View source for Guide:PoE2 tips

{{Guide|subject=General PoE 2 tips for early access|date=December 9, 2024‎}}

This guide is meant to cover all things that players may wish to know when first starting the game in early access. It is meant to be relatively spoiler-free, but there may be slight spoilers.

== General tips ==

# Try out every single skill you are offered. Some skills are good in certain situations that you may not expect.
# Try to have at least two types of main attacks - one for single target (bosses, rares), and one for AoE/mob swarms.
# Always check the vendor in town, even for normal and magic items. Focus on finding weapons with high flat damage rolls and armour pieces with life/resists.
# Prioritize getting the upgraded base items as you progress through the acts. A strong base with weak mods will often times outclass a lower-tier base with many mods.
# When using your support gemcutters, make sure you click on the skill on the left to see suggested support gems. If they have an empty socket, it will automatically socket the selected support gem.
# Pick up all items with quality and sockets that you won't equip and [[salvage]] them for materials. Socketed items will have a white dot on the item with the default loot filter, and quality items will say "Superior" in the name.
# Make sure to fully explore all areas that have events and complete the events. The events will show up on the map in a circle around the waypoint.
# Pick up all white bases that drop with the stats that you are looking for and use transmute/augment on them as long as they have a higher base stat than what you have equipped (which means they are a higher tier base). For example, if you are a ranger and stacking evasion, do this to all pure evasion bases that drop.
# You can generally tell the tier of an item or weapon based on its level requirement.
# Make sure you complete the quests that give spirit in each act. You get 30 spirit in act 1 and act 3, and additional 40 spirit in cruel act 3.
# The quest items you pick up through the spirit quests (and some other ones) need to be right clicked in your inventory to apply to your character.
# You can control click vendors to get their default action to show up automatically. Control clicking the hooded one will automatically identify all items in your inventory.
# Don't be afraid to go back to town and refill your flasks. TPs are free.
# Acts 2 and 3 have ascendency trials. Cruel difficulty does not have the same ascendency trials as normal difficulty. There is a bug in cruel that shows the quest in act 2 but you cannot do it.
# Even if you don't use wands or scepters, make sure you look at the wand/scepter vendor to see if they have rings or amulets you need.
# If you want to refund passives to change skill tree pathing, you can temporarily deallocate points from elsewhere, allocate points to create a new pathing, deallocate the old path, then re-allocate where you originally took the point from to save on Gold costs.
# The caches at the end of the Trial of the Sekhemas are named very specifically based on what they drop. Make sure you read them before using your keys to open them.
# You can use the reforging bench to upgrade 3 of the same tier map to one of the next tier.
# Get your 3rd set of ascendency points by completing the [[Trial of the Sekhemas]] using a [[Djinn Barya]] that has 3 trials.