A brand new player's attempt to get a clue and 36 challenges

I started playing the game a week before the end of the ultimatum league. SSF really appeals to me, so the extent of my play so far was to level until the end of act 3 in standard to unlock SSF, played the storyline once in SSF ultimatum with a necromancer minion, zombies & skellies & spectres, oh my. That went reasonably well, made it to end of campaign no worries, discovered I was very squishy and I could kill lots of things but would sometimes randomly die without warning, or at least without anything I noticed as a warning.

League ended, in the week between leagues I decided to try hardcore SSF. This time a burning arrow elementalist, which was going really well, I was much tankier, happily nuking things, got a surprise on Dominus when I thought I'd killed him, sat back and grabbed drink bottle, only to be surprised by one more phase. Did the headless chicken dance to dodge things, had I think many stacks of bleed, stood still and emptied both life flasks, watched HP go down under 50 before the bleed dropped off and it recovered. Stuff like that makes HC fun. :D

Rolled on, think it was Innocence that I was fighting, all was again going well until the surprise new 1-shot mechanic right near the end of the fight. Giant golden ball of doom rolls across the floor while covering the floor in lightning. Tried to dodge as much as possible, stepped in front of the ball, was instantly squished. Stuff like that makes HC no fun. :(

Swore mightily, killed the boss on softcore, went and fought Kitava and died half a dozen times to 1-shot mechanics, which eased the frustration of screwing up the previous fight, because no way I was living through Kitava on my first attempt. That is the one thing I'm finding a little frustrating with the game, there's no combat log to try and figure out what I did wrong, and while early fights are a case of dodging things, hitting boss, occasionally taking damage, later on it seems to be very much about knowing the fight in advance, and there's a tendency for character to melt immediately if you make a mistake. And can't zoom out enough to see the boss properly.

Anyway, I'm excited for new league, this will be my first time playing the full league, and the portal reward for 36 challenges looks fantastic, so I must have it. But according to the forums, the 3.15 patch makes things impossible for newbies. Especially for newbies like me who insist on playing SSF and also not following build guides. So what am I to do...

So, my own take on advice for new players:

1. Planning ahead is good. Doesn't have to be hugely in depth, but at least have a look at the passive tree, it's not as overwhelming as it first appears. There are 1000+ options or whatever, but most are in clusters with a few minor skills and a major skill. With a round the tree highway made up of +10 str/dex/int nodes. So the simple planning is looking at where you start on the highway, finding the important clusters relevant to you to head towards first, and then you can simply look at the various clusters nearby, head to the next one and exit into that. Can't go too far wrong that way. And while you'll see plenty of posts about how easy it is to screw things up, I don't think it is. I think it's easy to be 80-90% efficient compared to a very experienced builder who puts more effort into planning and is at 100%. So you may not be as efficient, but I predict you'll still be able to get as far as you want to.

2. Most loot is worthless. I am a hoarder. I'm playing SSF. I will have a bunch of alts wanting gear. I find it really hard to run past loot. But the reality is that compulsive looting, and the many trips back to town to empty bags tat necessitates, makes things much, much slower. Once you finish act 10 and start running whichever end-game stuff appeals to you, you'll be rolling in useful gear and currency, so equipping your new alts will be simple. Spending 10 extra hours through act 1-10 on hoarding might be as effective as running level 70 stuff for 1 hour. The loot fountain looks nice to start with, but by the end of the campaign it's covering your screen. Loot filter is a necessity. I am using https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2606288/page/1 and finding it very effective.

3. You don't need a build guide. Honest. If you want to use one, if you want to follow one, good luck to you. But I'd recommend picking one that is aimed at newer players and a little more comprehensive. If you prefer to figure stuff out yourself, that's fine too. Do what's fun. Don't know about anyone else, but fun is why I play games.

4. Following on from that, the game is not as intimidating as it looks. There are multiple end-game modes. There's a giant tree and a pile of skills. And so on. But it seems like most builds end up using only a few skills, a couple of major offensive abilities, a defensive one, a few flask buttons to whack. It doesn't seem as involved as some other games where you might regularly use 6-8 active abilities + a few more niche ones.

5. You will die. There is no combat log, so you may not be able to figure out why you died. If you're not playing HC, dying has virtually no consequences, and boss progress doesn't reset, so you can kill a campaign boss by dying 20 times and running back to hit him a few times in between each death.

6. build advice might turn up later. Defence in depth is good. Being resistance capped is important. At 50% resistance you take double the damage of somebody capped. At 25% you take 3 times as much. If you're weak to one element, and you get hit with a debuff associated with that element, you'll melt. I don't believe it is possible to adjust the UI, so it can be quite a challenge to notice when you have a debuff, and until you learn the icons, it's even tougher to know what the debuff is.

7. Experiment with stuff. Strange combo seems like a fun idea, try it out and see what happens.

8. Start doing a little crafting (or some trading if not playing SSF) early. The tier 1 stuff available in your hideout even in act 3 can make a significant difference to your power and survivability. Going from say 750 life to 1,000 with a handful of entry level currency will make a difference. Basic vendor recipes can also be very helpful.

9. Have fun, nuke stuff, get shinies. ;)

Long term project might be to actually try and turn a couple of these into build guides, but that'll be a long way off. I don't like using guides, I don't like playing someone else's character, same applies for other games where netdecking or similar is rife. I don't mind reading what others have to say and deciding it looks like a bright idea and I'll see what I can do with it, which is where the burning arrow elementalist came from.

As I said, my main goal for this league is to succeed with 36 challenges and get the portal. I have no idea how difficult that might be. I do llke playing alts, so I expect I'll level at least 3 characters to end of campaign, and hopefully by then have a good handle on getting through the campaign quickly. I may end up trying to have 1 of each class, but not sure.

My bright ideas (feedback welcome):
shadow: I haven't tried traps yet, and I saw a flamethrower trap with the whirling merry-go-round of fire, so I must have one. That's about the extent of the plan so far. Get buffs to trap damage, throw explosions everywhere. I.m using siphoning trap as well while levelling, and picked up a unique hood called heatshiver, so I throw the siphon trap for both the boost to mana, the aoe, and the buff to fire damage.

witch: the burning arrow elementalist I tried in HC and got to end of act 5 will be done again.

templar: guardian is a minion ascendancy. One of the brand new gems, absolution, summons a steady stream of minions, as do an existing red gem or two. One of the other new geams summons a reaper that munches on other minions to buff itself. So I'll try and summon a never-ending horde of reaper food.

Those will be the three I definitely play.
Others if I feel the urge, or some unique drops that gives me ideas:
Ranger: Not sure about either pathfinder and poison, or raider with permanent onslaught and a very large 2H weapon.

Scion/marauder/duelist: not sure. Probably want a pure melee build, again looking at new gems behead and cyclone seem like they might go together well. Want a pure caster, either lightning or cold. Want some sort of chaos focused build. I'd like hollow palm to drop and try and make a build around that, as well as try out low life, the 1 hp/pure ES skill that I'll remember the name of later. I'll also look a bit closer at the new gems and see what I can experiment with.

More ideas and /or less vague ideas coming later.

More posts about how I'm actually going coming later too, we'll see whether getting anywhere really is impossible for a brand new player with a zero budget for gear. I really need stash tabs to go on sale, I was expecting them last weekend on the 3 week cycle, but looks like that paused for league start.

reserved

reserved

I was about 75% to gaining a level, when tiredness/stupidity/failure to pay attention to map mods on a Zana mission caused my xp bar to have a major accident. So I got fed up, went and did a couple of low level heists. It had 'reflects ~10% of elemental damage', no worries, I hardly do any ele damage, that'll be fine. And it was. Until I'd nearly escaped, was in the middle of a huge pack, and hit my vaal detonate dead button. ><

That put the xp all the way back to zero. I've hit level 90, I'm doing some red maps, I feel like my gear is really poor for my level, I have 4.5k hp, ~500 ES, but not seeing obvious ways to improve it. I need to do a crash course in learning to craft stuff.

My stash is an unholy mess, different uniques are giving me bright ideas for new builds to try, I've now got a list of about 10 builds, and I've run a few of those through the first 3 acts, will probably end up putting half a dozen weird builds through at least the storyline.

Brand new SSF player can definitely get a decent distance into the game, even with this patch apparently making things harder.