Gameplay Help and Discussion - Post-campaign progression - Forum - Path of Exile (2025)

This is my first real crack at POE, I followed this build guide

https://maxroll.gg/poe/build-guides/toxic-rain-ballista-pathfinder

and just finished the campaign and now I am totally overwhelmed with trying to figure out how to progress.

I understand I need to incrementally improve my gear and work towards maps, but am struggling with the steps to take. Can anyone point me towards a guide step-by-step video that really walks you through this stage of the game? I have found a few recommendations saying I should be doing heists to farm chaos orbs to upgrade my gear, but that's about it.

edit: just to add, my resists are all at 75%, but my sockets and gems are still way behind I think. I have 2 4 sockets for my skills but nothing more.

First, hi :) Hope you're enjoying PoE so far.

Heist is not really a good suggestion for newer players. I wouldn't think about that for the moment.

Reading through the guide, there is a fair amount of information about how to progress - specifically in the Gear Progression section, there is this part:

"After the campaign, you encounter a steep difficulty increase, which becomes a problem unless you upgrade your suboptimal gear into something more appropriate. This is where random currency you dropped during the campaign comes in. Spend all your Chaos Orbs you have on gear upgrades so you can progress through the game."

I would suggest buying a 5-link, or potentially a 6-link, body armour (from the trade site). This will allow your main setup to deal more damage.

A common strategy for your starting character is to do the Chaos recipe in Blood Aqueducts or a similar late-story zone, get some chaos and use it to stabilise your gear enough that you can start on maps. There will be youtube guides on this.

With a build like toxic rain, which has efficient scaling and is ranged so you can deal with being a little less tanky than other builds, you should be able to attempt some maps soon enough. You can leave your maps Normal, you can make them Magic for a bit of extra risk/reward, or Rare if you are confident.

Hopefully that has been somewhat helpful, if you have any more questions please post them in this thread, or feel free to pm me.

I would say interacting with everything is the best way to learn. It is true that the newer leagues are more rewarding than a lot of the older ones, but they are all useful in some way. Heist is good for currency and doesn't require much knowledge.

I'm not aware if there is a really good guide to when you start maps. A lot of information is created but the game is updated so regularly that things can become outdated very quickly.

There is a lot of information in the guide below, though not particularly useful. Section 6 is about league mechanics, but the information is extremally basic and some may be outdated. If you want to know something more specific like how to manipulate your betrayal board or build temple, that information is available if you go looking for it, but it's not gathered in one place that I'm aware of.

https://www.poe-vault.com/guides/gameplay-guide-hub

There are cheat sheets people have created for most thing which can be a middle ground between reading a full guide and going in blind.

Here's an example

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fIs8sdvgZG7iVouPdtFkbRx5kv55_xVja8l19yubyRU/edit#gid=1995599043

Unsure who the creator is but it has some good quick recommendations for the main league mechanics.

Finding a good guide for progressing your atlas might also be useful. I just do mine myself and it's very inefficient. A fairly new feature but I'm sure it's been worked out for most build/content by now.

If your having difficulty with specifics of your build, like say, death too often or help with improving gear, people are usually able to help on the forum. Providing pob or un-priveting character can speed things up if your happy to do that.

Over capping resists is useful on some builds as many things can lower you resistances. Ideally you probably want a 6-link on most builds, but even on a 4-link you should be able to handle most things if the build is good.

Edit: Purple Chakra advice above is good, if you are having trouble getting from finishing Kitava to handling and sustain low level white maps, you can keep farming in act 9/10. League mechanics will keep spawning until you are 10 levels over leveled. Aqueduct, Quarry, desecrated chambers and reliquary are some good areas. Or Lab, but that's not everyone's cup of tea.

"

Unsure who the creator is but it has some good quick recommendations for the main league mechanics.

FixFaxer is the creator he's been doing it for awhile heres his forum thread if anyone else is interested I think he just updates that google doc either way.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2451569