How to start with Path of Exile 2 – Beginner guide with tips and tricks to survive your exile

Path of Exile 2 is not a typical hack-and-slash aRPG, owing to its many overlapping systems. Certainly, you can play it that way and slowly make progress, but understanding everything under the hood will make for a much smoother experience. Washed upon the shores of Wraeclast once again, you will slowly begin your journey from barely surviving and without anything and aim to reach near-godhood. We have a few tips to help you along the way.

1. Don’t rush at the start!

When you just start out in Path of Exile 2, take everything slowly. Unlike games like Diablo 4, you won’t be able to simply rush into a horde of enemies and nuke them. PoE2 is more methodical and picking your fights and angles will keep you safe and alive. If you’re playing a melee class like Warrior or Monk, plan out how you’ll dash in and out of the fight. A common tactic can be to step in, hit, step back two steps, one in, hit, and so on. This will take you through the first few areas until you amass a bit of power to take on more enemies at once with ease.

2. Passive skill tree can be overwhelming – plan out your route

The first time you ding and your screen flashes, you’ll get a passive skill point to allocate. Once you open up the skill tree (P by default), you may be overwhelmed by the branching choices. Don’t panic! You can, and likely will, make mistakes, but these skills can be refunded later on with gold. Each class begins from the middle, but uses different two “entry points”, based on their primary attributes. The small circles are minor passives, but the ones you should be looking at are the bigger ones, called “notables”. These can affect your build in a big way, so to begin with, check out some of them and make a plan on how to get there. There are also gold-framed large circles. These are “keystone passives”. They often come with a big upgrade at the cost of a big drawback. If you’re just starting out in PoE2, it might be a good idea to skip them for now, until you’re more familiar with the game.

3. Itemization is key – craft and upgrade your gear

A large portion of your character’s power comes from their gear. You’ll get plenty of items while killing monsters, but not all of them are useful. But you can make them useful through crafting. Affixes – the mods on magic and higher gear – are among the most important aspects of an item’s power. While at the beginning you’ll pick anything to replace and put on, very soon you’ll have to pick and choose based on item mods. For example, check the type of damage your skills deal – let’s say Physical, then choose an item with an “additional Physical damage” mod, over one that increases Chaos damage. There are dozens of possible affixes though, so finding upgrades can be difficult. That’s where crafting comes in. It’s a huge system, and we have provided a separate guide to teach you the basics.

✓ Save good crafting bases

On the note of finding items – in most games, you’d quickly discard “grey” Normal items. That isn’t the case in PoE2. A good base item is the perfect blueprint to use to craft a decent upgrade. For example, a nice Evasion armour piece is useful if you play a Ranger. Save it in your stash, so you can craft it later. If it gets upgraded by a better base, you can just sell it anyway.

4. There are no links, and sockets work differently

This one’s for the players who have dabbled in the original Path of Exile. You don’t socket your Skill Gems into your armour and weapons anymore. Also, there are no links that you have to worry about. That system has been replaced with a dedicated Skill Gem menu, opened by pressing G by default. Your Support gems go into that menu as well. The sockets on your gear are now used to put in Runes and Soul Cores. They provide boosts to your stats and other affixes, just note that you can’t remove them once socketed – so plan accordingly.

5. Upgrade and add Supports to your Skill Gems

You may feel that your skills become weaker over time as you play through the game. That’s because their power level remains the same, so you have to upgrade them. You can use the same currency used to make new gems to upgrade the existing ones. It only has to be of a higher level than what your skill is currently at. Similarly, adding Support Gems to your skills will change them in different ways. You can hover over a Support Gem to see which of your skills it can affect. Stacking Supports will make your skills more potent, so make sure to prioritize the ones that you use the most.

6. Use Ailments and combos for maximum damage

While bashing your enemies with hits and spells can be effective enough, it’s better to use your skills in conjunction to take them down faster. Ailments are a great tool to diversify your damage. Fire, Poison, and Bleed will apply a DoT effect to whittle them down, while Shock can stack extra damage. Cold can Freeze enemies in place, which is just as effective as Stunning them. Some skills provide extra combos based on Ailments in effect. For example, the Mercenary can use cold bolts to freeze enemies, and then a different shot to shatter them.

7. Watch out for boss mechanics

Boss fights are some of the most intense parts of Path of Exile 2. From the very beginning, bosses will have different skill patterns and moves. Take your time to study their attacks and behaviour. It will be a while before you can face-tank a boss encounter, so it’s best to play it safe and use knowledge and pattern recognition to beat them. If you played Souls-like games before, you should use pretty much the same approach. When it comes to killing bosses, especially those linked to quest progression, slow and steady will win the race every time. If you die, there’s usually a checkpoint close by, so you can take what you learned and try again.

8. Don’t overspend currency items

While playing through the campaign Acts of PoE2, you will accrue quite a bit of currency items. These will be invaluable in crafting better gear as you progress through the game. However, we advise not to overspend them! Of course, use some to upgrade your gear to make progression easier, but don’t try to look for a “perfect piece” with each new upgrade. You will replace it soon enough anyway. This goes especially for some of the rare currencies, like Orb of Alchemy, Exalted Orb, and Chaos Orb, to name a few. A good (admittedly conservative) rule of thumb can be: if you have less than 10 of them, don’t spend it, unless you really need a stat boost or a stronger weapon.

9. Take your time before going to end-game

You will discover the campaign and its story for the first time only once. We recommend that you appreciate all the details and the story the devs have put into the game and take your time. Use that to get fully familiar with the basics of the game. The end game is the largest portion of Path of Exile 2, so there’s no need to rush to get there. You may find yourself underpowered if you skip a lot of content along the way, such as treasure caches and optional bosses that can give you buffs and skill points on the campaign map. The end-game stuff like Atlas and Maps will wait for you, we promise.

10. Pick your favourite end-game activities

Once you reach the end game, don’t be overwhelmed with everything you can do. Maps on the Atlas will be the biggest part of your gameplay loop. With that, you can specialize to work through areas that you enjoy the most. There’s Breach, Ritual, Delirium, and Expedition to name just a few. You can also work towards your class’ Ascendancy through Trial of Chaos and Trial of the Sekhemas. Then there are the Pinnacle Bosses. We recommend that you try a little bit of everything, then find what you enjoy the most and specialize your Atlas skill tree in that direction. Besides, knowing GGG and the previous League mechanics, there will be even more to come as time goes on.

Conclusion

And last but certainly not least – try to have fun! We know it’s a cliche line, but it really encapsulates Path of Exile 2. It can be hard, frustrating even… but there is so much to do and explore in Wraeclast. Slowly build up your power, explore the different classes and playstyles, and make mistakes. It’s all part of the process and admittedly the learning curve can be steep. But it’s worth it to truly appreciate one of the best aRPGs that gaming has to offer.