With Path of Exile quickly becoming the ARPG equivalent of 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel, it's easy to commit many mistakes regardless of whether the players are intermediate or newbies. Each new character in the game is subject to many trials and errors before they come out as either as house flies or butterflies after simmering in the cocoon endless grinding and trading.
In any case, certain mistakes, when piled up, can gradually (or quickly if in Hardcore) turn a playthrough sour. By then, the poor players who victimized themselves either with ignorance blind misfortune will have realized that they wasted hours trying to make something work that was doomed to fail several hours ago. Avoid that predicament by taking note of the most glaring issues that can and will ruin a Path of Exile playthrough.
10 Poor Internet Connection
Granted, this problem has always been prevalent ever since Path of Exile's (or any online game's) inception. Path of Exile, however, demands more from the regular household when it comes to connectivity. It uses either a lockstep system (that's only viable for fiber connections) or the predictive system which is terrible no matter the internet type as it's usually out of sync with the servers.
A subpar internet connection, such as data or spotty Wi-Fi, can and will make the game unplayable. If players try to force a latency above 100ms into lockstep mode, then the game will have a debilitating stutter. In Hardcore mode, playing under such conditions is suicide for any character. In Standard, it's a frustrating experience in high levels as connection disruptions can kill players and decrease their experience bar.
9 Starting Too Early Or Too Late In A League
Not playing in a League (for Standard) in Path of Exile is often considered by the community as a wrong way to play the game. There are lots of cosmetic freebies in Leagues and the new mechanics break the monotony. Hence, some players might be forced to participate in Leagues due to this, and depending on the League's age, they might want to sit one out.
Starting in a League too early means most players will start in a fresh economy; the items they need or want for their builds aren't available for trading yet. It's essentially double the grinding effort. Meanwhile, starting too late in a League's cycle (only a few weeks left, for example), means players might not have enough time to grab all the rewards or finish their builds. It's best to start around the middle of the League, meaning a few weeks or even a month in the cycle.
8 Spending Passive Points Recklessly
This mistake is more common among newer players or returning ones after a long hiatus. Passive points for the Passive Skill Tree in Path of Exile have just become more valuable thanks to the recent changes. Skill Tree nodes or keystones now offer more build-enabling bonuses that require even more passive points.
Should players just allocate their points blindly without any plan or template to follow, then they'll risk making their characters unplayable. If those are new characters, then they can become hobbled in the near future due to unoptimized or inefficient Skill Tree point allocation. There are Regret Orbs to refund some points but they're quite precious as currency or even fairly rare.
7 Wasting Currency Orbs
Similar to spending passive points too recklessly, players, especially new ones can fall into this trap easily. Orbs are the currency in Path of Exile because money is nonexistent and Wraeclast is a Stone Age continent. It might be tempting to spend those Regret Orbs for resetting a whole character but if it requires more than 20 orbs, players are better off just creating a new character.
Similarly, other orbs such as Alchemy Orbs hold good value and shouldn't be spent too carelessly on low-level maps. The rule of thumb here is to just hoard all orbs and be conservative with them. Otherwise, players might find it difficult to trade for the items they want, most of which sell for orbs.
6 Ignoring The Loot Filter
One thing that Path of Exile doesn't explain well to new players or to returning ones is that they implemented a loot filter system that classifies and tags all the loot. This way, players can minimize the time playing inventory Tetris and just pick up the ones that actually hold value based on the community's preference.
Ignoring the power and practicality of loot filters, for that matter, is practically a handicap for any player. A loot filter can easily point out Exalted or other typical currency orbs from the pile of merchant food on the ground. In fact, the game can even become unplayable due to clunkiness once players have gotten used to specific or customized loot filters
5 Using Trade Chat
Path of Exile has always had a rough trading aspect and one of the things that the newbies might notice is that there's a Trade Chat to help with this drawback. However, that partition of the chat function is a terrible way to trade. That's the general consensus in the community.
There are lots of players who sell items for bloated values in the Trade Chat. Bots are also quite rampant there. Should players get scammed with higher-priced items, this can set their progress back several hours of they might not even be able to recover what they spent. Instead, players ought to use a website like poe.trade for more standardized trade values as dictated by the community. There's also a developer-made trading UI on the official website but it's best to compare items or currencies there with the prices in poe.trade.
4 Not Looking Up Item Modifier Words
While Path of Exile's developers have somewhat implemented a text tutorial for the game, lots of mechanics are still left unexplained and might confuse many players. For one, there's a huge difference between an item modifier that says "increased" and "more." The former is only additive while the latter is multiplicative, meaning better.
This kind of modifier wording is present in items and even Skill Gems. Players will want to search up the meanings of those item modifiers first before they upgrade Skill Gems or items that utilize those words. Players should simply refrain from spending orbs and other resources on items if they're unaware of what their modifiers mean.
3 Overconfidence
This one's quite a devastating way to ruin a Hardcore playthrough and something that should always be kept in check. Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer in Path of Exile. There are moments when one might think that they can take on certain bosses or want to test out of their build can handle this or that even upon seeing a similar build on YouTube or the official forums struggle.
Overconfidence and complacency also go hand in hand. Trying to take on the highest challenges of the Atlas without taking the time to make a proper build is a good way to ram one's character into an unbreakable wall. By then, it's apparent that a change of tactic is warranted which either requires some Skill Tree re-spec or a new character.
2 Not Following A Build Guide
Path of Exile is such an elite and complex game that experimenting on Leagues if one's a newbie or has a poor grasp of the game mechanics is punished by the game. Going in blindly and trying to test out a random unplanned jumble of a character setup is not a good investment,
More often than not, players will end up having a non-viable character come endgame (Atlas). So newbies need to save themselves the trouble and look up some simple build guides. Meanwhile, even intermediate players will do well with following tried and tested formulas if they want a League starter.
1 Sticking To One Build
With that said, sticking to a favorite build is a pre-meditated path to disappointment in Path of Exile. That's because the game's developers have this penchant for nerfing some of the most efficient or most powerful builds. In fact, they did that quite recently and notably made the game more difficult.
Some meta builds were outright ruined while others were weakened too much. They have also implemented nerfs while a League is progressing. So it pays to be flexible or resilient in the face of these changes. Might as well make a backup build or character that's vastly different from the main one, just to be safe.
Path of Exile was released on October 23, 2013, and is available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.