Sorted: A Beginner's Guide to Path of Exile Loot

Greetings, my little nerdists! Today, I will be introducing a new format of column called "Sorted." The focus of these writings labeled as "Sorted" will be to explain parts of a game that are complex or unintuitive  in such a manner that a new player wouldn't feel so overwhelmed by their very nature. I'm not sure if it will be an every Friday type thing or if it will be delivered on an as needed basis. Likely, I will let the needs of my followers dictate this, and thus, ask and ye masses shall receive. For those of you who can't really be bothered to read large walls of text, fear not! I will also be producing accompanying videos for each Sorted blog post. These videos, while visually stimulating, may not quite have the breadth and depth of information in writing, so I recommend using them both in combination for best results.

He looks fairly confident, actually.

As all of you well know by now, I've been playing a great deal of Path of Exile: Awakening since it's release a week ago. I've written a bit about it and some of the responses I've gotten have noted that the game looks fun, but the learning curve is a bit steep. Indeed it is. PoE has a wealth of features in it that can quickly cause a new player with no guidance to become frustrated. Today, I'm going to tackle what I think is one of the most important things for a newer player to get a firm grip on: Loot.
In Path of Exile, loot is everything. Literally. Anything that hits the ground could be useful or valuable. The problem is, there are tons of different kinds of loot in PoE. While some conventions of the ARPG genre are very present here, like rarity tiers on items, others seem alien to a new player. Hopefully today's article will help to get you on the right path if, like many others, you are a bit daunted by all the shinies on the ground. If you are a veteran player, stick around! People may have questions in the comments section or you may catch mistakes I make. (Let me know!)

Time to go swimming..

So, to start off with let's talk about currency. In most games, currency usually is interchangeable with some form of money, be it gold, gil, platinum, et. al. However, Path of Exile is unique in that there is no "gold" in the game. Perhaps the best way to describe interacting with npc merchants and other people in this game would be to call it a barter system. Anyways, enough about semantics, back to currency. There are twenty four, yes 24, different kinds of currency currently in PoE. They all have a different graphic associated with them and make a specific kind of sound when they hit the ground. They range from extremely common (wisdom scrolls and portal scrolls) to painstakingly rare. (Mirror of Kalandra) Currency is also further complicated by the fact that each currency item has a distinct use within the game. For example, a scroll of wisdom does exactly what you would think. It identifies magical items. However, some currencies can do amazing and powerful things. A Mirror of Kalandra creates an exact duplicate of any one item in the game. When used in this manner, the currency is expended after use. So, you are always having to weigh the option of accumulating your currency to buy items from other players or using that currency on existing items you have to improve them in some way. For new players I highly recommend going with the former and not the latter. I'm not going to go into item crafting in this post, perhaps in another Sorted column later, but crafting can be very costly. New players will want to loot all currency. All! No discussion.

Moving on, let's get some basic things about the items you will see out of the way before digging a bit deeper. As I mentioned earlier, Path of Exile adheres to the idea of having different loot tiers. Most items in the game will fall under this color coding. (potion flasks being a notable exception) An item with a white colored name is considered to be of normal rarity, a blue colored name signifies magic, and yellow is a rare, and orange/brown hued names signify uniques. As you would expect, the vast majority of items you will see hit the ground, or drop, will be of the lower rarity tiers.

Another kind of item you can expect to see are skill gems. In PoE, any character can use any skill the game as long as they satisfy the stat requirements of the gem and have an open socket that matches the color of the gem. You insert the gem into that socket and voila! You can now use that skill. Skill gems come in three different colors; green, red, and blue. Each color corresponds to a different primary stat. Green for dexterity, red for strength, and blue for intellect. Some gems do use a combination of two stats, with the higher proportioned stat being dominant and granted the gem it's color. For example, the skill flame totem requires both strength and intellect, but because it requires more strength than intellect, it is a red gem. Skill gems do not drop with rarity, but can have quality. Quality is a percentage roll that can appear on items that will increase their usefulness. On weapons it will increase the damage, on armor it will increase the mitigation statistic of that armor type, but on gems it is wholly dependent on the gem. I feel that as new players it's advisable to collect all the skill gems you see. Even if you don't want to use that skill, you can sell those gems to other players who do. Quality gems are generally worth more than regular gems because they are harder to find. (The exception being extremely low quality gems, like 5%-ish, these rarely sell for more than the normal gem)

Still on the topic of gems, a new feature that was added to PoE with the expansion was new kinds of gems that could be directly socketed into your talent tree. These gems do have different rarities, but do not seem to be able to have quality or drop as white. Meaning, these are always blue or better. Being that it's so early in the expansion, the jury is still out about these guys and their usefulness. Most seem fairly blah, with a few seeing good use. Needless to say, if any of these drop for you, pick 'em up! The metagame in PoE is constantly shifting and items can see insane valuation swings in a very short period of time. Just set aside a spot for these gems and remember that you have them for selling or use.

Now, before we actually get started on what items you should be snagging, let's talk about something that has a great deal of relevance to this topic: sockets. Sockets are of crucial importance because they are where you put the skill gems to enable you to actually use skills. Sockets can only be found on wearable items. Different items can have a different maximum number of sockets. Chests and two handed weapons can have up to six sockets, boots, helms, and gloves can have four, one handed weapons and shields can have three, and rings can have one. Amulets and belts do not currently allow for socketing. Sockets can also have little bridges between them which causes them to be linked. This is very important in the game because it is a prime way with which to increase the power level of your primary abilities. Most end game builds will be running at least one, perhaps two, five or six link skill setups. Sockets can come in the three primary stat colors of green, blue, and red, but can also come in white. White sockets are referred to as prismatic and, you guessed it, can house any color gem. This makes them particularly desirable, but they are generally rare. I won't go into it, but let's just say that most items that drop can't have a prismatic socket on it unless you do some tinkerin'.

Ok, have you got all that so far? Woof. It's a bit of a read, but I'm trying to be as comprehensive as I can while still not belaboring points. Hang in there, we're to the good part now! Let's talk about looting! We will talk about each color in turn, and I think you'll be surprised how quickly it goes.

When you see a piece of white gear keep these things in mind. First, white gear can be sold/bartered to npc merchants for a scroll fragment. Five scroll fragments makes a wisdom scroll. This can be helpful if you are really desperate for wisdom scrolls. (In which case I recommend looting white jewelry, since it only takes up one bag slot) It is also worth looting if you don't have an item in that gear slot. This is usually only applicable at the very start of the game. In fact, the default option within the game's user interface is to auto equip items you pick up to any empty slot. The most likely use you are going to find for white items will be when you see them with three sockets, linked, Red-Green-Blue. We call this "tri color" and these are worth looting because you can sell them to a vendor for a chromatic orb. Chromatic orbs aren't the most valuable currency in the game, but they certainly aren't useless. Chances are that if you stick with the game, you will end up burning through boatloads of these by the end of the day. Regardless, if it's "tri color", GRAB IT! You might consider also looting white items you see with four sockets that are linked, regardless of color. Four linked skills can be a great launching point in the mid to late game until you get better gear. If you happen to see something that has five or six linked sockets, snatch it up! A five linked piece of gear can really shine in most builds and six linked stuff is the pinnacle of power for your skill gems. Six links also fetch a tidy sum from other players looking to do some crafting and improve their own gear. When an item drops that has six sockets, regardless of whether they are connected, loot it. Six socketed items will vendor for seven jeweler's orbs. (Just be sure to not vendor something that's six linked!) Lastly, for white gear, if you see an item with 20% quality on it, loot it. You can sell these to vendors for currency that you can, in turn, use to improve the quality of items you want to keep.

Disregard the rarity, look at the socket colors. Tri color. I will cry if you vendor this.

Hooray, one down, just a bit more to go! It gets much, much more easy from here if you've been paying attention. Take heart! In regards to blue drops, these can be sold to vendors either identified or unidentified. If sold identified, the vendor will offer you alteration shards, twenty of which will make an orb of alteration. These are very useful for both trading and crafting from mid to late game. If vendored unidentified, you will instead receive transmutation shards, and again, twenty of these will make an orb of transmutation. These are not quite as useful as alteration orbs, but still have their place. For what it's worth, once you actually get into the swing of the game, you will very, very rarely be looting blue wearables. It's always possible to have a turn of bad luck in trying to get a rare item to fill a slot, but believe me when I say, it's not worth the time to pick up and loot every blue item you see. Blue items can also have sockets, which means that they also adhere to the looting rules you saw above for whites. Tri color? Loot it. Five or Six links? Into the bag. Six sockets? Done. 20% Quality? Yessir. A notable exception is with four linked blue items. As a new player, you won't want to loot these unless they are tri colored. Why? Well, it has to do with crafting. It's much more expensive to craft on a blue item than a white item. There are more in depth things we could discuss, but it's simply not within the scope of this post.

See, that wasn't so awful was it? Yellows are where it's at. Chances are, these are going to be what you will spend a majority of your time sifting through. Personally, I loot and identify all yellow items, unless I'm running through a low level zone for a specific purpose. They vendor for more of the transmutation and alteration shards, and if you're lucky, you might actually get some alchemy shards. Twenty alch shards combine to make an alchemy orb and these are very useful. If you just can't be arsed to pick up ALL the yellows you see, adhere to the rules I laid out above and you'll still do fine, you just won't build up as much currency. Or maybe you will! Maybe in the time I would spend identifying all of those extra yellows, you'll have a super rare unique drop worth a dump truck of exalted orbs. Oh! Yeah, we didn't talk about uniques.....

What a glorious thing

LOOT THEM ALL! Granted, most will be junk or only good for leveling, but you might be surprised at how much some of them will sell for or how useful they can be. I remember on one of my first characters I had a unique amulet drop. Being that it was very low level and didn't look very impressive to my untrained eye, I tossed it in my stash and thought nothing of it. Later, I showed it to a friend of mine with an exponentially larger amount of experience than myself and he said, "Mate, that's the neck you want to wear for end game, congrats!" So when in doubt, don't throw it out. We have stash tabs for a reason.

*panting, hands on hips, bent over just past the finish line*

Excuse me, sir? Sir. You need to do a cool down lap.

*grumbles and starts running again*

Just kidding! Although I do want to share a few more tips or words of wisdom with you that aren't necessarily related strictly to looting.

Be patient! Compared to other action role playing games that are currently on the market, Path of Exile is designed to be much more of a slow drip of uniques. Consequently, the ascent up the power curve is often slow as well, but rewarding.

As a new player, I would generally avoid the general chat channels. All of them. It might sound like a good idea to pop into trade chat and ask for a price check on an item, but often these are met with ridicule and scam attempts. It can be frustrating when you want to know how much something is, but it's much better if you save your questions for a reputable source. I'm always available to answer price check questions in game, and if I don't know the answer, I can probably point you in the right direction. SN: Nerdstalgic, in the comments, etc.

A useful website for getting a general idea of the price of an item is PoE.trade. Beware though, it can be a bit of a bear to try and compare yellows for pricing. It's much easier with things that are more standardized, such as uniques.

When you interact with other people, don't take the bait! Because Path of Exile is a completely free game, it attracts the usual crowd of lamers and trolls looking for cheap (free, I guess) thrills. Some people you talk to won't be nice to you and that's OK! Be polite and when an interaction turns sour, excuse yourself from the situation. In the long run, you'll feel much better about acting this way. If you trade often, your reputation can and will follow you around!

Most of all, HAVE FUN and #GameOn!