Now that you’ve got your gear sorted from taoaxue's blog

How valuable, you might ask? Head to poe.ninja to find out. Because the economy is player-driven and there’s no in-game auction house, the value of things fluctuates quickly. This site will give you a pretty good idea of the basics, though. The main thing to remember is that a chaos orb is the closest thing to a standard currency PoE has POE currency trade .

Items can also be useful to sell to the many vendors you’ll find in the game. Run out of scrolls of wisdom? Sell some transmutations. Need a chrome? Sell an item with a socket of each color. There are tons of vendor recipes that can get you great early items, so take a moment to familiarize yourself with them.

Other things that are valuable are gear pieces with life, resistances, move speed, and whatever kind of damage your build is using. Try and keep your life, resistances, and damage high and you’ll cruise through the first five acts. One thing to keep an eye out for is Trials of Ascendancy, which will unlock your class’s three specializations (unless you’re playing a Scion, but that’s a whole other kettle of fish). Complete the trials as you go through the game, and after you finish act 4 head to the aspirant’s plaza. By completing the labyrinth you unlock your Ascendancy, which is usually a huge power spike. You’ll do this again around levels 55, 68, and 75.

(Image credit: Grinding Gear)Shopping! And acts six through 10

After you defeat Kitava and head to act 6, you’ll notice that your resistances take a big hit. Unless you’ve been very lucky, it’s likely that a few of your items are, well, hot garbage. Now’s a good time to learn to trade with other players.

Head to Path of Exile trade to get started. Here you can search for items to try and shore up your resists and improve your damage for the push through to maps. Try and get your elemental resists close to capped (75), and as much chaos res as you can manage. Hopefully you found a couple alchemy orbs and maybe a chaos or two to help you out here, but if you didn’t, don’t panic. People are often willing to negotiate prices on items, particularly if you’re just starting out. Use this as an opportunity to make a new friend!

Now that you’ve got your gear sorted, you can cruise through the last five acts. You’ll unlock Pantheons as you defeat various bosses—check your league starter guide to see which ones you should use. There’s some flexibility here, so if you find yourself feeling like there are others that are more useful, feel free to experiment. I almost always use Brine King to start with, as getting chain-stunned is a real good way to get yourself killed early on POE goods .