Contents:

• 1. Tips for New Players
  • List of Acronyms/Glossary
  • General Tips
  • Build Tips
  • Vendor & Economy Tips
  • Gameplay Tips
• 2. Game Mechanics
  • Difficulty Levels
  • Skills
  • Gems
  • Flasks
  • Classes
  • Attributes
  • Charges
  • Additional vs. Increased vs. More
  • Defenses
• 3. Links and Other Resources

1. Tips for New Players

List of Acronyms/Glossary

• Adds – Enemies that spawn during a boss encounter
• AoE – Area Of Effect
• BM – Blood Magic
• B/O – Buy Out
• CI – Chaos Inoculation
• C/O – Current Offer
• DOT – Damage Over Time
• DPS – Damage Per Second
• EA – Explosive Arrow
• EB – Eldritch Battery
• EK – Ethereal Knives
• ES – Energy Shield
• Eva – Evasion
• GCP – Gemcutter’s Prism
• GS – Ground Slam
• GM – Game Moderator – GMs can affect the game to resolve issues; synonymous with administrator
• GMP – Greater Multiple Projectiles
• IIQ – Increased Item Quantity
• IIR – Increased Item Rarity
• IR – Iron Reflexes
• LA – Lightning Arrow
• LMP – Lesser Multiple Projectiles
• LS – Lightning Strike
• Mob – “Mobile”, from old MUD games, but it means “Monster”
• Ninja – A player who takes drops that aren’t theirs (hard to determine in this game because of the loot timers)
• OBO – Or Best Offer
• Reroll – To make a new character or randomize the attributes/stats on an item (depending on context)
• RoE – Radius of Effect
• RT – Resolute Technique
• Toon – A character
• TP – Town portal
• WP – WayPoint
• WTB – Want To Buy
• WTS – Want To Sell
• WTT – Want To Trade

General Tips

• There are three acts and three difficulty types (normal, cruel, and merciless). Completing all three acts on one difficulty advances your character to the next difficulty. Each increase in difficulty and act makes the game noticeably more difficult. In Cruel your resistances are reduced by 20% and in Merciless your resistances are reduced by 60%. Note that this includes Chaos Resistance.
• If you die in hardcore your character will be moved to the regular (softcore) league and you can continue playing them there.
• AOE skills are very important for farming and killing large groups of mobs. (Almost) Every build should have an AOE skill worked in somewhere.
• You can use any gem as any class, so long as you meet the stat requirements.
• There are some reasons to not level up a skill gem – the mana cost of the upgraded skill may be prohibitive or you may not have the stats required to use the upgraded skill gem. If you don’t want to level up your gem, you can right click on the notification that it is ready to level up to hide it. You may later level the gem from your inventory screen.
• Two of the same type of support gem do not stack when linked together. However, you may link any number of different support gems.
• Dual wielding grants +10% more attack speed and a +15% block chance.
• There is a minimap. You can turn it on from the UI options menu. You can also turn on “items always visible” and “hold alt to pick up items” from here.
• To highlight items on the ground, hold down the ALT key. Alternatively, you can toggle the option of highlighting items on ground by pressing the Z key.
• There are no full respecs in this game. You can get respec points from quests and orbs of regret to “unspend” passive points, but in doing this you cannot break any dependencies. It is often better just to roll a new character if you need to make large changes.
• Instances reset between 8-15 minutes. Don’t loiter in town if you have a portal open, as it will disappear when the instance is reset.
• Control + Clicking on the entrance to an area allows you to reset an instance as you enter it.
• To link an item in chat hold control + alt and then click the item.

Build Tips

• When making new builds plan for about 80-85 skill points. You will reach this point around the time you complete Act III on Merciless and begin endgame content. No need to get all crazy with a 120 point build. By the time you have 80-85 points you’ll have a much better understanding of where the skill points should be going. Also, this keeps your head from exploding.
• Path of Exile can be unforgiving for those who neglect defenses (like elemental resistances). Sure you could make a full glass cannon build. But, would I advise that? Absolutely not.
• As a rule of thumb, try to get at least +100% life or energy shield from your passive skill tree into your build (To clarify, that is cumulative from +8%, etc., nodes. There are no gigantic +100% nodes.).
• You need elemental resistances. An easy way to build up resists is through rings. It’s a good idea to carry around different sets of resist rings and swap them out depending on the mobs you encounter.
• Keystones are major, large passives that lie on the outside of the passive skill web. They have the ability to completely change the way a character plays, and builds are usually planned around which keystones will be taken.
• Don’t know how to build your character? Check out the official path of exile forums and /r/pathofexilebuilds for ideas.

Vendor and Economy

• Control + Click quickly moves items between your inventory and a vendor/your stash.
• Shift + Click allows you to split stacks of items.
• Eternal Orbs, Exalted Orbs, Divine Orbs, Gem Cutters Prisms, and Chaos Orbs are the most valuable currencies. Your best bet is to hoard everything until you get a good understanding of values in this game.
• Pick up: all currency items, quality skill gems (hover over the gem, if it has a quality bonus, no matter how small, pick it up), unique items, items with three color links (a red, blue, and green socket linked together), superior-quality flasks, and any item with 5 or 6 links.
• White items can be insanely valuable. This is because some of the best items in the game can be crafted from a white item using the aforementioned currencies. Example: Find a white weapon with good sockets. Increase its quality by +20% using Blacksmith’s Whetstones, then use an Orb of Alchemy on the item to make it a rare with +20% quality!
• Superior items (items with bonus quality) can be hoarded and sold for Blacksmith Whetstones, Armorer Scraps and Glassblower Baubles. Any item with 20% quality can be vendored for a whetstone/scrap/bauble, and any combination of weapons/armor/flasks totaling 40% quality can be vendored for a whetstone/scrap/bauble, respectively
• Items with at least one of each color socket, all linked together, can be vendored for a Chromatic Orb.
• If you don’t have any resistance rings but really need some, you can vendor a skill gem and iron ring to get a resistance ring. Red skill gems give fire resistance rings, Blue skill gems give cold resistance rings, and Green skill gems give lightning resistance rings.
• You can vendor Orbs of Transmutation for four Scrolls of Wisdom each.
• Vendoring white items yields Scrolls of Wisdom, vendoring unidentified magical and rare items yields Transmutation Shards, and vendoring identified magical and rare items yields Alteration Shards.

Gameplay Tips

• Look out for Puncture. This is a skill enemies use that does five times more damage while you are moving. You are effected by puncture if you’re leaving a giant trail of blood behind you, and you HP is dropping like a rock.
• Look out for Viper Strike. This is a skill enemies use that does chaos damage over time to you, and it stacks. Four stacks can kill you very quickly. Run away and wait for the stacks to dissipate if your flasks and lifesteal can’t keep up with your HP loss.
• You don’t have to have an aura on your skill bar to keep it up. It only turns off if you enter town, you remove the gem, or you manually turn it off.
• Weapons/shields equipped in your secondary weapon/shield set (you can swap between two sets) can be used to level up skill gems, though you can’t cast them when those weapons aren’t equipped. You can swap between primary and secondary weapon sets with the “x” key, or from your inventory menu.

2. Game Mechanics

Difficulty Levels

• There are three difficulty levels: Normal, Cruel, and Merciless. You must complete Normal difficulty before you can move to Cruel, and you must complete Cruel before you can move to Merciless. The higher difficulties have death penalties, causing you to lose experience when you die. They are 0% for Normal (no penalty), 7.5% for Cruel and 15% for Merciless difficulty. This is a percentage of the experience needed to gain the next level, not your total experience.
• Losing experience in this way cannot cause you to drop down a level. For instance if you have 11% progress to your next level and die in merciless difficulty, your progress will be reset to 0%. There are also penalties to resistances in higher difficulty levels. In Cruel difficulty, there is a -20% penalty to player resistances, and this increases to -60% in Merciless.

Skills

• Skills currently come in two main varieties: spells, and attack skills. Any skill that uses your weapon damage counts as an attack skill, and everything else counts as a spell.
• Attack skills are dependent on your weapon, and so are affected by attack speed, accuracy, etc.. Bonus damage from rings and other gear is applied when using an attack skill.
• Spells do not draw their damage from your weapon in any way. They are affected by % cast speed, %fire/cold/lightning damage, %spell damage, and critical strikes. Integer damage bonuses on gear are not added to spells.
• Traps are very similar to spells, but are not affected by cast speed or spell damage mods. They are affected by % trap laying speed, and relevant damage mods. Integer damage bonuses on gear are not added to trap damage.
• The only exception to this is Town Portal, which is not affected by attack speed, cast speed, or anything else.

Gems

• Support gems only affects skills where it makes sense. For instance, skills that do not already do damage (such as Temporal Chains) will not benefit from Added Cold Damage. Skills that do not already have an area of effect will not benefit from Increased Area of Effect, etc.
• Gems get experience equal to 10% of the experience you earn.
• The number of gems you have equipped has no effect on the rate of XP gain. So having less gems equipped does not cause them to gain XP faster than if you had many gems equipped.
• Gems are not affected by the experience penalty when facing enemies below your level.
• Gems do not lose experience when you die.
• Gems can grant auras which need to be cast outside of town. Once cast, the mana pool is reduced by a certain amount for the aura and this shows up as “Mana Reserved”. This amount can be modified by items.
• When a gem is ready to level up, it shows up on the right side of the screen with a plus sign. Next to the plus sign are the new attributes of the gem. Before leveling the gem, mana pool of the player should be taken into consideration.

Flasks

• Flasks come in four main varieties: life flasks, mana flasks, hybrid flasks, and utility flasks.
• Life, Mana, and Hybrid flasks – These flasks cause you to regenerate life and/or mana when used. The amount recovered is shown on the flask as Life Recovery and Mana Recovery. The time it takes to recover the full amount is shown on the flask as Recovery Time. If you reach your maximum life and/or mana amount before the end of the recovery time, the flask effect will end prematurely. For example: You are at 100/300 life, and 150/200 mana. You use a hybrid flask that has 400 Life Recovery, 200 Mana Recovery, and Recovery Time of 8 seconds. After 2 seconds, you will be at 200/300 life, and 200/200 mana, and the mana recovery effects ends. The life recovery continues, and at 4 seconds, you have reached maximum life, and the life recovery effect also ends. *Flasks can have magic modifiers that provide bonuses while the flask effect is active, for example increased movement speed or resistances. These bonuses end when the life/mana recovery effect ends. *When multiple flasks are used at the same time, the effects are queued. The effect with the highest regeneration rate is always applied first. For example: You have two flasks, one that gives 500 life recovery over 10 seconds and has a 20% increased movement speed modifier, and a second that gives 500 life recovery of 5 seconds with no additional modifiers. You use the first flask and gain the movement speed while recovering life. After one second, you use the second flask. At this point the remaining 9 seconds from the first flask is queued, and the second flask begins its effect. Once the second flask has expired, the first flask resumes its effect for the remaining duration.
• Utility Flasks – These flasks give a temporary bonus for a set duration. Unlike the other flasks, the effects are not queued, each effect has its own timer that can overlap with other effects. The default effects of the flasks will not stack. For example: You have a magic Granite Flask with +25% movement speed, and a regular Granite Flask, both giving +4000 armour for 4 seconds. You drink the first flask, and one second later you drink the second second flask. The result will be that for the first four seconds you will have +4000 armour and +25% movement speed. At the four second mark the first flask ends, but the second flask still has 1 second left. So you will have +4000 armour (but not the movement speed) for another 1 second.
• Flask Charges – Drinking a flask consumes flask charges. Each flask shows how many charges are used per drink in its description, and each flask has a maximum number of charges it can hold. Whenever you or one of your minions kills an enemy, all of your flasks gain charges.
• By default regular monsters grant 1 charge each, magic (blue) monsters grant 3.5 charges each, and rare (yellow) monsters grant 6 charges each. So killing a rare monster causes all of your flasks to gain 6 charges.

Classes

The main difference between the classes is their stating location on the passive skill tree. Classes also start with different amounts of attributes at level 1:

• Marauder: 30 STR, 14 DEX, 14 INT
• Ranger: 14 STR, 30 DEX, 14 INT
• Witch: 14 STR, 14 DEX, 30 INT
• Duelist: 22 STR, 22 DEX, 14 INT
• Templar: 22 STR, 14 DEX, 22 INT
• Shadow: 14 STR, 22 DEX, 22 INT

Scion is the class added at the game’s release and starts in the middle of the passive skill tree.

Attributes

All classes begin with the same base life, mana, and evasion, and gain the same amount per level. These are still affected by the classes’ base stats. For example, a Marauder will start with 50+(30/2) = 65 life.

• 50 life, +6 per level
• 40 mana, +4 per level
• 50 evasion, +3 per level (including level 1)

Attributes are required to equip gear and skills. The three attributes also grant some passive bonuses:

• Strength grants +0.5 life and +0.2% melee physical damage per point
• Dexterity grants +2 accuracy and +0.2% evasion per point
• Intelligence grants +0.5 mana and +0.2% energy shield per point

Therefore the +10 attribute passive skills effectively grant:

• +10 Strength: +5 life, +2% melee physical damage
• +10 Dexterity: +20 accuracy, +2% evasion
• +10 Intelligence: +5 mana, +2% energy shield

Life and mana regeneration – All classes have a base mana regeneration rate of 105% of their maximum mana per minute. For example, a character with 100 maximum mana will regenerate 105 mana per minute, or 1.75 mana per second.

• “Increased Mana regeneration rate” modifiers modify the base rate. For example, 20% Increased Mana regeneration rate would result in 105 * 1.2 = 126% per minute.
• Characters do not begin with any life regeneration, but it is available from gear and passive skills.
• The rate at which you gain life from life leech is 20% of maximum life per second. If you have 1000 maximum life, and leech 600 life with a single attack, it will take three seconds for that life to be applied to your current life. You always get the full amount of life leeched, although it may take time to be applied – if you leech a large amount of life during a battle, you may find that the life gain continues long after the battle is over. Similar to flasks, the life gain from leech will end if you reach maximum life.
• The same is true for mana leech, although the rate is 12.5% of maximum mana per second.

Charges

Charges are glowing orbs that represent temporary buffs with different benefits:

• Endurance Charge (strength) – +5% Physical Damage reduction & +5% additional Elemental Resistances per Charge
• Frenzy Charge (dexterity) – +5% increased Attack Speed & +5% increased Cast Speed per Charge
• Power Charge (intelligence) – 50% increased Critical Strike Chance per Charge

Charges are accumulated by the use of certain skills and equipment, and last a short duration—nine seconds by default. Gaining a charge resets the duration of all accumulated charges. Each type of charge grants different bonuses. A charge bonus increases proportional to the number of accumulated charges of that type. By default, characters can have a maximum of three charges of each type active. This limit can be raised by certain passives and equipment.

Additional vs. Increased vs. More

When you are reading the Tool Tip of a node, pay attention to the percentages and the word that comes directly after it. It will determine how that percentage modifies your current stat. In short:

• Additional – adds directly to the base value.
• Increased/Decreased – an additive multiplicative increase in percentage.
• More/Less – a multiplicative increase in percentage.

What this means is that additive increases add directly to your current percentage. Whereas multiplicative increases, increase your current percentage multiplied by that amount.

There are two types of multiplicative modifiers. There are your increases, which are added together, then multiplied, and then there are your mores, which are all multiplied separately. For example, let’s give a character a bunch of additional damage effects from weapons:

a1, a2, a3, ... , aj.

He/She also has a bunch of passives that give you % increased damage. We will call these percentages:

i1, i2, i3, ... , ik.

You also have a few gems/items/etc that give you a certain % more damage. We’ll call these:

m1, m2, m3, ... , ml. 

They all multiply together in the following way:

(Base damage + a1 + a2 + a3 + ... + aj) * (1 + i1 + i2 + i3 + ... + ik) * (1 + m1) * (1 + m2) * (1 + m3) * ... * (1 + ml).

So there is additional, which is added directly to the base value, there is increased, which is an additive multiplier, and then there is more, which is just a regular multiplier.

Defenses

There are a wide variety of defenses in the game, and it is important that you learn what they are and how they work if you want to survive. They are:

• Life
• Energy Shield
• Armor
• Evasion
• Block
• Elemental Resistances
• Chaos Resistance
• Dodge

Life – Run out of this and you die. Your character begins at level 1 with 50 base health, and gains 4 health for each level thereafter and 1 health for every two strength you have. Your other defenses mitigate the impact enemy attacks have on your life pool. More is better, unless you focus on…

Energy Shield – ES works similarly to life, only you don’t get any bonus ES per level, you get it from gear. You cannot replenish it through flasks, and instead it regenerates itself after a short period during which you are not hit. Every 5 points of intelligence increase your maximum ES pool by 1%. Characters that choose to focus this exclusively end up taking the Chaos Inoculation keystone. Some notes: Chaos damage goes directly through ES to your health pool (which is why Chaos Inoculation is so useful), and having any ES at all confers a 50% chance to resist being stunned.

Armor – Armor provides damage reduction from physical attacks. It reduces incoming physical damage by a percentage according to the following formula:

Reduction = Armor / (Armor + 12 * Damage)

So, attacks that do more damage penetrate your armor better. It is capped at a 90% reduction. Armor is excellent for tanking large groups of weak mobs, but is somewhat lackluster against enemies that hit very hard.

Evasion – This is your chance to simply avoid being hit by physical attacks. It rolls against your attacker’s accuracy like so:

Evasion Chance = 1 - Attacker's Accuracy / ( Attacker's Accuracy + ( Defender's Evasion / 4 ) ^( 0.8 ) )

Evasion also reduces the odds that you will be hit by a critical attack, since your opponent must succeed on a second attack roll as a critical-hit check. Technically, PoE doesn’t use an RNG to determine when you do/don’t get hit with Eva, but they have a weird system in place that gives the same results as an RNG with a little more reliability for the end-user (this is buried somewhere in the Mechanics Thread, I’ll find it later). High Eva is great, but focusing only on Eva can be very dangerous as you will be 1-shot by more powerful enemies later in the game. It is capped at a 90% chance to evade.

Block – If you have a shield or are dual wielding, you will block a certain percentage of incoming enemy physical attacks. Against all physical attacks, if the attack hits you get to roll against your block chance. If you succeed, the attack is mitigated. If the attack would have stunned you had it hit, you go through a 350 millisecond block animation, otherwise the damage is just mitigated with no effects. Block chance is capped at 75%.

Elemental Resistances – Comes in three flavors – Fire, Cold and Lightning. Up until now, there has been no mention of spells. Spells (usually) do elemental damage, hit automatically, and generally can’t be blocked or dodged. However, their damage is reduced by whatever percentage your resistances are. If you have 50% resistance to that element, then you take half damage from that attack. Elemental resistances are capped at 75% without certain skills.

Chaos Resistance – Works like elemental resistances, except it’s much harder to get. Chaos damage always does DOT and bypasses ES. Chaos Inoculation provides immunity to Chaos damage.

Dodge – A special defense that only characters with the Acrobatics keystone can get. It provides an additional chance to negate attacks and even spells. It is calculated independently of Eva.

3. Links and Other Resources

• Even more tips and good explanation of controls
• List of Acronyms
• Common questions and their answers
• In-depth Mechanics of PoE
• Path of Exile Wiki
• Quest Reward List
• Accuracy Table
• Mods Compendium Thread
• Direct Link to the Mods Compendium
• Crafting Guide
• Worth Exalting?
• Life Leech vs. Life Gain On Hit calcuator
• Path of Exile currency exchange rates
• Monster Levels per Area and Difficulty

Source: Reddit

If you have any resources of your own to add to our list post them in the comments below.

Certain currency items are more or less difficult to obtain thus the different values and trading ratios are very important to understand. Once you remember all the ratios and start trading with other players it’s almost like a minigame within PoE in which you barter and haggle with others in order to get currency items you need at the best possible price.

There’s about 20 different currency items (frequently referred to as Orbs) in Path of Exile. I’ll list all of them below along with a short explanation of what they are used for. They are listed (more or less) by rarity, so the first ones listed are very common and easy to obtain while the bottom ones are very expensive and less likely to drop.

Armourer’s Scrap	Scraps drop frequently and are very inexpensive, up to the point where finding a buyer for these is even hard. Don’t fret though as you should still always pick them up and use them for Chaos Orb recipe on high level items. Using Armorer’s Scraps also increases your chance to 5 or 6 link gem sockets on an item so if you decide to go for it having a few hundred Armorer’s Scraps might save you more valuable currency later on. You can trade Scraps for Whetstones at vendors.
Blacksmith’s Whetstone	Same as Armorer’s Scraps, Whetstones are used to improve an item’s quality up to 20% and are easy to obtain. They drop often from mobs and aren’t used in high amounts. Nevertheless you should still pick them up whenever you can since like everything else in Path of Exile it has its value. You can only trade them for Armourer’s Scraps at vendors.
Glassblower’s Bauble	Glassblower’s Baubles are used to improve quality of flasks and typically players don’t need a large amount of them. You’ll probably use 100-200 of these at most throughout the game so once you have the best (Hallowed or Sanctified) flasks you won’t need these. They can’t be traded for anything of better value at vendors and I have yet to see a player buying Baubles.
Orb of Transmutation	Orb of Transmutation transforms a white (common) item into a blue (magic) one. Very common and mostly used on flasks, lower level maps (66-68) and strongboxes. Usually when I get over 100 of these I just trade them at vendor for Orbs of Augmentation or more often Scrolls of Wisdom.
Orb of Augmentation	Adds an additional stat to a magic item. Some magic items have only one stat and an Augmentation Orb is used to add an affix to them. Very easy to obtain in larger quantities and best traded at vendor for Alteration.
Chromatic Orb	Changes gem socket colors on an item. Easy to come by and you will need a lot of them (as in hundreds). I recommend keeping at least 150 of them at all times and trade the surplus for other orbs.
Orb of Alteration	Replaces current with new random stats on a magic (blue) item. It’s unlikely you will need many of these unless you’re really into crafting items, which you won’t be until very late endgame. I prefer to simply trade them to vendors for more valuable orbs. They are extremely easy to come by.
Jeweller’s Orb	Fairly easy to get, Jeweller’s Orbs are used to change the number of sockets on an item. When you get a better piece of gear you’ll surely want to add more sockets to it so you might want to have at least 100 spare Jeweller’s Orbs to spend. If you have extra trade them with vendors for Orb of Fusing.
Orb of Chance	This currency orb transforms a white item with no stats into a magic (blue), rare (yellow) or even unique item. Obviously the chances of getting a unique item are slim but it’s well worth using on certain endgame gear (especially Glorious Plates and Siege Axes, both of which can turn into extremely expensive gear). You can just hoard these, chances are you’ll be using all of them. If you don’t want to test your luck, you can vendor them for Orbs of Scouring and Orbs of Regret for fairly decent rates.
Cartographer’s Chisel	Chisels are used to improve the quantity and rarity of item drops on endgame maps. Even though you won’t be seeing Chisels drop in lower levels they are fairly common but always in high demand. Once you get higher level maps (70+) you will definitely want to improve them with Chisels so keep a few around; you can exchange the rest for Chaos Orbs or some other currency which will probably be more important to you earlier.
Orb of Fusing	A mid-value orb used to link sockets on an item. They are high in demand and you should always keep 50-80 of them in your stash to be able to link your own items if necessary. To get 5 linked sockets on a piece of gear you’ll need about 150 Fusings and an average of 800 for 6 links (rough estimate, can vary significantly) so players often purchase these in large quantities which makes them extremely easy to trade.
Orb of Alchemy	I tend to use all my Alchemy Orbs (and even buy some occasionally) to turn common (white) high level rings, amulets and belts into rare items. Those pieces of equipment typically don’t drop often and are hard to get sometimes so it’s best to simply pick up white ones with high rolls and turn them into rares, hoping for a decent item. If I don’t get anything good I just use them for Chaos Orb recipe at vendor. Most common use though is on maps.
Orb of Scouring	This orb removes all stats from a magic or rare item. It’s useful for crafting or rolling maps, but can be somewhat harder to trade with other players. I usually turn them into Orb of Regret at vendor (2:1), since Regrets are always easier to sell.
Blessed Orb	Blessed Orbs aren’t used very often but they can be very useful on high quality items. In most cases you’ll just trade them for Chaos Orbs. They are used to change the values of implicit (health on Coral rings, or resistances on Prismatic, etc.) stats on a particular item. Especially useful when rolling higher value Unique items.
Chaos Orb	Another mid-value orb and sort of considered the main currency of the game. They are somewhat easy to obtain later on in the game but also very quick to spend. Always in high demand, and any other currency item can always be traded for Chaos Orbs. Chaos Orbs often serve as sort of an anchor for trading, meaning most other currencies and their exchange ratios are just translated into Chaos Orbs.
Vaal Orb	Frequent drop with same drop rate as Chaos, Vaal is used to modify items randomly. It can turn unique items into rare ones, break socket links or even add Prismatic (white) sockets. Important to note that once you use a Vaal Orb on an item you can’t use any other currency on it, that includes Fusings, Jewellers, Eternals and even Whetstones and Scraps.
Orb of Regret	There’s always someone who wants to re-spec their passive skill tree and allocate a point or a few differently, thus Orbs of Regret are highly valued. Unless you really messed up your skill tree build you won’t need dozens of them (plus you get about 15 free respec points from quests), but do try and keep about 5-10 of them in your stash. You might need to allocate a point into resist after changing your gear or figure out a shorter path to a certain keystone passive after awhile so having a few extra Regrets doesn’t hurt.
Regal Orb	Regal Orbs are used for crafting, more specifically turning a magic item into a rare one. Do note that when using a Regal your now rare item will get one additional stat and will retain the stats from the blue item, but unless you have plenty of Exalted Orbs to spend to craft further don’t even bother with this. In a majority of cases you should just trade your Regal Orbs for Chaos. Definitely not recommended using on low level gear while you’re leveling.
Gemcutter’s Prism	High value orb and pretty darn rare as a monster drop, Gemcutter’s Prism (GCP) is used to improve the quality of a gem. Never use these on gems with no quality whatsoever, in fact make sure your skill gem has at least 15% quality before you try and improve it. Even then the Prism should only be used if you’re filthy rich and with decent gear already. Before you decide to spend these rare and valuable orbs make sure you know exactly what you’re getting by improving a gem (auras for example only add fairly useless range). Also most useful 20% (max) quality gems cost 1 Exalted Orb which trades for about 10 Gemcutter’s Prisms, thus the aforementioned 15%. Remember, there’s also a recipe for quality gems!
Divine Orb	Another high value orb used for crafting and as such unlikely an average player will be needing it early in the game. Feel free to sell it for GCP or Chaos. Divine Orbs are used to reroll explicit (as opposed to implicit; look under Blessed Orb above) item stats to random values, most commonly used on unique items: if you get a low-roll but still valuable unique item you can use a Divine and hope for better stats. High or perfectly rolled uniques are typically more expensive than those with average stat rolls so Divine Orbs can add quite a bit of value to them.
Exalted Orb	Extremely rare to find and always in demand. If you ever see this baby drop you better click like mad and hope the servers don’t crash. It’s used for adding additional mods (stats) to a rare item, something you should probably never do unless you have dozens or even hundreds of Exalteds to spend. You will have absolutely no trouble trading them for any other orb in the game. Some of the best and most expensive items in the game cost dozens and even hundreds of Exalted Orbs so don’t waste them ever, especially on low level items!
Eternal Orb	Eternal Orbs are used to “remember” stats, socket number and colors on a single item and later restore them if your crafting attempts don’t pan off. For example if you had a great 5-linked chest and want to try and 6-link it, you can use an Eternal Orb before you start and later on easily restore 5-links (which are hard to get as well). Eternals are expensive and very rare so don’t use them unless you really know what you’re doing!
Mirror of Kalandra	Extremely expensive and almost impossible to find, the Mirror makes an exact duplicate of an existing non-unique item. It’s pretty much worth as much as the most expensive item in game is, meaning it sells for over 100 Exalted Orbs in Standard league and if you get one you’re encouraged to donate it to me.

Two other notable items are Scrolls of Wisdom and Portal Scrolls. You’ll be getting tons of these are in majority of cases they are next to useless, however some players are lazy to constantly pick them up so I’ve managed to sell 100 Scrolls of Wisdom for 1 Chaos Orb several times so far. If you don’t mind picking them up you might get lucky and sell them.

Trading Ratios

As I mentioned already everything in Path of Exile has a certain value. The prices of orbs are determined by the frequency of their drops, vendor exchange prices and recipes, and player demand (probably in that order). If a vendor exchanges 4 Jeweller’s Orbs for 1 Orb of Fusing obviously the players exchange them in the same ratio; on the other hand if for some weird reason Jeweller’s Orbs started dropping in extreme amounts from now on chances are the prices would change.

The economy in PoE is basically based on supply and demand, therefore knowing the exact prices and exchange ratios of orbs is extremely important unless you want to throw away “money” for no reason.

Vendor exchange ratios

I briefly wrote on this topic in another post but I’ll repeat some of the key points here. Vendors can exchange basic currencies for you so for most low-value Orbs you don’t have to bother finding players to trade with. Here’s what vendors have to offer:

The basic system I use for getting rid of low value orbs is: Transmutation > Augmentation > Alteration > Jeweller’s > Fusing. Fusings are also easiest to trade with other players and the ratios are pretty standard (2 Fusings for 1 Chaos at the time of writing this). You can also vendor Transmutations for Scrolls of Wisdom, and then sell Scrolls to players.

Player exchange ratios

You can view currency exchange ratios here, I keep it updated constantly and it’s usually way more accurate than other resources. It’s based on “Standard” league and the prices are a bit different in other leagues such as Hardcore, so take that into account. Some currencies can’t be “downgraded” via vendors which also means that players may be selling them at a slight loss.

A small sidenote: prices often fluctuate slightly up to 15%. It’s especially important to consider that high value Orbs (especially Exalted) are often sold for a bit more than they’re usually worth (although technically they’re worth exactly as much as someone is willing to pay for them). You could spend days on end just trading one currency for another in Path of Exile and make a profit off of that.

Conclusion

The currency system isn’t overly complex and you’ll get the hang of it pretty fast. Just make sure you remember exactly how much an Orb is worth and what’s the best way to trade it. Take a screenshot of currency exchange values and set it as your desktop wallpaper if necessary (but remember, values and rates constantly change!).

And if you ever have any questions you can always simply ask me in the comments below.

1. Follow a skill tree build

The first thing you should do when you make your first character (or preferably just before) is to find a good skill tree build and follow it. I know we all want more damage but in Path of Exile building a glass-cannon character simply doesn’t work in endgame. A majority of your points usually need to be in defensive talents, because simply put a dead character isn’t dealing any damage.

If you’re confused with picking a class you can take this as a basis:

• If you want to play a ranged caster mage pick a Witch
• If you want a ranged archer pick a Marauder or Duelist
• If you want a tank pick a Marauder or Templar
• If you want melee DPS pick a Marauder, Templar or Duelist
• If you want a melee caster pick a Shadow
• If you want a dual-wielding melee beast pick a Duelist

Also worth noting is that having good weapons will increase your DPS more than having a majority of damaging skill points in your passive tree, so once again, focus on building defense via the skill tree. Additionally having 3 or more support gems linked to your main damaging ability will immensely increase your DPS.

2. Don’t throw away skill gems with +Quality

They are valuable and can be traded to other players, or even vendors in bulk for very valuable currency items called Gemcutter’s Prism. Most gems with less than +12% quality are best to simply sell to vendors (in bulk for Prism, not single!). The recipe works the same way as other +quality items: sell gems with a combined quality of 40% and you’ll get a Prism. Anything over 12% quality should be either used by you or traded to other players.

3. Don’t spend currency on low-level items

And by low-level I mean anything below 60. I know it’s tempting to turn those “useless” white items into rare (yellow) ones when you’re level 30 or 40 but you will out-level them very quickly. Orbs of Alchemy and Chaos Orbs are much better used for high-end items so save them, you will need every single one.

Blacksmith’s Whetstone and Armorer’s Scraps on the other hand are fairly easy to come by and if you find a decent piece of gear you will use for awhile feel free to improve its stats, but don’t go overboard. Just remember you’ll replace those items pretty quickly.

4. If you don’t know the value of an item, don’t trade it

I still don’t know the value of a lot of items and sometimes it’s hard to determine it, but if you think something is really good don’t just sell it for an Alchemy Orb. A good example is the aforementioned +Quality gems: high-level characters often prey on lowbies in Normal difficulty and try to buy out their gems for Alchemy Orbs. If a gem is 6% quality or less you can trade it away for an Alchemy Orb, but anything above that is more valuable (look above at tip #2).

Once you hit the endgame knowing the value of items becomes even more important. Check out some of the trading sites like poe.xyz.is or poexplorer.com and search for an item with similar stats to yours to get an idea of how much it could be worth.

5. Pick up all orbs

I must admit I haven’t made this mistake myself (I still pick up most Wisdom scrolls even though they are pretty much useless), but don’t skip picking up any orbs that drop for you. All of them can be traded for higher valued currency items and once you figure out what their value is you’ll start probably need as many as you can get your hands on. In fact even Wisdom Scrolls can be traded, but if you’re building a high MF character you might even need to buy them off of other players.

Even common currency items such as Orbs of Alteration and Chromatic Orbs are worth picking up. Once you get your hands on a 6-linked item you might end up spending hundreds of Chromatic Orbs to get the socket colors you want. Even lower-value orbs like Chance can be used much more efficiently at endgame so don’t skip picking them up.

Another thing I’d like to say is that you should never use Divine or Exalted orbs before endgame. They are extremely valuable and hard to come by and best used on the highest quality gear, or even traded for decent items.

6. Pick up items with linked 3-color sockets

If you see an item drop that has 3 LINKED gem sockets of different colors pick it up and sell it to a vendor for a Chromatic Orb. Even though Chromatics are fairly easy to come by chances are you will need a lot of them, and of course you can trade them for something more useful if you have extra. If you don’t pick them up, you won’t have any extra.

Once you approach level 50 or so and start grinding Merciless be sure to re-read this loot guide and remember all items you need to pick up. Never forget to pick up items with 6 sockets (even white ones), and you better click like a madman when you see one with 5 or 6 linked sockets. They are extremely valuable.

7. Grind experience in groups

You get more items, more experience and you’ll kill monsters quicker. Path of Exile was built for playing in groups so take advantage of it. If you need advice on where to grind experience read my leveling guide. If you’re having trouble picking up your own loot in groups and hate ninjas just find a group with Permanent loot allocation, or create your own.

Grinding in groups is also helpful when you’re undergeared or underleveled for a particular area so just hit up that Social panel if you’re having trouble.

8. Be prepared to spend money

Although it’s admittedly not a very helpful tip, I’d just like to point out that you will need to spend a few bucks on this game after awhile. You can’t buy items or anything like that, but you will need stash tabs. If you intend on leveling multiple characters you will run out of inventory space in your stash fairly quickly so be prepared to spend about $20. I know a couple of people who loathe spending money on online games and this is a deal breaker for them, which I honestly think is sad, but to each its own.

I currently have about 80 stash tabs — it’s way, way above what an average player will ever need but I’m a hoarder. 20 stash tabs should be more than enough for an average player, but fortunately it’s not overly expensive.

9. Not all areas have waypoints

Before you search the same area three times looking for a waypoint, you might want to take a look at my list of zones which have waypoints, it might just save you some unnecessary searching. In most cases you don’t even need to bother finding waypoints (in Normal and Cruel difficulties) as you’ll simply progress further quite fast and won’t really have a use or need for them later on. Just remember to always try and get to a waypoint before you finish playing as it’s the only way to save progress.

For the completionists out there who always want to fully clear an area before moving on, remember to use the /remaining command in chat. It will show you how many monsters are left in a particular area before you move on to the next. Also you can type /help for a full list of slash commands.

10. Trade low-value currencies with a vendor

Vendors are more than just bots where you dump your trash. They can actually exchange (some) currencies for you so you don’t have to bother spamming the trade channel if you’re missing a few Fusings. You can take a look at the table below for some of the trading ratios:

This is actually one of the basic ways how low and mid value orb prices are determined on the market. If a vendor exchanges 2 Orbs of Scouring for 1 Orb of Regret it’s a reasonable assumption players won’t exchange them for a different ratio, unless someone is trying to take advantage of your lack of knowledge about the pricing system.

As you may notice some trades are definitely not worth doing at vendors since you can trade with players with a better ratio, but if (or rather when) you find yourself with hundreds of Alterations rather than bothering with finding a player to trade with for something more valuable you can exchange them at vendors for Jeweller’s or Orb of Fusing: they are also more sought after and thus easier to find players to trade with, not to mention you might need them yourself as well.

You can take a look at my other post for the currency values to get a better understanding of them, but do note that the in-game prices among players vary often and can be either higher or lower, so it’s more of a guideline than a rule.

11. Check vendors for items

Vendors sometimes sell items that can be sold back for Chromatic Orbs (see tip #6) for a measly Orb of Augmentation which has a much lower value. Even though a Chromatic isn’t a very valuable orb, it’s still a good trade. Also pay attention to items with 6 sockets and as previously mentioned more importantly 5 and 6 linked sockets, as you can trade them to other players for a whole lot more than they cost. Do note that vendors sell these rarely, but if you check it every once in awhile you may come across one.

Other resources:

• http://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/wiki/faq – really helpful and organized general information about the game
• Item mods spreadsheet – probably better for more experienced players, you don’t need to pay attention to this until endgame
• Accuracy and Evasion table – how much hit percentage you have with a certain amount of Accuracy (quick tip: consider Resolute Technique passive node and you’ll never miss)
• Currency values – current trade ratios for various forms of currency in Path of Exile
• Official forums – you might want to take a look at it from time to time, there’s often useful information you can find or even ask other players
• PoExplorer – if you ever want to buy an item this is the place. Also useful for determining prices in case you want to sell something.
• ExaltingPoE – when adding additional stats to an item with Exalted Orb this helps you figure out what mods you can get

If you have any of your own tips or resources, by all means you’re welcome to share them in the comments below.

Best part: it’s completely free! (except for the internet bandwidth)

First things first though: you’ll need an Android-powered device for this to work. This works on iPhone and iPad as well, but for the purposes of this short guide we’ll stick to Android. You’ll find detailed steps of exactly what you need to do to “play” SWTOR on your mobile device below:

1. Get TeamViewer

TeamViewer is a piece of software which you need to install on your PC. You can download it on the link provided, and surprisingly the application is entirely free of charge. You will need to create an account on the same website (again, free), and make sure to remember all the details. Additionally, make sure you create the account on the PC you’re using to play SWTOR.

If you need help setting anything up, I suggest you refer to the instructions on the official TeamViewer website. The application is fairly straightforward and you’ll likely figure it out pretty quickly.

2. Get TeamViewer for Android

Go to the Android App Market and download the TeamViewer Android app. When it’s installed on your table or mobile phone, run it and log in with the details from step #1. You can also download the TeamViewer for Android as well as iPhone and iPad on the official website (click the “Mobile” tab).

3.  Connect to your PC

That should be it! If you set up everything correctly, you should be able to see your PC’s desktop on your mobile phone. It isn’t the prettiest sight ever, but it’s more than enough for what we need.

Below is a screenshot of how The Old Republic should look on your device:

Just enough to bring up the companion menu (hotkey “N”) and send them to do missions. You can use the little keyboard icon to bring it up.

A couple of extra notes. This consumes fairly high amounts of bandwidth, so consider yourself warned. If possible, try to use a Wi-fi connection. Additionally, you will need to move around or just hit the “Space” key every now and then to prevent logging out for being AFK.

Do note that you won’t really be able to do much else in SWTOR, but if you want to grind some credits while at work this will be perfect for you!