Casual Observations of Keepers

1. There still isn't enough orbs that drop during the campaign. If you want us to get a feel for crafting early on, then you need to drop more. I'm not saying you need LE's level of crafting, but nothing feels worse than getting a decent drop and not having currency to change the sockets.

2. Because of #1 and relying almost entirely on RNG, the Market ends up being the best way to gear by far and that kind of feels bad. Once I hit Act 6, I immediately bought a weapon that nearly tripled my DPS. Why? Because again, there's not enough currency available during the campaign to even attempt to craft something decent.

3. Drop Portal Scrolls and just give us a portal button like PoE2. It's time. Most people bypass it by escaping back to the char select screen and re-entering the game again anyway.

4. Give all chars a Dash by default. We don't need a dodge roll or run, but coming from PoE2 it feels bad not having one.

If you want to learn all about crafting, i would recommend SSF, you will have to go through every crafting system, and will learn what you need to progress, the game have always been balanced around trading, with inspiration from D2, being casual and taking it slow isent a bad thing at all! take your time, there is no need to compare yourself to anyone else, its all about you having fun, it is a valid tactic to reset an instance and refarm it, until you feel like you have what you need to progress, depending on your build many people farm low level cluster jewels in the campaign to get a specific item level as an exsample, if you feel like you need more orbs, reset some zones, just be aware that in the campaign if you are too "overleveled" less stuff will drop.

"Yes, you get less loot if you overlevel, but only for currency and divination cards in areas more than two levels below your character's level, according to the PoE Wiki and Reddit. The penalty is a 2.5% reduction for each level you are above the monster level + 2, and your character level is capped at 68 for the purpose of this penalty, so higher-level characters will not be further penalized in maps. "

So this ^^ could likely be the very issue you are experiencing, because breach in campaign gives you crazy xp.

How many vendor recipes do you know?

They are the bread and butter of "crafting" during the story. Only takes a single orb or even no orbs in some cases.

Anything that guarantees you a specific mod you want is instant win for story mode crafting. Vendor + crafting bench, or essence + crafting bench gets you anything you could possibly want.


If you are doing other modes of crafting without having the supplies for them, its a mistake.

Yeah it sounds like having come from poe2 you're used to the mechanics in that game. I would say though, I think SSF gearing in the campaign is easier in POE1, especially with crafting bench. Perhaps it is relative to the amount of experience players have in each.

I think the crafting changes in POE2 are interesting. Exalts probably should be more available in POE1. I think Ex is about 30x rarer than chaos. It could probably be down to 10x or even closer to 5. POE1 is less reliant on it though, since there are other useful currencies that are available. Having different systems is ok.

Sockets are an extra thing players need to worry about, I can see what you mean there. Though I also found it easier to get links in POE1. In POE2 it does not dictate the item use, but if you don't get the link orb dropping, there is not a way of getting the extra supports. 4-linking multiple skills was much easier in POE1, and you really only need one 4-link on most builds in the campaign. I see your point though, that it is an extra property on the item that is important and dictates what you equip. I like the system in POE1 for this more currently. In POE2 interacting with the skills menu is a bit more clunky than just doing it directly. There are some things that might be good with the poe2 system, like it works well for weapon swap options and skill UI, as an example, but at the moment it is too much interaction over just swapping them on the inventory UI. There's further clunky aspects as well that the need to iron out, like needing a gem to look at what is available. Not being able to buy lower level gems if you want them. Preventing buying multiples under certain conditions. A lot of things. It will probably work well eventually, but it is still a work in progress. In general, I like the POE1 socket system, there are things that can be improved with it, but it is pretty good and a unique aspect of POE.

All classes get offered movement skills from breaking some eggs quest, which is at about level 4. Jugg is the only one that doesn't get offered direct reward until leap slam, which is about level 10. There are many options beyond dash. In ruthless mode movement skills are not available, but players get a default quickstep gem, a bit like you are suggesting. There are a lot of functions in POE2 that are not available until well into act 1, which I think us actually part of ACT1 being one of the hardest parts of the campaign. In some ways POE1 also has this, once player starts gearing, they game actually gets easier. I think the difficult would be better increasing in general, and having the early acts quite easy and gradually getting more difficult.

What was the difficulty you found with the movement skills exactly? Dodge roll in POE2 is supposed to be more restrictive than spamming a variety of movement skills in POE1, though I think it is basically the same thing.