1721

The second thing is that all you spell users out there should consider picking up +1 to level of element skills wands/scepter:

[ul]
[li]Magic (blue) wand or scepter[/li]> [li]Ruby ring (+1 fire) OR Topaz (+1 lightning) OR Sapphire (+1 cold)[/li]> [li]1x orb of alteration[/li]> [/ul]

Yields the wand or scepter with +1 to level of skill gems of that type. For casters, gem level is a more significant portion of their damage than say melee or ranged gem users. This is a great way to give yourself a nice leveling boost with say flame totem, and then later with whatever you are planning on using as your main skill.

Wow, nice recipe. But it would be useless if the wand didn’t also have the right colored sockets to take advantage of the right skill types. Are the sockets and links from the wand used in the recipe retained after selling to the vendor?

1722

Not necessarily, but if it doesn’t that’s what chromatic orbs are for. Collect and sell RGB linked items while you play. Use Chromes to get 3-4L items where they need to be.

Chroming items is dependent on the base type, and number of sockets. For a 3-socket item, it’s pretty easy to get what you need. Item type really comes into play with armors. Straight Armor/Evade/Energy Shield items favor blue over other colors. In a 4L, it can be hard to roll a “pure” defensive item as 2xOff color, 1x off color, 1x base color. E.g. armor gloves as BBGR. Hard is a relative thing; there’s always the possibility you’ll do it in one roll. I went through dozens of chromes early in league trying to roll an “off color” combo on a 4L. . . probably the unluckiest streak I’ve personally observed.

So your “let me craft a leveling wand” ideal currency order is:

  1. Vendor any old magic wand to get +1 ele gems to taste.
  2. Jewel it up to 3 sockets (should be very cheap).
  3. Link it with fuses (should be very cheap).
  4. Chrome it to taste (might cost more chromes than it did to do #2 and #3. But chromes are a more common currency).

Vendor recipies are one of the few things that does not preserve sockets/links/colors.

1723

Woah. What is step 2 there peacedog? I didn’t know you could increase number of sockets.

1724

All currency can be used to change an item somehow. They are, in sort of roughly tiered:

  1. Scrolls
  2. Transmutation Orb - turn white item magical (adds 1 or 2 affixes, randomly).
    Augmentatoon orb - add a random affix to a magic item, giving it it’s max of 2. Cannot be used if an item has 2 affixes.
    Alteration orb - reroll a blue item. Can go from 2 -> 1 affixes, or 1-> 2.

Affixes have tiers. The minimum health roll, for example, is 3-9 or something. The max is 81-100, for some types of items. The tier you can roll is capped by the item level of the item. So higher ilevel items = better potential. But you can roll shit tiers e4ven on high level items.

  1. Chromatic orb - reroll socket colors.

  2. Jewelers Orb - reroll # of sockets on item.

  3. Chance orb - turns a white item into a “random rarity”. This can be magic (blue), rare (yellow), or unique. In descending order of probability. The only way you can get uniques is when chancing the base item a unique is. E.g. Occultists robes can turn into 1 of 2 unique chest pieces. One of this is GG endgame tier. Also rare to get that via chance :P

  4. Fusing Orb - reroll # of links on an item.

Alchemy Orb - turns a white item into a rare item. The rare item will have 3-6 affixes, randomly, and the # of affixes is “rerolled” when applied. So you can go from 6 to 5 or 4 or 3. And vice versa. Note that items can have at most 3 prefixes and 3 suffixes.

  1. Chaos orb -rerolls all affixes on a rare item. Can change the tiers of affixes.
    Blessed orb - rerolls the implici mod of an item only.

  2. Regal orb - Turns a magic item to rare by adding an affix at random. Existing affixes are unchanged.

  3. Divine Orb - rerolls the values of all affixes on an item. Can re-tier affixes. The type of modifier is unchanged. So if you have the item with perfect affixes (say a 2h axe with +% physical damage, attack speed, + flat physical damage, leech, and shit I don’t know what you would want for physical. Let’s say added lightning damage and added cold damage, for gigles), you can use divine orbs to reroll the values but keep those mods. Of course, you can roll across any tier, so it’s only somewhat less hectic than using a chaos to reroll a rare. Which you should not be doing.

  4. Exalted orbs - adds an affix to a rare item, to a max of 6. This is a way to upgrade “incomplete” rarities.

  5. Mirror of Kalandra - makes a copy of an item.

I’ve listed these in rough order of rarity. You get Trans and alt shards by vendoring magic/rare/unique items. Also alch shards, but this is very rare. There are other important orbs (one each for adding quality to weapons, armor, flasks, and maps scouring removes non locked master crafted affixes from an item, regret give you a passive respec point), but never mind.

If you wanted to start with a horde of say Alts or Trans and work up to Jewelers or Fusings, you wouldn’t go through each successive currency exactly. It’s sort of weird. You shouldn’t be trading up for currnecy this way until you have high level masters(who each sell discount currencies).

Trading on the player market revolves around Chaos and Ex. A piece of gear you get for 1 chaos is frequently good enough to use in high level maps assuming you have other, stronger gear in some parts. Sometimes people chard alchs or fusings for items, and these usually trade in the 2:1 Alch/Fuse : chaos ratio range. Regals usually trade for chaos 1:2. As I mentioned earlier right now the Chaos:Regal ratio has gone bananas.

Chaos are used at high level to reroll ambush strong boxes (certain ones), reroll rare maps, and pay for master crafted map mods at Zana (Zana can run any map with a special mod added for a cost of chaos. it gets expensive but can be worth it. Most previous challenge league types are available this way. E.g. Beyond has enemies appear from another dimension as you slaughter regular monsters in a map. They are much tougher, but the drop potential is good). Oh, and pay for high level master crafting stuff. Nothing in master crafting costs more than chaos.

Your jeweled orb count will infalte as you go up in levels once 6-socket items start dropping. These vendor for 7 Jewlers. And you should be doing that (rolling a 6-link item is hella hard, btw) in most cases (for white items. If it’s blue or yellow you need to stop and think). Chaos are gained starting level 60 by vendoring the chaos recipe, but do drop before them. The chaos recipe turns to the regal recipe with ilevel75 items.

Fusings are not common, so one thing people have to do is farm up/trade up and then trade for fusings to make 5l and 6l items if they don’t trade for such items outright.

1725

Those are some great posts with a ton of info peacedog! Thanks for putting them all together. I learned most of that stuff the hard way over a whole lot of trial and error, good for the newer players to be able to avoid a lot of that!

Another thing newer players might want to check out if you’re new is Noperative’s Beginner Guide. It has a lot of generally useful tips that can save you some grief.

Of course, you might like learning the hard way. If so, carry on. :)

1726

Poe is one of those games that if you try to give anyone a sizeable amount of information up front it could turn them from the game. But once people start playing that information goes from noise to sweet, sweet nectar.

This is also probably a good time to ask new players:

  1. Are you using a loot filter?
  2. Is your answer “what is a loot filter”?

We know some people are but once threads like this get flowing, it becomes helpful to go back over important topics.

Who doesn’t learn it the hard way? It wasn’t until I copied your summoner build waaaaaay back in I think it was Nemesis (I can’t even remember what the HC league was at the time) that I finally decided “I need to start learning currency”. Iv’e never done any serious crafting (who among us can afford to?) but it was clear to me that I was missing out on things in game because builds seemed to peter out and I wasn’t sure how to go about extending their life-times (so to speak).

Between your advice and ZiggyD I managed to cobble together enough of an idea of what to do to start forming massive future brain dumps I could share with unsuspecting and well meaning “Gosh, I would like to try Path of Exile” types. And then I played a shitload more of the game and sponged up what I could.

1727

Speaking of ZiggyD and loot filters, here’s a 3 minute youtube video by ZiggyD on how to set up a loot filter. I don’t use his, though. I use the NeverSinkloot filter and find it useful.

Not quite loot filter specific but other youtube/twitch personalities I find interesting and/or fun to follow (in addition to ZiggyD) are Hegemony, LiftingNerdBro, and Ghazzy.

After a brief foray with a dual-totem Witch I’ve gone back to an Incinerate character (dunno, for some reason I’m finding incinerate way too fun right now). I’m trying a real tanky one and so far so good. One thing you’ll find, though, Here’s my tip for playing Incinerate for maximum fun: Wombat, is that when you first get Incinerate (at level 12) you’ll run out of mana in about 5 seconds when channeling the spell (I always link it with either Added Lightning Damage or Lesser Multiple Projectiles right off the bat, which also exacerbates the problem). There are two ways to fix the mana problem: increase your mana regeneration (which an Incinerate build might be doing, especially if you started as Templar and took all those juicy regen nodes at the start) and/or lower the cost of the spell (through passive skills or gear). The first thing I do after getting Incinerate is pick up a Clarity gem and run the aura, which increases mana regeneration. That helps, but not enough. As a result, from the time I get Incinerate (usually around 13.5 or so) until 20 I typically just chug mana potions nonstop. This can be a bit frustrating, and as a result, I usually run a flame totem at the same time to take some of the heat off me. However, at 19 or 20 it all changes. At 19/20 you can equip an Elreon ring or amulet. Elreon is the Loremaster dude you find (I think) in the Act 1 town. He’s the dude who gives you the protect/destroy the relic missions out in the wild. DO THOSE MISSIONS! He sells rings and/or necklaces that reduce the cost of spells. I equip a “-7 mana cost to skills” ring and all of a sudden my Incinerate guy can fire it off literally forever. I usually buy the first 4 or 5 Elreon rings/necklaces he offers and stash them just to have a bunch from which to choose when I’m making a new character.

1728

I ought to try those Eleron rings sometime. I’m usually too obsessed with resists but I could take a few and see if I get lucky when making them rare.
Meanwhile my 2H sweep marauder made it to merciless tempest, where he how has -40 chaos resists and only 52% fire. On the plus side he has 70% physical damage resist, and 90% when granite flask is up. But he used a lot of portal scrolls getting past cruel Malachai. My lightning-based templar is in cruel A4, much less tanky but his lightning storm totem means he can do a lot of damage in boss fights while running around avoiding damage.

1729

Your experience tracks with mine. I’m in Act II and doing pretty much what you say–linked Incinerate with Added Lightning, tossing a Flame Totem (also lightning linked), occasionally popping the Firestorm for clearing out annoying apes and whatnot, and using the Incinerator for finishing up the bosses or tougher blues. Clarity is running all the time. I have a necklace with -5 mana cost that was in my stash that helps, and Elreon is in my hideout somewhere I think. I already use the three crafting things I have there to add resistances and life and mana and stuff to crappy rares.

So far, I find the Incinerate Templar quite fun, but I don’t expect the real tests to come until late III/IV.

1730

I followed your discussion about loot filters a little bit once you explained that they’re legal mods allowed by the developer. But I’m skeptical that they can fit my needs.

I’m usually dead within the first 35 levels, and here’s what I’m looking for in loot usually:

  1. Something white, so I can sell it and get partial identify scroll.
  2. Something thin, so it only takes up limited room in my inventory, so that I can take more items back on each run.
  3. Something with the right colored linked sockets for each character, depending on the type of skills that I’m looking to combine at that moment.
  4. Something blue that I won’t use with any character, so that I don’t have to identify before selling, so I can get an alteration orb.
  5. Something blue that I can potentially use that I can identify to use or sell to get the better than alteration orb, the one that enhances blues with another property.
  6. Something yellow.
  7. Any belt for the stash.
  8. Any ring for the stash.
  9. Any orb for the stash.

Those last few seem easy, but can a loot filter really get the first three priority items? Those seem the most important to me. I’m always out of wisdom scrolls. Constantly. I just need to pick up more whites, but they’re a pain in the ass to pick up and take back to town. So I tend to try take really small whites back if I can.

1731

One filter to rule them all has most of what you need - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1259059 . However it only highlights the interesting white items (those that can be chanced into uniques and those used for crafting), as they’re generally worthless otherwise. It’s certainly faster if you just stick to picking up identify scrolls rather than selling items for scrolls.

While using filters you can also at any time hit the highlight key and it will display all the items on the ground, including the ones that were filtered out.

1732

Rock8man, I used to think of loot similarly. To be real honest, though, I started enjoying the game a hell of a lot more once I made the following rules for myself:

  1. Blues? Nah. Only if it has a decent chance of being an upgrade for the character I’m currently playing, which means “basically never” after level 15 or so, weapons excluded.
  2. Whites? Hahaha, no. Only if they are reasonably craftable (or chromatic, or 6-socket [I realize you don’t see 6-sockets if you’re not making it much past 35]).
  3. Rares are generally grist for the mill. Seriously, 90% of them are garbage and should be vendored. The time and attention you’re spending on them should be spent murdering more things.
1733

I would agree with you guys if there was some other way of identifying things, like a Decard Cain, but there isn’t. There just aren’t enough identify scrolls that drop in the game on their own. Not anymore. Back in the early days when I played in the beta, I had identify scrolls coming out of my ears. But in the current game, I usually have to decide, should I identify the unique belt, or identify the new magical greater mana potion I just found with my last scroll? Ok, time to go pick up five useless whites so that I can now identify the other item.

This is especially turning out to be the case for my witch. With the melee or bow weapon characters, I could at least ignore previous base items, so if it’s a blue axe that is a worse base item than the one I’m using, no need to identify it. I can ignore it, or pick it up and sell it if I have the space. But with Witches, I can’t even do that. Several times now, I’ve found the previous kind of wand or shield from the one I’m using that I identified, and it had better affixes than the one I was currently using. That’s because the affixes matter more to the Witch than the base type. So what if that wand doesn’t do as much physical damage? This isn’t my wand witch, all she cares about are the affixes on the wand, not the physical damage base.

1734

Amount of identify scrolls is only an issue very early on, maybe up to level 10 or so. After that you’ll be swimming in them. You can also sell your Portal scrolls to a vendor and get ID scrolls in return.

Another thing - identifying blues is pointless, chances of finding an upgrade are slim to none, and even if you found a REALLY good upgrade at your level, something like 80% more spellpower - which is impossible to find at low levels - it would scale your spell damage from something like 5-10 to 9-18. So not exactly gamebreaking ;). If you stick to picking up rares and only identifying and selling those without even touching blues you’ll end up with more currency in the long run because you’ll waste less time selling nearly worthless blues and whites.

1735

I find it takes longer than that, if you don’t transfer anything from higher level characters. Usually well into Act 2 before I have more Wisdom scrolls than I need to ID the rares I pick up. And the “random” in RNG for drops does kick in every once in a while and cause me to run out even then. I usually have to sell off some Portal scrolls at least a few times. Which is what the stash is for…I usually save a couple of stacks of every type of currency, including both types of scrolls, any time the RNG has been good to me (rather than upgrading them to higher currency) so I have them for new characters later. There’s generally some in the guild stash, too, if you need them.

1736

I used to obsess about the crap mobs dropped. I am not going to install a loot filter because for the past several weeks of playing I have ignored everything that isn’t 1) a chromatic link turn in, 2) yellow (to be vendored), 3) a white with excellent and numerous links (not very common to find), or 4) a unique. Everything else I just leave on the ground anyhow. And still, I fill up with crap yellows. I routinely now go through the stash and cash out anything with only one socket, say, as in most cases one socket will not cut it.

Much less stress than originally, when I hoovered everything.

1737

But it sounds like you’re exactly the target demographic for the loot filters! It removes all the junk and clutter from your screen that you’re just going to ignore anyway.

1738

Exactly this, lol. Loot filter is one of those things that makes you wonder how you were able to play at all before you started using it.

1739

Yep, I installed the one filter to rule them all and it seems to pretty much do what I want. Wish I had done this earlier.

1740

Just tried OFTRTA in place of whatever other one I was using (was another linked off the subreddit). While I didn’t hate the other one, and OFTRTA will require a little tweaking, overall I find it much superior.