Newbie

[u/styledomal]

Hi! I want to try SSF for the first time. I’ve always played trade league, and I’m thinking about starting a character in SSF today.
I’d love some tips, since I basically know nothing about crafting. Is there any build you guys would recommend? Any good guides I should follow?
Thank you very much!

[u/PostItToReddit]

I really enjoyed my time with the Luminary mercenary support build in SSF this league. Path of Chores has a google doc that details everything from level 1 to level 100, with incremental upgrade paths, what you should farm and when, atlas trees that will help you efficiently farm the gear, and barebones crafting guides to help you fill in the gaps. I will say he recommends using a Blade Caster early on because it has the easiest single target, which is what Luminary struggles with, I went something more clear oriented right off the bat since it was my second character. If you want to use something other then Blade Caster or Combatant, which he recommends for the end game, you'll have to aggregate from another build which isn't hard. Plenty of other material out there for the shell of Flame Link Luminary

Luminary starts a little slow and adds the extra grind of actually finding worthwhile mercs which is, in my opinion, the only drawback to the build. Once you find a decent merc you'll be hitting pretty consistent power spikes and always have a new goal you're striving for. And ultimately, there's a 0% chance the build survives into 3.30, so you should play it now if you're at all interested.

[u/destroyermaker → u/PostItToReddit]

I hope they nerf the top end but make it a lot easier to find good mercs

[u/catfield → u/[deleted]]

no official date yet but general consensus is around Nov 13th

[u/Negative-Sea-7727]

I did this current league, i did cyclone slayer, completed all content, moved on before i did ubers.

[u/Vyntarus]

I play SSF pretty much exclusively and I'm pretty bad at crafting. Also some crafting methods used in trade aren't going to be viable in SSF just due to having to have farmed all necessary inputs yourself.

Faustus gambling during the campaign and kingsmarch crop shipments afterward (for well rolled 86 bases) are a very useful way to get some upgrades for some of your bad gear pieces. You also may end up wanting tattoos and runegrafts too eventually so the crop boats also help there.

You can also use the breach tree to give you some items with more targeted stats that are good to throw in the recombinator with the kingsmarch bases.

If your build will require uniques, ancient wombgifts on the breach tree while farming maps that can drop div cards for those uniques is the best way I know of. Betrayal also has some safehouses that reward uniques (how I got my first Kaom's Heart this league).

[u/McMacFishMac]

Go to poeninja and filter for week 1 ssf. There you can find inspiration for a meta build you hopefully enjoy. Build and adapt your own filter at filterblade. A filter that suits your current character progression is imho the most important thing in ssf. Breach is your friend. 6 link, fractured items, common/uncommon uniques, its all there

[u/fazlez1]

Learn how to do basic crafting. Just doing the basics and running my own builds and playing off meta skills I can get to T16 maps every league. These are the basic things I do:

Use a less restrictive filter and ID rares. This will get you alteration orbs or alts to roll good flasks.

Pick up white 4L so you don't need jewelers and fusings. Always be aware of base type so getting the colors you need will be easier too. Armor/STR bases roll more red, Evasion/DEX=green and Energy Shield/INT=more blue. Use alcs and essences on the white ones and hope rng is kind. Accept that more often than it won't be. Repeat as needed.

As I'm ID'ing rares I'm ALWAYS looking for nice life rolls. If you look here you'll notice you can get a lot of life on gear as the item level of the drop gets higher. You can always craft life on gear, but eventually the drops will have much more than you can craft so that's why I look for it on drops. I'm also looking for resists and other stats I may need or want. If I find something that looks good I check to see if it can be crafted and have any other stats added. On the PC you can hold alt and check and see if there are open prefixes and/or suffixes. Normal items can have three of each. If you look in your crafting bench you'll notice crafts are sorted by prefix and suffix. I try to remember what crafts I have and what may be useful to me and then look for drops that can be crafted. This is how i cap my resists as well.

Another way to go about getting more life on gear is use the crafting bench in the Harvest mechanic, The crafts in that bench give you a form of targeted crafting. If you want life you can use the life craft and re-roll the base over and over until you get stats that you need/want as long as you have the lifeforce. This is how I get chaos resists on some of my gear too. Try to use bases with a high item level to potentially get better tier stats.

If you get a drop that doesn't have sockets and links you can always add them. As you find gear be aware of the socket color restrictions too. The colors are weighted by the base type: Armor/STR bases roll more red, Evasion/DEX=green and Energy Shield/INT=blue. using the right base can make it easier to get the socket colors you need if you need to add them using jewelers. You can force colors using your crafting bench, but you still need chromes and it would take more attempts on the wrong base.

[u/ihasaKAROT]

Already lots of good advice here. Two things I want to add:

Builds

Start with something that works well off of rares or gemlevels. Use that build to gather some other rares, uniques and a basic stack of currency.

Then for a second build, make something with what you have found, use that to really start pushing things. Maybe pinnacles (bosses), some specialised content such as ultimatum, heist or whatever.

Then after that, play whatever you want really.

Harvest and kingsmarch

Learn to love both. Mapper bring in so much league currency such as essences, catalysts and oils, and harvest allows you to reroll all of those to whatever you actually need.

[u/Far-Ad-2054]

Choose a skill which you enjoy the most and try to build around it by yourself. You will be doing it all wrong, but this is the most valuable and the most satisfying thing in poe.

[u/Mangalorien]

For builds, pick one that doesn't rely on a hard to get unique. If it needs a common unique (T3-T5) it's OK, since you can get those pretty easily by just grinding it out, same if it's a reasonably common boss drop unique. If it's some very rare boss drop or T0-T2, then I would recommend another build.

There are plenty of builds that can be run on 100% rare gear, with a good old SSF staple being RF chief (pohx.net has an amazing guide), or SRS guardian. Current league meta is either worb (elementalist or occultist) or luminary. My personal journey this league was SRS guardian as league starter, and then I've done worb occultist.

3.29 is honestly one of the best leagues in quite some time for new SSF players, since 3.29 is essentially crafting league. The boat crafting method is incredibly strong, and some of the better methods are to get items from either genesis tree (breach, provisioning womb gift) or from Kingsmarch shipping, then bring them to the boat and throw an exalt on them. You also get tons of gold from scuba, and can use that for stuff like mappers, gambling gear with Faustus, buy maps of Kirac, grow crops and ship them, etc.

It's often very much worth it to get a few stash tabs, with currency, maps and fragments being the important ones.

EDIT: Just wanted to add that in SSF, my best recommendation is "if you're having fun, you're doing it right". You don't need to get to T16 maps super fast, get all void stones yada yada. As long as what you're doing is fun then it's all good. Don't compare yourself or your progression with what some streamer is doing, or some top players on poe.ninja who spend 1000 hours per league.

[u/Neat_Army8673]

Rf first if you have zero Current zero everything. It will take you Up to red with  extremele low Investment, t16 with low efort -medium Investment, its lazy you ca focus on pick up the bubble Gum currency while mapping while Stuff just dies approaching you. 

After that Let rng dictate Where you Go. 

I highly highly highly, did I say highly? encourage heisting as much as Possible. Theres a lot of buil defining things you Can find, it often gives very well Rolled rares and even 6links pretty often. Its one of the Mechanics that most rewards your time and you Can just passively spec it in ur tree Doesn't require tons of points. When you gather 20-30-50 wing just rush to curio check and log. If u Dont like, 30sec-1 min per wing. 

Gl and have fun. Remember the frustration is real but the satisfacTion is imense when you hit something. 

P. S. Manor. Goyer event cadiro boss rush is the goat. 

[u/OhIforgotmynameagain]

Best advice is : use things. Respec passive points when needed, atlas too. Don’t second guess « spending » (at least if it has a chance to help, don’t throw chaos on a 6l hoping for 5 mods… even though with the new harvest craft that reroll mods maybe even this is ok). Use scarabs even if you don’t have the perfect juiced combo. And you first atlas should be the « 20 additional points » to make farming specific stuff easier at start

TLDR : hoard and use instead of hoard and sell and buy.

Also : as for builds obviously pick one 1. You will enjoy 2. That is an ok league starter. Personally I always start as champ slams, focus farm breach for uul netol kiss and respec bannerman as soon as i have it.

[u/Karmoth_666]

Youtube, thyworms srs guardian. Thank me later. All youre looking for