Path of Exile 2 - Everything you need to know for starting on Console and Tips for New Players
I’ve been playing POE2 as time allows now, since it initially launched. I actually tried to play on launch day but along with everyone else on that day, I was having problems connecting to a server. So I got to watch the intro video, change a few settings in the options menu and that was it :)
I went back a couple of days later and managed to get in and start playing. I chose the mercenary as my class as it seemed to be a kind of cross between the Rogue and a Demon Hunter or at least that’s how it seemed to me. It’s actually more Demon Hunter than Rogue, as he doesn’t have a lot of mobility, however there are ways around that, which I’ll get to later.
So far I have got to Act 2, I’ve done a few quests there and beat the side-boss to start the Ascendancy Quest(Is it a quest or a life path?). That means this really isn’t a thorough review of the game, just some impressions I have about it and playing on a console, in my case an Xbox Series X.
The Controller and Skills
First and foremost, it plays really well on the controller, one stick moves, the other stick aims and you have skills, spells and abilities mapped to the buttons and the d-pad.
One thing that works quite well, the left trigger is reserved for calling up additional skills, so you can map additional skills and abilities to the buttons and just use them in combination with the left trigger to activate them. This is a nice way around the physical limitations of the controller compared to the keyboard and I think I prefer this method.
However and this is worth saying upfront. Inventory management with a controller sucks. Sucks hard. There is no auto-arrange, sort or anything (at least that I’ve found, I admit I could be blind). So dragging items around by clicking on it and then moving the stick and clicking again is slow and clunky. You will find yourself needing to do this often though to make things fit so you can pick up more as items are placed in your inventory haphazardly.
This also goes for managing stuff in your stash, on the currency tab… etc but you can use “Y” to quickly transfer between stash and tab.
“ALT” is available but not everywhere.
One key that is available on PC is the ALT key and pressing it in POE2, based on where and when you press it, can provide a lot of extra information or allow you to skip some steps. For example you can hold “Alt” and click on The Hooded One to automatically identify items. Unfortunately this isn’t possible (to the best of my knowledge) but in some areas, for example in your inventory, you can replicate the behaviour of the ALT key by pressing right stick in, this will give you access to additional information, for example on gear it will show you your prefixes, suffixes and tiers, which can help when upgrading or replacing items.
Characters
POE2 Mercenary
Inventory screen in POE2
There are many and more thorough guides and videos online covering this, in terms of whats easy, powerful etc, so I don’t want to go too deeply into it. I will just say to give them all a try and try to find something that suits your play style. I will say though, that as you can carry two types of weapon, theres nothing stopping you being a warrior who can cast fireball with a wand for example.
I’m actually happy as well that (at the moment?), there isn’t a need to spend time customising the character at the start, just pick a class and go.
I’ve read online though, that in terms of best class to play for casual gaming or just starting, Witch is apparently the way to go.
Single Player
Single player works quite nicely as you would expect, the game runs smoothly on the Series X. There have been a couple of times that I’ve had some slowdowns recently but there wasn’t a lot going on, on-screen, so I believe it is more related to my internet connection being bad and lagging as opposed to the game having issues.
Otherwise even though I can see other players in the world, I’ve yet had no interaction with anyone, I could if I so choose but if you don’t, you can quite happily play through by yourself. There were a couple of periods were it was tough going but I just went back to an earlier area and levelled up a bit. This actually wasn’t a grind either as I found areas and sub-bosses that I’d missed before, which kept the game entertaining and meant I didn’t feel like I was grinding for levels or gear.
Gear
Speaking of gear, it may not be what you’re used to from other ARPG’s. For example I found some unique’s quite quickly, which was a surprise but with the exception of one, none of them were something that I would replace an existing item with. In fact nearly all the gear I have now, started off as a normal or magic item that I improved with crafting. I actually like this aspect of the game, so rather than grinding for set armour or a set piece of gear, you utilise stuff that you found or bought (thats another point, check the vendors, they actually have good stuff) and upgrade it.
It’s also worth picking up junk items or socketed items, as you can salvage them at the salvage bench and improve the quality of your existing items (improve it’s stats) or add a socket to it.
Difficulty
I’ve seen some comments from people that the game is too hard and should be made easier, at the moment (maybe I’ll have a different opinion later? :) ), I don’t think it is. As I mentioned before, when I got stuck I either went and levelled in another area or improved my gear with upgrades, improved my skills with gems or all of the above. Oh and most importantly, improved my resistances, energy shield and/or armour. Doing that got me past a couple of the tougher areas. It’s also the method I used to beat the Act I boss. He got me the first time but after making some changes, I got him on my second try later.
Lost gear
One thing I wanted to mention. I was fighting a boss and after a couple of attempts I beat him, he dropped loot but then while I was stupidly looking at what had dropped (hadn’t picked it up yet, was just looking), I was rushed by a huge mob of his minions. This caught me off guard and they overwhelmed me and I died. When I came back from the checkpoint, all the loot was gone :( My fault I know but this felt a bit harsh.
Couch Coop
Couch coop is available in POE2 for consoles, which is good news. It’s easy to get going as well, on the character selection screen, just switch on another controller and use a guest account or have the other person log in with their account. You both play on the same screen, however it’s fine, it doesn’t feel like you are getting in each other’s way or limiting the other person.
This is what the menu’s / inventory screens look like in couch coop
When you open your inventory or a menu, it just covers your half of the screen and the other person can carry on playing, when they walk along, they kind of pull you along behind them.
I have a video up on YouTube where you can see Couch Coop in action.
One thing to be aware of though. I played with my son and he logged into his Xbox account as himself and created a character. When we finished playing, his character was assigned to my account. It didn’t save to his account, it’s tied to mine as if I created the character. So something to be aware of if you want to progress by yourself later.
However at this point he didn’t own the game (he does now) but no idea if it would have made a difference. His original character is still tied to my account.
When the game started, it went through the beginning intro and started us on the shore of the river, despite my character being further along. This was actually fine as the game balances for you and lowers the skills and level of the higher character to more closely match the other player, so no carrying someone through. However this can be disabled in the options menu but it will limit the experience you can gain until you are closer in level.
Everything was actually going well but we got stuck at one point, where a quest requires you to summon an NPC to open the route for you. I’d already done this quest but my son hadn’t, so he couldn’t progress, an invisible wall was blocking him and he also couldn’t summon the NPC. I’m pretty sure that this must just be an early access bug though and will be fixed (if it hasn’t already) at some point. We just ended the game there.
Item Sharing and Trading
Just a quick note, when you kill something and an item drops, if it’s “your item”, it shows up greyed out for the other person for a few seconds, they can’t pick it up but you can. If you choose not to, then after a few seconds it becomes available and they can pick it up. You can change this in the options menu, including setting it as “free for all”.
Trading of normal and magic items worked as expected, you open a trade, drop the items in and off you go. We were unable to trade unique items, apparently this is something that unlocks at level 25 (I’m currently level 24).
Online Coop
Online coop works pretty much the same as any Xbox game, you both need to own the game, then someone just invites the other player to join their game. We did this through the Xbox menu, when you do it this way, it automatically puts you into an in-game party so you can see each other on the map.
One thing thats important to note
In POE2 when you travel to a new area, the game (currently) will pop up a box asking you if you want to start a new instance or if someone is already playing there, it will show you there instance and allow you to join it.
By default if we both went through the portal to the new area at the same time, it didn’t put us into the same instance, we were both playing in our own instance, which is obviously not what you want if you’re in a party. I’m assuming this is also an early access glitch or bug?
We worked around it by having one member go through first, waiting a second or two and then having the rest of the party go, this way they are offered the instance the first person created and can join them.
If this doesn’t work, you can also just go to your party screen, click on the players portrait with the right stick and choose travel to player or teleport to player, I forgot the wording but it will take you directly to them.
Quests
We didn’t have the issue with quests while playing online coop. Whenever he got to a part I’d already completed, he was able to progress it fine, however for me, he was standing around talking to trees etc as the quest stuff was invisible to me. The most important thing though is that we were able to progress together.
You can see some an example of Online Coop on YouTube here.
Items
Items and trading etc, all work exactly the same as it does for Couch Coop.
Xbox thoughts
POE2 is great on console, if you were debating whether to get it or not, I’d highly recommend that you do. I think that the game runs well and so far it plays well, by that I mean I haven’t ever had the impression that I am performing a pointless fetch quest or something, keep in mind I am only part way through the campaign at this stage, so there is some stuff that I haven’t seen yet but so far so good.
Graphically it looks good and surprisingly for the console there are multiple graphical modes to choose from, including upscaling etc. This really surprised me as I’m used to just performance and quality modes from other games. It’s nice to have the options, I set the resolution to the resolution of my monitor (1440p) and it has been running fine, I pretty much left all of the other graphics settings at defaults and I haven’t had a reason to change them.
The game starts up quickly, it is annoying however that you have to connect online before you can play, so many games do this these days though, it’s not something exclusive to POE2. It would be nice if there was an offline mode, so you could just play and it would sync up once a week or something but I also understand that the online check is probably also to prevent people cheating or gaming the system. Still, it’s a bit of a nuisance when games do this.
Sound in the game is good, I usually play with headphones and so its quite spooky sometimes going through a dungeon and hearing all of the various in-game sounds, grunts from the monsters etc. Plus sometimes, some of the things that my character says when he’s killing things makes me laugh.
All in all, it’s a good experience on the Xbox, I expect it would be the same for the Playstation too, so no reason for you not to get it unless you’re waiting for the free version of course.
Loot Filters
Loot filters are a thing in POE but unfortunately, it seems that in POE2, at least on console, theyre not a thing just yet. My understanding is that they are available for PC and will be coming, hopefully soon for console but they aren’t available right now. You can see the Loot Filter in the menu but the only option is default for now, hopefully this is the promise of things to come.
The mai reason to use one, is that they change the appearance of the text that displays when an item drops, making it more (or less) noticeable and highlighting important items.
TIPS
Ok, I’m going to do my best to try and give some tips here that haven’t been covered by a multitude of people on YouTube already but I probably will touch on stuff that has been picked up, so forgive my transgressions.
Gear
Dont ignore normal (white) or magic (blue) gear. As I mentioned earlier, POE2 isn’t like other ARPGs and white or blue gear can either have good stats and be better than something you are currently using or can give you good resources for crafting if you salvage it. With white gear look for a quality rating and with white and blue gear, check if it also has a socket. Plus some blue gear just rocks, so check it anyway.
Disenchant gear - If you are doing ok for gold but you are running short on orbs, one thing you can do is disenchant gear, you can usually find a vendor in town who offers this option, when you select it, you can move the cursor over the gear in your inventory and it will tell you what you would get for it, for example a regal shard. When you have 10 shards, you get a regal orb automatically. So don’t overlook this as an option.
Identifying gear All gear you find, will be unknown at first, you can find scrolls of identify by killing monsters and searching chests and use these to identify your gear. I strongly recommend that you complete the first few quests in the campaign though, as this will give you access to a character in town who can identify your gear for you for free.
Skill gems and support gems These will also drop from monsters, when you get a new skill, don’t forget that you can also improve it or modify it’s behaviour with support gems. For example I have Gas Grenades as a skill, I added a support gem to it called Corrosive, this means that it now poisons enemies and also damages their armour.
Different Gear for different situations You can dual wield in this game and switch between weapons at will or assign a skill to be used with a particular weapon and then it will always be used automatically every time you use that skill. So for example you can be a warrior with a sword and shield but also give yourself a bow and quiver if you want.
Orbs You will find lots of orbs in the game or craft them from weapons and gear. Although they can be used as currency in game, they can also be used to improve your gear. I suggest that you use them to upgrade any good items that you find. Some of the best gear I have is from an upgraded item.
Compare items - When you find an item that you want to compare with an equipped item, just move the cursor over it in your inventory and press the right stick in. It will automatically compare them both for you. If you’re dual wielding, it will compare all three. Plus if you move over an equipped item and press right stick in, it will show you the items tiers, the higher the tier, the better stats you can get when upgrading.
Sockets Add sockets to your gear. You will get a lot of runes just by playing and they can really help improve your character, so don’t be afraid to use them. However consider carefully what you want before socketing as once you socket a rune, it can’t be removed.
General
Maps and Mini-Bosses - On the map (the one you see when standing on a waypoint), you will see locations and skulls, if you press the right stick in, it will show you POI (points of interest) and let you highlight the skulls. These are mini-bosses that are worth killing for the XP and rewards but some of them have a cross next to them. This means you will get a permanent buff if you kill them. Well worth doing.
Enemies - Later in the game you will come across more and more enemies that have armour, or an elemental resistance. It’s good if you have a skill, ability or weapon that will allow you to overcome that. You can still beat them with your basic skill but it will take longer, so keep an eye out for anything that could help you.
Bosses - This applies to end of act and mini-bosses, if you’re having problems beating them because they’re killing you too quickly, check your resistances. Look at the damage they’re doing, is it fire based? Then try to gear up or use a charm or something with fire resistance on it. This can give you the edge that will tip things in your favour. Also, not always but sometimes when you kill a boss, you will get rushed by their minions while your still eyeing the loot. Make sure you have some good area of effect skills to clear out the mob, otherwise they can take you down quite easily.
Inventory Management - This isn’t a tip, just wanted to say that trying to organise stuff in your inventory with a controller is painful. You have to select and drag everything, which is nowhere near as smooth as it is with a mouse and there is no auto-arrange option. You can quickly transfer stuff from your inventory to the stash by pressing “Y” though.
Skill Management - Don’t overlook adding skills to your “alt” skill bar, accessed via the left trigger. Its a good place to put your secondary, or oneshot skills and keep your main skills on the main bar. Skills can be re-arranged as you like, so customise it for you, so that things feel intuitive for you.
Hopefully this should be enough to get you started and if I can give you one final piece of advice it would be this. Try to just play through the game yourself, without looking for build guides and so on at first. It really is more fun that way and is also the reason why I’ve tried to keep my advice here as general as possible. If you find yourself unable to progress even after upgrading your character and abilities, then give it a try but otherwise just see what combinations you can come up with :)
I also hope this gave you some insight as to what it’s like playing the game on a console and if you have any questions, please let me know and I’ll do my best to answer them.
