User:Techhead7890
Notes
- Act 1 centres around naval and explorational themes. The Karui raiders, and their history.
- Phrecia appears to be the forest of Act 2. Act 2 primarily ends up concerning the Vaal archaeology. This is the sort of ancient history of thaumaturgy.
- It appears that the Old Empire and Eternal Empire are one and the same. Act 3 displays some of the Empire statues shown on currency. Act 3 shows the effects of thaumaturgy in the Empire that Sarn was once capital of; and the revolt, with necromancy in visceral fashion. Despite the sunny Greco-Roman architecture, it also gets surprisingly rainy.
- Highgate was part of the endgame for many (real time) years and over time, has grown to many more NPCs than previous towns.
mechanics
- item sockets and gems are difficult to categorise, but follow thèmes like MTG. Key ones might be melee/impact, projectile/speed, and caster
- Higher item level grants more sockets. However it is only when more links end up dropping that they end up better than the same number of raw sockets. (example: a 4 socket item with a 3-link is not much better than a 3 socket 3-link item).
- it's hard to get a good socket layout without any particular gem in mind, except that more links are usually better.
- (nb: often skill is omitted to avoid confusion with the passive skill tree; perhaps we should petition GGG to rename gems to ability gems or something)
- Continuing on loot/pickups: Rares are the primary way to get
Alteration ShardsAlteration ShardStack Size: 20A stack of 20 shards becomes an Orb of Alteration.
for currency via 
ScrollScroll of WisdomStack Size: 40Identifies an itemRight click this item then left click an unidentified item to apply it.
-identified modifiers, and Alts are used as a Vendor#Prices currency. Basically all magic items are dumpable because of their low amounts of modifiers (apart from maybe magic boots for movespeed); these tend to stay unid and vendored for Transmutation Shards (handbags)?
- Alterations kinda look like fat octopi, whereas Transmutations look like thin squids.
- Advanced currency/rarity management through magic rarity: use Transmutation to go up from normal, Augmentation to double up, Alterations to redo, and Regal to go to Rare? Chance Orb for Uniques ("Diablo Legendaries").
- Weapon restrictions: some can't be used with each other or certain skills. If in doubt, stick with a pair from your class. Specific examples: don't try and wield wands with anything else. Mauls can't be used with duelist's quest-given abilities. Sceptres can be dualwielded with each other or used with a shield, but nothing else.
- Skill trees: sometimes you can save points by picking fork points as late as possible. Some "travel" (stat) nodes are obligatory because they are entrances or exits to clusters, be sure not to count these mandatory spends.
Duelist
- Bladestorm is a little more focused than cyclone, but cyclone seems to be recommended for beginners and duelists and has a longer history. (bstorm was added in 3.7, mentions POEVault. Bstorm has those earmarks of advanced/niche benefits with its stance interactions, which are complex in themselves.)
- TODO: Bergerbrush>New Players Guide>Leveling Guide>Skills for Leveling Act 1-10>Auras recommends B&S stance: Maim Support. He explains:
"Also when you use Blood and Sand & or Flesh and Stone. You can alternate between Blood and Sand Stance. I suggest Sand Stance for clearing packs of mobs and Blood Stance for Single Target/Bosses." - Dex simply says:
"You can swap back and forth between blood and sand stance as you want, just keep in mind that blood=DPS and sand=defense. Until you are comfortable with the build, just play in sand stance." (own notes: for F&S, some bosses may involve ranged adds/mobs, or ranged boss abilities, which would support his idea a bit. Sand stance also grants range via B&S.) - You do need to cast the stances to reserve mana and gain those aura benefits, even if a "default stance" is specified on some of those 3.7 skills