New to the game

My goodness this game is immersive if some went to the trouble of creating that path of building! It has me a bit dazed trying to take it all in. Its very neat and I am trying all the templates to see how others are choosing their skills.

Yes, the game is very deep, and there are so many sub-games within it. Path of Building is really helpful as far as understanding what goes into a build. And when you see someone else with the "same" build and level but much more damage or defense, you can look at the calcs section to see exactly where it's coming from.

If i make a new character is there a way to start without having access to my stash or is the stash always there regardless of how many characters i have?

If you've rescued the Scion in Act 3, you'll have access to SSF (solo self found) when creating a new character. This is its own league, with its own stash. You will not be able to trade or group, and your progression on things like the atlas, masters, and lab trials, are all unique to your SSF characters.

This, I believe, is the only way to do it right now, and future SSF characters will have access to your SSF stash. (i.e. all SSF characters, I think, share access to stash and progressions with each other, but not with your non-SSF characters.)

The other option is to wait until the new league launches in early June. At that point, your current character(s) will be moved to standard league and the first character you start in the new challenge league will have an empty stash.

Looks like you are really new and this game can be quite overwhelming to new players. The game developer does a pretty poor job at tutorial and guide, but luckily the community is huge and very helpful.

There is no easy way answer all your questions. My suggestion is, if you want to invest some time into this game, start here: https://www.twilightstrand.com/home

Thanks for the info and the website link. Very helpful! I am enjoying the game just kinda clueless on how the passive skill tree works with the gems (there are so many!) and what skill set i want to work towards. I am still experimenting with melee ranged spell still. I restarted several times already =)

There are several ways to go about learning. Nothing wrong with trying a range of different builds to see how different they feel. Just keep in mind that a lot of builds don't start to achieve their intended feel until higher levels. Also, builds can feel easier or harder at different levels just based on the gear you are currently running, and whether you have a good combination of gems and passives.

All the options can definitely be intimidating. That's one reason I like to look for builds where the owner has invested a lot of time in explanation. It also helps if they are popular enough to have other experienced players posting on them. You can learn a lot seeing how someone has created a variation on a build.

I have four toons between 85 and 90 that I've played over the last four months, and I'm still learning new things all the time. That's a big part of the appeal.

Is there a list of crafting recipes? So far i like the maraurder 2hd and the templar purifier. I cant seem to get into the ranger, rogue, witch, duelist yet. Is there a block key? I keep seeing in skills and gems “..on block, when blocking...” i didnt see it in the consloe command list?

Crafting can be anything from quite simple to crazy complex. E.g. you can easily orb-craft flasks to get exactly the mods you are looking for because they can only take two mods.

Rare gear is harder because you have to worry about socket color, links, and up to 6 mods. And then you've got fossil crafting, beast crafting, orb crafting, essence crafting, meta crafting, as well as elder and shaper base mods, synth mods, lab and syndicate enchants, plus whatever I'm forgetting. And it's possible to use most of those in combination. Even for something as "simple" as socket color you have to decide whether to use direct chromatics or Vorici on the bench (which is actually two separate methods.)

The best way to get started is to do as much syndicate as possible to get Jun's recipes for your bench. Also do some delving to get the Vorici recipes for the bench. Then you can start to play around with simple improvements like upgrading the number of sockets in an item, changing the colors, and adding one more suffix or prefix.

No block key. Block is something you have an automatic probability to do with a shield. Upgrading a shield's quality will increase its block chance. (EDIT: Sorry, this last is not true. Shield quality affects the primary defensives, but not block.)

If you're enjoying purifying flame, I would suggest running normal labyrinth to go inquisitor and get your first two ascendencies. Then keep playing that toon to get a better feel. Most builds start to come into their own when you finally have all 8 ascendencies. (You'll be in your 70s for this simply because the second round of lab trials when you're mapping are somewhat random.)

The first time you run normal lab, you may want to be a few levels above the recommended 33 to make it easier. Same thing for the more advanced labs when you hit them later.

Cheers