Guide:Diablo Player's Guide to Path of Exile

D3 to PoE

Guide compiled by Phlexonance

I assume you've played a lot of D3 and D2, so here's a quick and dirty guide that should show you the main differences and special things about PoE and get you playing in no time!

Paymodel

Game is in closed beta. You can get a beta key for 10$. Open beta is supposed to start sometimes this year (September 2012 maybe). After release, it's going to be free to play. Characters and items from open beta will remain into the release!

This game is, for all concerned, a “Free to Play” game (i.e. there is a store with micro transactions available). Do not worry about any “Pay2Win” misconceptions though, as the developers have stated that the items available in the store are cosmetic and you can have a “complete, fulfilling gaming experience without spending a penny”.

Active Skills

The skills in PoE aren't fixed for the class you play, but come in the form of gems which you socket into items. You'll mainly get gems as quest rewards early on and they also drop as loot. There are (red, green, blue) = (str, dex, int) skill gems.

Gems can level up, they get 10% of your combat XP (even if you don't get any because you outlevel the enemies). They have level- and attribute-requirements for leveling up (hence the colors). The leveling up of gems is optional, you may want to keep one down to have its mana cost low.

You can use any gem in any class.

There are currently something like 75 Skill Gems. There are also Support Gems which alter the behaviour of the active skill gems if you put them into linked sockets (some sockets have links).

Examples: Put the Life Gain on Hit support gem next to a linked Cleave gem you'll regain life for every enemy hit by Cleave.

Combine Detonate Dead (active) with Totem (support) to have a totem which casts the spell for you so you can focus on other things.

Ice Spear (active) with Greater Multiple Projectiles (support) with Elemental Proliferation (support) to fire multiple ice projectiles which freeze enemies and have the freeze effect jump over to nearby foes.

The maximum number of possible linked sockets is 6 and it's hard to come by such an item. Most support gems raise the mana cost of the active skill.

For future reference: some big passive skills are also available as support gems if you want their effect for only some of your skills.

Classes

The classes in PoE are very liquid.

The only differences are: how your hero looks, what his starting attributes are and his position in the passive skill tree (more on that next up).

For now:

• INT - Witch
• STR - Marauder
• DEX - Ranger
• STR/INT - Templar
• DEX/INT - Shadow
• STR/DEX - Duelist

Each level up gives a passive skill point, with some quests also rewarding a passive skill point. Maxlvl is 100, but you can get a maximum of 111 Passive skill points. More on that under the Passive Skills section.

Passive Skills

Check out the passive skill tree

I know, I know, it seems ridiculously huge at first sight, but it gets familiar quickly.

The witch's starting position is to the north, the marauder’s to the south west and the templar’s, you guessed it, in between.

Actually fairly straightforward, just try it out, go ahead and skill a Marauder before you continue reading.

You'll notice that there are small thematic groups of passives with pure stats as ways between them. More significant boosts are the larger circles. You'll notice the very large circles at the edge of the skill tree, e.g. Resolute Technique which makes all of your swings hit (there's normally hitchance like in D2) for the cost of you never critting anymore. They are designed to vastly change the way your character plays.

You'll get a few respec points from quests which each allow you to remove a single skill point, so you can try out big nodes and make little mistakes, but still have to plan and pay attention. It's possible to get respec points from items but they are rare and it's probably faster to level a new char. So there are no full respecs.

Here's how I'd skill my Marauder

Here are some really cool and extreme builds:

• Funky Tank
• Extreme Witch

Resource management

There are flasks which are refillable potions which you can drink from a couple of times before they are empty. The come in all colors and sizes and have their own affixes (e.g. double armor while the flask fills you up). They refill when you kill enemies.

There's also regular mana and life regeneration, life on hit, life on kill, life leech, mana leech etc.

Currency Items

There's no gold in PoE. You buy items from NPCs by trading for e.g. a Scroll of Wisdom (identify scroll).

You can vendor white items for different amounts of scroll fragments (5 make a scroll). You can vendor unidentified blue items for fragments of Orbs of Transmutation which make a white item blue (20 make an orb) and you can vendor identified blue items for fragments of Orb of Alteration which rerolls a blue item's affixes!

All currency items drop as loot.

There are also: Orb of Augmentation, adds another affix in case it doesn't have max; Orb of Chance, white to random (blue,yellow,unique); Chromatic Orb*, change color of sockets; Jeweler's Orb, change number of sockets and many, many more! You get the drift, you can reroll almost anything on an item.

The best weapons I've been able to get my hands on are made that way: find high base quality type white weapon, heighten quality to the max of +20% with Blacksmith's Whetstone, make rare with Orb of Alchemy, BAM! high dps weapon.

Orbs of Alchemy are rare and so are Blacksmith's Whetstones, but it's doable and you don't have to rely on RNG (Random Number Generator) as much as in D3.

Stuns

Stuns are handled differently from other ARPGs. They depend on the damage dealt compared to the recipients total life pool. Spells have critical effects, i.e. an ice spell CCs you, a fire spell DoTs you and a lightning spell debuffs you.

When you play you’ll notice that your attacks interrupt enemies, that’s actually considered a stun; the default duration is 350 ms.

Check out the Stun page about this.

Attributes and Stats

You only gain attribute points from passives and items, not from leveling up per se. Each additional 10 attribute points give:

10 STR = +5 HP, +2% Melee Physical Dmg (or even ranged physical with a passive)

10 INT = +5 Mana, +2% Energy Shield

10 DEX = +20 Accuracy, +2% Evasion

The defensive stats are Armour (notice british spelling, important if you search it in wikis) which reduces physical damage (like D3 but only for physical); Evasion which lets you dodge attacks (like Armor behaved in D2); Elemental Resistances which have one cap at 75% (max which you can achieve with items+passives+quest rewards) and another at 90% with flasks and other temporary effects.

Accuracy calculates against the enemies’ Evasion rating to calculate your hitchance, just like in D2.

Chest armour items reduce your movement speed (visible in the character sheet).

Game modes and endgame content

There are currently 2 acts with 4 difficulty types (Normal, Cruel, Ruthless and Merciless) in the beta and a 3rd act is coming soon (when it does, the difficulty type Merciless will be removed).

Whenever you create a new character, you specify what League you want them to join, which is essentially the game type. (Default and Hardcore) Characters can be moved between leagues (usually towards the Default league) when certain events happen. Usually at the end of a ladder race/reset, characters are moved back to Default so they can keep being played after the event. There are prizes for events, usually ingame currency.

There are also map items (drop as loot) which open a high level map with rare mobs. You can even make them harder with currency items.

PvP is coming in the next patch. There will be dueling as well as tournaments.

Hotkeys and GUI tips

Shift+click to move an item into the selling window.

Ctrl+click to post an item into chat. (Open chat window by pressing enter to mouse over linked items).

Get a minimap in the options menu. (map transparency adjustable)

Shift+enter or a “#” for global chat.

Ctrl+enter for a whisper reply.

A “%” for party chat.

An “@” followed by a character name for whisper.

You can hide global chat by an option box on the top left of the chat window.

/itemlevel will show the item level of the item you’re holding in your mouse pointer

/online will show how many people are globally online in both regions and on all leagues

Holding Control and clicking on an instance will give you the option to reset the zone.