Some Path of Exile League Advice for Casual Players from luckypants's blog

Hello everyone. This is my first league playing PoE "for real". I started in Legacy League and played a bit, and 3.0 for like a week but I didn't know what I was doing. This league I dedicated some time to understanding the game, from currency making, to atlas optimization, gear and monster mechanics. The goal was to be able to kill Shaper on my own, and well, here's the story.

My first real league and my achievements - some advice for casual players

This will be a list of pitfalls, advice and overall impressions:

Figure out what you want to do in the game, what makes you want to play it

don't sink money into your atlas without understanding why you're doing it; I remember shaping Laboratory as my tier13, sextant blocked without red maps, and then when I checked poe.trade, no one was selling Shaped Laboratory, since there were tons of better options for T8 like infested valley. Big big Fail.

If you want to make poe orbs, DO roll many characters! That's how you'll learn what's worth and what's not. That's how you'll find what character you'll love to grind with and actually do it. Maybe just stop investing in them after you reach points of serious diminishing return upgrades.

Understand the league-specific content. it took me too long to understand that the abyss jewels are strong, the abyssal depths are worth doing for the liches, etc.

Play a lot Kappa.

Always try to improve the aspect in which you are struggling, whether it be dying a lot, not having enough damage, not getting returns from maps, etc.

one aspect of mapping that I neglected was selling maps. I had my Shaped Vault but didn't bother to unlock higher tiers, like guardians, to sell.

Guardian maps sell for a lot (currently 20c). if you run a t14, and have t15 drops, run them, and sell the guardian maps.

Don't neglect linking your gear besides armour and getting as many skills that can help you as possible (e.g. Vaal Grace, Orb of Storms, Blood Rage, Curses, ) and don't neglect getting onslaught, frenzy charges, power charges or endurance charges.

Don't underestimate jewels, since they can scale your damage and life pretty good.

When you're building your character, on top of defense / offense, you should also identify the best way in which the character makes money.

Something I overlooked. Always always level gems in the switch. Always have 6 gems leveling while you play, whether they're enlightens, empowers, skills you use, or skills that will sell. Preferably level them as 20% quality, but if you don't have the poe currency, use the vendor recipe to get 20% quality. This wall of text is intended for noobs and casuals. Enjoy.

When you read this article, I hope this article can help you. But, when you asking about optimal atlas shaping strategies, you have to understand the basics of the game. Once you have it all setup then yeah, it is the most 'efficient' way.