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What is the best class in Path of Exile?

  • Duelist

    Votes: 31 26.7%
  • Witch

    Votes: 20 17.2%
  • Marauder

    Votes: 19 16.4%
  • Ranger

    Votes: 24 20.7%
  • Templar

    Votes: 22 19.0%
  • Shadow

    Votes: 0 0.0%

[Official] Path of Exile Information and Discussion Thread

60K views 1K replies 175 participants last post by  InsideJob 
#1 ·
Path of Exile is now in OPEN BETA and is 100% free to download and play as of January 23, 2013! Sign up HERE

Path of Exile is now RELEASED as of October 23, 2013! It is 100% free to download and play Sign up HERE


"Path of Exile is an online Action RPG set in the dark fantasy world of Wraeclast. We're a small independent team of hardcore gamers based in New Zealand and have created Path of Exile as the game that we'd want to play ourselves. It is designed around a strong barter-based online item economy, deep character customisation, competitive PvP and ladder races. The game is completely free and will never be 'pay to win'."
- Grinding Gear Games

To find out more about this great game and get to the official site CLICK HERE

Players can choose from 6 character classes (as noticed in the poll above) that revolve around the three core attributes of strength, intelligence, and dexterity:





Each class shares a passive skill tree with each class starting in the location that corresponds to their attributes. As you begin completing quests and leveling up in Path of Exile, you can begin to completely customize your character and move about the massive skill tree however you see fit.

CLICK HERE to check out this web of over 1300 passive skills!
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How the Game Works

Quote:
When you create a character in Path of Exile, you choose a league for that character to exist in. We expect and encourage most players to play in the default league, but other leagues exist for specific play styles or events.

Characters can only see and interact with other characters in the same league. In this way, each one is its own isolated economy. The default league is extremely large and hence acts as a general economy for all characters that were not created in a specialist league. All characters in a league have access to the same shared stash pages.
At this point in time, there are only two leagues. Default (softcore) and Hardcore. Unlike some other games, in hardcore when your character dies, it reverts to default league. This is nice given the complexity of the game, so that you can continue to test or work on your build to see if its viable for higher difficulties.

If you die in hardcore, your character and on person inventory all goes with you to default league. Your hardcore stash remains intact.

In the future GGG will implement tournaments and races that players can create characters in. Some talked about ideas are "cut throat" where players can invade other players map instances and kill them to steal their loot, and races that last 24-48 hours or a week in which the player who is highest level at the end of the time period wins. Like hardcore, once the "event" is over, your character will revert back to its parent league (ie if its a hardcore race event, and you haven't died at the end; your character will go to the regular hardcore league)

More information about leagues.
Quote:
Wraeclast: the land of the damned. This forsaken continent is home to many writhing horrors, murderous beasts, and ravenous undead. The very soil is permeated with dark, ancient power, the earth shivering with malice. The dead are refused peace, rising up and hopelessly wandering in eternal pain, sorrow and hunger. The wildlife is twisted and misshapen, unnaturally aggressive and savage. Lurking in the darkest of corners, unspeakable horrors lie in wait for unsuspecting prey, eager to rip apart the mind as well as the flesh. Wraeclast is a place where few remain alive, and fewer remain sane.
Act I - The Shore
Quote:
All exiles are given the same choice: to sink or swim. Those that don't drown will reach the forsaken shores of Wraeclast, where the only welcome is the clinging embrace of undeath. However, a small band of survivors has managed to hold fast in a ruined lighthouse, desperately repelling both the grasping undead and the manic scavengers that stubbornly cling to their last shreds of humanity. Under the commanding gaze of Axiom Prison, snarling goatmen roam the craggy bluffs, always keeping their cloven feet well clear of the rhoa-infested swamps in the lowlands. All along the coast, rotting shipwrecks litter the shoreline, the spirits of the stranded sailors still haunting the wreckages of their ill-fated ships, waiting to take out their sorrow and rage on those who yet live. All the while, the Siren herself continues her sweet, sad song, luring ever more ships to their watery graves.



Act II - The Forest
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Farther inland, through the twisting caves and darkened forests, the ruins of civilisation become more apparent. The ravages of time have worn many buildings to rubble, and stripped away decaying flesh, leaving only grotesquely grinning bones. The dark, fetid caves and underground passages are a clattering refuge for these skeletal ranks, while the open forests and riverways brim with monstrous beasts with a taste for blood. Recently, ragtag groups of bloodthirsty bandits have built fortified camps in the forest, openly challenging one another while extorting food and supplies from the small, struggling village that sits between them atop a stone dam. Ignored by the squabbling bandits, strange newcomers clad in black armor have been seen skulking around various large ruins, their purpose both mysterious yet unsettling.



Act III - The City of Sarn
Quote:
Atop a sheer cliff of ruptured mantle, straddling the river feeding a mighty waterfall, lies the fallen capital of the Eternal Empire. Its former glory rots amid the ruins of a blasted cityscape, the buildings decrepit and mouldering. But Sarn is far from uninhabited. Many of the original citizens still lurk the dark recesses, their humanity washed clean by the cataclysm of centuries past. These Undying monsters roam the city at night and skulk the shadows during the day, for the naked sunlight is anathema to their shrivelled, leathery skin. The sun-scarred days are far from peaceful, however. A legion of soldiers from Oriath has occupied the area to the west of the river, and is fighting an all-out war against the multifarious denizens of the city. Every day their black-clad soldiers battle twisted insects that scuttle and breed, feasting on anything that moves. Every day they throw battalions against the army of floating, red Ribbons that eviscerate all who trespass on their domain. Every day they skirmish against a small group of exiles who have barricaded themselves on a small island in the middle of the river, caught between certain death on both sides.


MONSTERS

There are a lot and GGG keeps adding more! One of the many great things about PoE is that all the skills and attacks monsters use, are the same ones that you can use as a character! This means that you can, and should, become very familiar with all the skills and effects. Additionally, monsters scale in difficulty with the maps. In PoE you will notice that each map (or location on the world map) has a level. This corresponds with the monster level in the area, and the world map as a whole scales with the difficulty your character is in (i.e. normal, cruel, and merciless). Additionally, there are champion and unique monsters in the game who are substantially more powerful. Unique monsters can have auras that make them, and any allies around them much more deadly. The auras work the same as they would on a hero, in that the unique monster doesn't have minions, but the aura buffs all enemies who may be around it, regardless of if they are champions, other uniques, etc... This means you need to know what you are getting yourself into!

LIST OF MONSTER AURAS TO BE FAMILIAR WITH!

END GAME MAPS!
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Path of Exile's end-game areas are items called Maps. They grant limited access to a new world area that can contain great challenges and greater rewards. Like other items, Maps can have random mods that affect their difficulty. For more information, please read this development diary entry about the system.

*Note that some currency items like cartographer's chisel interect with maps.
PoE is a game of barter. As such, there is no gold. No gold sinks, no repair costs, no nonsense! Currency in the game takes the form of useful items. These items can include orbs that change the properties of an item, re-rolls items values, can change the number of sockets or links in an item, or can turn a common into a rare! This being the case, It is helpful to know what each item does, and what its good for in order to place a value on it. (read more about items in the "Weapons and Armor" below). Anything you do in Path of Exile that would normally cost gold in other games, uses this currency instead.

Read the Grinding Gear Games philosophy as to why they did not want gold in the game.

Comprehensive list of PoE currency!

Players aquire currency by exploring maps. Chests, killing monsters, etc... You can also aquire currency when you sell items to a vendor (see vendor recipe link below in the "...some more good info" section). When you vendor items, depending on their attributes, their socket color/links, and their rarity and quality, vendors will give you either scraps or shards which turn into actual useful currency when the correct quantity is reached, or will give you actual useful currency for your items!
Active skills in PoE come in the form of gems that are used by socketing them into weapons and armor. Gems have attribute requirements based on their type and level and gain experience as you slay enemies. The higher the quality and level of a skill gem, the better the skill is or becomes. The skills are based off of the prime attributes; strength, dexterity, and intelligence.

List of Strength skill gems
List of Dexterity skill gems
List of Intelligence skill gems

In addition to active skill gems, skills can be compeltely customized and transformed into even more powerful skills that take on different effects. This is done by using support gems. Support gems can be linked to skill gems to modify the base skill to add the effects of the support gem. Support gems of any color can be linked to skill gems of any color provided the correct combination of linked colored sockets is present in the particular item in which you want to socket them. (see below "weapons and armor"). Additionally, a single support gem can be linked to multiple skill gems so that each active skill retains the effects of the support.

Comprehensive list of support gems

Remote skills are used the same way as active or support skills. They are in the same form of gems, but when the skill is used the effect is allowed to be placed (i.e. "remotely") somewhere on the map.

List of remote skills

Lastly, there are white gems in PoE that can be found which can be placed into any color socket to give you skills such as town portal so you don't have to use scrolls.
Quote:
Path of Exile is a game about items. As you kill monsters, open chests and interact with townsfolk, you will receive items that allow you to better protect your character and to kill stronger foes. Many items are worth keeping to trade to other exiles.
As noted in the skills section, gear you find in PoE (armor and weapons) have colored sockets that can be "linked" together. This partly determines usefulness and value. this means that even non-rare or non-magic items can be valuable! Remeber all it takes is an orb of alchemy or some other currency item to turn a 6 linked socketed non-magic item into a rare!

ITEM MODS
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As you progress through the game, you may find Magic, Rare or Unique items. These items have magical properties known as Mods. On Magic items, they appear as either prefixes or suffixes on the name of the item, with a maximum of one of each. Rare items can be found with up to six random mods (three prefixes and three suffixes).
Comprehensive list of PREFIXES
Comprehensive list of SUFFIXES

WEAPONS
Quote:
Without a good weapon, an exile is as good as dead. The monsters of Wraeclast guard a wide variety of weapon types, ranging from Bows to Swords to Wands to exotic Claws. Weapons are aligned with up to two of the core attributes: Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence. These attributes affect the speed, damage, critical strike rate and requirements of the weapons.
Comprehensive list of WEAPONS

ARMOR
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In Wraeclast, defense is as important as offense. The defensive properties of armour pieces are dependent on what attributes they are aligned with. Strength armour conveys Armour, which reduces incoming physical damage. Highly effective against swarms of small monsters, armour has a greater effect on smaller amounts of damage. Dexterity armour pieces grant Evasion, which contributes to your chance to evade attacks. Intelligence armour has Energy Shield, which is a magical barrier that absorbs incoming damage. It starts to recharge after you have been out of combat for a few seconds.
Comprehensive list of ARMOR

JEWELRY
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Rings, amulets and belts cannot have gem sockets, but instead have powerful magical properties imbued into their base types. These properties stack with the existing mods that magic, rare or unique versions of the items receive. Jewellery pieces do not require specific attribute requirements to equip.
Comprehensive list of JEWELRY

Tips/FAQ for new players

Mechanics of the game

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Some more good info

Patches having been flowing since open beta pretty regularly.
Kudos to GGG for their work!
Proof of their awesomeness (list of all patches w/ notes)
The standard leagues are DEFAULT and HARDCORE. These two leagues are always active and players can always play in them. The ladders are below showing the top leveled players in each league.

CURRENT DEFAULT LADDER RANKINGS

CURRENT HARDCORE LADDER RANKINGS

GGG has released the season ONE tournament ladder schedule! This allows players to take part in short (or longer) duration tournaments over the course of the season to earn point towards rewards. Pretty sweet!
Quote:
Path of Exile race leagues are short duration events where players compete in a fresh economy to win prizes. With durations ranging from one hour to one week, they allow players to demonstrate mastery of the game.

We're now grouping race events into seasons. Season One runs from February 23 to April 7 (NZT) with a total of 109 events. Success in these races earns event reward points. As you accumulate reward points and cross thresholds, you are awarded prizes.

The prizes are a variety of tradeable game items with alternate art. These items were not chosen because of their power level but because their exclusive artwork makes them collectable. The prizes are either staple Unique items or fully upgradable base item types.
Quote:
One of Path of Exile's most interesting features is the short term race event system. Today we are announcing the first season of race events (which runs from February 23-April 7, NZ time). There's a summary page with your progress towards the new season's exclusive rewards here. This news post contains a much more thorough explanation of how this system was designed and how it works.

Path of Exile's race events were really popular during the Closed Beta. We had half of the active server population turn up to play in certain events. Our first month of Open Beta was spent fixing immediate problems while we let the economies of the permanent leagues develop. We are now ready to start a full schedule of races.

A race event is a fresh league that lasts for anywhere from an hour to a week. They all take place in their own separate economies with new characters. Your existing in-game wealth doesn't help in these races - they test your playskill and luck. The leagues generally reward players who can level up quickly and place in the top ranks of their character class. There are also rewards for objectives like finishing side quests or full-clearing areas first.

Rather than running self-contained individual races, we've now structured the events into seasons. Season One starts this weekend (February 23, NZ time) and runs for just over six weeks (until April 7, NZ time). There are prizes for top-placing people in each race, prizes for people who achieve good results for a set of events in a season and prizes for people who finish at the top of the realm overall in a given season. Seasons of races help encourage players to play in multiple events and allow us to provide prizes that transcend individual events - giving players something meaningful and special to work towards over several days or weeks.

In past events we gave out orbs and other currency items as prizes. Because these items had a known value, this had an adverse effect on both the economy and the incentives to play races. If the prizes were low, races seemed unappealing. If the prizes were high, it became mandatory to participate in races to keep up with the inflation the orbs caused. We have avoided this in Open Beta by designing new custom prizes for race events. We still want them to be tradeable, but we want to let the market decide their value.

The prizes are a variety of existing unique items and a very upgradable base item type (Coral Ring) that all have alternate art in-game. These particular pieces of special artwork are only available from this season of race events - other seasons will have different items. While the power level of the uniques (and upgradable base ring) is relatively low, they have high trade value because of the exclusive icons. For example, most high level players have access to a Goldrim (unique Battered Cap) when they need to twink resistances on a new character, but few people will have the version with special collectable artwork. The items are itemlevel 100, which means that there are no restrictions on how they can be rerolled. Note that these items are not better in any way than the regular versions you'd find in game, other than the fact they have special artwork. The list of items that are prizes for the first season are shown on this summary page. The sockets and values of the mods on the items are random within the regular ranges. The specific values on that page are only for illustration.

Shortly after a race is over, you are awarded reward points based on your performance in the race. Please note that these reward points (please use the initialism RP if you want to abbreviate them) are not the same type of points that are purchased and spent on microtransaction items. These are two completely unrelated systems.
The season's prizes exist at various RP thresholds. You are awarded the prize as soon as you cross that threshold. For example, our first prize is awarded when you hit 15 RP, which will take a few events for a decent player (or one event if you're very skilled/lucky).

Season RP values do not carry across to the next season. Each season has a new set of prizes and is an opportunity for a fresh start. Your total reward points are still tracked as lifetime points which are eligible for other prizes as you participate in multiple seasons.

During the Closed Beta, we gave out Demigod's Presence unique amulets to the top players of each character class in an event. In the Open Beta, we're keeping this concept, but with a new item. For most short races, the top player of each class will receive a Demigod's Triumph unique wreath. Like all other race reward items, this helmet can be traded with other players.

We will also be adding a ladder of reward points for the current season. This ladder will show which accounts have the most points so far and will help us track who is due to win the overall season prizes. At this stage we're expecting to give alternate art Demigod's Triumphs to the top 20 people in the overall ladder of reward points for this season. Details of this will be announced when we have the ladder of reward points implemented soon.

There are prizes for reaching lifetime reward points thresholds as well. Lifetime reward points are not reset between seasons, so if you play in many seasons over the life of the game you'll be able to win some awesome rewards. We haven't yet announced the schedule of prizes for lifetime reward points, but it's coming soon!

We've put together a schedule of 109 events over 44 days, which start and end on a weekend. The events occur in four different timeslots which are chosen to hopefully give equal opportunities to players in America, Europe and NZ/Australia. We're looking to improve these times for subsequent seasons based on feedback. Most of the events are between 1 and 4 hours in duration. Two of the events last for a week and have other shorter events occurring at the same time. It's up to you to decide whether it's more important to go for success in the week long events, the smaller events that occur at the same time, or both. The number of events ramps up gradually over the course of the season so that players have more opportunity to catch up.

We understand that this system greatly favours players who play in more events. That's true of almost any sport or hobby. We've pitched the prizes so that there are still cool things to win even if you can only play in one event per week.

We reserve the right to change the number of reward points awarded for different objectives as we get feedback and data from early races. We may increase or decrease certain thresholds that reward points are granted at depending on what levels players get to. To be clear, I'm not talking about changing the thresholds for receiving the alternate art prizes - those aren't being modified once the season has started.

We have a lot of interesting league types coming soon. In addition to the regular set of party, solo, and turbo, we're discussing some other interesting twists. Burning Ground or Blood Magic leagues are the type of options that we're experimenting with internally to see what is fun in a race setting. We expect that most or all of the events in the first season will be in hardcore mode.

For a calendar of events and for information about the season prizes, please check out the Season One page.

We're really excited about this race system and the first season! I'm going to try to play in as many events as I can. Good luck!

To view current reward point ladder CLICK HERE

CURRENT SEASON SCHEDULE AND PRIZES
***DISCLAIMER*** Before delving into any of these builds to end up pissed off later in the game, do your research! Read the threads and feedback as well as the reasons behind certain aspects of the build. Doing so is the only way to know what you need on your gear as well as resistance/armor/evasion/energy shield/life/mana thresholds etc.

Additionally, I am going to avoid posting specific builds because there are no "cookie cutter" builds per se. You can literally do anything. The general idea builds exist, but even then are modified depending on what items you have access to (ie taking a +armor node or + life node instead of resistance node or a +accuracy node over + elemental dmg node etc depending on what your gear is lacking at the time).

Duelist

Marauder

Ranger

Shadow

Templar

Witch

*TIP* Look for the threads that have a lot of feedback, as well as threads from members that have been playing the game for a long time (guys that have support tags and what not)

Path of Exile Wiki <<good accurate info! (I suggest studying up on the bosses)

QUEST REWARDS BY CLASS

VENDOR RECIPES

Newbie's Guide to Loot

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A lot of us play on OCN's dedicated team speak server: TS3.OCNGaming.net it's a hit or miss when we are all on though.

HardwareDecoder, also hosts his own TS server: ks3290132.kimsufi.com. He's got a good number of guys that get on there regularly. They take turns sharing maps and do a lot of end game map runs in Default league.

CLICK HERE If you are new to team speak and want to find out what it's all about!
 
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Reactions: Leg3nd
#6 ·
title is misleading. that is not diablo 3.

title should be more like:
Path of Exile (diablo 3 ripoff)
 
#12 ·
Creating a game that is in the same genre as another is not, "ripping" off another game. Why hate on game producers that try to better you favorite "type" of game. If this is your short minded logic, then every mmo is EQ ---> WoW; or every FPS game is somehow CS/BF/MW. Let the creative minds do their thing....

If you have enough time to critique these games on these forums, you obviously are not producing a quality game.
 
#13 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by TwilightEscape;14237863
Wow I'm actually rather amazed at how decent the graphics are, especially for an F2P game, and it looks like it will bring a lot of the Diablo style gameplay with it. Only thing that could ruin it would be a broken cash shop.
IRONY! How have you been?

The past has come to bite the present in the ass
lachen.gif


OP:Looks very interesting , will definitely be checking this game out.
 
#14 ·
Bump 4 more viewshipz.
 
#16 ·
#23 ·
stay a while and listin
 
#24 ·
Sweet thanks for posting this!
 
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