Path of Exile Loot Guide by Falcord
The Newbie's guide to loot: Introduction
PoE is a complex game. After the shock and awe caused by the passive
skill tree, I think the second biggest impact comes from the
itemization.
PoE's economy, even at this early stage, is convoluted and involves much
more than just gear. Skills are itemized, hell, even places are going
to be itemized soon in the form of maps. New players are overloaded
with this information, which makes it very hard to tell what is worth
keeping and what is vendor trash.
I think it's important to give newcomers guidance on what drops they
should be paying attention to, and which aren't worth keeping. This
guide aims to do just that, offering a list ordered by pickup priority.
It involves the obvious stuff (rares, uniques) but also the less
immediate such as 3-color-links to trade into chromatics or max implicit
jewelry.
Obviously, this guide assumes you want to pick stuff up for its general
usefulness / market value. Your personal character needs at the moment
should be max priority, and if you feel a blue (or a white) is an
upgrade over what you're wearing at the moment, by all means pick it up!
Understand this guide is a product of my own (limited) experience and
doesn't involve the endgame, just the route to MoC. If you have any
suggestions or changes, feel free to post it in the comments =).
Priority List
So let's say you are just born fresh (and soaked) into the world of
Wraeclast. You might think that, just because you're new, all the items
you're get are worthless. On the contrary! There are items of great
value for newcomers too, that can be traded for high end Uniques. I
recently got a +16% Whirling Blades gem in the very second area of the
game, which sells for a substantial amount of high end currency. You
should keep your eyes open!
In order to know what stuff is actually valuable, here's my personal priority list:
--->
a) Max Priority: Pick these all the time<---
a).1: All Currency items.
Every single currency item is worth picking up and stacking, with the
occasional exception of Scrolls of Wisdom and Portal Scrolls. These
last two are plentiful so it is fine if you skip them every now and
then. The rest should be picked without exception, as end-game
"crafting" uses them in great quantities and they are all valuable.
Even the less obvious ones (such as Orb of Scouring) are worthwhile and
shouldn't be left in the ground!
a).2: Quality Skill Gems. This
is often overlooked by newbies, which leads to a lot of wealth wasted.
Every time you see a skill drop, even if it's extremely basic, take a
second to hover your mouse over it and check if it has a Quality bonus.
If it does, no matter how small, pick it up. These sell for high
prices as they significantly reduce the number of Gemcutter's Prisms
you need to make them perfect, and high level min maxers will pay for
them. They're also good to use in place of the normal ones, even when
underleveled!
a).3: Uniques. Some
uniques are better, some are worse, but they're generally helpful to the
appropriate build, and some times they're extremely powerful (such as
Charan's Tipua Kaikohuru). If you see brown text on the ground, don't
pass. Even if it's low level, it may come in handy for your next
character or a strange build. I've made a build that abuses Crown of
Thorns, which has been called the worst Unique ever, so remember this:
There will be someone out there buying the Uniques you get, even if you
can't figure out how to use them.
a).4: Three-Colour-Links. Knowing
that you should pick 3CLs up is one of the best benefits of reading
the Sales Recipe thread. 3CL is any item with one socket of each colour
linked together (they may have more sockets). They are good because
they sell for 1 chromatic orb, in one of the most direct recipes
available, so it's the equivalent to picking a (rather bulky) chromatic
orb. Vendor it ASAP and collect your reward.
--->
b) High Priority: You generally want to pick these<---
b).1: Rares. More often
than not, you want to pick rares up. What you do with them is another
issue that I'll discuss in another section of the guide, but they're
useful material. Identified, they may turn out to be quite powerful and
sell for decent amounts, or serve as gear for yourself or your twinks.
If they turn out not too decent, they can be turned into Sale Recipes
to get special orbs, or outright vendored for shards. Left unidentified
they can also net you some orbs thanks to Sale Recipes. How to "spend"
your rares will be explained later on.
b).2: Non-Quest Skill Gems.
Many skill gems are awarded as quest rewards for the different
classes. Others aren't, and it's a good idea to pick up the ones that
can't be easily obtained. You can probably obtain a list somewhere else
in the forum, but quickly asking on the Chat will suffice. Having a
couple copies of every non-quest gem is always good in case you roll a
character that uses them, or a sale opportunity turns up. If they start
piling up, you may want to skip some.
b).3: High Links. High
Links are items with many linked slots. They won't start appearing
until late Cruel, so don't worry about this at first. 5-links should be
picked up without exception, and if you see a 6-link you better dive
like crazy for it: they're extremely rare. 4-links depends on you, and
how much storage space you have. They're rare enough to be convenient,
but won't sell for much.
b).4: Max Implicit Items.
Some items (like Jewelry) have implicit bonuses: Those are the ones
above the horizontal line before the magic stuff. Implicit values are
important because they're independent of the rest of the bonuses, so if
you tinker with a piece of jewelry or belt that value will be left
untouched, unless you use a special orb for it. This means items with
perfect Implicit mods have an intrinsic value, as they are perfect
tinkering material at any level (for example to twink characters). Since
jewelry doesn't take much space, picking up those 15% gold rings and
20 onyx amulets isn't a bad idea.
--->
c) Medium Priority: You may want to pick these<---
c).1: Magic Flasks: It's always good to pick Flasks up and
identify them, because some of their bonuses are valuable. Surgeon
flasks sell for alchemy shards, and the ones that heal minions are
decently rare. They usually aren't trade material as most people seem to
manage their own ones, but it doesn't hurt checking them out.
c).2: Weirdly Coloured Sockets:
This may be a personal quirk of mine but I like hoarding items with
very unlikely socket colours. This could be, for example, a bow with
four red slots, or an axe with five blues. These proportions are
statistically very unlikely, and if there is ever a build that requires
precisely that layout, chances are they'll be paying a lot for it.
Given how specific these would get, I only suggest picking them up if
you have a lot of stash space!
c).3: Advanced Flasks:
The weirder flasks, such as Resistance Flasks, Diamond and Granite
Flasks are rare enough to warrant picking a 5-set of every one, if
anything because they're good to have around. I'd advise to pick them up
until you have 5 of each, then keep them just in case.
--->
d) Low Priority: You usually don't want these<---
d).1: Whites without good sockets:
There is little use for Whites without interesting socket layouts.
Even if they have Quality, there is little point in picking them up,
since Quality on a white is very easy to apply. Of course, whites with
Implicit bonuses are subject to the Implicit criteria I explained
above, but other than that, don't pick them.
d).2: Blues (although you may to ID+Drop):
Blues are very common and picking them up without any criteria will
clog your inventory and waste your time and scrolls. This problem is
very common with Diablo 3 players, since they're used to blues being
valuable. Here, not so much. However, you might want to pick up blues
you might be interested in and drop a scroll on them to see if they have
good mods. If they do, they might be good material for promotion into
rares with a Regal Orb, but since an effective promotion would probably
require some Exalted Orbs too, this is something you should probably
be doing in the endgame.
d).3: Quest skill gems: Gems that are given as quest rewards are generally trash, unless you need them urgently.
What do I do with my Rares?
I am not going to replicate the Sales Recipe thread here, but if you
haven't read it yet, you really should =). There are plenty of useful
recipes to be used. In my experience, the most interesting have been the
3CL one I explained before (which should be used whenever possible)
and the Rare related recipes.
There are recipes involving Quality Gems to get GCPs, but I think they
offer a horrible return rate, so I wouldn't advise to use that one.
When it comes to Rares however, there are many options to cash your
rares in for currency even when they suck completely. So unless your
Rare is actually good, or you happen to get the legendary quiver
Skin Flute, which you should immediately send to me, prepare to turn them into useful stuff.
There are four recipes you want to aim for. Alchemy, Regal, Chaos and double Chaos.
Chaos is the simplest one if you don't want to bother. Just stash those
rares trying to keep different item types, and when you get a full set
of gear, vendor it for a Chaos.
There is a twin for that recipe, which involves selling all rares
unidentified. This will net you two Chaos instead of one, which is a
great bang for your buck, but you won't get to check whether the rares
you got are good by themselves, which would mean they sold for more.
It's up to you. If you do want to farm Chaos orbs, I suggest farming a
low level area (such as normal Fellshrine) and selling the unidentified
rares in bulk. However, high level rares should be identified just in
case.
If you want to put a bit more thought into your rare recipes (and also
play a fun collection mini-game) you could aim for the Alchemy and Regal
recipes. As you might have seen in the recipe thread, you are supposed
to hand in Rares with the exact same randomly generated name, and this
will give you rewards. 2 same-namers grant you an alchemy, and 3 give
you a valuable Regal.
In order to match names effectively you need a strategy. Many people in
this forum use a chrome extension to check for coincidences in their
rare names. This is a good idea, but you can go even further.
I have a personal strategy that you may enjoy using: Pick a letter, or a
set of letters, and gather rares that start with it, until your stash
is reasonably full. This will make it easier to remember which rares
you have to keep, but most importantly, you can comfortably buy in
bulk. By asking on chat "WTB any bad rares that start with F, G and H"
for instance, it will make it easier for people to look them up, rather
than request specific names.
What do I do with my Currency?
Except for a very few cases,
you do not want to use your currency items in your own gear.
This doesn't mean you should be stingy though. What I'm saying is
that, until you reach the endgame, they're better spend trading than
enhancing.
Since the amount of currency items you have to sink to reroll a level 70
item is the same than for a 5 item, doing it on the latter means
you're wasting your currency potential. A spare alchemy every now and
then when you absolutely have to replace a piece of your gear is okay,
but don't engage in addictive orb iteration when your base item just
isn't worth it.
Instead, actively engage in trades. It's amazing how much more value you
can get for your stuff by trading. An egregious example of this
happened to myself after I started the game, back when I had no clue how
valuable a GCP was. I sunk two GCPs on my Ice Spear gem to get a
measly +2% quality on it, and then I saw someone in the chat sell a
+10% Quality Ice Spear for 2 GCP. Silly me!
So remember: Unless you're engaging in high-end "crafting", or you are
looking for something very specific, the value of the orbs is much
higher when unspent.
The End
That was all folks! I hope you enjoyed the guide, and if you have any
criticism, suggestion, or possible change in the priority list, I'm
willing to hear about it.
