Hover items, passives, or anything else that has a pop-up to read about what they do and navigate to related keywords and concepts.


Smaller tooltip next to cursor says to hold ALT to inspect. This allows you to move your cursor into the tooltip and highlight other underlined keywords to read about them.

While holding ALT, a pin appears in the top-right. Click it to pin a tooltip so it won't automatically close.

Hold ALT again to move the mouse cursor into the next pop-up and repeat as necessary to explore related mechanics.

Drag pinned tooltips to re-arrange them on your screen and use the X in the top-right to close them.


Knowledge is power. Read them.

• Gold
  
• Crafting materials

Both are important and is a constant balancing act of how much you value gold to raw materials.

When selling items, you have a choice (or will as you advance through the first act). Check the gold sell value of items, then decide if it's better to sell it for gold or to convert it into a crafting material.

• Sell items for gold
  
• Disenchant magic and rare items into affix improvement shards
  
• Salvage items with quality bonus for quality improvement materials
  
• Salvage items with rune slots for rune slot shards

Salvaging for quality improvement materials and rune slot shards is valuable.

Material wealth isn't important -- but I'd sure as hell rather be rich than poor. Convert your items responsibly.

Crafting is gambling gold, orbs, and other materials into improvements for your character.

Yes, gambling. Crafting is random and exciting and frustrating and necessary. Give it a shot and embrace the complexity. While it is all of these things -- above all, it is rewarding.

Read the crafting material tooltips and discover the process of crafting. Learn now so you don't mess it up with the valuable crafting materials later in the game.

• Magic (blue) items have up to 1 prefix and 1 suffix
  
• Rare (yellow) items have up to 3 prefixes and 3 suffixes

Some items may have an implicit modifier.


This magic ring gives cold resistance as an implicit modifier, then has 1 prefix and 1 suffix listed at the bottom.

Items, gems, and others have quality. Quality improves the base stats of said thing up to +20%.

Runes can be placed into item slots. This is permanent, but offers a massive power boost.

Spending gold is crafting. Every item vendor restocks every time your character levels up. Buy items with rune slots and salvage them. When in doubt, save for your next level or gamble the gold on getting a random item to go full circle.

When evaluating if to sell an item, also consider the possibility of crafting it into something worthwhile for yourself. It's rare to find a piece of gear that is good just lying on the ground. It's much easier to find a piece of gear that might be able to be crafted into something worthwhile, but how much currency are you willing to spend on gambling for it and is it worth it?

Unspent currency is unrealized power. Enjoy the gambling -- go all-in on life.

Getting currencies and crafting things is fun and all, but what are we working towards and what should I be looking for? Well, resistances and damage (also-known-as life and sustainment). Then anything else that looks good compared to the skills and passives you are using.

Static vs dynamic is a spectrum.

• Passive skill tree points are refundable, but expensive
  
• Putting a rune into a rune slot is permanent, but we can always craft another item, right?
  
• Removing a piece of equipment with a resistance we need on it is easy to replace
  
• Removing a piece of equipment with 4 resistances we need on it is difficult
  
• Switching a skill gem, support gem, flask, or charm for another is almost free

When finding and crafting items, consider keeping alternate or old items. Having some backup gear you can change into to get different resistances covered or different attack types is the difference of a souls-like boss fight and mindlessly clicking buttons.

Skill gems and the skills you learn and use can also trivialize a fight. Switch your equipment, skills, and playstyle to adapt to the problems you're facing.

Stay dynamic -- only make static decisions when necessary. Adaptability is the key to longevity.

Passive points are a currency. Focus on spending them on major nodes, not the small minor nodes. You don't need to complete a cluster of nodes. Beeline for the major node you want, then move on, leaving some nodes of the cluster untaken to be better spent elsewhere.

A single major node can provide a major power boost -- don't waste it on +5 strength.

Like this guide? Learn to play without one and rediscover the joy of gaming and discovery without spoilers: https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3380447263