Beginner’s Guide to Path of Exile 2

Introduction

Path of Exile 2 inherits the original game’s depth, complexity, and unique approach to character building – which gives it endless replayability, but can be quite intimidating for new players!

This guide aims to help with that, with an overview of key concepts and mechanics in PoE2. Many topics covered here will link to more in-depth guides on the site, so you can delve deeper into these topics!

Leagues

When you create a new character, one of the first things you will be asked is what “League” you wish to create that character in. In Path of Exile, Leagues denote completely separate servers with different gameplay rules. You will only be able to play and trade with other characters who have selected the same League as you.

Standard and Temporary League

The default League is called Standard. This is a permanent League where your character will exist forever, and is where all of your characters from Temporary Leagues are moved after those Leagues end.

Temporary Leagues, on the other hand, only last for a set duration, and usually feature new content or gameplay twists. Temporary Leagues are generally seen as the default way to play Path of Exile, with the entire player base starting over from scratch when a new League launches, building up your character from scratch, while exploring the new gameplay mechanics.

As PoE2 is currently in Early Access, there is not currently a Temporary League. However, once the game fully launches, we should expect a new temporary League featuring a new League Mechanic approximately once every three months.

Note that while Standard is intended to be a permanent League, the exact plans for how GGG will deal with Early Access characters are currently unknown. It has been suggested that all Early Access characters will be transferred to a separate “Early Access” League when the game launches.

Hardcore League

Hardcore is a variant League option that can be applied to any League. Hardcore is intended to give an additional challenge for players that want it – by causing you to lose your entire character when you die.

This incredibly punishing death penalty forces you to build your characters defensively and play cautiously if you want to progress further, as even a single death can set you back days.

A character that dies in Hardcore is not deleted; it is simply transferred to Standard League, so you can always continue playing your character in Standard if you aren’t willing to start over again!

SSF (Solo Self-Found)

SSF is another variant League option that can be applied to any League. SSF disables your ability to party up or trade with other players – meaning that you are progressing through the game entirely on your own. As a result, non-SSF Leagues are sometimes referred to by the community as “Trade Leagues”.

Players who prefer a slower character progression (or are uninterested in trading with other players) can take on SSF as an extra challenge and as a way to show off how far they can go all on their own!

Private Leagues

While not yet implemented in PoE2, Private Leagues will allow players to create their own temporary Leagues for them and their friends. Private Leagues pick an existing permanent or temporary League to be based on, and can optionally have additional challenging modifiers applied.

Private Leagues are often used as a private trade economy for a group of friends, or as community challenge events where players race to complete the game with brutal difficulty modifiers.

Private Leagues are available via microtransaction, with the cost scaling with the number of players allowed in the League.

Gameplay Basics

While Path of Exile 2 shares a lot of its gameplay mechanics with other ARPGs, quite a few mechanics are wholly unique in ways that can be confusing at first. Some of these concepts carry over from the original Path of Exile, but some of them are brand-new to the sequel.

Control Schemes

If you’re playing on PC, the first thing you’ll be greeted with after logging into your character is a prompt asking you to choose a control method.

PoE2 features three different control methods, each with their own advantages and disadvantages:

• Mouse & Keyboard: This is the classic ARPG control scheme. You move your character by clicking on the screen where you want them to move, and also use your skills by clicking the location or enemy you want to use them on.
• WASD: This control scheme is new to PoE2, and has you control your character’s movement with the WASD keys. This allows you to move your character independently of skill use, enabling you to move in one direction, while firing a skill in a different direction.
• Controller: This control scheme resembles WASD control, but adapted for play on a controller. This is the only control scheme available to console players, and comes with its own custom UI designed for controller play.

Gems

In Path of Exile 2, the skills you use come in the form of items called Gems. Skill Gems are the actual skills your character uses, while Spirit Gems grant your character passive bonuses.

These gems each have a number of slots you can put Support Gems into, to modify the functionality of those Gems or boost their damage!

Gems are an incredibly important part of PoE2, which is why we have an entire guide dedicated to them! Check out our in-depth Gems guide for more information.

Flasks and Charms

Flasks and Charms provide powerful defensive utility to your character – restoring life, mana, and even removing negative status effects from your character.

Each character has a slot for a single life flask and mana flask, with belts granting you access to up to three Charm slots.

Flasks and Charms consume charges on use, and regain charges as you kill monsters, or by using the Well in town.

While Flasks need to be manually used, Charms are used automatically when their triggering condition is met – usually when a negative status effect is applied.

Checkpoints and Respawning

As you progress through areas you will unlock checkpoints. When you die, you can respawn at the last checkpoint you reached, however all monsters you’ve killed since that checkpoint will respawn, forcing you to fight through them all again.

If you’re playing in a party, you won’t be sent back to a checkpoint until the entire party dies. When a player is dead, another player can revive them by standing near their body for a short period of time. This can be very useful in clearing difficult bosses!

Checkpoints and reviving are only available during the campaign. Once you reach the endgame, dying will kick you out of the zone, and you’ll be unable to return.

Identifying Items

Non-consumable items will drop “Unidentified”, and require you to identify them in order to see their stats. Early on in the game, your only way to identify items will be to consume Wisdom Scrolls, which you can find as drops from enemies.

Later in Act 1, you’ll unlock an NPC called The Hooded One. This NPC will be able to identify all the items in your inventory for free, saving you the Wisdom Scrolls as long as you take a trip back to town!

Gold

Gold drops in small piles off of slain enemies, and will be automatically picked up simply by walking near it. Unlike some other games, Gold cannot be traded with other players – it is exclusively used as currency with NPCs for various services and for buying items.

Gold mostly serves as a flexible way to offset random drops. If you haven’t gotten a good weapon in a while you can spend some gold to buy one from an NPC! NPC’s inventories will refresh every time your character gains a level, so checking in for good items to spend your Gold on can be a huge aid in leveling!

Gold is shared across all of your characters in a League, so if you want to level a new character, your existing stash of Gold can help make that a lot easier!

Currency

In Path of Exile 2, “Currency” does not refer to Gold or any sort of “number that goes up in a UI”. Rather, “Currency” refers to a category of consumable items that drop off enemies and can be used to modify items in various ways. These items can also be traded with other players.

Due to the fact Currency items are used in the creation of the most powerful items in the game, these items have an inherent value to them; both to you, and other players!

Farming Currency, using it to create or upgrade powerful items, and trading it for items you want from other players forms the backbone of Path of Exile 2’s economy and endgame.

Crafting

Crafting refers to the process of modifying items with Currency items, in the hopes of making something more powerful.

For example, an Exalted Orb can add modifiers to an item. So if you have a good item with a few empty affix slots, you can “craft” it with an Exalted Orb, to try and make it even better!

Crafting in Path of Exile can get significantly more complicated than that, however – especially in the endgame, where you need to craft increasingly powerful items in order to upgrade the items you already have.

Thankfully we have a dedicated Crafting guide just for that purpose. Check out our in-depth Crafting guide for more information!

Character Progression

Getting more powerful in Path of Exile 2 isn’t as simple as making the numbers on your gear go up, or gaining levels. There are a huge number of ways in which you progress through the game and grow stronger!

Quests

The PoE2 campaign largely consists of running through zones, killing bosses, and completing Quests along the way. Quests can reward permanent character power boosts, such as Skill Points and maximum Spirit, so you want to make sure you’re completing them!

Notably, you never have to actually accept a quest in order to do it. If you’re already familiar with the campaign and are leveling a new character, feel free to run past the quest NPC, do the quest, and speak to them to collect your reward!

Leveling

Killing enemies grants experience towards leveling – with magic and rare monsters granting large amounts, and lower-leveled monsters having XP penalties.

Every time you level up, you will fully heal, gain a small amount of maximum life and mana, and be granted a passive skill point to make your character stronger.

Skill Gems and Equipment have level requirements – locking you out of using higher-level equipment and skills on lower-level characters.

When you die at endgame you will lose experience towards your next level – up to 10%! This penalty can never cause you to lose levels… but it can slow down your leveling quite a bit, if you’re not careful!

Skill Tree

The Passive Skill Tree is an absolutely massive web of passive skill points you can choose as you level up. This Skill Tree is shared among all the classes in the game, with each class having a different starting position on the tree.

The passive skills you take will define your character build – granting all sorts of bonuses you need to grow stronger offensively and defensively.

Respeccing

While equipment and gems can be freely swapped around, if you want to change the skill points you have allocated, you’ll need to Respec.

Each town has an NPC that will allow you to un-allocate passives from your skill tree… at the cost of Gold for each point un-allocated.

This enables you to fix a build that isn’t working, or experiment with new things… but it can also eat up a lot of your Gold if you aren’t careful – so choose your passives wisely!

Character Building

What made Path of Exile a game that players have returned to again and again over the last decade is the depth of options and customization in character building. Path of Exile 2 is no different – giving you the ability to try a new build or playstyle every time you make a new character, or return for a new League launch.

Classes

PoE2 currently features 6 different classes, with 12 planned for launch.

Unlike many other games, Classes do not have any inherent differences to start out with, beyond starting at a different location on the Passive Skill Tree. Each Class can use any weapon, any skill, and be played in a number of different ways.

While there are no direct ties between classes and these things, each class is nudged towards specific types of builds, based on the passive skills near their starting location, suggested gems, and most importantly, their Ascendancies.

Ascendancies

Each base class can “Ascend” into one of three class-specific Ascendancies (some of which are currently unavailable in Early Access). While classes don’t grant any unique bonuses, Ascendancies do, and are generally the main consideration players make when deciding what class to play.

You can earn up to 8 Ascendancy points to allocate onto the Ascendancy Skill Tree for your chosen ascendancy, with each point providing powerful and potentially transformational bonuses. While the points within an Ascendancy tree can be respecced later, it’s important to note that your choice of Ascendancy cannot be changed once you’ve made it. If you Ascend your Witch into an Infernalist, your only way to play a Blood Mage is to go level a brand-new character.

Ascending is a huge power spike for most characters, and barring the few examples where it is suggested not to, you’ll want to Ascend as soon as you can. Ascending is first available in Act 2, when you unlock the Trial of the Sekhemas. Further Ascension is then available in Act 3, when you unlock the Trial of Chaos.

These trials can be extremely difficult, especially for players unfamiliar with them.

Attributes

One of the primary stats for characters in Path of Exile 2 is “Attributes”. There are three attributes, each of which have a small inherent bonus:

• Strength: +2 Maximum Life per Strength
• Dexterity: +5 Accuracy Rating per Dexterity
• Intelligence: +2 Mana per Intelligence

More importantly, Equipment and Gems have attribute requirements to use them – with higher level skills and equipment base types having higher attribute requirements.

Most builds will find it impossible to have high enough attributes to mix-and-match the best skills and equipment across all three attribute types – requiring you to specialize in just one or two.

Using higher-level skills and equipment is essential to progress in PoE2 – so you’ll need to be sure you’re keeping up with your attribute requirements as you progress!

Weapon Types

Each weapon type has associated attributes to use it. For example, Maces have very high Strength requirements, while Staves have a high Dexterity requirement and low Intelligence requirement.

Since most skills require specific weapons to be equipped, your choice of weapon will inform the attributes and skills you care about – or maybe the other way around!

Resistances

One of the most important stats on your character is your Resistances. These reduce the amount of damage you take from specific types of damage (Fire, Lightning, Cold, and Chaos).

It’s important to have your Resistances as high as possible, even while leveling through the campaign. If you don’t, you’ll find yourself taking way too much damage with attacks potentially even instantly killing you!

The default cap for resistances is 75% and at endgame you’re expected to be at this cap for the Elemental Resistances (Fire, Cold, and Lightning) at all times!

Each Act you complete applies a Resistance penalty to your character; an additional -5% penalty to each Resistance. Make sure you’re equipping items with more and more Resistance as you progress. Runes are a huge help for keeping them capped!

Types of Builds

You’ll see the community refer to character builds as either “Leveling Builds” or “Endgame Builds”, to denote whether it’s a build you’re intended to play as you play through the campaign, or one that’s designed around endgame play.

There are a few reasons for this distinction. For one thing – many Endgame builds are simply impossible to play while leveling. They could require a Unique that’s only available at high levels, combinations of passives that require a high level, or simply use items that are so rare and valuable that no player starting out fresh in a new League could possibly afford them.

Leveling Builds, on the other hand, are designed to give you a smooth experience leveling through the campaign, without relying on specific or powerful items that you may or may not have access to. The very best leveling builds enable you to speed through the campaign with whatever items you happen to find along the way!

Veteran players will often start out a fresh League with a Leveling Build, and then switch to an Endgame Build once they’ve acquired the necessary uniques, equipment, or skills for it.

Important Tools and Resources

Path of Exile 2 is an absolutely massive, complex game – and it will only grow bigger with each new update! Thankfully, there are a number of guides, tools, and resources created by GGG and the community to make things easier for you.

Build Guides

Build Guides are an absolutely essential part of Path of Exile. Character builds are complex, with the best ones making use of specific combinations of skills, passives, uniques, item stats, ascendancies… and more! How is the average players supposed to figure out what the best stuff is? Especially when each new patch brings balance changes?

Well, thankfully there’s an entire world of veteran players out there figuring out the very best builds, and creating and updating detailed build guides for you to follow.

Build guides include the build’s playstyle, gem setups, key uniques, the best items to go after, a complete passive tree for you to follow, and often even have additional information like leveling and crafting guides!

Whether you want to stick to them exactly, or just use them as a jumping-off point, Build Guides are essential for figuring out what is good in the current version of the game, and building a powerful character for yourself.

Many of these build guides are hosted on this very site – go check them out!

Loot Filters

Monsters in PoE2 drop a lot of items; so many items that it can be hard to know what’s worth picking up, or even tell at a glance what’s dropped!

This can be easily solved with Loot Filters. Loot Filters can hide and highlight items on the ground, based on all sorts of criteria.

For instance, valuable currency can be changed to make a sound when it drops, with a beam of light and a text box that makes it stand out! Worthless loot, on the other hand, can be de-emphasized, or hidden altogether.

While some community members share their own custom loot filters, most players use the website FilterBlade, created by Neversink. This fan-made site allows you to choose a Filter preset, customize it how you see fit, and even upload it to your account so it’s available for you to use in-game!

I strongly recommend that every player use a loot filter, even brand-new players. If you’re just starting out, use the “Semi-Strict” Neversink loot filter. Preset Filters are available through Neversink’s Github page for players who don’t want to use the Filterblade website.

Trade Website

The Trade Website is an official website created by GGG to facilitate player-to-player trading. It allows you to search for items that players have listed for sale in-game, and then message that player with an offer to purchase.

There’s an absolutely massive amount of ways you can filter and sort through items – enabling you to find the exact item you’re looking for!

Path of Building

With so many different parts to a character build, how are you supposed to plan an entire build? How can you know if a slightly different build would be better, or if an item is a downgrade or an upgrade?

Path of Building is a community tool designed to answer all of this questions. It enables you to plan out an entire build, complete with passive skill tree and equipment, and see everything from your DPS to how much damage you can take without dying.

Many build guides will include a PoB code in them. These codes can be imported into the PoB client to load up that build, giving you access to everything you need to follow along!