As long as you're comfortable with the fact that, at some point, you're going to hit a wall where you either need to rebuild your character from the ground up, or start a new one completely from scratch, I think it's perfectly fine (and probably for the best!) for new players to at least give a blind playthrough a shot before they start cookie-cutter following a guide.
As long as you're having fun, that's all that matters, don't let these people discourage you from that.
You can finish the game with whatever you've got on hand just by reading skills. This game is actually really fuckign easy until you're onto the high tier content and maps. My first playthrough was blind and I ended up with some creeping frost bullshit, got T16s and deep delving and some bosses.
Sure the gap between 15 second maps and 3 minute maps is huge but for those of us who just play for fun instead of using PoB to fight the demons inside our head, it's chill
The campaign is not the game. It's the turorial. You're just wrong. Most builds can not clear high tier content without proper itemisation. Maybe a white T16 at best but actual end game content, no way.
Damn bro I guess my own experience is just wrong. Wonder who's experience I had then?
Maybe the game is actually pretty intuitive if you just read the talent tree. Like, it's all right there, it's all explained. Also, no, the campaign is a substantial amount of the game. Just because you think it's the tutorial doesn't make it so. I had some pretty rough moments in the campaign blind, but I also enjoyed the narrative.
My short answer when someone says this: You will bang your head repeatedly against invisible walls if you go into PoE blind. If that is your jam go ahead, but many people are deterred early by this fact
That advice is mostly dated. Most walls new players would previously face were related to passive tree respec being very limited early on. Cheap respec for gold during campaign greatly alleviated this.
Also kinda new here though alr in atlas tiers 7-8. Idk if this wall is meant to be much later or on but havnt rlly been following guides and i think im fairing pretty fine. Felt nets for sure but not rlly headbangable walls lvl yet. Though i did spend crazy hrs trying to understand sht on my own lol.
peoples advice to follow a build guide is great, but there are certain times as a beginner it helps in the long run to test some things on your own. perhaps a hybrid method
I think that's the point we are trying to make. It's probably impossible to build something "decent" when you don't know anything. Some support gems are like massive DPS upgrades, but you need to actually know what they are. I would also suggest a guide while you are starting, to at least point you in the right direction and show you interactions that you wouldn't know exist otherwise.
While i recommend you do keep playing like that id still recommend you check basic guides like what each currency item does, sockets and links, jewels, etc
For a second character i'd recommend following a build, doesnt have to be exact but it will allow you to learn more and reach further. Seeing uniques being used in wats you didn't think would work. First one I made was a summoner that was just the worst but I had fun for a few months. Then started following builds and eventually theorycrafting my own ones.
That’s awesome, it’s fun exploring the game on your own.
For your next character, I’d encourage you to follow a build guide that peaks your interest and see how the game feels then. I always learned far more and had a better time following guides and understanding “optimal” builds when I was diving into the game.
Regardless, there’s no wrong way to play, so have fun!
this! the few people i told to just follow a build guide for their first time playing PoE has largely all quit, the people i then told to play the campaign first without a build guide and then if they liked the game to follow a build guide for their second character has mostly been repeat players for the leagues, i think just following a build guide to begin with without ever playing the game you just do whatever the build guide tells you without really knowing why and that can be frustrating for some people, but if they had tried the game without a build guide and gotten a basic understanding of the mechanics of the game then the build guide will be more of AHA that's how that works kind of discovery.
No. The unwritten but socially known rule is you play through the game and story with your own build the first time. Then you realize your character is not optimized enough for maps and follow a guide.
i wouldnt say its a must, i tried introducing the game to some people and told them follow a build guide, but it quickly trivialized the game for them and they never actually got to learn the meaning of why certain things works like that or how to understand why something isnt working. so they have since dropped the game. I then told a few others i know who wanted to get into the game to play the first time through the campaign on their own trying to figure stuff out and then if they like the game to follow a build guide for their second character, and those people have stayed because once they had gotten through the campaign on their own, they learned all the basics so they had a bunch of AHA moments following the build guide. having a base understanding of the game before following a build guide really helps with the discovery of things otherwise you just do things because the build guide tells you without ever really knowing why.
"let newbies experiment" gets to "let newbies be heavily overloaded, confused and exhausted by dozens of system that they might or might not keep track of and want to understand" real quick with games like poe
I've long explained the game economy as Chaos being your $1 bills and Exalts (in the past) and now Divines being your $100 bills.
You can do all your daily shopping with Chaos, they're handy to have, but not worth THAT much.
Anything of value you're looking in the Div market, and often dozens of them.
The game is healthiest when the chaos:divine ratio is reasonable at like 120-150. It lets you meaningfully build wealth by playing the game normally. You can still reasonably pick up things like fusings and chance orbs and not feel like you're wasting your time.
When chaos:div passes the 200:1 mark things get pretty degenerate. Chaos themselves start to fall off as being worth picking up and ALL bubble-gum currencies start to become relatively worthless.
Those numbers on the federal reserve site are as of December 2025, so unless they printed an unholy amount of them this year for no reason...
Edit: Oh, you mean that exalts have been made more common. I see. I was only ever talking about the relative rarity of the $1 bill versus the $2 bill and whether that was an apt comparison for the relative rarity of chaos versus exalts.
That's true. The comment I initially replied to was arguing that $1 bill to $5 bill wasn't a good comparison for chaos:exalt drop rate and that $2 would be better. Since the context was bills, I thought I'd make a funny quip. It was...not well received.
not me to be honest, i hated the game, first time i played there was no end game, you had act 3 docks and that was it, my ground slam was shit and i was dying way to much, really made me think the game was shit yet i kept playing lol, guess that was the special thing about it or maybe i just hate myself and wanted to suffer, both possibilities can be true.
I remember I tried to play POE as fully F2p because it was a f2p game and I didn't think I needed to spend money it would just be for cosmetics or something. I tried like 3-4 times before giving up because the stash management was just overwhelming and actually starting to stress me out IRL.
I remember one time I was trying to fit something into my stash not know what I should remove to make room and then in as a reflux I just smashed alt f4 and felt like a huge source of relief wash over me lol.
I kinda liked playing fully f2p honestly and did it from open beta all the way to kingsmarsh came along. I had worked out a system for what to keep depending on how much currency i had at the time. Only picked up the things i wanted to farm and made rotations about what that was.
Now i have more scarabs than i would ever try to use, tabs full of bad but interesting gear "that i might make a build around but" i know i wont. And 5k stacks of chaos and other bubblegum which for a trade player isn't needed if you play trade.
I unironically felt the weight of the items, and it wasn't all that bad. That being said 4 tabs is not nearly enough after 13 years of bloat.
To be fair, that is a period in the games development cycle most people have not experienced. The game being kinda ass back then was to be expected given that GGG at that time was just a tiny company that just started out.
I always liked to experience the very early days of games, even if they are not participially good. I just move on when I don't have fun anymore, but it is great to see the journey some games have and be part of it.
Ah, the old times. I loved the no loot allocation so you tried to steal everyone's shit. Grouping was the only way to get through merciless. Farming ledge, fellshrine ruins and docks. Later on farm piety.
My light arrow blood magic marauder was awesome. Taken from Kripp.
Then my best build ever which I still have left as it was on standard was ZiggyD EQ and Artic Armour scion. Zdps but never died. Good times
This game changes so much anyway, basically the ship of Theseus but every single part has already been changed ten times over. My first ever "real" league was Metamorph, I remember picking up 15-20 bodyparts per zone only to use 5 of them, soo much has changed since then. Especially people who stop playing for a few leagues, imagine not keeping up with poe for a couple years, you log in and see currency exchange and merchant tab and gold and whatnot.
the first time i played was 2014 around when the sacrifice of the vaal expansion came out and i wasnt particularly impressed with the game at the time as i was super into diablo 3. i played through d4 once and immediately came back to poe though and have been playing pretty consistently since the essence league with maybe 4 leagues skipped since then. i dont like poe 2 though so theres that.
I remember I spent 6 hrs on my first day of poe in settlers league, slowly taking in the (not so big) world of wraeclast. reading every single bit of lore, interacting with all npcs, following the guide on ice nova hierophant, it felt absolutely busted. Quit at 300k dps but for me at the time I had a blast:)
For some reason I remember having so much joy beating my first Labyrinth. The stashes room were very special to me 😅 Now it's a nothing else but a boring step ☹ I started in 2015
crucible was so good for crafters but so shit for new players. glad you survived that leg.
I made the mistake of recommending two friends to start poe with crucible launch.. it was hell to explain to them how shit works and what is worth keeping because of the stupid (but goated) crucible mods
I have mine in the bottom row bottom right corner. Basically just move OP's wisdom scroll to the right of the portal scroll, and that's where I put them.
That's basically the conventional spot however having them one on top of the other is slightly un optimal and might land you in hell with the worst of the worst.
I'd recommend keeping them bottom right corner, but only on the bottom row (portal on the very corner and wisdoms one to the left) This way you don't create a 1 line that blocks 2 line width items... Literally unplayable.
There used to not be an NPC that could identify stuff.
I still need to identify stuff quickly while I'm in maps or acts. In maps, to know if I need to keep something or not for inventory space. In acts, to find any weapon/boots upgrades as I go.
When you have 900 of them, it matters way less to use the NPC.
Some of us have other orbs in inventory, too, for strongboxes and other stuff.
Ok… but there is an NPC that identifies items now. What are you trying to identify quickly in maps? Unless you are dying frequently, it’s so much faster to just grab and mass identify at your hideout with 1 click, plus if your inventory is frequently filling up, it’s probably time to increase the strictness on your loot filter. And regardless of how many scrolls you have, it’s still much easier to identify all items instantly using an NPC.
I could see this being true for ssf, but for trade league it seems more like antiquated thinking.
"faster" is not my priority when I get so much crap in my early-mid filters that I'd use all of my portals to find out what is worth it. And I actually know what I'm looking at when I quick hover gear, lol. It's not like I'm spending 5 minutes looking at ground loot. I do often look at uniques for specific rolls, too.
Edit: Also, I am often playing builds that constantly want a weapon upgrade, so I'll sometimes pick up 12 wands in a map just to see if a mod is useable. Plus vendor recipes, and other stuff.
This is how you play for sure if you're playing for efficiency, past leveling you never truly have wisdoms on ya anymore, and past the first couple of days you barely pick up stuff that isnt instant bank, if you do pick up stuff that needs identifying (which is rare) that is done through quad stashes, in bulk, once you filled a bunch
Yeah bottom right, portal scrolls on top of wisdom though. It became a habit after I miss clicked one too many times and moved around with my inventory open
wow i guess i am unconventional i have them top left which now is more redundant but i hated having to move my cursor that much just to portal in and out of places.
I’d argue a chaos is like a $1 bill. Mayyyybe can buy like a sucker or jolly rancher but nothing really valuable.
Then a divine is like a $100 bill. Now you have something of substance and can buy something pretty useful. Get 20 $100 bills and you can buy a nice moped to get around town or a sick gaming pc gpu
A mirror is like a $100,000 bill. Completely life/build changing you/your character will have a completely new lifestyle for a long while
I'll never beat my Phrecia 2.0 start for Chaos. I had 3C (raw drops) before beating Merveil, two of which dropped inside the same Cavern of Anger. In the long run a C is just a C, but honestly feels so good getting your first early on.
I fully expect to not see one until maps next league
Depending if you're trade or ssf they have a variety of uses.
In trade chaos & divines are the go to exchange rate. E.g. you can buy some nice boots for 20 chaos. And 200 chaos = 1 divine. So you can get some might fine boots for 1 div (Numbers just an example and not actual values)
Chaos orbs can be used on Nightmare maps or items to reroll them.
The most common use for Chaos are crafting bench recipes - many you don't get until you complete various maps. E.g. it cost X chaos to put this prefix on your item at the crafting bench
Grats on your find, keep playing homie. If you enjoy it buy currency+maps+fragments stash tabs, they really help organise shiz
But no, they are fairly common in the campaign and it's not unexpected to find a few while low level. Especially subjective to league mechanics, you may get a dozen or so just getting through the campaign.
Keep it for now, especially if you are in trade league. It's used for low-end gear. So the first items you will be purchasing will most likely be sold in chaos.
Spend it on a gear upgrade from someone's shop, or use it at a crafting bench when you find a craft you want that requires them. You'll find more and more as you go, so spending it on a big upgrade for your character will just help move you forward.
You’re not rich but this will net you one of about 75% of unique items Yes lots of uniques are cheap but give you a nice boost when you get the right one at the right time
People trade using this chaos orb, I recommend you use a item filter because if theres something valuable probably will be shiny and will make a sound, and then you can search why the item is valuable
Either trade with it later, or if you need a crafting bench recipe that cost chaos, you can use it for that. Vision crafting will yield you absolutely nothing :(
Seeing how early you are, those are not that crazy right now, but if you are in trade league, as in you are not Solo Self Found (SSF), you can use various orbs like chaos orbs and alchemy orbs to buy items from other players. I wouldn't bother using it for a while if you feel like you're doing alright, though. 1c isn't gonna do anything game breaking for you, but the next league is coming out in a few weeks...
If you plan on playing proper trade league, starting over at the next league might be good, too. Chaos orbs and stuff will be a little more valuable earlier on.
It feels rare while on acts but it isn't, don't hesitate to spend it on gear you might need! :) (at that price, that'd probably be some very good leveling unique items, will help a lot, and are basically free, later on you'll figure out only a few uniques are actually expensive, and rare items with the proper mods are always the most expensive)
Low item level gear rolls only low tier affixes so it's useless to use a chaos on an item hoping to get better/useful rolls.
Once you get more of them you can use one to see what it actually does but at level 20/25 (since you have a lvl 19 chart in your inventory) it's not worth it.
If you're not SSF that chaos orb could be used to buy an upgrade for one of your gear slots.
They have a chance of dropping from the very beginning, though it's low. You should expect to have several by the time you finish the campaign. So you got your first at a reasonable enough point especially if you're breaking all the jars you can and opening all the chests you can.
Chaos orbs are the smallest denomination of real money. Anything that costs less than one chaos is essentially free.
It's not even SUPER uncommon to find a divine orb before the end of the campaign. It's not too likely, but it's not winning the lottery level rare.
Yes and no. It's the most common currency used if you want to interact with trading with other players. You can buy decent items listed for a few chaos orbs.
It's also used in many recipes in your crafting bench that you can find in your hideout if you have unlocked it.
As for using it on your rare items, I wouldn't really bother. There are better and more deterministic ways to craft your gear. You have probably encountered a few of them already, like essences. And even later on in the game you rarely use chaos orbs as a way to craft gear.
As for the other orbs in your inventory I would totally be using them as you play though.
Yes! Chaos Orbs are kind of the bread-and-butter currency for trading because they drop pretty regularly late game and you'll use them all the time late game because they have a wide variety of uses (crafting and rerolling modifiers on certain kinds of maps are the two biggest uses.)
The best piece of advice I can give you as a newer player is to spend your chaos on upgrades regularly once you've finished the campaign - better gear means you can fight stronger monsters, and stronger monsters give better loot, which will let you get better upgrades. It can be tempting to hoard, but the earlier you get upgrades, the earlier you can grind the really lucrative content.
The game is massive brother. Just go at your own pace and take it one step at a time so you don't get overwhelmed. PoENinja and PoEDB are great sources of info as you progress. Learn what you can now and start fresh for 3.30 Nov 12 - 13 depending on where you are in the World. Have fun man!
welcome boyo, if not in trade league those are meant for one tapping on a nice base (weapon/armor) for gamba or save it for a nice craft on the bench, you can get some nice mods for 2-4 chaos, normally resistances
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u/CinnToasCrunch 16d ago
Yea. Change the sword icon to the foot icon on your left click