ARPGs are all about problem solving and Path of Exile has the strongest feedback loop to help guide you towards problem areas that you need to solve.

• Taking too much damage or a specific status effect giving you problems?
  
• Taking too long to kill monsters and don't have enough sustain to keep your mana up?
  
• Does it feel slow getting through areas and can't traverse fast enough?

These are examples of the kinds of problems you will notice with your build. PoE may feel punishing, but it's really trying to hint at a problem that you need to figure out how to address. And my god, does PoE give you options to do so.

Further, these problems can layer on top of each other. For example, lets say I need to upgrade my gloves, but my gloves have my only green slot that I need to run Precision to help with my accuracy problem. So to upgrade my gloves, I need to first solve my accuracy problem since my strength & intelligence based character rarely gets green slots.

Most other ARPGs don't have a strong enough feedback loop, where even with a "bad build", you can easily clear the game. Turning the game more into a spectacle fighting game rather than a puzzle game where it's fun to think about difficult decisions and the different approaches to solve the problems the game is showing you.

This is why I don't recommend using a build guide or really any walkthrough of the game. Advanced tools take you out of the game, which isn't what we want if we want to play the thing. And looking things up can spoil some cool moments in the game that can take a lot of the magic away (old games used to seem more fun because there was surprise, nowadays it's so easy to look everything up and min-max that you lose that aspect of gaming).

Items and passives are 2 different ways to solve the same set of problems. But each is slightly unique with items being more flexible, but harder to obtain.

• Resistances can come from items or passives
  
• Some notable passive nodes have a mirrored unique item that gives a similar effect
  
• Can use ability-boosting passives to allow you to use an item you're missing requirements for to solve some other problem (creating a temporary problem of having a wasted passive point that you'll probably want to respec later on -- more problem layers, yay!)

The emergent simplicity is that behind all of this complexity is that simple feedback loop the game is showing you by getting you almost, or completely, killed. This allows you to hyper focus on a specific problem and you get clear feedback from the game when you solve it by letting you progress (and hopefully teaching you a thing or two about your build in the process).

The goal is to learn how to use your currencies (such as orbs), your crafting bench, and whatever league mechanics are available to solve the problems you are facing. This will help you gauge item drops to see how relevant they are and how much you'll have to do to turn it into an item that helps you.

If you really need an easy button, you can buy some items from another player but you're likely cheating yourself and when you hit a similar problem down the line you'll be inclined to buy your way out of it instead of fixing it yourself.

Combining everything so far, you'll pick up a good sense of what improvements you want to make to your character as you progress.


If you want a completely blind start to the game, stop reading here.

Below are some decent ideas for beginners to consider as they build their first few characters.

• Path your passives towards sustainment, such as increased life and 1 other kind of defense (like energy shield or evade)
  
• Focus spending passive points on notable passives, every leaf or endpoint of your passive tree should end with a notable
  
• Focus on 1 attack skill that will be linked to 3+ support gems in the mid and late game
  
• Your other skills should be auras (lots of reserved mana tends to be worth it, which is another build problem to solve), buffs, and curses
  
• Max your elemental resistances and keep them there (75%), worry about chaos later
  
• Armor should give life, other defense, and resistances
  
• Weapons should focus on damage
  
• Boots should have movement speed
  
• In the early game, socket colors and links are more important than stats they have
  
• Mid and late game you can craft a good stated item into having good socket colors and links
  
• Have a jump skill for moving up and down cliffs or over enemies
  
• Have a teleport skill to move fast and go through enemies
  
• Keep your level as close to the map level as possible (it's easy to over-level, don't unless you hit a wall that you need to solve -- skip enemies and move fast)
  
• Health and mana potion use are a sign of, and a band-aid for, a build problem, fix it
  
• A loot filter[www.filterblade.xyz] is a good idea, its set and forget, so just do it (sign-in, use defaults, export to PoE, select it in game)

If you like the game, buy the First Blood microtransaction for $20 during a stash-tab sale (happens monthly-ish). You'll be able to afford a currency stash tab, a map stash tab, and an additional stash tab for a decent quality of life improvement.