1. Trading

For a game based so much on loot making trading with other players so inconvenient is a mysterious move in my opinion. It’s becoming increasingly annoying for me to try and trade currencies to other players. Usually it involves me spamming at least five different trade channels only to be replied by players who are just trying to take advantage of me, which amounts to borderline scam. For some reason everyone expects a 30% or higher profit yield in currency exchanges and even refuse to negotiate for a reasonable ratio. I often spend an hour or two just sitting idly in Sarn just waiting for someone to offer a regular trade ratio.

And I shouldn’t even mention trading items. Unless you have a valuable Unique or a GG item chances are you won’t sell it. Again even with somewhat valuable items that are worth a few GCPs you’ll spend hours spamming channels only to be replied by offers of 1 Alchemy and such. It’s no surprise that the public parties window is laden with people selling and buying items and currency, when there’s no alternative system in place to facilitate more convenient trades between players.

Furthermore making forum topics with shops and/or relying on 3rd party services to help you sell items is just ridiculous for any game. GGG has mentioned that some kind of a trading system will be put in place before the game’s release, and that can’t come any sooner. For those hardass players who are in favor of the current trading system, all I can say is Diablo II was released over a decade ago and it’s time for you to move on. Trading via forums or chat doesn’t make trading impossible, just inconvenient. GGG should encourage trades rather than hinder them, but that’s just my 2c.

The best solution would be to add an auction house, at least for the casual Standard league. It’s a proven system for trading in online games and it’s unlikely it would be a difficult implementation.

2. Dependance on Kaom’s Heart

Edit: fixed in patch 1.0.0. Base character health increased, Kaom’s Heart down to 500 health.

Currently my build doesn’t provide much room to remove Kaom’s. By significantly nerfing health bonuses from the passive skill tree in a recent patch GGG has in my opinion made a huge mistake. Before you could have insanely high health and truth be told it needed to be reduced, but by reducing health nodes in the skill tree I am now even more dependent on using Kaom’s Heart. By removing it with my current gear I’m left with 2,700 health which is hardly enough for high-level map farming. And there’s no alternative: with the old health values in my passive I could have 4,000 HP fairly easily and using Kaom at that point wouldn’t be mandatory, in fact I’d gladly remove it.

It doesn’t seem okay that an entire playstyle is viable only because of one item. Anyone who plays melee builds very likely has to get Kaom’s or risk dying far too often. One solution would be to reduce Kaom’s bonus health by half but increase health nodes in the passive tree to the previous amounts. Likelihood of that happening though is extremely slim.

3. RNG

This might come off the wrong way but I’ll include it anyway since it frustrates me beyond belief at times. First of all I don’t mind farming and grinding, in fact I believe it’s one aspect of the game that keeps me going. I’m always hopeful to get a valuable item or at the very least farm enough currency to buy one. However when you’re farming 30 hours a week and get nothing out of it but some low-value currency you start to get increasingly vexed by the futility of the time invested. Looting an amazing item is fun, it keeps me playing, but farming currency to hopefully be able to afford one some day kind of puts me off.

If you could get currency more consistently then playing for hours on end would feel more rewarding. A possible solution would be to make sure that for (example) every 5 thousand mobs you kill in maps your chances of getting an Exalted Orb increase exponentially up to the point where a drop is almost guaranteed. It would make farming more consistent in terms of value gained and make it at least a bit more bearable. Just this past week I did well over 100 68+ map runs and got nothing out of it; the most valuable loot I got is a couple of Regret and Chaos Orbs. Vendoring hundreds of rare items for Alterations and picking up every single Chromatic won’t get me near Soul Taker anytime soon.

Here’s something to put things into perspective for you. I have 40 days played (that’s 960 hours spent in game) and all I got to show for it is a total net value of 50 Exalted Orbs (half of which is due to one lucky drop). Barely enough to buy two GG Unique items for my build, Kaom’s Heart and Soul Taker. Is that a reasonable reward for the time invested?

Path of Exile has numerous character builds I’d love to try out but it’s so damn expensive. It’s not enough to simply level a character to 80+, you need to spend hours upon hours farming maps for specific items to make it viable. Farming hundreds of maps also brings me to my next two points.

4. Leveling past 85

Don’t get me wrong, leveling to 100 should be nearly impossible and unattainable to only but a few who can dedicate a gigantic amount of time and effort it takes. But getting stuck at level 85 or so (or 87 in my case) feels like I’ve yet to reach “high-level”. I like the fact that levels are always the carrot on a stick and it’s just one of the reasons why I keep logging in. But unless you have access to 73+ maps  leveling past 87 is nearly impossible. I get less than 1% of my level for a full map run, and chances are every 10-15 runs I’ll do something dumb and die only to lose 3-4 hours of gameplay, experience wise. Getting to those maps requires either a huge amount of currency or friends with huge amounts of currency, neither of which I’m in abundance.

Getting plenty of 72+ maps to be able to farm consistently is an entirely different problem.

5. Sustaining map pools

The only maps I always managed to have plenty of are 66s. A couple of weeks ago I spent an Exalted to buy sixty 68 maps just to try and get a bit closer to higher level maps, again. I managed to turn those 60 maps into about a hundred total but right now I’m almost out of 68s. I did get about fifteen 69s and six 70s but I quickly ran out of those. Sustaining a high-level map pool to me seems impossible if RNG isn’t in your favor. Frankly, spending 4 Chisels and a few Scouring + Alchemy Orbs to get 80+ quantity is a noticeable investment and then not getting a single map drop is irritating. Just yesterday I was in some public group doing blue 70 maps for an hour or so and the guy always got 1-2 level 70 maps in every single run despite extremely low quantity (usually about 20%).

I tried buying 70 maps, I rolled mazes and 100%+ quantity and whatnot and if the RNG doesn’t favor you it makes absolutely no difference. Sooner or later I fall back to farming 66 maps, hoping to get a few 67s or 68s, all the while spending currency to roll them which barely gets back my investment. From what I can gather most players start having problems with sustaining their 72+ map pools; I can’t seem to get even near that level. Considering I don’t gain any experience from < 72 maps farming them also feels completely futile, and I might as well farm Docks or Lunaris.

Basically, it doesn’t feel right that unless you have friends in high places you’re getting denied the full endgame experience.

6. Magic Find

I feel it’s unfair that having Increased Item Quantity & Rarity is exclusive to practically one build in the game. If this trend continues Sporkers are soon going to be played by half of the population, and the builds popularity is in no way surprising. It’s cheap to get started with and requires practically no defensive stats all the while yielding currency at a consistent rate. With every other skill tree build your gear must focus on defensive and offensive stats, and Sporkers only have to get IIQ/IIR and they’re more than ready for Merciless Docks. I hate to bring another game into the discussion, especially one so hated by the PoE community, but Diablo III had an interesting system implemented in a later patch where Magic Find was a base character stat depending on level rather than being exclusively gained through equipment.

Considering some of the other points I outlined above perhaps such a system wouldn’t be entirely wrong in Path of Exile either, because getting gear with health, resistances and damage is hard enough without having to think about IIQ & IIR as well.

7. Item Filtering

If you ever did Coward’s Trial you know why there’s a need for item filtering options. Sometimes there’s so much loot that you literally can’t even see or pick it up because it goes over your screen boundaries. Even in regular maps there are often dozens of monsters and a boss at the same place and you have to spend a minute just looking at the loot and see if there’s anything you missed.

I probably picked up more 6-socket items because someone missed it in the giant blob of text rather than having them actually drop for me. Before loot allocation options were implemented you could at least filter out white items, now it’s either all or nothing. A customizable item filter for white and blue items would definitely be a welcome addition to the game and I can’t possibly see anyone complaining about it.

In-game passive skill tree planning, more gem choices, useless currencies (Glassblower’s, Transmutation, Augmentation), accuracy stat (awful mechanic), clearer wording (“More” and “Increased”)… Those are just some of the other minor issues that may or may not be fixed, improved or implemented with time. The game is still in beta and GGG has said multiple times Path of Exile is aimed at “hardcore” gamers, but I can’t help but whine about some of the things that irk me on a daily basis. The 7 outlined issues I have with the game are more of a quality of life change rather than making the game overly casual, at least that’s how I feel about it.

A couple of years ago I asked Chris from GGG for a small favor and although he had no reason he was very forthcoming. For someone as busy as I’m sure he is to take the time of the day to accommodate me is unprecedented and just one of the reasons why I don’t feel bad at all when buying weapon effects and stash tab bundles. I’ve observed the way he and the rest of the company interacts with the community and I’ve grown very fond of the way they do business. I admire their patience and envy their well-deserved success. I’m not their targeted audience though: I’m a casual player and I’m sure some of my opinions differ from what the majority of the community feels.

It’s the small things that make a game great and Path of Exile is already there. But there’s always room for improvement and I’m certainly hoping that some of the peeves I have will be eventually addressed.

What annoys you in Path of Exile?

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!

In Diablo III there are no attribute or skills points to improve your character. Instead when you gain levels you automatically unlock new skills and your class’ core attributes will increase. Spells automatically improve in strength with levels but most of the customization to them comes from applying Runestones.

Each class in Diablo 3 has over 20 different skills but can select only six on the maximum level. They are unlocked automatically and you gain a new one on nearly every level. By opening the skills window as displayed on the picture on the right you can see your skills and place runestones into them. In addition to active skills you will also have three different passive spells that offer additional benefits.

The active skills can be bound on your mouse or keyboard much like in an MMO game, and any of them can be swapped for other skills which opens up many new gameplay opportunities. At start you can only hotkey two skills, up to the maximum of six on the level cap.

If you get bored with using one set of skills, you can just replace them with others, and since all of them can be further improved with the use of runestones the amount of customization is really impressive, if not a bit overwhelming: one additional reason to get a leveling guide and learning the best skill/runestone combos for every class.

So to recap:

• There’s a total of 20 active skills for each class
• You start with 2 skills and later on end up with 6
• Skills are automatically learned with levels
• You can swap skills anytime
• There are no skill trees or specs like in Diablo II
• Skills are improved and customized with different effects via runestones
• You also have three passive skills

Leveling guides are typically used for MMORPG games, where leveling your characters is a big part of the game and staying ahead of other players, especially at game launch is really important. In essence Diablo 3 isn’t much different from your typical online RPG game.

There are thousands of players who have way more time than you do and if you want to stay competitive in this game, you will need some kind of an edge. The good thing is that Diablo III is still a new game and as such it lacks really useful informational guides beginner players could use to learn more about the game. However, that’s why there are several paid D3 leveling guides that will help you gain an advantage over other players.

Having such a useful leveling guide to show you exactly where you should go and how to maximize your character’s potential is extremely beneficial to being good in this game. If you want to start dominating other players online than knowing the exact strategies for boss fights, class vs. class tactics, equipment drops and more is essential.

Be sure to read up on all available Diablo leveling guides. All of them are or will be reviewed and compared against each other on this site, so make sure you read the reviews carefully and get the best one.