Path of Exile – Beginner-oriented Farming Guide / Build

This guide contains general tips on how to make currency farming endgame maps plus a quick suggested build that works pretty well with the ideas presented.

Other PoE Guides:

Introduction

This guide contains as concisely as possible the build that I use to farm at the start of a league when I have almost no currency whatsoever, alongside some general farming tips and thoughts that you might or not agree with. Take the parts that you think are good, change or discard the ones that you don’t and have fun.

Mapping

One of the best ways to accumulate currency is to simply keep doing low tier maps while focusing on selling complete sets of unidentified equipment for the 2c vendor recipe. The reasons why this is effective are several:

  • You can have an overleveled character with item rarity/quantity gear that will clear the area pretty easily without any drop rate penalties;
  • In theory the 2 regal recipe is worth more than the 2c one, but in practice you’ll probably have to do a 1:1 rate if you want to sell them fast;
  • Although the idea of finding that dream 20ex kitchen knife or any other high price equipment may sound appealing, PoE’s drop system works very much like a lottery, this meaning that one of these items will most likely drop in the league, but most likely it won’t be for you;
  • Good-but-not-so-good rare items are hard to sell even when undercutting the prices, you’ll probably just end up with whole stashes of rare items that won’t sell;
  • Currency drop rate does not increase in higher tier maps;

When running the maps you should always use an Orb of Alchemy on them, at the very least you’ll get you alchemy back in drops and most of the time you’ll profit.

To maximize your gains, you should do as often as possible maps that drop high value divination cards. These may change from league to league, so you should take a quick look at PoE’s wiki.

Although this may be a little obvious, you should do the labyrinths inside the maps, as they drop offerings, which sell for around 4~6c each.

You should get a good item filter before starting farming and keep your eyes open for items that sell for the 7x Jeweller’s Orb and 1x Chromatic Orb recipes.

Don’t identify any maps you find, since you get a bonus in item rarity and quantity for doing an unidentified map.

Strongboxes

It is recommended that you always carry with you a pack of Transmutation Orbs, Alteration Orbs, Augmentation Orbs and Vaal Orbs for rerolling strongboxes. You may also need a Scouring Orb from time to time to clear a bad rolled rare strongbox that you find on maps, so it might be a good idea to carry a pack of these too in order to avoid wasting map portals.

You should reroll Arcanist’s Strongboxes, Artisan’s Strongboxes and Diviner’s Strongboxes until you get a “of Abundance” (+x additional items) or “of Bounty” (% increased quantity of contained items) suffixes.

You should reroll Cartographer’s Strongboxes until you get one of the two suffixes already mentioned, but you should also corrupt it with a vaal orb afterwards. This will give you high rarity/quantity corrupted maps.

I personally like to reroll Jeweller’s Strongboxes until I get a “of Affluence” (x additional rare items) suffix to help with the 2c recipe, but you can also use the same strategy of the Cartographer’s Strongboxes to try to get some really good corrupted jewellery, although this works best at higher tier maps.

Stash Management

It really helps a lot if you can buy a 8 stash tab pack and at least 1 premium stash to organize the items you take and your trading. It is a good idea to keep a tab for each type of equipment of the 2c recipe, one for helmets, another for rings, amulets and belts, another for boots etc. Since the jewellery (rings, amulets and belts) tend to be the bottleneck of this recipe, once you fill the tabs of the other pieces you can just ignore their drops for a time or identify them if you want.

As you farm, if your stash is being filled with maps and you need to free up space, you can use a transmutation orb on 3 equal maps and vendor them for a higher tier unidentified magic map, which gets a pretty decent item rarity/quantity, close to a bad roll with an alchemy. Another option is to do the Chisel recipe.

Trading

There are few items that are really worth putting for trade and, as said above, it helps a lot if you can get a premium stash tab for doing this. Mainly you should trade:

  • High value divination cards: you should check the price on poe trade and possibly undercut depending on volume;
  • High value uniques: same as above. If an unique is only selling for 1fus/alch or 1c you’re better off just vendoring it;
  • Quality gems: the ones that are worth trading are the ones with at least 10~13%. As a rule of thumb you should ask for 1c per point of quality, but this may vary from skill to skill and you may want to do a lower price to attract buyers for a quick sale. You should keep the low quality ones for the GCP recipe;
  • Any good rares that you think will be sold fast;
  • Popular gems at the league;

If you want make a little extra with trading, you can also put for sale a whole bunch of assorted “normal” gems with a highly undercut price of 2 jeweller’s or so. A good portion of them sell like you wouldn’t believe.

Suggested Build

Why this build?

Being a tanky build, it allows you to map with item rarity/quantity gear without struggling too much or having to be careful when running around the map while still maintaining a good clear speed at low tier maps, which are the focus of this guide. It also has great mobility due to Brightbeak + Leap Slam.

The build is basically a Resolute Technique, life and armour based Cyclone build focusing on using axes. The survivability relies on life leech, which compensates for the low % increased maximum life (169%). The information concerning gems and gear will be presented with farming in mind and is not meant to be optimal or extensively complete.

Also, before you start using the item rarity/quantity gear and gems you should probably level your character and gems a little bit to the point where you are doing comfortably maps of the lowest tiers (1~4).

You should get the life and mana leech nodes, Resolute Technique, Art of the Gladiator and at least 4% life regen early on.

Go for Brutal Favour and Bane of Legends ascendency passives. Brutal Favour first if you need more survivability, Bane of Legends otherwise.

Gear

Weapon:

  • Kaom’s Primacy – Really cheap axe that gives a nice dps boost plus a free Culling Strike. 

Weapon swap:

  • Brightbeak – This is the weapon you’ll be using with Leap Slam for movement. 

Armour:

  • Greed’s Embrace – Since you’ll be moving around using Leap Slam, your movement will be mostly based on your attack speed, thus the movement speed reduction on Greed’s Embrace won’t be much of a problem. 

Ring:

  • Thief’s Torment

Boots:

  • Goldwyrm

Other gear:

  • If your defences are already good, you can use a Perandus Blazon unique belt and Sadima’s Touch unique gloves for extra item quantity, otherwise just go for regular gear with +physical damage, health and resistances. 

Flasks

  • 3x Bubbling/Seething Divine Life Flasks 
  • 1x Granite Flask of Iron Skin 
  • 1x Quicksilver Flask

Gems

  • Cyclone + Added Fire Damage + Melee Physical Damage + Item Rarity 
  • Ancestral Warchief + Melee Physical Damage + Faster Attacks + Item Rarity
    You’ll need item rarity on this one too because of Kaom’s Primacy culling strike. 
  • Vengeance + Stun + Melee Physical Damage + Endurance Charge on Melee Stun 
  • Leap Slam + Faster Attacks + Blood Magic 
  • Blasphemy + Enfeeble 
  • Hatred 
  • Blood Rage 

Gameplay

There is not much to say, just turn on Blood Rage, jump and spin on anything that moves, summon the totem when you need the extra damage and manage your flasks.

When doing the weapon swap to use leap slam with Brightbeak, it’s highly recommended to hold the “Attack in Place” key so that your character doesn’t move to get in range. If you find the default key uncomfortable to use, try setting it to the spacebar.

Volodymyr Azimoff
About Volodymyr Azimoff 8007 Articles
I love games and I live games. Video games are my passion, my hobby and my job. My experience with games started back in 1994 with the Metal Mutant game on ZX Spectrum computer. And since then, I’ve been playing on anything from consoles, to mobile devices. My first official job in the game industry started back in 2005, and I'm still doing what I love to do.

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