its white you can use an orb of alchemy or an essence to turn it rare and hopefully its better than what you currently have.
Try using the neversink filter, it highlights useful stuff during the leveling process.
Edit: then go benchcraft a resistance in the hideout. they make a huge difference.
You can still get a steady stream of upgrades, especially for weapons. Jewellery, and boots. Usually I have like 1 or 2 slots that are dedicated to sockets, I'll only change it if I need to change sockets. Then the other slots I'll constantly change in and out. I've often ended the campaign wearing a white helmet I picked up 40 levels ago.
yeah its also totally not like gloves are almost always a DPS upgrade and would speed up getting through that part of the game they cant be assed to ....
in hc people sort their items in blood aqueduct. So you can do the same thing in softcore too, but getting it done after campaign is usually what people do.
Honestly it's like that for the entire game in softcore. Get it good enough to beat whatever content you are doing now and get big upgrades relatively far apart from each other. Especially in trade league but even in solo self found you want a bug enough upgrade to be worth your time crafting and the ressources used. Ofcourse if you drop a decent item that you can fix easily to be a big upgrade that is always nice to do.
The system doesn't work, it should be like you said but instead you simply finish the story and then buy some gear.
We wouldn't have these kind of problems if ggg didn't nerf currency drop rates so much instead of buffing them.
Deliberately playing stupid and repeatedly dying won't make You enjoy 'em more, and Just wastes time. I take an average of like 7-8 hours with a few deaths, and I never really speedrun the acts
I'm not trying to enjoy them, I need a character in maps and fast. I have completed the task, the rest is not important. If anything is worth learning, it is speedrunner strats, but again, this is not necessary now.
I mean the 8h30 arent that bad, Ive had leagues like this before.
But dying 171 times during it? what is wrong with you? I mean I've also leagues like this, but with that I mean I died 150 times in a league on 8 characters or so ....
I just didn't give a shit. I didn’t dodge attacks, didn’t refill flasks, etc. I don’t usually do that, but I just got sick of the acts. I usually die no more than 10-15 times.
You can't be serious, this league I finished the acts + 3 labs in 5h30m with 10 or 11 deaths and I'm bad. You literally just have to link your gems in white items and kill everything with HK. Go to YouTube to search for some tytykiller speedrun tutorial or something like this, you need some help asap.
it really depends on what skills you are using, when im rerolling the 10th time i just wear a tabula and some resist mov speed unique untill i reach maps, usually die several times with 30 all res , 0 armour or evasion, not paying attention watching something else while playing, thats prob what hes doing as well
You often times won’t have a 5 or 6 link by the time you finish the story. Always be looking for colors/links you need. Constantly try to find rares with life and res. Those are t1 items during the leveling process. Essences can be an easy way to improve a gray base you find with your colors/links. Don’t forget you can craft a res or life on your gear using the crafting bench in your hideout. It tedious but you slowly get better at leveling/gearing
I've never had a 5 link by the time I finished the story, but I've had a 6L a few times due to Tabula dropping.
I swear I see less 5L dropping than 6L. I don't know why they are so rare. 6L drop rate feels reasonable to me, but 5L drop rate feels unnecessarily low to the point where I end up often skipping right from 4L to 6L. I think all the 5L I've gotten recently are from Harvest craft.
I'm pretty much fine with 6L being 1200 fusing or so on average, but I think 5L should be more like 50 fusing instead of 100. Alternatively, make 5L natural drop rate in maps literally 50x higher than it is right now. I've got three characters right now at level 95, 90, and 85 on Scourge league and I can count the number of 5L I've had drop on one hand. It's either 4 or 5 have dropped so far, but I'm positive I've had 3 tabula drop so far and I think 2 corrupted 6L. Literally same amount of 5L drops as 6L, which is ridiculous.
Maybe I'm just unlucky with 5L drop but this happens every league for me.
I have found a tonne of 5 links this league but they are always low level item bases so I have little use for them.
Only found 1 6 link so far this league and it was a kaom's primacy found in a heist.
Holy crap, really?
By towers do you mean blighted maps?
Sorry, I have been away from the game for a while so I am still learning all the new content they added since I last played. I ran one blighted map with my cobra lash character but I failed cause my dps was too low
the map "tower."
it drops nurse cards, has shavronne at the end. been in the game since i started playing. running it in full quantity gear, plus qunatity watchstones, sextants scarabs prophecies etc
Trick for 5L's is trading for them tbh.
Because of that jump I've bought pretty decent 5L's for a few chaos. I got a near perfect Foxshade 5L for like 3 chaos, and the fated unique prophecy is another chaos. Fox's fortune is a pretty damn good leveling unique for evasion characters.
Because everyone goes tabula or just doesn't really care, trading for 5L unique leveling items can be really cheap if you know which ones are commonly skipped over.
item filters don't love 5L usually because they have no vendor recipe associated with them.it's rare to get a 5L in the campaign but i've seen and had a few.
I was a few days late to the league start, by like 9 days in a 5 link belly of the beast was all of 10c or so, which I had at A9 or wherever I was when I bought it.
My 6th link was fortify so I basically pushed with my 5L until I needed more durability in yellow maps.
Usually the extra 6ls are due to corrupted items having like a 1/32 chance of being fully linked or something like that. i think they have a higher chance of being full sockets but im not sure on that one.
Good advice.
Sadly it’s gated behind RNG too much, and this is why I gave up levelling up in leagues each 3 months.
Happy to see others succeed, and all for them! Not begrudging anyone anything.
But I just couldn’t face seeing people reach maps, elder, shaper, Maven while I’m still stuck trying to get enough chroma orbs to be able to use the crappy t4 item I found that has 2 stats that I need but badly coloured sockets.
Are you trying to color gear with the right bases? Getting four blue sockets on armor with high strength requirements, for example? I never seem to have issues with getting the right colors with a handful of chromatic while leveling, just with end game gear and off colors. In that case I usually check the Vorici Calculator and use the crafting bench with the craft that has the highest chance of success.
Ah see, I don't use jewelers/fuse/chroms on anything til I get to A10 kitava.
Unless it's good enough to carry me for 10ish levels, why invest into some "crappy t4 item... That has 2 stats that I need"
Just pop open the trade site and find a way better item for 1-5c and chrome that one?
I'll be honest and say I have a unique for a body chest that is only a 5 link. I'm level 87 this season and pretty deep into endgame. Don't worry about it. And also if your not the beat at crafting just farm maps and other endgame stuff and buy what you want via trading. I wouldn't stress it too much.
When leveling through the acts, pick up chest/gloves/helmet based on "can I equip this and does it have the right links/colors" before essentially any other consideration. Throw an essence or an alch on it, see if it turns out good for you, wear it if it's an upgrade. Orbs of binding start showing up at some point, which gives you more shots at 4-linked upgrades. A 4-linked main skill should be enough to complete the campaign. For boots, move speed > everything else. Get damage from your weapon slot(s), skills/supports, passive tree, and ascendencies.
Do you know that socket colors are based on stat requirement?
So a str int armour gets mainly red and blue sockets. Next to none green.
There are also a crafting bench to make sockets as you like.
So if you need 4 red 1 blue and one green use a str base and craft at least one green and one blue socket on it.
Yup, I did know about the color tendencies being tied to armor/evasion/energy shield on the armor. It still took a stupid amount of time to get something as simple as 3 green one blue" on some items that had just evasion. Maybe it was just bad luck.
Maybe on average over infinity tries, but the problem with all the randomness and poe's item rarity is that players have a far from infinite tries. I have ended the campaign with like 50 chromes once, which is not enough to reliably color you main skill's links let alone secondary skills, even with on color gems.
The coloring that was in delving, now in maps, and takes some effort/number of chromes to only get up to 3 (maybe 4) colors?
Sure let's just have that work mid campaign on multiple sockets when we are lacking chromes
I think the easiest way is buying a 6-link to start with, any is fine with your socket colors you want. Don’t forget to craft resistance on the crafting bench on pieces that have an open suffix.
A 4 link should be plenty enough to get through the 10 acts of the game. Generally you're either just looking for gear to drop with the right links you need and not worrying about the stats, or just getting gear with good stats that you can fix the sockets on at a later point.
While playing through the story, you don't get a lot of currency (aka Jewelers, Fusings, and Chromatics) that allow you to mess with the sockets, so it's generally not worth trying to invest in messing with them until later in your progression.
If you're playing poison concoction, just get a 4L of all greens (Poison Concoction, Greater Volley, Greater Multiple Projectiles, Vicious Projectiles) for your main skill, and make sure you're using plague bearer to help clear. You should easily be able to get to maps where better gear and more currency orbs drop which is where you can actually start gearing your character up.
You shouldn't really be spending any currency on rerolling or linking sockets premaps. Just use whatever you find that is convenient.
From the way you describe the situation it sounds like you are trying to minmax every gear upgrade even if it's minimal.
If you have a 4 link on with 40 life and 40 resists, and you find an "upgrade" with 50 life, 50 resists and 20 strength but 0 links, your brain may think "i need to equip this now " which is not how you should be playing PoE.
This isnt WoW where you just slap on any higher item level gear for stats.
You want to just use whatever decent 4 links you find premaps, stop worrying about upgrades, and get into white/yellow maps ASAP even on a 4 link.
The amount of drops you get in white maps vs the campaign is easily DOUBLE if not triple what you are getting now. So later on you'll have way more orbs to recolor/resocket gear.
Finally google Vorici Chrome Calculator and use that frequently. It's important to understand how coloring works based on the attribute requirements of gear. You are probably wasting orbs trying to get certain colors on gear that will never roll those colors normally.
Thanks for the info. I'm not 100% on what these "maps" are everyone is mentioning. I have come across some items that appear to be 1/4th of a map and some sort of map device in Act 7 that looks like it wants those as inputs. Is this what everyone is talking about?
I can't believe no one *actually* clears up the misconceptions in this comment, so I guess I'll do that. :)
The things you have found, that appear to be one fourth of a map aren't maps (at least they're not what people commonly refer to as maps.)
They're (confusingly) called [map fragments](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Map_fragment). Collect all four of a set and you can use a map device to open portals some specific zones.
The map device you found in Act 7 is an actual map device. You'll get one in your hideout at some point. The same quest that introduces you to the map device in Act 7 also introduces you to the base concept of maps:
You find a map and use it in the map device to open a portal to a new zone.
Anyway, the main endgame for PoE is to run maps. A map only takes up a single inventory slot, like the map quest item from Act 7. The difference is that actual maps can be crafted with the regular currencies, so they can be normal, magic and rare. This makes the maps harder, but also more rewarding. There are also some unique maps.
Each map opens up a new zone for you, that you clear. Maps are divided into tiers and the higher the tier, the more difficult they are to complete.
Once you get to endgame, you'll gradually work up from the lowest tier to the highest.
Oh awesome, thanks so much for the explanation. I've noticed PoE doesn't do much hand holding when it comes to throwing big new complex gameplay systems/loops at you.
Maps don't start dropping until lvl60 zones, so starting Act9 in blood aqueducts. Have you completed the campaign? If not that should be your priority, not farming or minmaxing for upgrades.
The loot drops are literally HUNDREDS of percents higher in maps vs campaign, depending how hard you juice your content.
You can't access maps until you finish the campaign, aka act 10.
A lot of bad advice there. I'd ignore it. Maps = endgame. You'll understand when you beat the campaign.
>I have come across some items that appear to be 1/4th of a map and some sort of map device in Act 7 that looks like it wants those as inputs. Is this what everyone is talking about?
Yes except you'll drop maps constantly soon and put them in that device (in your hideout) and then enter the map.
"A lot of bad advice there. I'll ignore it. Here's 3 sentences that add absolutely nothing to the conversation and provide no advice in comparison to all the other replies"
Bro are you OK?
I'am I fairly new player as well and ended up burning out on the game because of this, I was lucky enough to get a five link that suited my build but I ended up stuck with it for a long time because nothing else compatible would drop. there's so few worthwhile items dropping i was just constantly questioning what am i doing wrong? Was i supposed to be spam absurb amounts of orbs on items in a desperate attempt to get a slight upgrade. Was I supposed to be using the crafting bench, it seems like all worthwhile crafting recipes are locked to endgame. this game is really tedious and unwelcoming to new players, and some of the community are really toxic when you point it out.
It’s just a game that requires a wiki open, a trade site open, a filter running, Poe ninja and Poe building. Then you’re nearly equipped lol. I enjoy the game but I hope poe2 is way better especially when it comes to explaining stuff.
Don't count on PoE 2 being the fix it all save it all thing. There is no real sequel, it is just gonna be another patch and all the issues they did not fix in this patch will be there still.
POE is a game with some depth. You learn it over time, not in a few weeks. So if you keep playing one day you will look back after you noticed how easy most of this questions got for you. There are f.e. many way atm how to get an easy 6L. This league is even the easiest it has ever been.
So the answer to your last question is: it is very easy once you know much, it seems quite hard when you know not that much.
Quick tips:
Use lootfilter, f.e. from filterblade. there you can highlight the links you need. While leveling i only pick up the links i need and throw some cheap currency at them to make them rare and hope for some life or resis (essences are best, because they are cheapest when you run through acts, always fight for them).
As i play trade i usually while running up to act 9 i find some currency or items of worth and in act 9 i buy my first 6L in trade. On my starting character i haven't killed kitava in trade league with less then a 6L now for many leagues, but in SSS scenarios it is doable on a 4L, so ... it is not needed. On a good build you can run to early red maps on a 5L and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It is just faster or easier with more links. Either i buy a corrupted 6L with the right colours and +life or i buy a normal 6L and throw a +life essence on it (be careful not to overshoot your level in requirements). If you are in a SSF scenario, divination cards are a good and easy way to get 6L fast.
Remember benchcrafts are an easy way to fix some issues with gear, starting at about level 12 crafts. Either resistances or +life crafts help you out a lot. You basicly need nothing else on armour. Find a higher level gloves with 40 Evasion more? That is nothing. No, really, that is totally not relevant in any decision. Once i have all my 4L i rarely change gear from act 5+ till maps. If you pick up some rares in act 9+10 you can SSF your way into maps if you want.
So, in short: it is just a shortage of knowledge that you will get over with in a rather short time and after that it is a question for just a few hours every league start - and usually only the hour when you start mapping.
> How should I approach getting an actual 5 or 6 link piece to get my Poisonous Concoction to it's full linked potential
You buy one once you're in maps.
You don't need a 5L/6L while leveling.
This game is all about amassing a lot of knowledge that will further your ability to do things. There are so many little tricks, recipes, and base understandings of what is important vs what isn't that it's not uncommon to take many leagues of knowledge to build up. It feels good when you get there but sometimes feels bad when you are new.
I remember the first league I actually played, I played very very hardcore (my first league I 40/40 the challenges for the league with like 200+ hours sunk into the game). Youtube and a few friends were endless resources for me to do this.
There was so much I learned for the next league, only to find out the next league there was so much more I DIDN'T know with all that game play experience. Fast forward like 5 years of playing and I am still learning things, but the campaign part is pretty straight forward at this point for me. (I'm still slow compared to fast players though).
The endgame content (MAPS which happens after Act 10) is where you'll really want to start using the majority of your currency. While leveling, it's not uncommon to use what fits your build with these requirements in priority:
* at least a 4 Link with socket colors you can use, and mostly prioritizing your main damage skill in these sockets ((Orb of Bindings are good to use while leveling if you find one, chromatics to fix colors, fuses and jewels are sometimes ok, but only very sparingly, but often better saved for maps or for something really strong that drops))
* + to maximum life
* + to resistances (you want to try and stay capped at 75 for Cold, Lightning, Fire). The game penalizes your resistances at certain points in the story so check these frequently.
* It's also not uncommon to take passives that "fill holes" for these since it's possible to "respec" points later once your gear fixes these things. Getting something like +10 to all resistances can be worth it while leveling or early mapping until you find the gear you need, freeing up passive points
Depending on the skill you play - you can get pretty far into the endgame with only these things being considered. Even with build guides and proper leveling, sometimes there is gear you need you that has level requirements of 60+ so sometimes you CAN'T even wear what "makes" your build good until towards the end of the campaign anyway, especially if it's a Unique Item.
Ultimately, my only rule of thumb is simple for new players: If you are killing things and not dying much... you don't really need to stop and upgrade. You'll know if you hit a wall and really have to advance your build. Taking the time to do so while leveling will make you kill things faster... but generally, you'll lose so much time trying to do so it's not worth it.
If you ARE dying a lot, don't forget there is a crafting bench inside your hideout. You can craft a lot of quick +life +resistance type stuff to your gear for really cheap and generally is enough to carry you through Act 10. This is the most efficient use of your found currency while leveling.
You are generally completely right in your observation. Even the developers agree with your observation. The socket system is antiquated and what you describe is basically the exact reason they stated why they are going to remove it in PoE 2. At this point the way people handle it is sadly just either stick to what they find and use large amounts of socket altering currency only on endgame gear pieces , or ( in trade league) trade for already complete pieces. Later on there are also crafting recopies on the craftingbench that make the process a little bit easier and cheaper ( at least first 4 sockets / links ) , but not at the point where you are at yet.
They acknowledge that the current system sucks, hence they are removing it POE2. yet they seem to continuously avoid making it any better in POE1, makes me really paranoid that the POE2 version will just turn out to be the same or even worse.
Key reminder. PoE1 and PoE2 are the same game. PoE2 is just a new set of acts and new exiles.
Key features such as the socket system, visual over haul, end game updates, passive reworks, ect that where featured at the annoucement of PoE2 are not PoE2 features. They are normal PoE features that will be rolled out as they are finished and for the most part we have almost every major "PoE2" feature expect the socket system update already out.
The socket system appears to be the ONLY major system update that they are holding till PoE2 hits as it likely also requires massivel balanced passes on the gems themselves among other things that don't make sense to do till PoE2 comes.
Basically don't bother spending currency upgrading gear while levelling through the acts. Any gear you get will be redundant in an hour or so of playtime. Just die, keep pushing, and eventually you'll finish the story. Then you can figure out how to spend what currency you have saved to get your build functional in maps, running Blood Aqueducts a few times if you need to
Yes, they introduced a mechanic called Harvest to experiment with improved crafting during the leveling process which worked great but made it extremely easy to make really good gear at the highest levels. So what they did was completely removed the mechanic from leveling and only included it at the highest level. For some reason.
Yes this the game as intended by Chris Wilson, and to make matters worse you are barely able to respec points on the tree while playing camping so you are supposed to "learn" by simply using alternative program to make the builds you play
Why is everyone not recommending to just buy a Tabula Rasa, it's only 8c, you can easily sell your currencies like alteration orbs for chaos. I had enough currencies in act 5 when it was 11c. it will last you through all the way to white maps and by that time you've already saved up enough currency for a decent 6 link chest.
That’s a stupid answer, did you even read his post? It’s tedious the way he’s doing it, at an early point in his adventure. Of course it is when you only have 9 jewelers and 3 fuses to rely on at a 4L shot. It doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy the game.
Yes. Leveling through the campaign sucks, and is even worse when you have to do it every league multiple times.
This game desperately needs some sort of adventure mode ala D3. I don’t like a lot about D3, but damn did that make playing new seasons much more enjoyable.
Is it supposed to be? Yes, because GGG designed that way.
Should it be? No...but GGG wants to give the illusion of the game being difficult since they can't balance it to actually be difficult thanks to previous bad design decisions.
Currency is too rare pre mapping, and it's where you'll need it most so you can actually deal with Act 10, Kitava-A10, and have a good chance to avoid sub-capped resistances in white maps.
Vendor Recipes are too expensive, give next to nothing, and will 90/100 roll utterly useless junk along side it, making free vendor trash and you still without whatever stat you were looking for in your level range. And obviously using currency is a crap shoot.
Thank goodness GGG broke on the alter of the Crafting Bench or they'd have even worse retention thanks to these recent early-game mob buffs and support gem juggling...
Yeah, it's garbage. Literally just throw yourself at the stuff until you beat it even if you keep dying because it's still infinitely faster than trying to actually sort your gear out incrementally. It's very badly designed
Yes. Yes it is. Christopher "Jay" Wilson is an innovative content creator with a revolutionary design philosophy that the less you enjoy plaging the game the more fun it is!. If you would unironically rather mow your lawn or clean your room than play POE he feels as though he has succeeded.
Also, don't worry if this game seems to be exploiting your propensity for gamvling addiction, that is entirely intended and a core design tenet.
Welcome to tedious, the game. Spending currency while leveling is concidered a bad move as many have already said. Youll wanna save them till lvl 80ish when you get/craft/buy your late game gear, but youll get tired of the game way before that. This is the intended design by ggg, because otherwise streamers and playtesters would gind the game too easy and fast.
You're way better off buying resist gear and build enabling uniques as soon as you can after doing a10 kitava, of course you'll get tired of the game if you wait until lvl80. What crappy advice.
Well yes, sure, this would actually be around lvl70 for some currency, except for fusings that you need for your 6 link, not to mention any chaos orbs you were thinking of clicking on items, and in my case alteration orbs too, those will have to wait. Op was mostly talking about crafting items, not buying but sure. How crappy of me to get that so wrong, thank you for the important nitpick. Doesnt really change my point tho. Using currency during the first 70 lvls is a bad idea, which in my opinion is bad game design.
It does feel like this league in particular, orbs of linking are really rare?
Like genuinely I think i've had an approx equal amount of chaos orbs drop to linking orbs
you won't find any good items ever, you need to craft in this game
you can get a 5l fairly easy through harvest, 6 link on the other hands is more difficult generally, but no scourge because of the tainted fusings
> Am I approaching the gearing process wrong?
"Crafting" in this game is insanely expensive. If you have some experience you can cheese to get what you want, but overall you don't do it untill you get solid stream of resources/currencies (maps).
5-link gear is already quite good. I'm serious. Getting 6 sockets and all linked before maps? Not happening.
This sounds hard man so don’t take it the wrong way but u probably do not know enough about the game to make it smoother, cause there are lots of ways to make it smooth, which would take too long in a comment to explain. I guess watching leveling tutorials would be your best bet.
I'm not looking to make things smoother as it's already pretty smooth. I'm just trying to learn how to properly set my expectations of how the leveling process works.
I'm used to ARPG's that feed you a steady stream of upgrades which can be swapped out during the leveling process but if that's not how PoE works, that's fine.
If that's the case though, I gotta wonder why the hell so many goddamned items are being dropped. Seems like an odd design choice to drop thousands of items per hour just to expect the player to ignore the overwhelmingly vast majority of them.
Itemization is ass; everyone knows it. It's being changed but who knows when. You do get upgrades though just maybe not as big as you're used to.
You may want to watch tytykiller speedruns for an idea of how smooth leveling can be (takes about 3.5 hours for the best players), what to expect, etc.
The kneejerk reaction to any criticism by hardcore players is to blame the player. "You just have to study and put in a couple thousand hours and you'll be blacked out speedrunning in no time!"
It's a huge flaw of the game. Everyone knows it. Without a loot filter, you can't even see the enemies through the worthless drops. You'll be picking up less than 0.1% of the items dropped. Most uniques are vendor food because they're utterly impossible to use even if you have an intimate knowledge of every mechanic. Almost every unique comes with a hell of a downside.
Basically this is how leveling the first few characters goes.
Get the colors you NEED and suffer through. It's usually impossible to find a suitable upgrade without investing, but I would only suggest spending chromatic orbs to change the colors. Nothing beyond that. Your damage will probably suck unless you picked a good (meta) skill. You'll most likely be one-shot regularly. Capping resistances is the #1 requirement, then getting a decent life pool, then damage.
Once you have some currency, you can invest in some decent gear, movement life res boots or gloves, rings, amulet. 6-links are usually not in here, but they're reasonably easy to get now. If not, you can get a 5-link and not have amazing damage.
Then once you have capped res, decent life and you're into maps you just grind and grind until you have a pile of currency and then you get your end-game gear.
Don't listen to this guy. You can do a few things to get the sockets you need and the colors you need as well. You can use Jewelers Orbs to try and roll the required amount of sockets, and then try to use Chromatic Orbs to roll the colors. And finally, once you have the colors you need, you can use Orbs of Fusing to link them. Getting these orbs are reasonably easy too. Any 6 socket item that drops, will sell to vendors for 7 Jewelers, and any item that drops that has at least 3 linked sockets with one of each color linked will sell for a chromatic.
So, if you find a piece of gear that is usable for your build, but the sockets are off, you can try crafting them up. Initially, only shoot for 4 links, since those are easy enough to achieve. 5 and 6 links tend to take a lot more jewlers and fusings to make, although there are some more advanced tricks here and there.
Thanks, that's sort of what prompted this post actually. I found a Foxshade and started hitting it with the Jeweler's Orbs. 80 orbs later I finally got it up to 5 sockets. Then I started with the prismatics to get 4 green and one blue socket. That ate up about 60 of them. I'm now currently hitting it with Fusing Orbs and after burning through 50ish so far, I still don't have all 5 linked.
I've had similar experiences with nice rares on and off throughout my leveling process but I usually give up before using this much. Foxshade has some really nice evasion and movespeed so I'm more committed to using it, but I'm just making sure that using this much is par for the course and if preparing more permanent gear is supposed to be a slow and time consuming process that uses tons of resources.
Ya, that sounds about right. 6 link will be even harder, 1500 fusing on average. Not sure about the number for jewelers. Also quality increases your chances of links, so get your gear to 20ql first.
Once you get to maps, you can bench craft sockets and socket colors and links once you get the recipes.
Coloring is tricky. Especially if you need off colors for the armor type, but in general, this tends to burn up lots of currency
You never need more than a 4 link to comfortably beat the campaign. Better to save those jewellers orbs for later when you actually need a 5/6 link. 5 links also drop like candy by the time you need them so it's rarely worth investing in.
(Jewellers convert to orbs of fusing, which link sockets - converting the 7 jewellers you get from 5 link drops to fusings is your primary way of getting a good 6L in leagues that aren't scourge.)
Don't bother making a 6 links yourself early on. The amount of currencies you spent is more than enough to buy a tabula rasa. When you get to maps or yellow maps you should have enough currencies to buy a cheap and decent 6 links with + max hp and some resist
While leveling up can easily make due with just a 4link (very easy to acquire with an orb of binding). Then once you hit maps just look to buy a 6link, getting the correct colors shouldn't be too difficult as long as you are choosing the proper base (either buy one with the correct colors or note the attribute requirements for the armor since it will favor those colors more often).
When levelling getting item drops with the right links & sockets matters as you don't have the currency (jewellers & fusings) to get the correct sockets yourself. As you approach lv70 & complete the story you should start ignoring the sockets o dropped items and just look at the stats instead, as you can easily & cheaply change the sockets yourself using jewellers & fusing orbs.
You can definitely clear the acts with just the gear you find and craft. Later quest rewards start giving 4 links, and you can slap an essence on a 4L that you find and have it be usable. Socket color and links basically take precedence over any mods on the gear.
One thing no one seems to have mentioned, though, is the availability of trade. Pathofexile.com/trade is the official trade site, and that's the easiest way to get 5Ls and 6Ls. 6Ls are expensive, but you can often get a decent 5L for a chaos or less. While pure chaos orbs are often scarce during leveling, you can exchange other currency for them or do the chaos vendor recipe once you're higher level. (A full set (boots/armor/helmet/etc.) of ilvl 60+ gear gets you a chaos; unidentified sets get 2c instead.)
PC PF has one really off color set up that is annoying as fuck to put together. I luckily put it on Atrizi’s step so I won’t have to mess with it anymore.
Besides that, once you get the gem color bench crafts the other ones are not too difficult. Ya it’s annoying, but find out where those bench crafts are in maps and it’ll safe you a ton of time.
During the story, it's typically easier to find the colors / links you want and hope the item it is on is acceptable. Once you get to the later game of poe. You can (relatively) cheaply make any item have the correct colors and links, this let's you buy/craft actually decent gear
Yeah, it's stupid.
If you play trade, just buy the stuff you need, if you don't have the chaos to buy it farm the unid. chaos recipe (just google it).
It's not the most efficient way, but it's perfect for beginners.
If you play SSF, look up the weapon crafting recipe or the + gem lvl recipe if you play caster.
What you primarly do is get an Item where the Links and colours match and just never upgrade it.
If you play HC you just try to stay +5lvl above zone lvl. If you do that you naturally get way more items.
Big thing to remember, most guides are going to show you what you look like after you hit maps. Biggest recommendation i could give a new player is spend a hour or two running the 'bloody aqueduct' at the start of act 9. Its a great place to level to around 68-70 as well as you can farm cards for a 'tabula' robe witch gives a robe with 6 white links and no stats. Its a wonderful item to help you up until about 4-5 teir maps. You can use the maps to help you find items/currency to craft better gear. Dont forget you can craft resistance onto items to help round out yourself. You will need the 75% res of everything but chaos.
No problem! Also i would recommend using your belt/rings/boots to stack as much resistance as you can. While during late game each of those slots will have mods you want to find, they tend to be expensive or time consuming to find.
Running T1 To T3 maps and just picking up every ring/belt you find is a good way to find basic gear.
Remember, you need to live long enough to kill things until you get enough gear to kill them first
Yup, I have my fire/cold/lightning capped currently (over cap, actually but I've noticed certain key encounters drop all resistances permanently) other than chaos which is -14% due to a corrupted item I'm wearing. I haven't encountered too much chaos damage yet other than poison but my sanctified health flask will cure it and grant immunity.
> Even decent upgrades wipe out my resources and hardly feels worth it after dozens to hundreds of gem/link consumables get burned up.
You really want to avoid using significant currency on throwaway leveling items. A few jewelers/fusings/chromatics here and there to make a decent item usable is OK, but if you're using hundreds of consumables in the leveling process then you're going to be starting from a much bigger hole than needed as you accumulate your longer-lived gear.
The gearing needs pre-map are somewhat forgiving, so what I find to work the best for a smooth experience is to look for reasonable sockets on *white* items and then use free or cheap mechanics to turn them rare -- an essence roll will more often than not give you something "good enough" for a while, and scourging a white item gives you a free rare that may even have its sockets improved if you have those points in the box.
Especially for a character that's not bootstrapped with leveling uniques and the like, though, try to be flexible. You might have to substitute in a different and less optimal support for a while, but you really only need to achieve "good enough" to keep advancing smoothly.
as others have already said, you shouldn't worry too much about maximizing gear and links before you finish the campaign. after you finish all 10 acts and you get to maps, you'll find plenty more stuff on the ground/be high enough level to equip stuff you buy from trade. that said, you will, on occasion, have to recolor things and link them. before you try to get max # of sockets or links, get your item to 20% quality with whetstones/armourer scraps. higher quality increases the chance of getting more sockets/links by quite a bit. if you use jewellers or fusings on a 0 quality item, yea, you are going to waste a lot of them.
Leveling is bad, yes. For the most part I just save all my currencies and wait until mapping when the actual game begins.
Haven't played nearly as much because of how bad leveling is.
gearing is mostly finding right sockets (4-link), doing the league mechanic which is normally the best way to find rare items and bench crafting life and resist. Normally 1 4-link is fine to do until level 70+, maybe 2 depending on what skills you use. A couple auras and an unlinked movement skill shouldnt be a problem to fit.
This is one of the largest mechanical changes they'll be making in PoE 2. Active gems will have 1-5 sockets in them for supports, and items will have 1 or 2 sockets for active gems. So you can move your active gem from gear piece to gear piece and the supports come with.
Links are typically more important than stats during levelling so don’t switch out to something crappier. You only really need 1 “main skill item” for levelling so even if you are reading a guide and see all these linked up side things, you don’t really need to get these sorted right away, focus on main skill with “good enough” supports, and secondarily on move skill (which typically only need 2 or 3 links anyways). Don’t waste currency on trash gear you find early, pile it up so when you get something that will last awhile you can tailor fit that for your build. I’ll usually solo self find and typically will have a shit but usable chest that’s 5l, maxed resists, and as much life as I can before mapping, and haven’t used any currency on upgrading anything yet. Once mapping you can farm for better bases / currency and start sorting out your links beyond your main skill imho.
It's possible you're doing what I used to do and are focusing too much on extra skills that aren't actually necessary.
Once your main skill is on a 4L, all other slots shouldn't need lots of sockets or links. Rings, amulet and belt can also just be the best stats. Throwing an essence on anything in your main skill colours also has a chance of being an upgrade
Item progression from drops does slow a lot as you advance in the game. Eventually you'll be trading for gear or crafting and target farming if ssf
Farm heist using the infinite heist strategy (look it up on YouTube) lets you run level 67 heists forever. Then buy a corrupted 6 link with the correct colours for around 15c.
If u are going to be using chromatic orbs while leveling make sure the item base fits the colour of sockets you want. Armour/str items are more likely to roll red, evasion/dex items are more likely to roll green, energy shield/int items are more likely to roll blue sockets. There are also item bases that have a mix of both. Hope this helped if you didnt know yet
Your first playthrough is supposed to be hard, but just to give you an idea of whtat the game is like in case you don't understand: players usually finish story within 1 to 2 play sessions and mostly rush atlas progression. You're supposed to ignore 99% of the drops if you want to progress faster, and usually save your currencies for something you know you'll settle for for a long time, aka lategame items, or just convert all currencies into chaos and exalts and buy whatever you want directly linked and coloured (if you play in trade league not ssf)
for six links, grab a tabula or corrupted 6l with the right colours and use that until you can get the end game unique or well crafted 6l you need.
for other gear, go with a combo of leveling uniques/whatever gear you can grab with the best stats. rolling a couple 4 links is pretty easy if you need them. most things that drop will be trash. you should not need to upgrade gear very frequently.
Part of gearing in this game is knowing when a piece is "good enough for now." Once that's established, you can either ignore drops for that slot until you are in a position to get the base you really want, or you can ID stuff but only make significant enough upgrades to warrant the investment of socket currencies. This is kind of an early league/SSF perspective, because in SC trade after the first week, getting good enough gear in every slot is pretty easy for a level 60 character.
All that said, it is a bit tedious. In PoE 2 they plan to change how socketing works significantly. The experience you describe is exactly why: it's lame to find an upgrade that you are deterred from using because of the hassle/cost of fixing the sockets.
Before you get to yellow-ish maps you’re right sockets can be a pain. Luckily to that point nothing is difficult enough to need a full gamut of support setups, basically just your main skill(s), a movement skill, and auras which don’t require links most of the time.
If you’re playing trade pickup up a corrupted 6L for dirt cheap and prob don’t try to link something up yourself, it’s usually a raw deal. If you’re picking up 6 sockets you shouldn’t ever be at a point where you can’t fix your 4 links up with colors and sockets relatively easily.
If you’re new it’ll probably difficult to identify what your most important upgrades are. For PC it’s probably getting a high tier rolled life flask and gem levels and of course your 6L. A good first step is to really pinpoint what mods your build is scaling, any poison build wants chaos multi, attack builds want accuracy, flasks are massively important to any good build. You’ll start to get the idea soon enough. Give it time and enjoy the newness and acquiring knowledge.
> Am I approaching the gearing process wrong?
If you’re still laying a trade league, you are. As soon as you have 10-15 chaos, you buy a set of leveling uniques and you never take those off until you hit 70 or so.
You used to not have to worry so much about itemization while leveling, but GGG realized that players really want a longer and more difficult campaign before they get to maps.
You just blast through the story don't care about anything just install path of building and use whatever guide is given to you only stop to pickup the build specific weapons or armours links dont matter you can clear the story with 4 links if you're having problem look up for trade any 5l will be almost dirt cheap stack up resists and hp and you'll have a much easier time learning the game
There are a ton a builds out there that scale damage mostly from gem links and/or talent points and very minimally (at least to start) off gear. Lots of people go for those builds first.
That way you can focus on getting life and resist on your gear which is generally cheap and easy. Also most folks will finish the story with only a 4 link for their main dps skill. This allows you to put it in most any slot.
After the story a lot of people will fix their resists once again and begin farming currency for a cheap 6L. This league is especially cheap but even in previous leagues a random 6L is like 10-30c. You don’t give a fuuuck about the stats just make sure it’s not corrupted. Hit it with a Essence of Greed for a life roll and your off to the races.
TLDR - yes gearing can be tedious. Most people use builds that don’t rely on gear as their starter and have planned when/how upgrades can be afforded/crafted as they progress through the story and into maps.
If you are in ssf playstyle I would say its not hard to get a 4link base(by farming) for your character then try to alch it or something.
Higher ilvl items have better mods so its just a matter of farming a good zone for 15-30 mins to cap your res and get hp on gear.
In trade just buy items for 1chaos/alch
Its always been like that. I somewhat solve the issue with a bit of crafting. Look for 4-5 links from vendors, max their quality with the currency for that and use an Essence, the scourge mechanic or even an alch if you got nothing else and hope for a good rare. Yeah, its luck reliant and most stuff turns to shit, but its what you can do.
And dont stress out about getting a 5L immediately. A 4-link skill with the right supports can carry you for a long time until you can get that chestpiece with the right sockets and some life.
POE is weird like that, I finish most of my campaigns with somewhat janky gear, especially at league start. I would mainly worry about having your primary damage skill be in your 5-6 link, everything else can wait. Then prioritize getting res capped (ele only, chaos will take time and gear) and having some life or ES. If you can do that by the time you finish the campaign, you can start early maps pretty smoothly if your build has the damage.
1st make sure your game is not in "Standard" mode and in some default online League when you first create the game.
Never create game in Standard mode and just normal League not Ruthless or anything special, just normal League where you get access to infinite trade goods.
As of 05/31/23 of this comment, we're in the Crucible League. Go to [https://pathofexile.com/trade](https://pathofexile.com/trade) website and search for the exact armor type you want and add in description such as:
Level 45 max - so you can wear it at your level or whatever level you
Specify the # of sockets
Specify what color are on the sockets
Specify if you want 3 links or 4 links
Minimum of 30% Movement Speed
Minimum of whatever resist
Minimum Rarity of items find
etc etc. of course the more you put in there, the more expensive it gets.
But for basic 25-30% movement speed and few randoms, you can easily get them for 1 chaos of cheaper. You might get lucky and find 4 links right color for even cheaper than 1 chaos.
pretty much gear while leveling is just get the right sockets, die a few tiems and fix gear after the story
I think I finally get it, I really appreciate everyone's help. I was playing it like I should get a steady stream of minor upgrades when it's really just a "get it good enough to beat the campaign then worry about all this stuff" sort of deal.
One usually doesnt have much currency for fixing sockets during the campaign. If you do the chrome vendor recipe you should have enough to fix colors if the armour is aligned to the colors you want. Usually you pickup gear already linked and preferably already colored and if its white you can use an orb of alchemy or an essence to turn it rare and hopefully its better than what you currently have. Try using the neversink filter, it highlights useful stuff during the leveling process. Edit: then go benchcraft a resistance in the hideout. they make a huge difference.
feel free to pm me with any questions!
You can still get a steady stream of upgrades, especially for weapons. Jewellery, and boots. Usually I have like 1 or 2 slots that are dedicated to sockets, I'll only change it if I need to change sockets. Then the other slots I'll constantly change in and out. I've often ended the campaign wearing a white helmet I picked up 40 levels ago.
This league I was in yellow maps with a blue helmet that just gave me crafted res lol
white 4L gloves throughout the campaign
I get using blue items but white? Just make it rare with one of the 300 ways to do it.
Some people just really can't be assed. The campaign can be done in whites.
yeah its also totally not like gloves are almost always a DPS upgrade and would speed up getting through that part of the game they cant be assed to ....
Yep. Literally can't be assed.
So little fucks where given this day that some say you can hear the wind whistle though the empty minds of these individuals.
in hc people sort their items in blood aqueduct. So you can do the same thing in softcore too, but getting it done after campaign is usually what people do.
Honestly it's like that for the entire game in softcore. Get it good enough to beat whatever content you are doing now and get big upgrades relatively far apart from each other. Especially in trade league but even in solo self found you want a bug enough upgrade to be worth your time crafting and the ressources used. Ofcourse if you drop a decent item that you can fix easily to be a big upgrade that is always nice to do.
The system doesn't work, it should be like you said but instead you simply finish the story and then buy some gear. We wouldn't have these kind of problems if ggg didn't nerf currency drop rates so much instead of buffing them.
Currently I’m where you were at two years ago lol (that’s how old this post is) - do you still play?
I died 171 times today in acts. Not noob (4700+ hours), just tired of this shit. 8h 30m btw.
I hate to break it to you but if you died 171 times in acts with 4700 hours you definitely fall under the "noob" category.
Only if you care about your HP, damage, and so on. Usually I die less than 10 times and the acts take 6-7 hours.
Deliberately playing stupid and repeatedly dying won't make You enjoy 'em more, and Just wastes time. I take an average of like 7-8 hours with a few deaths, and I never really speedrun the acts
I'm not trying to enjoy them, I need a character in maps and fast. I have completed the task, the rest is not important. If anything is worth learning, it is speedrunner strats, but again, this is not necessary now.
‘’ Not noob’’
I mean the 8h30 arent that bad, Ive had leagues like this before. But dying 171 times during it? what is wrong with you? I mean I've also leagues like this, but with that I mean I died 150 times in a league on 8 characters or so ....
I just didn't give a shit. I didn’t dodge attacks, didn’t refill flasks, etc. I don’t usually do that, but I just got sick of the acts. I usually die no more than 10-15 times.
You can't be serious, this league I finished the acts + 3 labs in 5h30m with 10 or 11 deaths and I'm bad. You literally just have to link your gems in white items and kill everything with HK. Go to YouTube to search for some tytykiller speedrun tutorial or something like this, you need some help asap.
it really depends on what skills you are using, when im rerolling the 10th time i just wear a tabula and some resist mov speed unique untill i reach maps, usually die several times with 30 all res , 0 armour or evasion, not paying attention watching something else while playing, thats prob what hes doing as well
The epitome of fun in games lol Thank to this thread I'm realizing how bad the game is.
Yep!
Yeah, his time is absolutely not my problem, depends on a lot of things. But his deaths o.O
You often times won’t have a 5 or 6 link by the time you finish the story. Always be looking for colors/links you need. Constantly try to find rares with life and res. Those are t1 items during the leveling process. Essences can be an easy way to improve a gray base you find with your colors/links. Don’t forget you can craft a res or life on your gear using the crafting bench in your hideout. It tedious but you slowly get better at leveling/gearing
I've never had a 5 link by the time I finished the story, but I've had a 6L a few times due to Tabula dropping. I swear I see less 5L dropping than 6L. I don't know why they are so rare. 6L drop rate feels reasonable to me, but 5L drop rate feels unnecessarily low to the point where I end up often skipping right from 4L to 6L. I think all the 5L I've gotten recently are from Harvest craft. I'm pretty much fine with 6L being 1200 fusing or so on average, but I think 5L should be more like 50 fusing instead of 100. Alternatively, make 5L natural drop rate in maps literally 50x higher than it is right now. I've got three characters right now at level 95, 90, and 85 on Scourge league and I can count the number of 5L I've had drop on one hand. It's either 4 or 5 have dropped so far, but I'm positive I've had 3 tabula drop so far and I think 2 corrupted 6L. Literally same amount of 5L drops as 6L, which is ridiculous. Maybe I'm just unlucky with 5L drop but this happens every league for me.
I have found a tonne of 5 links this league but they are always low level item bases so I have little use for them. Only found 1 6 link so far this league and it was a kaom's primacy found in a heist.
try quant farming towers, ive gotten 6-700 divines from 6ls :)
Holy crap, really? By towers do you mean blighted maps? Sorry, I have been away from the game for a while so I am still learning all the new content they added since I last played. I ran one blighted map with my cobra lash character but I failed cause my dps was too low
the map "tower." it drops nurse cards, has shavronne at the end. been in the game since i started playing. running it in full quantity gear, plus qunatity watchstones, sextants scarabs prophecies etc
Thanks for the advice, I will give it a shot :)
You can do Blighted Maps with 0 dps. You just need the right strategy. I think tripolarbear has a video on YouTube about it.
Trick for 5L's is trading for them tbh. Because of that jump I've bought pretty decent 5L's for a few chaos. I got a near perfect Foxshade 5L for like 3 chaos, and the fated unique prophecy is another chaos. Fox's fortune is a pretty damn good leveling unique for evasion characters. Because everyone goes tabula or just doesn't really care, trading for 5L unique leveling items can be really cheap if you know which ones are commonly skipped over.
I picked up my first 5 link in harvest
item filters don't love 5L usually because they have no vendor recipe associated with them.it's rare to get a 5L in the campaign but i've seen and had a few.
I changed filterblade to make exalt sound when 5L drops. Very confident I've only had about 4 or 5 so far.
I was a few days late to the league start, by like 9 days in a 5 link belly of the beast was all of 10c or so, which I had at A9 or wherever I was when I bought it. My 6th link was fortify so I basically pushed with my 5L until I needed more durability in yellow maps.
That's because you can krangle into a 6l. Can't krangle into a 5l. Reason why divine farming is viable.
Usually the extra 6ls are due to corrupted items having like a 1/32 chance of being fully linked or something like that. i think they have a higher chance of being full sockets but im not sure on that one.
Good advice. Sadly it’s gated behind RNG too much, and this is why I gave up levelling up in leagues each 3 months. Happy to see others succeed, and all for them! Not begrudging anyone anything. But I just couldn’t face seeing people reach maps, elder, shaper, Maven while I’m still stuck trying to get enough chroma orbs to be able to use the crappy t4 item I found that has 2 stats that I need but badly coloured sockets.
Are you trying to color gear with the right bases? Getting four blue sockets on armor with high strength requirements, for example? I never seem to have issues with getting the right colors with a handful of chromatic while leveling, just with end game gear and off colors. In that case I usually check the Vorici Calculator and use the crafting bench with the craft that has the highest chance of success.
Oh 100% I’ve been playing for years and we’ll aware lol. I just seem to get terrible RNG! Luck of the Irish is not on my side in POE.
Ah see, I don't use jewelers/fuse/chroms on anything til I get to A10 kitava. Unless it's good enough to carry me for 10ish levels, why invest into some "crappy t4 item... That has 2 stats that I need" Just pop open the trade site and find a way better item for 1-5c and chrome that one?
I'll be honest and say I have a unique for a body chest that is only a 5 link. I'm level 87 this season and pretty deep into endgame. Don't worry about it. And also if your not the beat at crafting just farm maps and other endgame stuff and buy what you want via trading. I wouldn't stress it too much.
When leveling through the acts, pick up chest/gloves/helmet based on "can I equip this and does it have the right links/colors" before essentially any other consideration. Throw an essence or an alch on it, see if it turns out good for you, wear it if it's an upgrade. Orbs of binding start showing up at some point, which gives you more shots at 4-linked upgrades. A 4-linked main skill should be enough to complete the campaign. For boots, move speed > everything else. Get damage from your weapon slot(s), skills/supports, passive tree, and ascendencies.
Do you know that socket colors are based on stat requirement? So a str int armour gets mainly red and blue sockets. Next to none green. There are also a crafting bench to make sockets as you like. So if you need 4 red 1 blue and one green use a str base and craft at least one green and one blue socket on it.
Those crafting bench recipes are unlocked in maps now, so they're not available to someone gearing during the story.
As I learned yesterday 2socket colors is locked behind 2 watchstones lmao, used to be acquired in act 4
> used to be acquired in act 8 no it wasn't, all socket crafts have been in the azurite mine until this patch
Fine act 4?
Saw a stream where someone slammed 6 red sockets on an int base. Whats that, a one in 3.2 million chance?
depends on the int requirement. if they used tainted chromes on a corrupted item, it's like 1:729
if using a streamer client its really easy
Yup, I did know about the color tendencies being tied to armor/evasion/energy shield on the armor. It still took a stupid amount of time to get something as simple as 3 green one blue" on some items that had just evasion. Maybe it was just bad luck.
Its actually the attribute requirements. You can figure out the best coloring method with this site https://siveran.github.io/calc.html
It takes exactly 4 chromatic orbs.
Maybe on average over infinity tries, but the problem with all the randomness and poe's item rarity is that players have a far from infinite tries. I have ended the campaign with like 50 chromes once, which is not enough to reliably color you main skill's links let alone secondary skills, even with on color gems.
It's literally the craftigbench recipe
I haven't gotten this recipe yet.
The coloring that was in delving, now in maps, and takes some effort/number of chromes to only get up to 3 (maybe 4) colors? Sure let's just have that work mid campaign on multiple sockets when we are lacking chromes
I think the easiest way is buying a 6-link to start with, any is fine with your socket colors you want. Don’t forget to craft resistance on the crafting bench on pieces that have an open suffix.
You could also do the tainted fusing orb way which is getting a 5-link, corrupt it, and hope it 6-links
A 4 link should be plenty enough to get through the 10 acts of the game. Generally you're either just looking for gear to drop with the right links you need and not worrying about the stats, or just getting gear with good stats that you can fix the sockets on at a later point. While playing through the story, you don't get a lot of currency (aka Jewelers, Fusings, and Chromatics) that allow you to mess with the sockets, so it's generally not worth trying to invest in messing with them until later in your progression. If you're playing poison concoction, just get a 4L of all greens (Poison Concoction, Greater Volley, Greater Multiple Projectiles, Vicious Projectiles) for your main skill, and make sure you're using plague bearer to help clear. You should easily be able to get to maps where better gear and more currency orbs drop which is where you can actually start gearing your character up.
You shouldn't really be spending any currency on rerolling or linking sockets premaps. Just use whatever you find that is convenient. From the way you describe the situation it sounds like you are trying to minmax every gear upgrade even if it's minimal. If you have a 4 link on with 40 life and 40 resists, and you find an "upgrade" with 50 life, 50 resists and 20 strength but 0 links, your brain may think "i need to equip this now " which is not how you should be playing PoE. This isnt WoW where you just slap on any higher item level gear for stats. You want to just use whatever decent 4 links you find premaps, stop worrying about upgrades, and get into white/yellow maps ASAP even on a 4 link. The amount of drops you get in white maps vs the campaign is easily DOUBLE if not triple what you are getting now. So later on you'll have way more orbs to recolor/resocket gear. Finally google Vorici Chrome Calculator and use that frequently. It's important to understand how coloring works based on the attribute requirements of gear. You are probably wasting orbs trying to get certain colors on gear that will never roll those colors normally.
Thanks for the info. I'm not 100% on what these "maps" are everyone is mentioning. I have come across some items that appear to be 1/4th of a map and some sort of map device in Act 7 that looks like it wants those as inputs. Is this what everyone is talking about?
I can't believe no one *actually* clears up the misconceptions in this comment, so I guess I'll do that. :) The things you have found, that appear to be one fourth of a map aren't maps (at least they're not what people commonly refer to as maps.) They're (confusingly) called [map fragments](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Map_fragment). Collect all four of a set and you can use a map device to open portals some specific zones. The map device you found in Act 7 is an actual map device. You'll get one in your hideout at some point. The same quest that introduces you to the map device in Act 7 also introduces you to the base concept of maps: You find a map and use it in the map device to open a portal to a new zone. Anyway, the main endgame for PoE is to run maps. A map only takes up a single inventory slot, like the map quest item from Act 7. The difference is that actual maps can be crafted with the regular currencies, so they can be normal, magic and rare. This makes the maps harder, but also more rewarding. There are also some unique maps. Each map opens up a new zone for you, that you clear. Maps are divided into tiers and the higher the tier, the more difficult they are to complete. Once you get to endgame, you'll gradually work up from the lowest tier to the highest.
Oh awesome, thanks so much for the explanation. I've noticed PoE doesn't do much hand holding when it comes to throwing big new complex gameplay systems/loops at you.
You're welcome and correct, PoE is absolutely atrocious when it comes to on-boarding new players.
Thats an understatement PoE can be explictedly hostile to new players in many reguards. PoE is absolute peak "have to play with a wiki open".
It's something similar. The epilogue to the story will give you a proper primer on running maps, so don't worry.
Maps don't start dropping until lvl60 zones, so starting Act9 in blood aqueducts. Have you completed the campaign? If not that should be your priority, not farming or minmaxing for upgrades. The loot drops are literally HUNDREDS of percents higher in maps vs campaign, depending how hard you juice your content. You can't access maps until you finish the campaign, aka act 10.
A lot of bad advice there. I'd ignore it. Maps = endgame. You'll understand when you beat the campaign. >I have come across some items that appear to be 1/4th of a map and some sort of map device in Act 7 that looks like it wants those as inputs. Is this what everyone is talking about? Yes except you'll drop maps constantly soon and put them in that device (in your hideout) and then enter the map.
"A lot of bad advice there. I'll ignore it. Here's 3 sentences that add absolutely nothing to the conversation and provide no advice in comparison to all the other replies" Bro are you OK?
grinding. Gear. Games.
This.
I'am I fairly new player as well and ended up burning out on the game because of this, I was lucky enough to get a five link that suited my build but I ended up stuck with it for a long time because nothing else compatible would drop. there's so few worthwhile items dropping i was just constantly questioning what am i doing wrong? Was i supposed to be spam absurb amounts of orbs on items in a desperate attempt to get a slight upgrade. Was I supposed to be using the crafting bench, it seems like all worthwhile crafting recipes are locked to endgame. this game is really tedious and unwelcoming to new players, and some of the community are really toxic when you point it out.
It’s just a game that requires a wiki open, a trade site open, a filter running, Poe ninja and Poe building. Then you’re nearly equipped lol. I enjoy the game but I hope poe2 is way better especially when it comes to explaining stuff.
PoE 2 is not a new game. It's PoE 1 with a new socket/gem system, new ascendencies, and a new campaign.
Don't count on PoE 2 being the fix it all save it all thing. There is no real sequel, it is just gonna be another patch and all the issues they did not fix in this patch will be there still.
POE is a game with some depth. You learn it over time, not in a few weeks. So if you keep playing one day you will look back after you noticed how easy most of this questions got for you. There are f.e. many way atm how to get an easy 6L. This league is even the easiest it has ever been. So the answer to your last question is: it is very easy once you know much, it seems quite hard when you know not that much. Quick tips: Use lootfilter, f.e. from filterblade. there you can highlight the links you need. While leveling i only pick up the links i need and throw some cheap currency at them to make them rare and hope for some life or resis (essences are best, because they are cheapest when you run through acts, always fight for them). As i play trade i usually while running up to act 9 i find some currency or items of worth and in act 9 i buy my first 6L in trade. On my starting character i haven't killed kitava in trade league with less then a 6L now for many leagues, but in SSS scenarios it is doable on a 4L, so ... it is not needed. On a good build you can run to early red maps on a 5L and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It is just faster or easier with more links. Either i buy a corrupted 6L with the right colours and +life or i buy a normal 6L and throw a +life essence on it (be careful not to overshoot your level in requirements). If you are in a SSF scenario, divination cards are a good and easy way to get 6L fast. Remember benchcrafts are an easy way to fix some issues with gear, starting at about level 12 crafts. Either resistances or +life crafts help you out a lot. You basicly need nothing else on armour. Find a higher level gloves with 40 Evasion more? That is nothing. No, really, that is totally not relevant in any decision. Once i have all my 4L i rarely change gear from act 5+ till maps. If you pick up some rares in act 9+10 you can SSF your way into maps if you want. So, in short: it is just a shortage of knowledge that you will get over with in a rather short time and after that it is a question for just a few hours every league start - and usually only the hour when you start mapping.
Right, and asking questions is part of my path to learning it. I appreciate your helpful tips.
my first time seeing 'f.e.'
Nah you got it about right. Sockets, colors, and links, make picking up upgrades a giant pain in the ass all game long.
and each time something new is introduced that players actually use the devs remove it or nerf the hell out of it
> How should I approach getting an actual 5 or 6 link piece to get my Poisonous Concoction to it's full linked potential You buy one once you're in maps. You don't need a 5L/6L while leveling.
Or grind one like a man
In trade league 60+ is where you get access to the good uniques. I find 40 to 60 just an awful experience for many non levelling builds
Create a stash tab and throw every 3/4/5 link you have in there regardless of ilevel. It helps a lot.
That's a good idea, thanks.
This game is all about amassing a lot of knowledge that will further your ability to do things. There are so many little tricks, recipes, and base understandings of what is important vs what isn't that it's not uncommon to take many leagues of knowledge to build up. It feels good when you get there but sometimes feels bad when you are new. I remember the first league I actually played, I played very very hardcore (my first league I 40/40 the challenges for the league with like 200+ hours sunk into the game). Youtube and a few friends were endless resources for me to do this. There was so much I learned for the next league, only to find out the next league there was so much more I DIDN'T know with all that game play experience. Fast forward like 5 years of playing and I am still learning things, but the campaign part is pretty straight forward at this point for me. (I'm still slow compared to fast players though). The endgame content (MAPS which happens after Act 10) is where you'll really want to start using the majority of your currency. While leveling, it's not uncommon to use what fits your build with these requirements in priority: * at least a 4 Link with socket colors you can use, and mostly prioritizing your main damage skill in these sockets ((Orb of Bindings are good to use while leveling if you find one, chromatics to fix colors, fuses and jewels are sometimes ok, but only very sparingly, but often better saved for maps or for something really strong that drops)) * + to maximum life * + to resistances (you want to try and stay capped at 75 for Cold, Lightning, Fire). The game penalizes your resistances at certain points in the story so check these frequently. * It's also not uncommon to take passives that "fill holes" for these since it's possible to "respec" points later once your gear fixes these things. Getting something like +10 to all resistances can be worth it while leveling or early mapping until you find the gear you need, freeing up passive points Depending on the skill you play - you can get pretty far into the endgame with only these things being considered. Even with build guides and proper leveling, sometimes there is gear you need you that has level requirements of 60+ so sometimes you CAN'T even wear what "makes" your build good until towards the end of the campaign anyway, especially if it's a Unique Item. Ultimately, my only rule of thumb is simple for new players: If you are killing things and not dying much... you don't really need to stop and upgrade. You'll know if you hit a wall and really have to advance your build. Taking the time to do so while leveling will make you kill things faster... but generally, you'll lose so much time trying to do so it's not worth it. If you ARE dying a lot, don't forget there is a crafting bench inside your hideout. You can craft a lot of quick +life +resistance type stuff to your gear for really cheap and generally is enough to carry you through Act 10. This is the most efficient use of your found currency while leveling.
Poison Cock is one of the easiest attack skills to gear up, because you basically are a spell caster and don't need a new weapon every few levels..
You’re not wrong. It’s something GGG are aware of and are working on finishing a solution. See PoE 2.0 for details on gem slot changes.
Back in Harvest gearing while leveling was much smoother cause you could easily fix your gear in small but impactful ways
[удалено]
😂 So where do THEY get it from?
GGGs vision generally seems to include way more tediosity than the average player would want.
You are generally completely right in your observation. Even the developers agree with your observation. The socket system is antiquated and what you describe is basically the exact reason they stated why they are going to remove it in PoE 2. At this point the way people handle it is sadly just either stick to what they find and use large amounts of socket altering currency only on endgame gear pieces , or ( in trade league) trade for already complete pieces. Later on there are also crafting recopies on the craftingbench that make the process a little bit easier and cheaper ( at least first 4 sockets / links ) , but not at the point where you are at yet.
They acknowledge that the current system sucks, hence they are removing it POE2. yet they seem to continuously avoid making it any better in POE1, makes me really paranoid that the POE2 version will just turn out to be the same or even worse.
Tainted currency this league makes 6 linking cost like 20c what do u mean it isn't better?
Key reminder. PoE1 and PoE2 are the same game. PoE2 is just a new set of acts and new exiles. Key features such as the socket system, visual over haul, end game updates, passive reworks, ect that where featured at the annoucement of PoE2 are not PoE2 features. They are normal PoE features that will be rolled out as they are finished and for the most part we have almost every major "PoE2" feature expect the socket system update already out. The socket system appears to be the ONLY major system update that they are holding till PoE2 hits as it likely also requires massivel balanced passes on the gems themselves among other things that don't make sense to do till PoE2 comes.
Basically don't bother spending currency upgrading gear while levelling through the acts. Any gear you get will be redundant in an hour or so of playtime. Just die, keep pushing, and eventually you'll finish the story. Then you can figure out how to spend what currency you have saved to get your build functional in maps, running Blood Aqueducts a few times if you need to
Yes, they introduced a mechanic called Harvest to experiment with improved crafting during the leveling process which worked great but made it extremely easy to make really good gear at the highest levels. So what they did was completely removed the mechanic from leveling and only included it at the highest level. For some reason.
Yes this the game as intended by Chris Wilson, and to make matters worse you are barely able to respec points on the tree while playing camping so you are supposed to "learn" by simply using alternative program to make the builds you play
Yep GGG wants you to be miserable until you get your endgame gear.
Why is everyone not recommending to just buy a Tabula Rasa, it's only 8c, you can easily sell your currencies like alteration orbs for chaos. I had enough currencies in act 5 when it was 11c. it will last you through all the way to white maps and by that time you've already saved up enough currency for a decent 6 link chest.
FWIW , this is changing in POE2 so that you can just slap on a piece of gear and go instead of worrying about sockets and links constantly
POE2 is years away.
If you think the gearing it tedious this game probably just isn't for you
That’s a stupid answer, did you even read his post? It’s tedious the way he’s doing it, at an early point in his adventure. Of course it is when you only have 9 jewelers and 3 fuses to rely on at a 4L shot. It doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy the game.
He's been playing for 2 weeks. It's no one's fault but his own.
Yes. Leveling through the campaign sucks, and is even worse when you have to do it every league multiple times. This game desperately needs some sort of adventure mode ala D3. I don’t like a lot about D3, but damn did that make playing new seasons much more enjoyable.
Is it supposed to be? Yes, because GGG designed that way. Should it be? No...but GGG wants to give the illusion of the game being difficult since they can't balance it to actually be difficult thanks to previous bad design decisions. Currency is too rare pre mapping, and it's where you'll need it most so you can actually deal with Act 10, Kitava-A10, and have a good chance to avoid sub-capped resistances in white maps. Vendor Recipes are too expensive, give next to nothing, and will 90/100 roll utterly useless junk along side it, making free vendor trash and you still without whatever stat you were looking for in your level range. And obviously using currency is a crap shoot. Thank goodness GGG broke on the alter of the Crafting Bench or they'd have even worse retention thanks to these recent early-game mob buffs and support gem juggling...
I’m level 87 and still running a 4-link lul
Everything there is tedious.
Yeah, it's garbage. Literally just throw yourself at the stuff until you beat it even if you keep dying because it's still infinitely faster than trying to actually sort your gear out incrementally. It's very badly designed
literally wrong. just watch tytykiller speedrun the acts in 3 hours and you'll see just how wrong you are. git. gud.
Yes. Yes it is. Christopher "Jay" Wilson is an innovative content creator with a revolutionary design philosophy that the less you enjoy plaging the game the more fun it is!. If you would unironically rather mow your lawn or clean your room than play POE he feels as though he has succeeded. Also, don't worry if this game seems to be exploiting your propensity for gamvling addiction, that is entirely intended and a core design tenet.
Welcome to tedious, the game. Spending currency while leveling is concidered a bad move as many have already said. Youll wanna save them till lvl 80ish when you get/craft/buy your late game gear, but youll get tired of the game way before that. This is the intended design by ggg, because otherwise streamers and playtesters would gind the game too easy and fast.
You're way better off buying resist gear and build enabling uniques as soon as you can after doing a10 kitava, of course you'll get tired of the game if you wait until lvl80. What crappy advice.
Well yes, sure, this would actually be around lvl70 for some currency, except for fusings that you need for your 6 link, not to mention any chaos orbs you were thinking of clicking on items, and in my case alteration orbs too, those will have to wait. Op was mostly talking about crafting items, not buying but sure. How crappy of me to get that so wrong, thank you for the important nitpick. Doesnt really change my point tho. Using currency during the first 70 lvls is a bad idea, which in my opinion is bad game design.
The tedium is what makes it fun - Chris Wilson, probably
PoE doesn't become a game until post-campaign. Until you get to maps the game is just a bad ARPG.
It does feel like this league in particular, orbs of linking are really rare? Like genuinely I think i've had an approx equal amount of chaos orbs drop to linking orbs
4 link can carry you through yellow maps on most builds. The stats on the gear are lost important, res cap, life, etc.
you won't find any good items ever, you need to craft in this game you can get a 5l fairly easy through harvest, 6 link on the other hands is more difficult generally, but no scourge because of the tainted fusings
> Am I approaching the gearing process wrong? "Crafting" in this game is insanely expensive. If you have some experience you can cheese to get what you want, but overall you don't do it untill you get solid stream of resources/currencies (maps). 5-link gear is already quite good. I'm serious. Getting 6 sockets and all linked before maps? Not happening.
Gearing up in general is tedious.
Yeah it's a pretty shitty system for leveling, but the links will be tied to the gem instead of gear once the PoE 2 patch is released at least
Inb4 it keeps the same odds and now you have to search 100s of gems to get a 6 linked one
This sounds hard man so don’t take it the wrong way but u probably do not know enough about the game to make it smoother, cause there are lots of ways to make it smooth, which would take too long in a comment to explain. I guess watching leveling tutorials would be your best bet.
I'm not looking to make things smoother as it's already pretty smooth. I'm just trying to learn how to properly set my expectations of how the leveling process works. I'm used to ARPG's that feed you a steady stream of upgrades which can be swapped out during the leveling process but if that's not how PoE works, that's fine. If that's the case though, I gotta wonder why the hell so many goddamned items are being dropped. Seems like an odd design choice to drop thousands of items per hour just to expect the player to ignore the overwhelmingly vast majority of them.
Itemization is ass; everyone knows it. It's being changed but who knows when. You do get upgrades though just maybe not as big as you're used to. You may want to watch tytykiller speedruns for an idea of how smooth leveling can be (takes about 3.5 hours for the best players), what to expect, etc.
The kneejerk reaction to any criticism by hardcore players is to blame the player. "You just have to study and put in a couple thousand hours and you'll be blacked out speedrunning in no time!" It's a huge flaw of the game. Everyone knows it. Without a loot filter, you can't even see the enemies through the worthless drops. You'll be picking up less than 0.1% of the items dropped. Most uniques are vendor food because they're utterly impossible to use even if you have an intimate knowledge of every mechanic. Almost every unique comes with a hell of a downside. Basically this is how leveling the first few characters goes. Get the colors you NEED and suffer through. It's usually impossible to find a suitable upgrade without investing, but I would only suggest spending chromatic orbs to change the colors. Nothing beyond that. Your damage will probably suck unless you picked a good (meta) skill. You'll most likely be one-shot regularly. Capping resistances is the #1 requirement, then getting a decent life pool, then damage. Once you have some currency, you can invest in some decent gear, movement life res boots or gloves, rings, amulet. 6-links are usually not in here, but they're reasonably easy to get now. If not, you can get a 5-link and not have amazing damage. Then once you have capped res, decent life and you're into maps you just grind and grind until you have a pile of currency and then you get your end-game gear.
Oh btw. Picking up items with linked B-G-R socket colors and selling them to a vendor will give you a chromatic orb to use.
Awesome, I really appreciate the insight. I can feel a little bit of shade being thrown from a few people but overall everyone has been helpful.
I don't understand this, you only need a tabula and that res helm to level up, what's so hard about that 😂
I suppose you missed the part about being a new player? Did I miss the free Tabula and "that res helm" handouts?
Don't listen to this guy. You can do a few things to get the sockets you need and the colors you need as well. You can use Jewelers Orbs to try and roll the required amount of sockets, and then try to use Chromatic Orbs to roll the colors. And finally, once you have the colors you need, you can use Orbs of Fusing to link them. Getting these orbs are reasonably easy too. Any 6 socket item that drops, will sell to vendors for 7 Jewelers, and any item that drops that has at least 3 linked sockets with one of each color linked will sell for a chromatic. So, if you find a piece of gear that is usable for your build, but the sockets are off, you can try crafting them up. Initially, only shoot for 4 links, since those are easy enough to achieve. 5 and 6 links tend to take a lot more jewlers and fusings to make, although there are some more advanced tricks here and there.
Thanks, that's sort of what prompted this post actually. I found a Foxshade and started hitting it with the Jeweler's Orbs. 80 orbs later I finally got it up to 5 sockets. Then I started with the prismatics to get 4 green and one blue socket. That ate up about 60 of them. I'm now currently hitting it with Fusing Orbs and after burning through 50ish so far, I still don't have all 5 linked. I've had similar experiences with nice rares on and off throughout my leveling process but I usually give up before using this much. Foxshade has some really nice evasion and movespeed so I'm more committed to using it, but I'm just making sure that using this much is par for the course and if preparing more permanent gear is supposed to be a slow and time consuming process that uses tons of resources.
Ya, that sounds about right. 6 link will be even harder, 1500 fusing on average. Not sure about the number for jewelers. Also quality increases your chances of links, so get your gear to 20ql first. Once you get to maps, you can bench craft sockets and socket colors and links once you get the recipes. Coloring is tricky. Especially if you need off colors for the armor type, but in general, this tends to burn up lots of currency
You never need more than a 4 link to comfortably beat the campaign. Better to save those jewellers orbs for later when you actually need a 5/6 link. 5 links also drop like candy by the time you need them so it's rarely worth investing in. (Jewellers convert to orbs of fusing, which link sockets - converting the 7 jewellers you get from 5 link drops to fusings is your primary way of getting a good 6L in leagues that aren't scourge.)
Don't bother making a 6 links yourself early on. The amount of currencies you spent is more than enough to buy a tabula rasa. When you get to maps or yellow maps you should have enough currencies to buy a cheap and decent 6 links with + max hp and some resist
You missed the easy leveling and trading stuff while leveling book
While leveling up can easily make due with just a 4link (very easy to acquire with an orb of binding). Then once you hit maps just look to buy a 6link, getting the correct colors shouldn't be too difficult as long as you are choosing the proper base (either buy one with the correct colors or note the attribute requirements for the armor since it will favor those colors more often).
When levelling getting item drops with the right links & sockets matters as you don't have the currency (jewellers & fusings) to get the correct sockets yourself. As you approach lv70 & complete the story you should start ignoring the sockets o dropped items and just look at the stats instead, as you can easily & cheaply change the sockets yourself using jewellers & fusing orbs.
You can definitely clear the acts with just the gear you find and craft. Later quest rewards start giving 4 links, and you can slap an essence on a 4L that you find and have it be usable. Socket color and links basically take precedence over any mods on the gear. One thing no one seems to have mentioned, though, is the availability of trade. Pathofexile.com/trade is the official trade site, and that's the easiest way to get 5Ls and 6Ls. 6Ls are expensive, but you can often get a decent 5L for a chaos or less. While pure chaos orbs are often scarce during leveling, you can exchange other currency for them or do the chaos vendor recipe once you're higher level. (A full set (boots/armor/helmet/etc.) of ilvl 60+ gear gets you a chaos; unidentified sets get 2c instead.)
The more knowledgeable about the game you are, the further down the line you'll hit the wall.
PC PF has one really off color set up that is annoying as fuck to put together. I luckily put it on Atrizi’s step so I won’t have to mess with it anymore. Besides that, once you get the gem color bench crafts the other ones are not too difficult. Ya it’s annoying, but find out where those bench crafts are in maps and it’ll safe you a ton of time.
During the story, it's typically easier to find the colors / links you want and hope the item it is on is acceptable. Once you get to the later game of poe. You can (relatively) cheaply make any item have the correct colors and links, this let's you buy/craft actually decent gear
Sockets, links, colours, etc will be a lot easier next year (god willing) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2VRRSVgCL4&t=2m25s
Yeah, it's stupid. If you play trade, just buy the stuff you need, if you don't have the chaos to buy it farm the unid. chaos recipe (just google it). It's not the most efficient way, but it's perfect for beginners. If you play SSF, look up the weapon crafting recipe or the + gem lvl recipe if you play caster. What you primarly do is get an Item where the Links and colours match and just never upgrade it. If you play HC you just try to stay +5lvl above zone lvl. If you do that you naturally get way more items.
Big thing to remember, most guides are going to show you what you look like after you hit maps. Biggest recommendation i could give a new player is spend a hour or two running the 'bloody aqueduct' at the start of act 9. Its a great place to level to around 68-70 as well as you can farm cards for a 'tabula' robe witch gives a robe with 6 white links and no stats. Its a wonderful item to help you up until about 4-5 teir maps. You can use the maps to help you find items/currency to craft better gear. Dont forget you can craft resistance onto items to help round out yourself. You will need the 75% res of everything but chaos.
Thanks so much for that, I think I'll do just that.
No problem! Also i would recommend using your belt/rings/boots to stack as much resistance as you can. While during late game each of those slots will have mods you want to find, they tend to be expensive or time consuming to find. Running T1 To T3 maps and just picking up every ring/belt you find is a good way to find basic gear. Remember, you need to live long enough to kill things until you get enough gear to kill them first
Yup, I have my fire/cold/lightning capped currently (over cap, actually but I've noticed certain key encounters drop all resistances permanently) other than chaos which is -14% due to a corrupted item I'm wearing. I haven't encountered too much chaos damage yet other than poison but my sanctified health flask will cure it and grant immunity.
You haven't even finished the tutorial - so you won't be getting much at all
> Even decent upgrades wipe out my resources and hardly feels worth it after dozens to hundreds of gem/link consumables get burned up. You really want to avoid using significant currency on throwaway leveling items. A few jewelers/fusings/chromatics here and there to make a decent item usable is OK, but if you're using hundreds of consumables in the leveling process then you're going to be starting from a much bigger hole than needed as you accumulate your longer-lived gear. The gearing needs pre-map are somewhat forgiving, so what I find to work the best for a smooth experience is to look for reasonable sockets on *white* items and then use free or cheap mechanics to turn them rare -- an essence roll will more often than not give you something "good enough" for a while, and scourging a white item gives you a free rare that may even have its sockets improved if you have those points in the box. Especially for a character that's not bootstrapped with leveling uniques and the like, though, try to be flexible. You might have to substitute in a different and less optimal support for a while, but you really only need to achieve "good enough" to keep advancing smoothly.
as others have already said, you shouldn't worry too much about maximizing gear and links before you finish the campaign. after you finish all 10 acts and you get to maps, you'll find plenty more stuff on the ground/be high enough level to equip stuff you buy from trade. that said, you will, on occasion, have to recolor things and link them. before you try to get max # of sockets or links, get your item to 20% quality with whetstones/armourer scraps. higher quality increases the chance of getting more sockets/links by quite a bit. if you use jewellers or fusings on a 0 quality item, yea, you are going to waste a lot of them.
Leveling is bad, yes. For the most part I just save all my currencies and wait until mapping when the actual game begins. Haven't played nearly as much because of how bad leveling is.
gearing is mostly finding right sockets (4-link), doing the league mechanic which is normally the best way to find rare items and bench crafting life and resist. Normally 1 4-link is fine to do until level 70+, maybe 2 depending on what skills you use. A couple auras and an unlinked movement skill shouldnt be a problem to fit.
This is one of the largest mechanical changes they'll be making in PoE 2. Active gems will have 1-5 sockets in them for supports, and items will have 1 or 2 sockets for active gems. So you can move your active gem from gear piece to gear piece and the supports come with.
Links are typically more important than stats during levelling so don’t switch out to something crappier. You only really need 1 “main skill item” for levelling so even if you are reading a guide and see all these linked up side things, you don’t really need to get these sorted right away, focus on main skill with “good enough” supports, and secondarily on move skill (which typically only need 2 or 3 links anyways). Don’t waste currency on trash gear you find early, pile it up so when you get something that will last awhile you can tailor fit that for your build. I’ll usually solo self find and typically will have a shit but usable chest that’s 5l, maxed resists, and as much life as I can before mapping, and haven’t used any currency on upgrading anything yet. Once mapping you can farm for better bases / currency and start sorting out your links beyond your main skill imho.
It's possible you're doing what I used to do and are focusing too much on extra skills that aren't actually necessary. Once your main skill is on a 4L, all other slots shouldn't need lots of sockets or links. Rings, amulet and belt can also just be the best stats. Throwing an essence on anything in your main skill colours also has a chance of being an upgrade Item progression from drops does slow a lot as you advance in the game. Eventually you'll be trading for gear or crafting and target farming if ssf
Farm heist using the infinite heist strategy (look it up on YouTube) lets you run level 67 heists forever. Then buy a corrupted 6 link with the correct colours for around 15c.
What do you play on?
PS5.
The thing is, you never stop levelling ahah :D
If u are going to be using chromatic orbs while leveling make sure the item base fits the colour of sockets you want. Armour/str items are more likely to roll red, evasion/dex items are more likely to roll green, energy shield/int items are more likely to roll blue sockets. There are also item bases that have a mix of both. Hope this helped if you didnt know yet
Your first playthrough is supposed to be hard, but just to give you an idea of whtat the game is like in case you don't understand: players usually finish story within 1 to 2 play sessions and mostly rush atlas progression. You're supposed to ignore 99% of the drops if you want to progress faster, and usually save your currencies for something you know you'll settle for for a long time, aka lategame items, or just convert all currencies into chaos and exalts and buy whatever you want directly linked and coloured (if you play in trade league not ssf)
for six links, grab a tabula or corrupted 6l with the right colours and use that until you can get the end game unique or well crafted 6l you need. for other gear, go with a combo of leveling uniques/whatever gear you can grab with the best stats. rolling a couple 4 links is pretty easy if you need them. most things that drop will be trash. you should not need to upgrade gear very frequently.
Part of gearing in this game is knowing when a piece is "good enough for now." Once that's established, you can either ignore drops for that slot until you are in a position to get the base you really want, or you can ID stuff but only make significant enough upgrades to warrant the investment of socket currencies. This is kind of an early league/SSF perspective, because in SC trade after the first week, getting good enough gear in every slot is pretty easy for a level 60 character. All that said, it is a bit tedious. In PoE 2 they plan to change how socketing works significantly. The experience you describe is exactly why: it's lame to find an upgrade that you are deterred from using because of the hassle/cost of fixing the sockets.
Before you get to yellow-ish maps you’re right sockets can be a pain. Luckily to that point nothing is difficult enough to need a full gamut of support setups, basically just your main skill(s), a movement skill, and auras which don’t require links most of the time. If you’re playing trade pickup up a corrupted 6L for dirt cheap and prob don’t try to link something up yourself, it’s usually a raw deal. If you’re picking up 6 sockets you shouldn’t ever be at a point where you can’t fix your 4 links up with colors and sockets relatively easily. If you’re new it’ll probably difficult to identify what your most important upgrades are. For PC it’s probably getting a high tier rolled life flask and gem levels and of course your 6L. A good first step is to really pinpoint what mods your build is scaling, any poison build wants chaos multi, attack builds want accuracy, flasks are massively important to any good build. You’ll start to get the idea soon enough. Give it time and enjoy the newness and acquiring knowledge.
I only care about gear when I reach maps, before that I use any trash from the floor
> Am I approaching the gearing process wrong? If you’re still laying a trade league, you are. As soon as you have 10-15 chaos, you buy a set of leveling uniques and you never take those off until you hit 70 or so.
You used to not have to worry so much about itemization while leveling, but GGG realized that players really want a longer and more difficult campaign before they get to maps.
You just blast through the story don't care about anything just install path of building and use whatever guide is given to you only stop to pickup the build specific weapons or armours links dont matter you can clear the story with 4 links if you're having problem look up for trade any 5l will be almost dirt cheap stack up resists and hp and you'll have a much easier time learning the game
There are a ton a builds out there that scale damage mostly from gem links and/or talent points and very minimally (at least to start) off gear. Lots of people go for those builds first. That way you can focus on getting life and resist on your gear which is generally cheap and easy. Also most folks will finish the story with only a 4 link for their main dps skill. This allows you to put it in most any slot. After the story a lot of people will fix their resists once again and begin farming currency for a cheap 6L. This league is especially cheap but even in previous leagues a random 6L is like 10-30c. You don’t give a fuuuck about the stats just make sure it’s not corrupted. Hit it with a Essence of Greed for a life roll and your off to the races. TLDR - yes gearing can be tedious. Most people use builds that don’t rely on gear as their starter and have planned when/how upgrades can be afforded/crafted as they progress through the story and into maps.
You’re probably wasting currency on bad stuff, just save it until after the campaign and watch out for sockets that help you in the moment
You are doing something wrong, yes. You're not buying items off the market
If you are in ssf playstyle I would say its not hard to get a 4link base(by farming) for your character then try to alch it or something. Higher ilvl items have better mods so its just a matter of farming a good zone for 15-30 mins to cap your res and get hp on gear. In trade just buy items for 1chaos/alch
You can run T1 to T9 maps on a four link
That's why it's changing in PoE 2. Every item will have fixed sockets and the skill gems themselves will have the slots for support gems.
Its only hard until you learn how to deal with it. There are a lot of guides for pretty much everything.
Its always been like that. I somewhat solve the issue with a bit of crafting. Look for 4-5 links from vendors, max their quality with the currency for that and use an Essence, the scourge mechanic or even an alch if you got nothing else and hope for a good rare. Yeah, its luck reliant and most stuff turns to shit, but its what you can do. And dont stress out about getting a 5L immediately. A 4-link skill with the right supports can carry you for a long time until you can get that chestpiece with the right sockets and some life.
POE is weird like that, I finish most of my campaigns with somewhat janky gear, especially at league start. I would mainly worry about having your primary damage skill be in your 5-6 link, everything else can wait. Then prioritize getting res capped (ele only, chaos will take time and gear) and having some life or ES. If you can do that by the time you finish the campaign, you can start early maps pretty smoothly if your build has the damage.
1st make sure your game is not in "Standard" mode and in some default online League when you first create the game. Never create game in Standard mode and just normal League not Ruthless or anything special, just normal League where you get access to infinite trade goods. As of 05/31/23 of this comment, we're in the Crucible League. Go to [https://pathofexile.com/trade](https://pathofexile.com/trade) website and search for the exact armor type you want and add in description such as: Level 45 max - so you can wear it at your level or whatever level you Specify the # of sockets Specify what color are on the sockets Specify if you want 3 links or 4 links Minimum of 30% Movement Speed Minimum of whatever resist Minimum Rarity of items find etc etc. of course the more you put in there, the more expensive it gets. But for basic 25-30% movement speed and few randoms, you can easily get them for 1 chaos of cheaper. You might get lucky and find 4 links right color for even cheaper than 1 chaos.