It would end up being quite a rough start going into maps. I expected some issues while I was waiting on acquiring some critical upgrades. What I was not expecting was how long it would end up taking.

With the insane amount of things Path of Exile has it was easy for me to forget some stuff. I knew I had forgotten about something important. That became clear once I cleared my first map and got the bonus objective. However, how could I have forgotten about Atlas skills?

I also noticed you can unlock up to three different sets of Atlas skills. This means I can have an early mapping one setup and then switch to another one and start all over again. All without having to waste resources on resetting past nodes that I found I no longer wanted.

There are four things I decided I wanted to work on early on. That would be heist, delve, scarab, and map. Each would have its purpose. While they are not in ideal locations next to each other on the Atlas skill tree I could more than make it work for the time being.

Early on heist would be great for acquiring rings, amulets, and lots of lower-level currencies. It has been ages since I've done them anyway. I always find them rather fun. I would first need to level up my heist NPCS.

As for delve I've always loved delve. It’s hard to not be playing Path of Exile again without also running delve. There is also this skill passive called Packed with Energy that grants you a 35% increased attack, 15% movement speed, and elemental resistance cap increase. While it only lasts for 60 seconds after interacting with sulphite found on a map. It can be quite an insane little buff early on.

One of the things that can be traded on the new currency in the game market is scarabs. I don’t plan to run with scarabs on any maps I'll be doing for a while. I’m just going to hope that the ease of selling them the gold costs for listing them and what I end up getting will make it worthwhile (it in fact would be.)

I’d also be investing a few points into getting maps and my ability to gain and roll Kirac missions. Since I hate buying maps from other players and rather farm for my own. Those passives will be a great way to go after any maps I don’t have the bonus objective unlocked yet so I can get even more atlas skill passive points.

Later on in the league I'll more than likely not be caring so much about Kirac missions or Heist. At that point, I'll look into either removing on my first atlas tree those nodes or just starting and using the second tree once I unlock it.

Now it was onto the hard part of running maps at the early levels. It quickly became apparent to me my build had some issues. I was always out of mana even with a mana flask. If the wind blows the wrong way I die. I also no longer feel like I have superior damage output like I did when I was leveling up before getting into running maps.

Since getting the right six-link chest would end up taking some time. I decided to save up for a five-link chest. While the time I'd end up replacing it there would not be much re-sell value remaining. I needed the defense boost and getting another gem socket would make quite the difference.

While this chest was not anything insane. It ended up coming onto the market for a lot cheaper than other chest pieces that were far worse for a five-link. I would also end up wearing this thing a lot longer than expected as later on I'd end up struggling to have enough lighting resistance as I was slowly upgrading pieces of gear.

As far as fixing my mana issues goes. The best bet was getting two rings with “non-channeling skills have reduced mana cost.” I could craft that onto my rings if I get the unveil mod for it to craft with from Betrayal.

You could say I hate betrayal. Despite how amazing my current computer is compared to when Betrayal came out. I can still get some map lag while they are active on a map. As such I did not give them more of a second thought when they rarely showed up on any maps I was running.

While I did end up unveiling a lot of crafting mods. I never did get the one I was looking for. As a result, this ended up being something I saved up my divine orbs and chaos for.

This also brought up another thing I had forgotten about. I’m always used to exalted orbs being the currencies I scale up into at the end of every night due to inflation. When I saw exalted orbs only going for a couple of chaos each, I had a what the heck moment. Then I recalled divine orbs that people now use for their main trading currency. Which was already quite skyrocketing in price.

After a few rough levels gained from running maps. It was time to run my merciless labyrinth (lab). Despite my troubles struggling with maps early on. The lab was quite easy. I even lucked out and got a decent and easy layout.

After gaining a few more levels I'd return to the lab in an attempt to farm for my ground slam of earthshaking. After a dozen runs and lots of skill gems that I did not need. I ended up just forking over the 40 chaos at one point to buy the gem. That would however not be for a while since the ground slam of earthshaking would end up replacing my main damage skill of sunder. With how massive the mana issues I was having for quite some time. I held off on making that switch for longer than I should have.

I was also making lots of trips to Kingsmarch. I was going quite heavily into boats early on. Hoping that would be a decent money maker for me. Before I fully understood how the system worked it was a massive disappointment. Even after I did. It still was a disappointment.

Any items I got out from it that I thought would be worth attempting to sell never sold. That was for things other than runes which I could offload on the currency exchange. Even then it did not feel like it was worth the number of metals and food I was shipping off to other ports. I’ll be going into this in much further detail in a later post.

Final Thoughts

So, I got into the cycle of running a bunch of different maps I had not finished the bonus objectives yet. Along with upgrading buildings in Kingsmarch, and finally running delve to spend the sulphite I was stacking up.

I also decided to horde any heist contacts I was getting. I’d make a big push for that once I was a little more settled in. As at the moment my character could not take hits well and running heists where if you die you not only fail the mission but also drop anything you looted. Would not end up going well. I’d wait until I had a few more levels under my belt to make them as easy as possible.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Path Of Exile.