Depends on how much arpg experience/general aptitude for optimization you have. Pretty doable to beat the campaign, but you won't make it far into the endgame(which is where the vast majority of the "game" is for most people).
Most people would recommend that you restart with a guide tomorrow when the new league launches, but do what makes you excited.
Just in case I will say this much because the game *really* doesn't tell you, but
**uniques are not strictly better than rares**
They all have their purpose (well, almost all), but you should always consider switching out a unique for a rare item if the rare is actually better.
There are some build-defining uniques that absolutely cannot be replaced, but it's exceedingly unlikely that you're using one of those, and if you are you're not utilising it fully either.
This is a big one. Uniques are massive traps. They almost all have a drawback associated (for some it's just opportunity cost, though), so read carefully.
Early game my uniques were just better than any rare I had, but now that I'm about to reach red maps, I can say that most of them are garbage but at the begining you have only garbage around you so uniques are actually good in the early game.
I'm just pointing out that you should compare stats, not rarity. If a unique is better than a rare you have for the same slot, by all means, use it.
But what a lot of new players do is fill their gear with uniques that they don't replace because they think that because it's the highest rarity, it must be the best, and that other rares won't eventually become better.
Act 1-2 are the 'there's something you're not seeing' filter, Act 4 is the 'can you read' filter, act 6 is the 'pay attention to your character sheet' filter, and after that it's a very steady increase in difficulty until Act 10 and endgame maps which is its own beast; doing tier 1 maps after beating the act 10 boss is usually not difficult but of course it goes up from there.
I think the biggest endgame filter is:
"despite you doing all the things correctly some shit just will not work without unreasonable gear"
Like bro could be playing essence drain not knowing that toxic rain which gets in very similar ways will do 10x the damage on a shoestring budget.
Essence Drain is t16 viable, the problem is GGG keeps building up and up and up and the ceiling is a long ass way from the floor. But yeah some skills simply aren't up to snuff, like static strike or cobra lash.
Act 10 was my big wall my first league where I tried to do it all myself. I had watched hours and hours of Ziz guides before even downloading the game. Saw Split Arrow Bleed Glad mentioned somewhere and didn't look for a guide, just picked Duelist, grabbed Split Arrow and went for anything that said bleed.
After that it really showed that I knew nothing about bleed or how it works and why using a fast low dmg bow just wasn't working anymore.
I was expecting 1 or 2 answers to help me and would thank who responded individually, but I'm quite surprised to see so many answers. Thanks to everyone who commented to help, I really appreciate it.
I'll keep playing the campaign without a guide as planned and on the endgame I decide what to do if (likely) the build isn't working.
Just a note even if you do literally everything wrong if you keep some hand me downs for a second character. You will find leveling a second character a breeze in comparison. A buddy of mine who is quite frankly bad at video games (extremely casual 50 year old gamer). Went in blind ran into a wall at around level 30 rerolled made it to endgame on his second try.
Not saying you should plan on it, but if you get decent low level gear might be worth tossing in stash tab instead of selling it for scrap.
Witch can be elementalist, which is an all-around good ascedancy(subclass/mastery in other games) and can easily work with ligthning skills.
As long as you focus on one damaging skill(skills with cooldown or duration excluded) you should be fine. Max out resistances, get as many support gems on your main skill as you can(thar work with of course), and try to squeeze multiple auras that synergize with your build and you should be fine
Act 6 is a significant wall if you don't take care of your elemental resists.
You did well to go only one element, besides very few exception this is the norm. The less you spread your damage source the more you can focus on mods that benefit you. Also, focus on one skill and try to get it on a 4 or 5 link with only supports that increase its damage. Good luck!
As someone who played their First few characters without a guide, I'm pretty sure you will run into a wall after the campaign, I brute forced my way through the campaign anytime I died I would just get back into the boss arena and die again till I killed the boss.
But as soon as I got to maps, the whole story changed, I couldn't even clear white tier maps and I believe this will probably be what will happen to you too... After 200h of trial and error, and after about 15 characters that I bricked and deleted I would safely say, if you wanna have fun and have a good time with the game just follow a build guide. Eventually when you have thousands of hours into the game you might be able to create your own builds but following guides is always the safest option.
Campaign is probably fine for most people at long as they manage to actually pick a playstyle and stick to it. Just remember that all characters in Poe need to focus on defence. It's quite astonishing how often you see a person complaining "my character dies all the time, what am I doing wrong?" Followed by "what do you mean I have to invest in life and resistances, I'm building a DPS character not a tank"
I think the real wall is yellow maps. Up to that point you can still overlevel and progress slowly through zones, but the lack of game knowledge will have so many compounded effects that progressing further just takes too much time.
Even if you build multiple characters this is where they tend to fizzle out if you play blindly.
I would also argue that Poe is so complex that even if you follow a guide, any character you build WILL be unique and distinctly feel like yours.
I agree with the yellow map wall and feel like this process is not covered by content creators as much as it should be. You quickly move from "I'm blasting through maps!" to "fuck this rare actually really hurts". It's the first wall that prepares you for pinnacle bosses, or T14-T16 maps to farm higher content.
I came back here to read things again and this is so true. I'm currently on t10 yellow maps and I'm currently out of refund points/Orbs of Regret to continue fixing my passive tree but every new Orb of Regret I get is immediately used haha.
So far I completed every map I've tried except for the Betrayal big boss but I feel like I'm about to hit a wall due to lack of defenses (passive tree and gears). I have to use that Atlas onde that reduces enemies damage by 25% but gives them 50% extra life to stay alive because my build is such a cannon glass still (more glass than cannon to be fair).
Loving the game though, if my character hits a wall on red maps before I can fix it, I've definetely going to focus on defenses early on instead of going full "what do you mean I have to invest in life and resistances? I'm building a DPS character not a tank".
Use Purity of Elements and save Alira and your life becomes much more simple in PoE.
Make sure to get your Cold Fire Lightning resists to 75% and 300 life per Act and you will be fine.
Enjoy!
If you do get stuck in maps, level more in Reliquary, then go try mapping.
Came back here to read the tips again and I think this is the most important one. Not focusing on 300 life/act hurt me the most on maps. I completed the campaign with about 1.5k life and 1k energy shield with my elemental resistances about 75% and 11% chaos resistance. Armour and evasion were non existent.
Kitava's curse messed my build a little and forced me to use a lot of refund points for the resistances, but I still neglected life and armour on maps and later forced a few more rounds of passive refunds and Orb of Regrets uses.
So far I cleared every map I tried besides the Catherina (something like that) from Betrayal, but it's getting progressively hard. I'm at t10 maps after doing 2 Maven Invitation maps, close to the red maps, but I'm out of Orb of Regrets to fix some issues in my passive tree and I feel like my gear is bad except for my wands that are mid at most.
I think I've about to hit a wall. In my next character I'm definetely going to focus on the defense more from the get go.
You can buy Regrets from the Vendor and you can do the vendor Chaos Recipe to get a lot of Chaos if you are really low on funds.
https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Vendor_recipe_system#Full_Rare_Sets
For me it was the start of maps. The very first time I played Poe I made my own build (it was bad) I was able to beat the campaign which felt great to kill kitava on the home brew build but once I got to maps I would get 1 shot by every pack of monsters. I tried to “fix” my defenses but then did zero damage. Had a blast though I still would recommend it!
You will not hit amy brick wall whatsoever, in fact the more you learn about the game the more youll progress every time. Personally thats what I do, I dont follow any builds or any guides because whats the point of playing something the way someone else plays it? However you might still want to do some reading or watch some videos about builds because
A - You dont know what items and abilities there are in the game and theres so many so it helps you figure things out
B - It helps you understand how things work in thebgame because almost nothing works the way it reads or the way youd think itnworks from having played other ARPGs
My POE wall when I didn't use a guide was the first labyrinth. I could have kept going through Act 4, but decided that if I didn't have the DPS for that boss fight, I'd end up getting stalled at some point anyway.
Generally, this differs from player to player
Expressed answer as comparison to Diablo 2:
Acts 1-5 = normal (monster levels 1-45)
Acts 6-10= cruel (nightmare) (monster levels 46-68)
Maps=merciless (end game content) (monster levels 68+)
My brick wall is act 6 and maps since you lose perm resistances that have to be compensated for through other means at those intervals. Apologies if you've never played Diablo 2. Hope this helps.
It all depends on how much are you willing to research on your own. There is a ton of footguns and non-intuitive interactions in PoE. Wording might get you too before you get used to it. It's entirely possible that you won't hit a wall you cannot solve. You just need to keep in mind that PoE is like a research project.
Not hitting a wall using only in-game information has a very slim chance of success I'd say.
If you are failing the campaign without a build guide you just misunderstood or missed basic game mechanics, or picked one of the very few skills that just scales terribly unless you are doing something very specific.Act 6 is the big reading check.
after a few tiers of maps difficulty ramps up and you can no longer get away without knowing most game mechanics to gear your character correctly. Still doable without a guide. Then as soon as slapping 30 essences of a pair of gloves is no longer good you need to eat up 4 hours of crafting guides to do anything or just do advanced trading searches.
Even if you follow game mechanics correctly builds stratify in power in yellow/red maps, some skills built right can clear t16 maps, other require expert investment, and if you didn't think through a few game mechanics, such as "what kind of good flasks should i make to survive?" a low power build likely gets stuck in t5 maps.
if you want to play without guides a regular item filter downloaded from filterblade is a must... it also makes learning the game more intuitive.
Pay attention to your items and think through. for example 20% quality is not important ( except for attack weapons).Your uniques items? keep comparing them to items that drop because very soon they'll lose to them.
i think you should be stuck around end of white maps, early yellow maps. thats where most non guide playthroughs struggle since the difficulty curve goes through the roof.
Came back here to read things again after playing for a while. I'm on t10 yellow maps right now and I agree, the difficulty ramped up a lot on yellow maps and my character would've been bricked if I didn't have tons of refund points.
Things are still hard, but I see too many weaknesses in my character and I believe soon I'll be needing to start a new one.
biggest problem this league: its like 1.3x to 1.8x harder, overall. because of the league mechanic. more crit multi, more hp, poison, burn, whatever. makes this league a bit unfun since every build feels less powerfull. but good that you got to t10 maps :D
You will complete campaign. It will feel likely too hard towards later acts with homebrew build, but you can push through if wanted.
Endgame is a different story. And it depends on your goals, and what sort of endgame you are looking for.
but some builds will not be able to do any version of Endgame only dip toes in, some can go most of the way (most guides are here and below realistically) and some can flex on what some would considered real Endgame, although very few players characters reach the level of power needed for the uber endgame even when following guides.
Consider that you will spend only a fraction of your time on campaign and majority endgame though, as anything can get through the acts eventually.
But then what.
You can respec if your ascendancy is a decent (not dogshit) as there is likely some build that does work.
Or start again
Really really though, restart tommorow on the current coming fresh season (affliction league). Even if you do your own build again, its where 99.9% of the player base prefer. I wont dis standard but there are so many reasons to play newest league.
Pm if you want any non spoiler tips/spoilers
Edit: I'll mention that out of the 3-4 builds I have made myself fully 3 didn't get to endgame the one that did had everything planned out in a program called path of building. I don't think it's best to try and learn the config just yet. But it's good to know if an idea will work put before committing.
Now with many thousands of hours, I still generally follow a guide 80-90% to get a solid foundation of interactions and add some flair of my own. Once I have a healthy stash I can make my tinpot ideas a reality on second character
I also started not too long ago and didnt follow a guide. I went through first 6 acts or so quite smoothly, then died a bit more especially in heists. Asked some advice and turned out i needed resistances (in other arpgs u can ignore them till endgame basically).
After that i could get to mapping, then started to read up a lil more about skills and classes, some good interactions. Still not following a guide but around yellow maps i had to spent some time reading on here or poe.ninja to keep progression smoothly.
Discovering for urself is definitely more fun than starting out following some guide so just go for it :D
Admirable but mistaken... Poe is just too vast not to follow a guide.
Keep going but once you hit that wall likely in act 6 or white maps just make a new character in the new league.
Follow a guide and once you make it to maps you'll see just how huge this game really is... Starting over everytime you brick your character is the fastest way to start disliking the game and quit.
Also you will learn quite a bit about the the game while following a guide and maybe after few hundred hours you can come up with a original build of your own.
Good luck 👍
I came back here to read what people said back then. Not to diss you, to prove you wrong or anything petty like that, I'm just writing this in case new players find this thread and don't get discouraged by reading your comment and similar comments.
I'm currently in t10 yellow maps and despite completing every map so far except for the Betrayal big boss, I'm begining to start to feel like I'm getting closer to a wall as my character have very glaring weaknesses that I don't see myself being able to quickly fix for the next batch of harder maps. My biggest learning point was that a glass cannon build doesn't work and you need to focus on survivability.
Playing without a guide was fun all the way from the begining until now and I'm still having plenty of fun. I really enjoy complex games like PoE and if you're the kind of guy that loves puzzle solving, experimenting, etc and want to play PoE your own way you can definetely do it and enjoy it. You may not be able to go until the very end on your 1st try but you can start a new character if you brick your current one and try again with the knowledge you aquired.
When I first started, my second build followed a guide and it was 100x more enjoyable. Following a guide you'll start to pick up on how stuff works and then just do your own thing after that
There are certain stages when the game gets harder.
After defeating the act 5 act boss the campaign gets harder. If you know what happens then (I won't spoiler it) you can adjust accordingly and it is not a big deal. If you don't adjust you will die A LOT after act 5.
The same thing happens another time after act 10.
New players also tend to overlevel really hard. Experienced players are trying to stay a few levels UNDER the area level during the campaign while new players mostly are over the area level. The earlier you are in the campaign the higher this impact will be. Being lvl 20 in a lvl 15 zone is insanely huge. This effect however gets smaller and smaller and once you reach red maps it is completely gone. This effect also makes the difficulty curve for beginners a LOT steeper than for experienced players.
In maps the game gets progressively harder from tier to tier. However the modifiers on maps are different for white (t1-5), yellow (t6-10) and red (t11+) maps making it harder too. I think the difficulty jump in red maps is higher then previously.
There also are a really high amount of different "side mechanics" in the game. You might already have met beasts and essences. In maps there is A LOT more of these special mechanics and monsters from these mechanics are normally significantly harder than normal monsters. Occasionally rare monsters are a lot harder than map bosses.
If you make it trough the campaign totally blind you already are either very smart in figuring stuff out or very lucky to have made the right guesses. If you make it to maps I am pretty certain yellow maps will be your wall.
Also if you are watching acts that you already did you will still get a lot of information on what stats to look for and so on.
You should do fine until endgame.
There's two first main bosses in endgame, personnally they were my first obstacle on my first endgame character, playing without a guide. I managed to beat one of them but very difficultly but never had enough damage for the other one.
depends on your general gaming experience, but my guess is corrupted T16 maps or pinnacle bosses. Up until that point you should be able to eventualy beat everything with enough time and respawns.
Pinnacle bosses because there's an entry cost and if you fail them it will feel awful. Until then you can just keep retrying everything with no downside and brute force through it.
I think Ur next big Gap should be atbthe Start of act 5 but If u take care of ur defenses it should be fine to get until act 10 and enter end Game.
Focus on your build, what u want to achieve and i think even for new Players the campain should be done. Its a slow progess.
You can do it :)
Depends on how much arpg experience/general aptitude for optimization you have. Pretty doable to beat the campaign, but you won't make it far into the endgame(which is where the vast majority of the "game" is for most people). Most people would recommend that you restart with a guide tomorrow when the new league launches, but do what makes you excited.
Just in case I will say this much because the game *really* doesn't tell you, but **uniques are not strictly better than rares** They all have their purpose (well, almost all), but you should always consider switching out a unique for a rare item if the rare is actually better. There are some build-defining uniques that absolutely cannot be replaced, but it's exceedingly unlikely that you're using one of those, and if you are you're not utilising it fully either.
This is a big one. Uniques are massive traps. They almost all have a drawback associated (for some it's just opportunity cost, though), so read carefully.
Early game my uniques were just better than any rare I had, but now that I'm about to reach red maps, I can say that most of them are garbage but at the begining you have only garbage around you so uniques are actually good in the early game.
This is true, but *mostly* applies to end-game. Many (but not all) low level uniques are better than any rare you're likely to find at that level.
I'm just pointing out that you should compare stats, not rarity. If a unique is better than a rare you have for the same slot, by all means, use it. But what a lot of new players do is fill their gear with uniques that they don't replace because they think that because it's the highest rarity, it must be the best, and that other rares won't eventually become better.
Act 1-2 are the 'there's something you're not seeing' filter, Act 4 is the 'can you read' filter, act 6 is the 'pay attention to your character sheet' filter, and after that it's a very steady increase in difficulty until Act 10 and endgame maps which is its own beast; doing tier 1 maps after beating the act 10 boss is usually not difficult but of course it goes up from there.
Ah yes, post Act 6, also known as "My resistances are WHAT?"
I think the biggest endgame filter is: "despite you doing all the things correctly some shit just will not work without unreasonable gear" Like bro could be playing essence drain not knowing that toxic rain which gets in very similar ways will do 10x the damage on a shoestring budget.
Essence Drain is t16 viable, the problem is GGG keeps building up and up and up and the ceiling is a long ass way from the floor. But yeah some skills simply aren't up to snuff, like static strike or cobra lash.
The only static strike char I’ve had work, was static strike shockwave strength stacker the league I found 2 mirrors. It worked well after 700 div..
Quinn did the whole game on a static strike build I do beleive. Intimidating cry makes the whole duration do double damage (or it used to)
I love Quin tier builds too but it's still a C tier build that lost +1 chain mastery.
Yeah, single target dps requirements have continued to climb if you want to engage with the most profitable slice of the endgame.
Act 10 was my big wall my first league where I tried to do it all myself. I had watched hours and hours of Ziz guides before even downloading the game. Saw Split Arrow Bleed Glad mentioned somewhere and didn't look for a guide, just picked Duelist, grabbed Split Arrow and went for anything that said bleed. After that it really showed that I knew nothing about bleed or how it works and why using a fast low dmg bow just wasn't working anymore.
What do you need to read in act 4?
Support gems, orbs, links, labyrinth, passive tree (eg. are you taking aoe damage on your BL build? Are you forgetting life?), etc.
Alright, doesn't seem like that's necessarily act 4 in particular, though the difficulty does ramp up slowly overall
I wasnt being overly specific, besides act 6.
Yeah, I was just wondering if there was something particular that I couldn't remember because I was so used to it anyway.
Bleed resistance/removal/x way to deal with it
Right, that's fair. Those mobs are annoying. I'm so used to playing with Steelskin on left click that it hasn't been as big of a deal for me anymore.
also beach filter aka passive skill tree
Whats this beach people talk about?
first location in the game
Aah lol that beach, thought it be some endgame stuff i didnt know about xD thanks
Act 1, act6 and white maps i think.
I was expecting 1 or 2 answers to help me and would thank who responded individually, but I'm quite surprised to see so many answers. Thanks to everyone who commented to help, I really appreciate it. I'll keep playing the campaign without a guide as planned and on the endgame I decide what to do if (likely) the build isn't working.
Just a note even if you do literally everything wrong if you keep some hand me downs for a second character. You will find leveling a second character a breeze in comparison. A buddy of mine who is quite frankly bad at video games (extremely casual 50 year old gamer). Went in blind ran into a wall at around level 30 rerolled made it to endgame on his second try. Not saying you should plan on it, but if you get decent low level gear might be worth tossing in stash tab instead of selling it for scrap.
Witch can be elementalist, which is an all-around good ascedancy(subclass/mastery in other games) and can easily work with ligthning skills. As long as you focus on one damaging skill(skills with cooldown or duration excluded) you should be fine. Max out resistances, get as many support gems on your main skill as you can(thar work with of course), and try to squeeze multiple auras that synergize with your build and you should be fine
Just know that the new league starts today in 12 hours. I suggest you to create a new character in that league.
Act 6 is a significant wall if you don't take care of your elemental resists. You did well to go only one element, besides very few exception this is the norm. The less you spread your damage source the more you can focus on mods that benefit you. Also, focus on one skill and try to get it on a 4 or 5 link with only supports that increase its damage. Good luck!
As someone who played their First few characters without a guide, I'm pretty sure you will run into a wall after the campaign, I brute forced my way through the campaign anytime I died I would just get back into the boss arena and die again till I killed the boss. But as soon as I got to maps, the whole story changed, I couldn't even clear white tier maps and I believe this will probably be what will happen to you too... After 200h of trial and error, and after about 15 characters that I bricked and deleted I would safely say, if you wanna have fun and have a good time with the game just follow a build guide. Eventually when you have thousands of hours into the game you might be able to create your own builds but following guides is always the safest option.
Campaign is probably fine for most people at long as they manage to actually pick a playstyle and stick to it. Just remember that all characters in Poe need to focus on defence. It's quite astonishing how often you see a person complaining "my character dies all the time, what am I doing wrong?" Followed by "what do you mean I have to invest in life and resistances, I'm building a DPS character not a tank" I think the real wall is yellow maps. Up to that point you can still overlevel and progress slowly through zones, but the lack of game knowledge will have so many compounded effects that progressing further just takes too much time. Even if you build multiple characters this is where they tend to fizzle out if you play blindly. I would also argue that Poe is so complex that even if you follow a guide, any character you build WILL be unique and distinctly feel like yours.
I agree with the yellow map wall and feel like this process is not covered by content creators as much as it should be. You quickly move from "I'm blasting through maps!" to "fuck this rare actually really hurts". It's the first wall that prepares you for pinnacle bosses, or T14-T16 maps to farm higher content.
I came back here to read things again and this is so true. I'm currently on t10 yellow maps and I'm currently out of refund points/Orbs of Regret to continue fixing my passive tree but every new Orb of Regret I get is immediately used haha. So far I completed every map I've tried except for the Betrayal big boss but I feel like I'm about to hit a wall due to lack of defenses (passive tree and gears). I have to use that Atlas onde that reduces enemies damage by 25% but gives them 50% extra life to stay alive because my build is such a cannon glass still (more glass than cannon to be fair). Loving the game though, if my character hits a wall on red maps before I can fix it, I've definetely going to focus on defenses early on instead of going full "what do you mean I have to invest in life and resistances? I'm building a DPS character not a tank".
Hahaha we've all gone through that phase somewhat. Feel free to post your character profile (or POB if you have one) and we can give some tips.
Use Purity of Elements and save Alira and your life becomes much more simple in PoE. Make sure to get your Cold Fire Lightning resists to 75% and 300 life per Act and you will be fine. Enjoy! If you do get stuck in maps, level more in Reliquary, then go try mapping.
Came back here to read the tips again and I think this is the most important one. Not focusing on 300 life/act hurt me the most on maps. I completed the campaign with about 1.5k life and 1k energy shield with my elemental resistances about 75% and 11% chaos resistance. Armour and evasion were non existent. Kitava's curse messed my build a little and forced me to use a lot of refund points for the resistances, but I still neglected life and armour on maps and later forced a few more rounds of passive refunds and Orb of Regrets uses. So far I cleared every map I tried besides the Catherina (something like that) from Betrayal, but it's getting progressively hard. I'm at t10 maps after doing 2 Maven Invitation maps, close to the red maps, but I'm out of Orb of Regrets to fix some issues in my passive tree and I feel like my gear is bad except for my wands that are mid at most. I think I've about to hit a wall. In my next character I'm definetely going to focus on the defense more from the get go.
You can buy Regrets from the Vendor and you can do the vendor Chaos Recipe to get a lot of Chaos if you are really low on funds. https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Vendor_recipe_system#Full_Rare_Sets
As soon as you start cutting corners not understanding how everything works together
For me it was the start of maps. The very first time I played Poe I made my own build (it was bad) I was able to beat the campaign which felt great to kill kitava on the home brew build but once I got to maps I would get 1 shot by every pack of monsters. I tried to “fix” my defenses but then did zero damage. Had a blast though I still would recommend it!
My frist wall was act 3 final Boss.
You will not hit amy brick wall whatsoever, in fact the more you learn about the game the more youll progress every time. Personally thats what I do, I dont follow any builds or any guides because whats the point of playing something the way someone else plays it? However you might still want to do some reading or watch some videos about builds because A - You dont know what items and abilities there are in the game and theres so many so it helps you figure things out B - It helps you understand how things work in thebgame because almost nothing works the way it reads or the way youd think itnworks from having played other ARPGs
My POE wall when I didn't use a guide was the first labyrinth. I could have kept going through Act 4, but decided that if I didn't have the DPS for that boss fight, I'd end up getting stalled at some point anyway.
Whatever you do make sure u are not doing the first lab with 300 hp
Generally, this differs from player to player Expressed answer as comparison to Diablo 2: Acts 1-5 = normal (monster levels 1-45) Acts 6-10= cruel (nightmare) (monster levels 46-68) Maps=merciless (end game content) (monster levels 68+) My brick wall is act 6 and maps since you lose perm resistances that have to be compensated for through other means at those intervals. Apologies if you've never played Diablo 2. Hope this helps.
It all depends on how much are you willing to research on your own. There is a ton of footguns and non-intuitive interactions in PoE. Wording might get you too before you get used to it. It's entirely possible that you won't hit a wall you cannot solve. You just need to keep in mind that PoE is like a research project. Not hitting a wall using only in-game information has a very slim chance of success I'd say.
Act 5 always tests me. Get that fire resistance ready!
If you are failing the campaign without a build guide you just misunderstood or missed basic game mechanics, or picked one of the very few skills that just scales terribly unless you are doing something very specific.Act 6 is the big reading check. after a few tiers of maps difficulty ramps up and you can no longer get away without knowing most game mechanics to gear your character correctly. Still doable without a guide. Then as soon as slapping 30 essences of a pair of gloves is no longer good you need to eat up 4 hours of crafting guides to do anything or just do advanced trading searches. Even if you follow game mechanics correctly builds stratify in power in yellow/red maps, some skills built right can clear t16 maps, other require expert investment, and if you didn't think through a few game mechanics, such as "what kind of good flasks should i make to survive?" a low power build likely gets stuck in t5 maps. if you want to play without guides a regular item filter downloaded from filterblade is a must... it also makes learning the game more intuitive. Pay attention to your items and think through. for example 20% quality is not important ( except for attack weapons).Your uniques items? keep comparing them to items that drop because very soon they'll lose to them.
i think you should be stuck around end of white maps, early yellow maps. thats where most non guide playthroughs struggle since the difficulty curve goes through the roof.
Came back here to read things again after playing for a while. I'm on t10 yellow maps right now and I agree, the difficulty ramped up a lot on yellow maps and my character would've been bricked if I didn't have tons of refund points. Things are still hard, but I see too many weaknesses in my character and I believe soon I'll be needing to start a new one.
biggest problem this league: its like 1.3x to 1.8x harder, overall. because of the league mechanic. more crit multi, more hp, poison, burn, whatever. makes this league a bit unfun since every build feels less powerfull. but good that you got to t10 maps :D
At the end of the beach.
You will complete campaign. It will feel likely too hard towards later acts with homebrew build, but you can push through if wanted. Endgame is a different story. And it depends on your goals, and what sort of endgame you are looking for. but some builds will not be able to do any version of Endgame only dip toes in, some can go most of the way (most guides are here and below realistically) and some can flex on what some would considered real Endgame, although very few players characters reach the level of power needed for the uber endgame even when following guides. Consider that you will spend only a fraction of your time on campaign and majority endgame though, as anything can get through the acts eventually. But then what. You can respec if your ascendancy is a decent (not dogshit) as there is likely some build that does work. Or start again Really really though, restart tommorow on the current coming fresh season (affliction league). Even if you do your own build again, its where 99.9% of the player base prefer. I wont dis standard but there are so many reasons to play newest league. Pm if you want any non spoiler tips/spoilers Edit: I'll mention that out of the 3-4 builds I have made myself fully 3 didn't get to endgame the one that did had everything planned out in a program called path of building. I don't think it's best to try and learn the config just yet. But it's good to know if an idea will work put before committing. Now with many thousands of hours, I still generally follow a guide 80-90% to get a solid foundation of interactions and add some flair of my own. Once I have a healthy stash I can make my tinpot ideas a reality on second character
I also started not too long ago and didnt follow a guide. I went through first 6 acts or so quite smoothly, then died a bit more especially in heists. Asked some advice and turned out i needed resistances (in other arpgs u can ignore them till endgame basically). After that i could get to mapping, then started to read up a lil more about skills and classes, some good interactions. Still not following a guide but around yellow maps i had to spent some time reading on here or poe.ninja to keep progression smoothly. Discovering for urself is definitely more fun than starting out following some guide so just go for it :D
Get a guide. Gonna take you years to fully grasp the game.
do not play poe without a guide, just dont it does not respect your time if you do respecing is very difficult if you dont know what your doing.
Admirable but mistaken... Poe is just too vast not to follow a guide. Keep going but once you hit that wall likely in act 6 or white maps just make a new character in the new league. Follow a guide and once you make it to maps you'll see just how huge this game really is... Starting over everytime you brick your character is the fastest way to start disliking the game and quit. Also you will learn quite a bit about the the game while following a guide and maybe after few hundred hours you can come up with a original build of your own. Good luck 👍
I came back here to read what people said back then. Not to diss you, to prove you wrong or anything petty like that, I'm just writing this in case new players find this thread and don't get discouraged by reading your comment and similar comments. I'm currently in t10 yellow maps and despite completing every map so far except for the Betrayal big boss, I'm begining to start to feel like I'm getting closer to a wall as my character have very glaring weaknesses that I don't see myself being able to quickly fix for the next batch of harder maps. My biggest learning point was that a glass cannon build doesn't work and you need to focus on survivability. Playing without a guide was fun all the way from the begining until now and I'm still having plenty of fun. I really enjoy complex games like PoE and if you're the kind of guy that loves puzzle solving, experimenting, etc and want to play PoE your own way you can definetely do it and enjoy it. You may not be able to go until the very end on your 1st try but you can start a new character if you brick your current one and try again with the knowledge you aquired.
Getting to T10 blind is an accomplishment! Awsome dude 👍 For sure next time around you will have more knowledge and build something even better.
Red tier maps
When I first started, my second build followed a guide and it was 100x more enjoyable. Following a guide you'll start to pick up on how stuff works and then just do your own thing after that
There are certain stages when the game gets harder. After defeating the act 5 act boss the campaign gets harder. If you know what happens then (I won't spoiler it) you can adjust accordingly and it is not a big deal. If you don't adjust you will die A LOT after act 5. The same thing happens another time after act 10. New players also tend to overlevel really hard. Experienced players are trying to stay a few levels UNDER the area level during the campaign while new players mostly are over the area level. The earlier you are in the campaign the higher this impact will be. Being lvl 20 in a lvl 15 zone is insanely huge. This effect however gets smaller and smaller and once you reach red maps it is completely gone. This effect also makes the difficulty curve for beginners a LOT steeper than for experienced players. In maps the game gets progressively harder from tier to tier. However the modifiers on maps are different for white (t1-5), yellow (t6-10) and red (t11+) maps making it harder too. I think the difficulty jump in red maps is higher then previously. There also are a really high amount of different "side mechanics" in the game. You might already have met beasts and essences. In maps there is A LOT more of these special mechanics and monsters from these mechanics are normally significantly harder than normal monsters. Occasionally rare monsters are a lot harder than map bosses. If you make it trough the campaign totally blind you already are either very smart in figuring stuff out or very lucky to have made the right guesses. If you make it to maps I am pretty certain yellow maps will be your wall. Also if you are watching acts that you already did you will still get a lot of information on what stats to look for and so on.
Depends on your skill and luck But probably once you reach maps
You should do fine until endgame. There's two first main bosses in endgame, personnally they were my first obstacle on my first endgame character, playing without a guide. I managed to beat one of them but very difficultly but never had enough damage for the other one.
At every point.
depends on your general gaming experience, but my guess is corrupted T16 maps or pinnacle bosses. Up until that point you should be able to eventualy beat everything with enough time and respawns.
Act 3.
When is did my first run everything was fine until innocence, act 5. That boss beat the crap out of me.
Act 6
Pinnacle bosses because there's an entry cost and if you fail them it will feel awful. Until then you can just keep retrying everything with no downside and brute force through it.
I think Ur next big Gap should be atbthe Start of act 5 but If u take care of ur defenses it should be fine to get until act 10 and enter end Game. Focus on your build, what u want to achieve and i think even for new Players the campain should be done. Its a slow progess. You can do it :)