Is Path of Exile Worth Playing? A Comprehensive Guide for New Players

Path of Exile was released back in 2013, and over the 10 years of its existence, it has achieved success that probably no other modern diabloid can boast of. This was possible thanks to a truly developed combat system, as well as constant updates - primarily in the form of leagues every three months. In this article, we decided to talk about some of the features of PoE and help a new player choose whether to start playing PoE now or not.

Will you have to invest money?

This is a rather important question, and it cannot be answered in a few words. There is no need to pour money into PoE just to play. But to improve the convenience of the game, of course, yes. For example, you are tired of manually placing different types of items into sections of your chest. Easy - you can buy a special tab, for example, for legendary items, fortune-telling cards, currency, and much more. Then everything in the chest will always be clean and in order. Yes, each of these tabs is not cheap, and the developers have made a huge number of them over 10 years - at first you will be confused about what all these essences do, etc. Therefore, first, you need to figure out what you need to buy first and what you don’t need at all. In addition, you can wait for discounts, which often happen in the PoE store.

Another reason to spend money on the game is boosting. In Path of Exile, players often turn to boosting services for various reasons. Firstly, the game's complexity can be overwhelming for newcomers, with intricate mechanics and a vast skill tree to navigate. Boosting services provide these players with a way to catch up and compete with others effectively, buy poe currency, or just complete boring tasks with the help of skilled players. Secondly, the highly competitive nature of the game's leagues and leaderboards motivates players to seek boosting assistance to optimize their character builds and progress faster than their peers.

A beginner's nightmare?

First in general. Path of Exile is the spiritual successor to Diablo 2, with all that number-crunching and build-building. More precisely, in PoE, all these things were taken to the absolute level. It is enough to look at the leveling tree of the game to understand that there is no time for jokes - either study or die constantly. However, in the first stages, there is a third way - to play with someone else’s builds that have already proven themselves in this particular league. Of course, the barrier to entry into PoE is very high. Yes, the game has a huge internal encyclopedia, where you can read about any aspect - from how skill stones synergize with each other to the principle of damage resistance. But no matter how well the information is presented, at first it will not help you much. The game is terribly overloaded with mechanics, and the only way to understand it all is to devote a lot of your time to it. Both the game itself and viewing numerous materials about it. So the first conclusion is that Path of Exile is going to be here for a very long time. Yes, you can complete 10 acts even with a fairly superficial knowledge of the mechanics, and, by the way, you will also get a lot of pleasure from it. But PoE is still not about the plot, the main thing here is digging into all these stones, builds, and farming cards. But for this, you will have to sit down with textbooks.

Should you play alone?

You've probably heard more than once that PoE is dead, or that some of its leagues are uninteresting. In half of the cases, it’s just a local joke, each league is buried long before its appearance, and this is already a common thing. But the game does have problems, including balance. However, the truth is that you won’t start encountering them and understanding what they’re talking about until the first hour of the game, so you don’t have to worry about this. So, you finally decided to start playing PoE. What do you need to know in the first stages? The first thing is to decide how you want to play. You can create a suicide character to learn the basics of the game on your own. It’s more interesting this way, but you have to be prepared for the fact that you’ll hardly be able to advance far in the game with this hero. Or you can look at someone else’s build and understand the game, moving step by step along someone else’s path. In this scenario, you risk little, but always keep in mind that the main thing is to understand why the build was done the way it was and not otherwise. Otherwise, you will interpret it incorrectly, and therefore use it ineffectively. At the start, you will be asked to choose the type of league - standard or current. The difference between the solo mode, as the name implies, is that exchanging items with other players is prohibited here. Path of Exile is a bit of an MMO RPG; there is a place for both co-op and market relations. In solo mode, it will be just you and the game. Many people love this mode because it preserves the spirit of that very collecting - when you rejoice at the drop of everything that is relevant to you. Because you understand that you simply cannot get it any other way.

Answering the question - is Path of Exile worth playing - yes, of course it is. You just need to be prepared for the fact that the game is not particularly friendly to beginners, is replete with mechanics that are difficult to master, and the characters here are designed for exactly one league, or even less.