Path of Exile is a very complex game and leveling efficiently can significantly cut down on time spent in the campaign. If you're a seasoned player like me, where you've done the campaign over a hundred times since Path of Exile launched, speedrunning the acts and getting to maps fast is probably what you'll want to do. On the other hand, you might be a completely new player and just looking to get better at the game. That's fine too! I've written this PoE leveling guide to be useful for all types of players, and in it you'll find best Path of Exile leveling uniques, useful interface settings, skippable quests, tips for maximizing your experience gain and much more.
Interface Settings
First off let's start off with some Path of Exile interface options. Landscape transparency is really good if you put the map transparency to the right and the landscape transparency to the left on your mini-map this will make your map a lot easier to read. By doing this you won't see any of the fluff that you don't need.
By pressing the plus or minus button you can also zoom in and out if you want to see your map better. There's a few other useful settings, I always show new sockets, life and mana numbers and life bars on allies and enemies. Advanced Mode description will show you the item prefixes and suffixes if you hold the alt button, this is REALLY important because each item has up to six affixes.
Next up is mouse button 1 to click move, it is very important to set up because it is very common to see a lot of new players have default attack on their mouse button 1, they'll accidentally talk to NPCs while trying to walk near them which can result in a quick death. This can kill a lot of players in hardcore, especially when encountering npcs such as the Nameless Seer later on in maps.
Best PoE Leveling Uniques
Unique leveling helmets
- Goldrim is the golden standard of leveling uniques in Path of Exile, it gives a whopping 40% to all resistances which basically caps more than half of your resistances before encountering Kitava.
- Thrillsteel grants you permanent onslaught which is huge for speedrunning through early acts, especially in softcore leagues.
- Honourhome is another really strong leveling helmet as it gives +2 to level of gems, some bonus lightning attack/spell dmg and reduced mana cost of skills.
Unique leveling body armors
- Tabula Rasa is a six linked unique armor that you can wear from the start of the game. It has white sockets, meaning you don't need to chromatic orb recolor sockets in order to place gems in it. Overall, it provides a lot of "quality of life" and cuts down on skill gem management time.
- Thousand Ribbons gives a large flat damage bonus to spells/attacks, some resistances, and other modifiers that are VERY helpful for leveling.
- Foxshade is a good budget unique for speedrunning as it gives you a lot of bonus movement speed while at full life. This synergizes well with evasion-based builds that don't get hit much.
Unique leveling gloves
- Lochtonial Caress can be worn from level 1 and provide attack & cast speed, as well as charge generation on kill.
- Ondar's Clasp are great for attack based builds because it gives a lot of attack speed while on full life, as well as accuracy rating.
- Doedre's Tenure are the best spell dmg unique gloves for leveling, they grant you A LOT of additional spell damage at the cost of some cast speed reduction.
Unique leveling boots
- Wanderlust boots can be worn from level one and they give three very important stats: movement speed, mana regeneration and freeze avoidance. Not getting frozen is huge as it saves you time on rolling flasks that deal with freezes, and you can open strongboxes without ID'ing them.
- Seven-League Step are the best leveling boots in the game simply because they give a huge amount of movement speed, which can be boosted with a corrupted implicit that gives even more movement speed. They are quite expensive though.
Unique leveling amulets
- Karui Ward is the best leveling unique amulet in my opinion. It is good on all types of builds as it gives dexterity, strength, projectile damage and movement speed.
- Sidhebreath is a summoner build leveling amulet that gives a bunch of useful stats to any summoner build in the early game.
- Daresso's Salute is primarily a melee-attack based amulet as it gives a lot of melee damage on full life and additional strike range. It does however give a lot of resists and movement speed as well, making it useful on a variety of non melee builds.
- Carnage Heart will solve all of your attribute problems early on as it gives 50-60 all attributes. On top of that, it gives a lot of elemental resistances, physical damage leeched as life and additional damage while leeching.
Unique leveling rings
- Blackheart can be worn in both ring slots ans is generally a great attack leveling unique ring as you can equip it as early as level 1.
- Doedre's Damning can also be equipped early on and will solve your mana issues while also giving elemental resistances. Useful for all builds.
- Le Heup of All is my personal favorite. This ring is extremely powerful and even though it's for level 20ish, people on league starts tend to run it even in maps when gear is still scarce. It gives all attributes, increases damage and grants all resistances as well as additional rarity. What's not to love about it?
- Thief's Torment will take up both of your ring slots (you can only have one of these equipped). It grants A LOT of resistances and grants you life and mana on hit. It will single-handedly cap all your resists when paired with a Goldrim, and solve mana issues.
Unique leveling belts
- Meginord's Girdle is useful on attack based builds as it grants additional physical damage and maximum life as well as strength and cold resistance.
- Darkness Enthroned can be a bit expensive and generally it's unavailable early on during leagues. It is however, the best leveling unique belt in the game right now. You can wear it from level one and the way it works is you get level 1 abyss jewels with stats that are good for your build and socket them into the belt. This way they get additional effect, meaning the jewels' stats get boosted by 50-100%.
- Perandus Blazon grants quantity and additional attributes, quite useful for spell-based leveling builds. Another good option is Bated Breath.
League start & early game
You should look at the vendor in the first town because there’s 2 important things to try and get in order to get a faster leveling experience during a first playthrough/league start. These items are: 3 link item (any) and movement speed boots. Vendors can start selling movement speed boots as soon as you're in town after killing Hillock and the items reset every few zones so keep checking for movement speed boots!
You can also make a mule character, as it allows you to get some of the early gems that you will definitely need once you start progressing. For example a witch wouldn't start with decoy totem (really useful at Brutus fight) so you can make a scion character and as soon as you get off the beach and kill hillock you’ll be able to get the gem by picking it up as a quest reward or buying it at the NPC.
Logging out after completing a quest (in a zone) is a good strategy for league starts because it allows you to save up on portal scrolls, since logging back into the game places you in the corresponding act town.
An example of where logging out is a good strategy is: Quicksilver flask quest, Fairgraves quest, Crab quest, Spider in A2, Voll in A4 and any other similar areas where the zone entry is far from the boss.
Skippable Quests
The best time to get the Crab and Fairgraves skill points is when you’re close to being done with A2 because you’ll sometimes already have a second Quicksilver flask at this point and you will be moving a lot quicker due to having a movement skill and pair of movement speed boots (which is a must at this point, at least 10%).
A lot of PoE quests are skippable: Fetid Pool, Crypt, Library (although useful if you need gems), A Swig of hope…Many of these skippable quests only give minor rewards such as a rare item (which is in most cases bad) and respec points (which you shouldn’t need while leveling). These quests take a long time to finish so avoid them if you’re trying to get to maps as fast as possible.
Inventory Management
Remember that you can very easily make a +1 to gem level wand and the recipe for doing this is one alteration orb, one blue gem and a ring of your choice so for example a sapphire ring would make it a +1 cold gem wand.
One thing that's done by a lot of players is they pick up too much stuff early on which makes inventory management a living hell and it will drain up so much time to sort through items. Try not to pick up everything, if you really have to then only pick up rare items (blue and white are useless, sometimes you should sell them early in the league if you’re low on wisdom scrolls).
Path of Exile starts getting bloated with useless white and blue items once you start reaching endgame maps. Get an item filter, I personally use the Semi-Strict Neversink's loot filter and I find it great and it's updated before every league start. You can use the filterblade website to further edit the loot filter and even add custom sounds to it!
The fastest way to do you inventory management is to sort things while you’re walking, never go back to town unless you have to!
Bandits
Alira is the best bandit for league starts (especially for beginners) because you’ll get a bonus to all of your elemental resistances which is really important if you’re undergeared and trying to speed run. A good strategy for undergeared characters is to try and get to A4 and then run some Dried Lakes in order to catch up on levels and get good gear. If the Alira is not the preferred bandit for your build you can respec this later with twenty regret orbs and an onyx amulet.
Lab Trials and Ascension
Ascending as well can be pretty important, do the Normal Lab trials when you feel comfortable to do so and always have the best flasks for your current level. Some lab trials are really deadly so never try to rush it. After you’ve completed the lab trials you will be able to enter the respective lab (normal, cruel, merc, uber). Normal Lab trials and the lab itself usually take ~ 20 minutes which is not that bad because Normal Lab gives you a significant boost for your character (be it offensive or defensive, it will let you progress faster and easier) but always make sure you’re overleveled for the Merciless and Uber lab.
Maximizing Experience
How XP ranges work is an extremely important topic, the formula is base level +-3, meaning if you're level four you're getting full XP in a level seven zone and full XP in a level one zone. New players very often fully clear a zone thinking it’s better— IT’S NOT. If you’re speed leveling the most IMPORTANT thing is to stay around 2 levels below the zone you’re in, this will maximize your experience gain making you fly through levels in no time. This formula increases plus one every 16 levels so once you are level 16 you get full XP at level 20 and at level 12 and then again at 32 it is 27-37.
Blood Aquaducts is usually the best zone for both leveling and drops, highest experience per hour can be achieved in this zone with close to no effort because monsters are really easy (always skip the bird boss) and this zone drops the HUMILITY card. Combining a set of Humility cards will net you a Tabula Rasa— a 6 link body armor which can carry you to T10+ maps if your build is good.
Pick a build that you enjoy playing. I can’t stress this enough, most new players will google “top league starter build” and most often it’ll be a very hard build to understand. Meaning they'll not build it right so progression will be problematic and they will quit before reaching maps.
Lastly, be efficient with your time. If you’re playing a trade league (non SSF) and you lack items / don’t have capped resists, your damage is bad, consider buying some gear. Usually the best time to buy new gear is after A5 and after A7 or A8.
Useful Path of Exile links
- Path of Building | POB (a build planner app, everyone uses this to plan out and share builds)
- Awakened PoE Trade (an app that can price check your items and scan maps for bad mods)
- Lutbot Logout macro (an app that can track your ladder position, and is primarily used for logout in Hardcore leagues)
- Path of Exile Trade website (official website for trading items)
- PoE Ninja (a website that tracks all character and item data in every league, useful for checking other peoples' builds, currency rates and ladder ranks)
- PoE DB (a huge database that contains all the item information in the game, stats and modifier roll percentages)
