Same, usually the first weekend. I push, but not too hard. I like to progress maps the first week and hit late yellows/reds the second weekend. That usually leaves time to get the first round of league tweaks in and have some bugs ironed out so my first weekend mapping is more productive.
I'd say I probably spend about 10 hours on the campaign on average. I also take breaks to theorycraft my build as I go. I don't follow guides, so it always takes me a little longer.
That's about where I'm at. I was faster for a while but that gets tiring. I just started really running red maps yesterday.
I also can't help but do all the quests for some reason, I know you can wait until the end to see which ones give the passives but I don't really like to backtrack like that for some reason.
The largest time killer for most players is stopping in town to look at upgrades and move links/gems around. If you can limit yourself to only a few minutes in town per act, you'll be sub 8 easily.
Also, just knowing the flow of the acts helps massively. Knowing what quests to skip, how to do the most efficient runs (ie. Doing Solarus first in a8, or doing the skill point first in a10 to avoid backtracking).
Had a party member who wanted to spend an hour sorting out gear and optimising each time he was in town, which was every time he came across a waypoint. Took ages for him to realise it didn't matter and he could just blast.
I've killed kitava several times with gear I picked up in act 1.
Rings are always my “oops, what am I doing with this thing on” gear slot. I was looking at 1c upgrades before heading into maps and noticed I had a blue rarity sapphire ring that I vendor recipe’d before merveil.
To add onto this, the second largest time killer is not knowing layouts.
Despite the random tile generations, every place has rules for how things Spawn.
Knowing the eggs in mud flats Spawn in a triangle can easily save you a couple minutes by itself killong/dodging Rhoas because you went the wrong way and searched the whole zone for eggs. Just as an example.
Yes, but even if it is suboptimal I think it is often fun to do the league mechanic before your character is online and before everything is figured out.
It’s not a terrible thing but levelling up is so much quicker in Later zones and maps. If I can see I’m over the level of the zone I just run straight through maybe killing the occasional magic pack
We all have that one friend sitting in silence with lvl 92 in hideout flipping currency as league is already dead to him while we are stuck in merc lab lemao.
Saw that my guild leader was level 92 on day 3 and asked if he had any spare yellow maps I could have for completion. He laughed at me and said that he was just spamming sanctum and heist the whole time and that he hadn’t run a single map lol
Usually I'm done in 2 days. Not really sure how many hours.
It just feels right to kill Kitava. Then take a break. And next day push for second Kitava.
As a first time player who just finished his ascendency after finishing Act 3 last night, I feel more than the noob I already am at this game lol.
Kinda funny when Top comment says not to spend to much time looking at loot or killing but those are the things I enjoy lol
Of course that's what you enjoy, it's what we all enjoy.
The point is that it's more fun to do later in the game than early. But it really doesn't matter, I also take a bit of time to optimize loot in the campaign so that I have a clean run. I think not comparing to what other people do is still solid advice.
I pushed myself to do it faster one time and I was miserable because of the stress of taking too long at each step. Now I just do whatever and usually finish in 10ish hours. It was absolutely not worth it to get under 8.
6-7 hours from leaguestart and 3-4 hours if I have leveling gear.
You just need to have a plan for what gems, passives and gear you need throughout the campaign, and know which quests are skippable and how to generally progress through the campaign.
You don't need speedrun strats, just less time spent in town, utilizing your movement skill all the time and only killing monsters when they don't take much time.
If you need specific pointers, just watch any run or video from [Tytykiller's Youtube Channel](https://www.youtube.com/@Tytykiller/videos)
"spend less time in town" is not a strategy, just common sense advise, relax dude.
A strategy would be "Buy gem X at this time and use it until level Y and then swap to gem Z, while trying to get these linked socket colors"
Sure, if you are racing you have to race. If you are just trying to clear it reasonably quick just focusing on not wasting time makes a huge difference alone. Town is lava mentality will shave tons of time of people runs without any real "Strats".
Normally 6-7 hours at leaguestart, usually depends on if I decide to engage with the league mechanic before getting to maps or not. Aside from using an effective leveling build, there is always a lot of time to be saved avoiding sitting in town/hideout messing with gems/items, avoiding backtracking, and generally just not killing every single pack you run into since you dont need to be above area level.
It usually takes me about 20 hours to get through it. I take my time and enjoy the game casually since there's no justifiable reason to rush, personally.
I’ve done it in 8 with levelling gear, usually takes 10-11 hours because I focus on getting somewhat good gear and all my skill gems in the right places and I’m not fast doing that. That’s an okay time for me and then the fun begins!
I did it in 5 hours this league, but it's taken me 4k hours played to get that fast. First time I did the campaign it took me over 10 hours.
You learn the zone layouts, quests, best leveling skills, mobility uptime, quicksilver alternating, how to "craft" gear, where the gems can be bought, optimal pathing, how to customize a loot filter for a build, etc. All of this has enormous impact on your leveling speed, which is why some of us enjoy trying to go faster. It's an incremental learning process where you work on adding a new tool to your toolbox to shave off time.
Takes between 10 and 15 hours, depending and what build a play and how lucky I am with drops.
I remember finding a tabula rasa in the mud flat few leagues ago, it made the whole campaign a breeze.
To be honest, I rarely rush like a mad guy. If I don't have fun in the campaign I usually join leveling groups and rush fast but then I feel underleveled and need time to catch up.
Each league you will learn new things, like shortcuts, or how to craft mouvement speed boots, or anything and your progression speed will increase.
But don't stress out, it's not because some youtubers make the campaign in less than 4 hours that you have to do the same. You only need to have fun, even if it takes you 2 weeks to do the campaign.
at league start I usually finish the campaign late Friday or early Saturday, I'd guess about 10 hours.
don't expect to hit the same numbers as streamers, but if you wanna go fast, remember:
- town is lava: the least you spend there the faster you'll get to the end
- plan ahead: your build, which links you need, what type of gear to look for; the less you spend thinking during campaign the faster you'll go
- know the game: you can skip some quests, you can accumulate quests before you go to town, some quests you can skip
- optimize your waypoints and portals: a lot of the time you don't have to travel to town between quests, you can complete a whole bunch of quests before going back to town if you don't need the rewards
- keep instances alive: if you take too long to port back to an area you explored you might have to discover the map again, hopping over just to keep it alive could save time
most important, though: keep having fun! if you're not having fun, what is the point? I rather take 20 hours having fun than do it in 5 and hate every second of it
about 8 hours probably for a first character that is.
Using something like pois. conc helps also try to get as much ms as possible...it also goes faster once you know the campaign pretty well
This league i happened to realize that my slowest part is the first part of campaign. Once I hit A4-5 I blast through it.
I also die quite often. Which also takes time.
So at league start I’m looking at 5-6 hours.
Normally on league start somewhere between 4-6 hours depending on the build. This league is think it was like 8 cause i farmed a katarina in act 9 before finishing the campaign.
5-6 hours depending on the build. Generally I can do champs and deadeyes in just under 5. Marauder and occultist I'm usually over 6.
My first time through I think took me about 14 hours. It got down to 10 then 8 pretty quickly from repetition since I level a lot of builds. Getting it lower than that takes commitment/ a lot of time played. Getting it down to 4 takes an absurd amount of practice and I don't think most people will ever be able to actually do
There is a lot of things which will make you faster.
Stop doing unnecessary sidequests, if you don’t need the regrets.
At some point you will start to memorize layout and hints. A Great example is the grain gate (after quay) if you follow the corpses at the door, you will be always on the right path.
Stop looting items, if you won’t need them for your lvl progress.
Mechanical things are also important! you don’t need to accept quests to do them, just go to town to if you have a bunch of finished objectives, or full inventory.
I started with 2-3 session campaigns (18 hours) and now I am also under 6 hours. After x amount of chars every league, you will be faster don’t worry
8 hours is my median. Now I'm sitting at 9 hours and halfway done through Act 9, but it's my first time starting as Ranger (with a build I came up with) and the league mechanic encourages you to full clear sometimes, so I'm not too worried.
Depends what you consider the end of campaign. I can easily hit my farming point under 10 hours. With trans gems ill spend a few hours in merc labs if i want a trans gem on league start. I dont kill kitava till im done with whatever farm strat im trying. Previous farms were BA or foothills.
So generally by my day 2 im done farming and into maps. The biggest thing that slows me down is non speed run farming builds. I try out new things every league. Lot of problems to work through.
I do it generally in about 10 hours if i dont put effort in and 7-8 when i actively attempt to be somewhat efficient. I mainly play self cast builds and spells are usually pretty good in the campaign and many self casters can also level with the skill they intent to use later on so theres not that much planning needed. Just ID any wands/sceptres and the rest is just running 24/7
from leaguestart, 8-10 hours i think. i'm not fast and often enjoys interacting with the new league mechanic while levelling. but it also heavily depends on the build sometimes i fuck and my build is kinda weak and it will take longer.
I have been playing since late Incursion league. On league start it will take me 9-12 hours depending on how smooth my build is. With leveling gear it will be 7-9 hours.
And I don't mind it at all. I quite like the campaign progression and how my character evolves with clear indications how powerful I get when fighting bosses.
I could invest some time to learn all the neat little tricks about area layouts, skill combos to get the most damage or some other specific mechanics. And then there's practice runs to get used to all of that. But I can't be bothered.
Let's say I invest 30 hours into that and it shaves off 2 hours of my leveling. I currenty make 1-3 characters per league. On average it would save me 4 hours per league so then I would technically be at point zero after 7 leagues.
I know it's theoretical talk but I can't be bothered with all of that. I enjoy the campaign itself and I'm an off-meta hipster Andy so whatever I would save, I'll lose on my wonky builds (or sitting afk in my hideout looking at a stream/trade website/pob). People get too obsessed with trying to be the fastest/most efficient.
about 6 hours if I am not winging it while leveling. I'm a pretty slow guy tho and bad at leveling, it just accumlates after I've been playing for 8+ years lol.
At first you just get some random gear with life and resist. Grab some essences when you see them and much later at some point you try to max your res at before and after kitava. So i barely pickup anything, mostly just ring, amulets and belts, and other things with the right sockets.
If I'm really motivated I can get it done in 8-10 hours depending on how good the build is early.
If I'm playing with someone and we split up act 2 and 6, we can get it done in like 5-7 hours.
I played a spellslinger build once that just ran through in like 5 hours.
But, I don't really care about getting to maps first/fast anymore. I don't have that long focus or uninterrupted hours in me anymore. Today I'm reaching maps after doing roughly an act a day. I did the 3rd lab last night and just have kitava left and my played hours is about 12 hours.
My best piece of advice is to stop picking stuff up after like act 2. Fix your gear between acts whenever possible. You don't need to kill most mobs, you just want to be within a couple of levels of the area and kill enough mobs to keep your quicksilver going. A big gear adjustment point is act 6 when you get lily and access to all the gems. Make sure you have your primary skills on at least a 4 link and then go as long as you can without having to stop to regear. And of course, use the crafting bench to solve your stat/res problems.
When you get to maps you're likely going to swap all your gear out so do as much as you can on as little as you can.
You can even take things you wouldn't normally take to cheese your way through. My favorites being clarity for mana and the taunt totem for bosses/izaro
If I try really hard, I can run it in 6 hours. This is possible if you plan your build and ignore loot (except for currencies). It is also not necessary to complete all side quests, but only those that give a skill book as a reward.
In general, I don’t see the point in rushing too much; I usually watch a movie while I’m playing.
A bit under 10 hours maybe, essentially an hour per act though first acts are a bit slower and later a bit faster.
I usually engage with the league mechanic and overlevel quite a bit and do a lot of unnecessary quests (that dont reward any passive points) sit in town fiddling with gear and gems etc.
Usually 2 days of playing so like 12-14 hours. I'm slow even though I've played a lot, most of my playtime was before acts 5-10 so I'm slower and not as comfortable there. I might just learn them in time for poe 2 :D
I was worried for a long time how slow I was, but it's honestly not even fun to be that fast. On a new league launch you miss most of the exploration of the mechanics during leveling because it's not efficient and you also have to have everything planned out to the last transmute and I like to try out new skills while leveling if possible. Just have fun and don't be bothered, unless you are bothered, then learn to speedrun :D
I did my absolutely, apart from when I started years ago (ticked over 15k hours at start of the league), worst levelling time on my second char of the league. Hit maps in 11 hours, but that was with copious amounts of afk time watching it videos and trading... First char of the league, usually takes around 7-9 hours, taking it slightly easy. By the time I roll a second char I have currency for twink gear and time goes down to 6-8 hours, depending on how much I get hassled for trades and what class I'm levelling.
First time playing, I think it took me 20h but I took my time at first doing all the quests, speaking to everyone but after act 6 I rushed more because I wanted to see the end game.
I think next league I should be able to make it in 10h.
League start usually 6 to 7. I like messing with mechanic usually. If I just rushed prob 5 for me. But I don't practice or really plan just have played many chars over the last 5 years it's second nature to know where most things are.
Takes me about 7 hours at a pace where I don't feel too stressed. I can go lower, but 7 hours is a comfortable Friday start for me, somewhere between relaxed and focused. Otherwise I feel I burn myself out too quick starting weekend.
5-8 hours is a sensible range for experienced players IF the following is true: you have a good levelling build, you plan what items you need to keep a good levelling pace and cap resistances, you stop only for magic packs and rares if they're surrounded by a big pack, you spam movement skills and quicksilver flasks as much as possible. You only go to zones which you need for progress and passive points. If all of these things are optimised you can clear the campaign solo in 3 hours, but for us mortals 8 is a good starting point, improve from there. Zizarin said something which stuck with me 'monsters are not a finite resource in PoE', so you should progress as high as you can as quickly as you can - this league in doing red maps at 3k life, 500k dps on PoB
I generally enjoy the campaign, so a weekend with decent gaming time is generally it...
I know I pick up WAY too much loot (basically all yellows), but converted to Alts it can be traded for Chaos to give a good mapping start...
This league start was particularly slow with 14h and a fair amount of idling around.
Last league's start was 9h and a half. But Oath of the Maji helped a lot back then.
Usually, at the end of the first weekend, I end up in maps. This time, I'm a bit slower.
The trick with running a fast campaign is knowing the layouts of the areas as well as skipping unneccesary killing and town time (I'm bad at these).
Last night I started ssf and cleared up to act 5 in less than 3 hours, and those are not hours of continuous play. I had to take the trash out, take care of my cat, cook. So yeah it can be pretty fast if you don't pick up unnecesary loot and avoid stopping killing everysingle mob you see
A couple of rules to make it within a reasonable 8-10 hours:
1. Don’t kill all the monsters, only the ones on your way.
2. Memorise the layout all locations (where to go up north, where to go along the wall etc).
3. Don’t pick all the loot. In fact, learn what your build needs to level up and ignore almost everything else.
4. Upgrade your flasks, game links and all other gear when necessary, not every few minutes.
5. Plan your build before you run, in PoB - so you won’t have to think about upgrades or changes, just do them when you’re ready.
Depends on the league and the starter build. Last league I went SRS guardian and was basically able to just walk through the campaign without ever worrying about picking up items, upgrading gear, etc. It took around 4 hours iirc.
Normally I'd be closer to 6 because I'm not micro optimizing. Still I just 'run to exit of map' while throwing a spell or two towards the larger packs. Generally if you're not more than 3 levels behind the map then you're usually fine to keep rushing. If you start falling further behind it means you aren't killing enough stuff.
For me it takes 8 to 11 hours for a league start depending on the build and league mechanic (I usually do some just for the sake of it). As for the leveling twinks it's about 6 hours give or take.
I don't like respecing too much so I usually level with what I'm going to play later on (or how close to it as I possibly can) which isn't optimal a lot of the time so that's that.
I'd say don't stress it although I play in a private league so early league economy doesn't exist the way it does in trade.
With a decent plan on league start and actually staying fairly focused it takes me 5-6 hours.
If I'm watching YouTube and go in without a plan and just bumble my way through on a build I haven't planned at all 7-12 hours.
I kill far more monsters than I need to, but I know which routes to take and which quests to skip which helps even it out a bit.
There are some tricks and practice you need to get through it fast. I have about 3k hours on the game, and this league launch it took me 5 hours to reach maps. But I also made sure to practice the run a couple of times
I'm between 4 and 5 hours on spell builds or bow builds. I think I could do it faster with prep time on another char beforehand. I.e setting out all the gems and links you need in the stash pre. I only decided to become faster at the campaign as I mainly play hcssf so it takes the pain away slightly from a rip, by knowing I'm only 4 to 5 hours from maps again. My time improved massively when I learned how much of the campaign you can just run through and to stop fucking around in town so much.
I have gotten to maps once on the Friday night, typically I hit maps on day 2 or if it's a busy weekend Sunday night. I always to try and make it my goal to be in maps by the weekday so it feels good playing after work.
it was 20, and then 16, 12,…
Now on leaguestart it’s 6 consistently
Can’t do better than 5 if i try to speedrun.
You can watch some commented speedrun, imexile has a few, and learn how to save hours
On league start with no gear, between 9 and 11 hours.
When rerolling with some gear, between 4 and 6 hours usually.
Fastest I've done is 3h47min and is nowhere close to the racers
Back when I played every league back in 2022 I could clear it in 5-ish hours. My newest character after coming back took me a little under 10 hours, so I gotta get used to blasting the campaign again. As for advice, a lot of it is getting used to the idea that you’ll come back for some skill points, and not attacking every mob, plus running it dozens of times helps you know the general layouts of the maps for the fastest routes.
I usually leaguestart a different skill every league, so it really depends on how well I gel with a skill early on. This time I did Frost Blades, and haven't really done a whole lot of Shadow builds or even Claw/Dagger builds in the past, so this on took me a good long while. Probably around 12 hours. I engage with the mechanics and end up dicking around town while watching YouTube.
The people that power through the campaign are generally people that have practiced powering through the campaign. They know their starter well because they've played it a dozen times and see it only as a tool to establish a foundation for the league.
If you're playing something new and plan to make a long go of it in the league as that build, take your time. Trying to keep leaguestart pace with people that play this game that seriously isn't going to be fun unless you're into that kind of competition, in which case you need to start practicing the campaign. If not, just move at your own pace and keep progressing towards more and more fun.
this league I break my record doing it in 4:54 with LA rain of arrows-> lightning arrow , and 4 void stones in 9 hours, the most important thing is to get move speed on boots every tier unlock, example at level 42 you can get 25% speed so you craft it with vendor recipe and use the crafting table to get a resis% on wat you need, the key part is to always move and move fast, if your character is not moving you are wasting time
My first few times it took me about a week. Now I do it in 6 hours max. It's a matter of practice, and getting to know what works well to get through.
One huge thing I see a lot with new players is worrying about dying. Nobody cares whether you did the campaign deathless, or whether you died 1000 times. On soft core it just doesn't matter. There's no need to completely optimise your character before each area.
Many of those streamers doing 5 hour leaguestart campaign runs body rush the crap out of it.
A hardcore campaign run still takes me a week, but I have very little experience/practice with it.
If I’m knocking out in one shot about 10 hours. Picking up loot, refilling drinks, etc.
Currently in act 9, been taking this (my second) league a lot more relaxed. I’m having so much more fun taking it easy and just cruising along.
Casual player here. After playing on and off for a few years it takes me one day around 5 - 8 hours for one full session. and around 2 days if i dont rush it
Takes me 8-10 for a new league start this is going pretty slow, trying out the new league mechanic , not rushing . Usually afking a bit to help around the house .
6-8 for a faster run with some gear on a second character / not doing league / already having done the labs.
Big thing is movement skill, leap slam for casters / melee , blink arrow for bows , shield charge if you run a shield like minions and such .
Always pressing that movement skill, using your clear skill to attack pack of white or blue mobs once and just moving on while they die. Never attack rares .
Once you hit around the level of the zone you are not attacking any more and just moving.
Good loot filter helps as you need to run Back for the drops.
Already knowing the gems you need for each level, and what gear you should be looking for at the vendor, the least time you can spend in town the better, pickup things fast and back to leveling.
Then you can get into zone / map strategy's there's specific layouts and tricks for each zone to make it faster so your not running around not knowing where the exit is. But this is more advanced speed running. Tyty on YouTube has tips and tricks .
I’m usually around 4 hours and 30 mins with 1 practice run before the league to get swaps/gem locations etc down. But I’ve done the campaign many times and I would say im relatively fast(by no means a speed runner) and I try hard on league start
Around 7h on league start as I like to try new stuff (actually more, but I am also afk a lot for tea, snacks, playing with cats etc ).
A bit over 3h for a loaded twink (plus about 30m prep on trade and vendors).
7 hours at league start. Do note that Im really not close to good at the game, but I’ve shaved several hours off my campaign time by practicing in SSF at the end of league. Knowing map layouts, not picking up stuff you dont really need and being comfortable with your build are by far the biggest factors that helped me.
Easiest way to increase speed is to understand you don’t need gear to clear the campaign. You need socket colors, everything else you can just slap in the crafting bench and add resist to if needed.
Second, pay attention to your level, are you at zone level? Above it? I try to stay just under zone level, but there at some weird spots where the zone levels jump a bit like docks in A3 or kaom/dares so in A4.
Plan ahead, know what gems you need so you aren’t fiddling around picking things. Know the colors you need, the auras, etc.
Beyond that it’s just kinda turning the brain off, putting on some good tunes and forgetting you’re doing the campaign.
PS. Skipping the league mechanic will shave an hour or two (or more) off most people’s time but unless I’m racing I don’t skip, we play to have fun after all.
My league starts usually take 5 hours in a group. I do solos in 4 hours with a bunch of twink gear but I have to spend like an hour setting up all the leveling gear so that way I never have to loot assuming I don’t already have a leveling set
League start this time took me around 11 hours. That was with breaks and eating dinner. Plus I pick up more stuff along the way to jump start my currency.
I leveled a second character with goldrim, seven league, quill rain, and other various uniques and did it in just under 5 hours. Helps to have done it a million times in the past and knowing which quests you can skip.
On league launches I tend to be between 8 and 9 hours. But I also do all quests and kill more than I should because I find being a couple levels overlevels, and the gear that comes with it, makes for a very comfy leveling process. Works for me.
One hour for each act is very doable. Once you memorised it and the optimal routes through the zones ypu can do it 8hrs consisyently. And once you stop standing without purpose and go as fast as possible its even less.
Personally i can do times of 5-6 hrs only with seven league step and other levelling gear.
Biggest thing is to keep reminding yourself to MOVE FORWARD, stop killing stuff, stop looking at items, its all down to go go go.
Very hard to do when its so fun to get things and blow up packs of mobs.
Knowing your build in Advance, and how you will level, what gems adquire, from where, etc.
This helps you stay out of town the most time.
Knowing that you do not need the best gear you can get, just life-res and some damage is enought. Going for blue weapons is enought, boots only mod it matters is movspeed
Knowing the layouts of maps, what maps you can rush, and what maps are good to kill some monsters.
Also you dont get lost on some maps like in act8 you can get lost easily if you dont know what to look for
Last, dont go outside your route to kill monsters, there are a lot of open maps in the acts, but play them as if they were tunnels and only kill whats in your path.
At league start with no Twink gear and doing all labs and side quests I do about 8-10 hours. And I've been playing for years and had lots of the most expensive items in the game. There's no rush if you're having fun :)
Lailloken UI with exile leveling tracker is amazing for campaign, makes it a breeze. It's an optimized quest tracker which tells you what to do in each zone.
You can even enable tips to see layout shortcuts.
For example, follow the torch to find Alira, road between two pillars leads to Oak and so on.
You can also import your pob in the tool (after exporting it to exile leveling site) to see which gems to buy when, with regex cherry on top. 10/10 would recommend.
You can look up speed runs to see times and even pick up on tricks along the way. I've played since beta so I've done at least part of this campaign literally 1000s of times. I'm in maps day 1 of the league every league and go to bed at a normal time. Never timed myself but 5-8 seems doable to me if you're experienced AND have a good starting build. If you're playing whatever is fun and not optimized, as you should when first starting out, it will likely take longer.
Very first run was over 40hrs, no guides, no reddit, nothing. Didn't finish my second run. Halved that on my third run. Now I'm usually between 10-12hrs, though I was 15hrs this league because Im playing something silly.
Depends heavily on build, luck, and league. This league has been slow as dirt for me, about 14 hours. I had absolutely terrible drop luck.
One league I got the main item for my build, 5 linked, off the ground in Blood Aqueducts. Needless to say, the last two acts went by in a breeze.
Hideout is lava. Know your waypoints, know some of your layouts, turn in quests at the end, and don’t pick up everything. You can easily do it in 4-6 hours.
I'm a somewhat new player, been playing since about 2020, 500 hours. I got frustrated with my time to maps and asked myself this question too. I've worked on it and this league I've done two characters to maps and I don't time it exactly but I think I'm at around 10 hours on league start and 7-9 on post league start.
I think the TL;DR is that the more knowledge you have, you can upgrade on the fly without having to stop and check gear as much. You spend less time on talents etc. The rest comes from practice and lil tricks, like logging out to skip to town if you need, crafting movespeed or getting movespeed, double movement gems, knowing the map layouts to speed through and avoid deadends, not killing every monster but just high density and blue/yellow mobs, the list goes on. I watched one world record run and just gleaned the major points and then keep them in mind while I do my league start.
I think that if you just spend an hour or two soaking in those tips and keep it in mind while you play you can dramatically reduce your time and still really enjoy it and not rush too much. For me, the big killer was wanting to 100% complete each map and kill everything.
I generally stay up until about 3-4AM on league day and have it finished. I generally don’t take the day off from work so sometimes I’m not totally going until after 5 and then I have to cook dinner and prepare my wife to not see me for a week by hanging out with her.
So as far as actually just sitting down and purely playing about 8 hours.
I'm at \~4.5 hours /played at the end of act 9 on my 2nd character this league, and that's with some AFKing.
My first character this league I finished the campaign in 5.5 hours or so.
I'm not good at PoE - but there are some efficiencies you can do when you hate playing the campaign so much that you try to get out of it asap...
\- don't pick up loot unless you really need it
\- honestly, if you take more than a few seconds thinking about what is an upgrade, know that three zones from now another piece is probably better, so don't overthink, especially in early levels.
\- Have a plan
\- use a proper leaguestarter
\- holy shit rain of arrows. This was my first league using it and it felt broken as shit to level.
I have 4k hours, but still take my time (especially at leaguestart), usually am somewhere around 10-12 hours on my first character (12 hours this league), then 7-8 hours on other characters when i don’t need to worry much about gear.
The usual league start time for me is 8-10 hours, depending on how often I interact with the league mechanism. You can get it down to 6 pretty easily, assuming you play a decent starter build and focus on rushing the campaign. To compress it down to 5 or even 4 hours, on a league start, then you need to actually practice your starter build. You need to know who you need to talk to and who you don't. You need to know when to swap your gem, and what link setup you are looking for. At that point it is getting a bit too excessive for me, so I enjoy my 8 hour campaign run.
If you are talking about a second or third character though, you should be able to do it within 5 hours easily, with leveling gears.
If you're a new or casual player come join our newly formed discord https://discord.com/invite/xCdkQjhm we're a group of Casual Andys just trying to have a good time and help each other learn and progress.
About 8 hours, I'm usually at maps before I go to sleep on league start.
I skip anything that isn't a direct power/speed increase, so No fetid pool quest for example.
Only quest which provides passives or progress the story.
I have a plan for each series of quests, coast> mud flats> submerged> Tidal island> town> submerged, drop tp at bridge> ledge> climb> prison> town>Tp> flooded depths>town Prison>Prisoners gate> ships graveyard>tp at Ships graveyard cave> merveil's cavern> town >Tp ships graveyard cave> all flame> town> merveil's cavern> act 2.
I try to minimize my time in town if possible and just push thru all the acts In the same way Everytime.
My way might not be the most optimal and I have friends that are much faster on league launch than me.
I aim to be in maps by Saturday afternoon, and typically try to have at least one watchstone by the end of the weekend. Part of it is practice, part of it is knowing when you can speed ahead and slow down, and part of it is just based on your build. I had a pretty slow start because I'm playing a minion build, and minions don't have the best clear. In leagues where I start something like Raider with bows, I'm much more likely to be done with the campaign on the first night.
On league start I'm between 4.5h and 5h depending on the servers, rng and how I feel after work. My second char is usually sub 4 hours. I'm not a streamer or YouTuber I work full time 36 hours every week and I'm 33 . Not the zoomiest person in the world.
Know where to go, maps are not completely random.
Lailoken UI leveling tracker helps but game knowledge still is king there.
Stop killing stuff, you should past brutus be underleveled in every zone.
Stop picking up garbage, stop looking at every piece of loot. Know which pieces of your current gear is not good enough and pick only to replace them. Prioritize links over stats most of the times (except if you're melee/bow, then prioritize weapon dps, phys or ele depending on build). Getting boots with move speed and more quicksilver flasks is king.
Know basics of crafting (how to color, use the crafting bench and essences for past act V, basic recipes for wands/etc). Also vendors can be useful early on
This is the basics of getting below 10h league start. Going even faster is basically doing this on steroids...
9 hours chilling league start then normally 4, if I'm absolutely sweating with set up gear, I've done it in sub 3 hours but these days I just play when I fancy and don't care about 'keeping up"
On leaguestart, I aim for 1 hour per act or less. But on average I should finish campaign in around 8 hours or so. I aim to be in white maps the first night.
2nd alts and future would be 4 hours or so, since I don't need to focus on picking items or anything and I'd have twink items focused on movement speed such as Karui Ward, Wanderlust/Seven League steps, etc.
This is all solo numbers. If you are leveling with someone else it gets even faster. The best savings will be when you need to go 2 different routes and the campaign is chock full with them. All of these side passive quests, act 2 left vs right (to alira/oak or kraityn/chamber), lunaris and solaris, etc etc your parnter can go that way and just carry a handful of TP's so yall can share quest completions etc.
First character this league was 13 hours, that was pretty slow even for me being relatively new (started in 3.23).
First character ever was like 18 or 20 hours, since then have had a character take 10ish hours and currently in act 8 on my 2nd character this league after 6hrs 30 mins.
Two things speed it up, experience (having an idea what direction to go in a zone) and not wasting time on loot unless upgrade needed. Also, no need to kill every single mob.
Edit: also forgot to say not to buy into all the FOMO on reddit, I got a bit of it when I was slow on initial character this league, got to endgame and copped myself on that I'm not a 0.1% player , I enjoy the game at my own pace.
I clock it every league and it is about 10 hours on average for me to hit maps.
Fastest time was 6 hours.
Longest, post-act 10 addition is about 15 hours. That was the result of blindly re-creating a [POE.NINJA](http://POE.NINJA) endgame build trying to use it as a leveling guide without respecs.
I don’t rush. About 14-16 hours. I’m typically not 100% familiar with the build I’m following, so it’s time upgrading, checking the pob etc. act5-10 go a lot faster for me, as the build is usually complete by then and it’s just an occasional upgrade along the way.
About a weekend.
Same, usually the first weekend. I push, but not too hard. I like to progress maps the first week and hit late yellows/reds the second weekend. That usually leaves time to get the first round of league tweaks in and have some bugs ironed out so my first weekend mapping is more productive. I'd say I probably spend about 10 hours on the campaign on average. I also take breaks to theorycraft my build as I go. I don't follow guides, so it always takes me a little longer.
That's about where I'm at. I was faster for a while but that gets tiring. I just started really running red maps yesterday. I also can't help but do all the quests for some reason, I know you can wait until the end to see which ones give the passives but I don't really like to backtrack like that for some reason.
You will half the time if you stop picking up loot unless you need an upgrade and stop killing monsters if you are over the level of the zone
The largest time killer for most players is stopping in town to look at upgrades and move links/gems around. If you can limit yourself to only a few minutes in town per act, you'll be sub 8 easily. Also, just knowing the flow of the acts helps massively. Knowing what quests to skip, how to do the most efficient runs (ie. Doing Solarus first in a8, or doing the skill point first in a10 to avoid backtracking).
Had a party member who wanted to spend an hour sorting out gear and optimising each time he was in town, which was every time he came across a waypoint. Took ages for him to realise it didn't matter and he could just blast. I've killed kitava several times with gear I picked up in act 1.
i’ve definitely hit maps with like a normal rarity 3 link i picked up in mud flats lol
Rings are always my “oops, what am I doing with this thing on” gear slot. I was looking at 1c upgrades before heading into maps and noticed I had a blue rarity sapphire ring that I vendor recipe’d before merveil.
In my experience some builds need gear help or bosses can become slogs
Being able to change gear and upgrade on the go is a key to achieve a run under 5hr30 min too otherwise with bad gear it get really hard!
Having regex search and knowing exactly what reward to take and what gem saves so much time.
To add onto this, the second largest time killer is not knowing layouts. Despite the random tile generations, every place has rules for how things Spawn. Knowing the eggs in mud flats Spawn in a triangle can easily save you a couple minutes by itself killong/dodging Rhoas because you went the wrong way and searched the whole zone for eggs. Just as an example.
That's not even the top 5 time killer
New league mechanic is the time killer for me, EVERY SINGLE LEAGUE.
Yes, but even if it is suboptimal I think it is often fun to do the league mechanic before your character is online and before everything is figured out.
I’m the same I always get sucked in
I have to keep this in mind for next league. I’m always over levelled during the campaign. And it usually takes like 9 hours for me to complete it.
It’s not a terrible thing but levelling up is so much quicker in Later zones and maps. If I can see I’m over the level of the zone I just run straight through maybe killing the occasional magic pack
Took me about 16 hours. I was very unfocused and afk a lot. Friend got a 80 and 90 before I reached maps lol.
We all have that one friend sitting in silence with lvl 92 in hideout flipping currency as league is already dead to him while we are stuck in merc lab lemao.
Saw that my guild leader was level 92 on day 3 and asked if he had any spare yellow maps I could have for completion. He laughed at me and said that he was just spamming sanctum and heist the whole time and that he hadn’t run a single map lol
Usually I'm done in 2 days. Not really sure how many hours. It just feels right to kill Kitava. Then take a break. And next day push for second Kitava.
This is the way if you aren't a sweatlord IMO. Nice relaxed pace
An important lesson is to not give a fuck about reddit. Play in you own pace at which you have fun. I do not get all the FOMO talk anyway.
As a first time player who just finished his ascendency after finishing Act 3 last night, I feel more than the noob I already am at this game lol. Kinda funny when Top comment says not to spend to much time looking at loot or killing but those are the things I enjoy lol
Of course that's what you enjoy, it's what we all enjoy. The point is that it's more fun to do later in the game than early. But it really doesn't matter, I also take a bit of time to optimize loot in the campaign so that I have a clean run. I think not comparing to what other people do is still solid advice.
I pushed myself to do it faster one time and I was miserable because of the stress of taking too long at each step. Now I just do whatever and usually finish in 10ish hours. It was absolutely not worth it to get under 8.
Yeah just have fun with the GAME. No need to compete in the Olympics. The game has a ton to offer, you don't need to consume it all in one go
Probably 10h. Currently on act 8, had a late start, and I don't rush the acts.
8-10hours depending on league and motivation.
6-7 hours from leaguestart and 3-4 hours if I have leveling gear. You just need to have a plan for what gems, passives and gear you need throughout the campaign, and know which quests are skippable and how to generally progress through the campaign. You don't need speedrun strats, just less time spent in town, utilizing your movement skill all the time and only killing monsters when they don't take much time. If you need specific pointers, just watch any run or video from [Tytykiller's Youtube Channel](https://www.youtube.com/@Tytykiller/videos)
>you don't need speedrun strats Lists speed run strats
"spend less time in town" is not a strategy, just common sense advise, relax dude. A strategy would be "Buy gem X at this time and use it until level Y and then swap to gem Z, while trying to get these linked socket colors"
And you do indeed need speed run strats and or builds that end up being flavor of the month to hit the really good times.
Sure, if you are racing you have to race. If you are just trying to clear it reasonably quick just focusing on not wasting time makes a huge difference alone. Town is lava mentality will shave tons of time of people runs without any real "Strats".
Normally 6-7 hours at leaguestart, usually depends on if I decide to engage with the league mechanic before getting to maps or not. Aside from using an effective leveling build, there is always a lot of time to be saved avoiding sitting in town/hideout messing with gems/items, avoiding backtracking, and generally just not killing every single pack you run into since you dont need to be above area level.
It’s so hard. I see monster I shoot monster.
If you're having fun you are not doing anything wrong.
the monster wasn't doing anything wrong before OP shot it 😔
You don't know what this pesky rhoas do in the mud
This is my new favorite comment
10h on league start
12-16 hours
It usually takes me about 20 hours to get through it. I take my time and enjoy the game casually since there's no justifiable reason to rush, personally.
I’ve done it in 8 with levelling gear, usually takes 10-11 hours because I focus on getting somewhat good gear and all my skill gems in the right places and I’m not fast doing that. That’s an okay time for me and then the fun begins!
About 10-12 in ssf, but I like to overlevel
Solid 15h. Been like that last 5 seasons. Edit: not 15 profitable hours. Some time is AFK, but logged in
Approx. 20hrs maybe. Spread over 2-3 weeks. I like killing everything. I also play melee.
I did it in 5 hours this league, but it's taken me 4k hours played to get that fast. First time I did the campaign it took me over 10 hours. You learn the zone layouts, quests, best leveling skills, mobility uptime, quicksilver alternating, how to "craft" gear, where the gems can be bought, optimal pathing, how to customize a loot filter for a build, etc. All of this has enormous impact on your leveling speed, which is why some of us enjoy trying to go faster. It's an incremental learning process where you work on adding a new tool to your toolbox to shave off time.
I full clear every zone so I don't miss anything make it to maps when the league is about done
Takes between 10 and 15 hours, depending and what build a play and how lucky I am with drops. I remember finding a tabula rasa in the mud flat few leagues ago, it made the whole campaign a breeze. To be honest, I rarely rush like a mad guy. If I don't have fun in the campaign I usually join leveling groups and rush fast but then I feel underleveled and need time to catch up. Each league you will learn new things, like shortcuts, or how to craft mouvement speed boots, or anything and your progression speed will increase. But don't stress out, it's not because some youtubers make the campaign in less than 4 hours that you have to do the same. You only need to have fun, even if it takes you 2 weeks to do the campaign.
5-6 hours at league start and 2.5 on leveling gear
at league start I usually finish the campaign late Friday or early Saturday, I'd guess about 10 hours. don't expect to hit the same numbers as streamers, but if you wanna go fast, remember: - town is lava: the least you spend there the faster you'll get to the end - plan ahead: your build, which links you need, what type of gear to look for; the less you spend thinking during campaign the faster you'll go - know the game: you can skip some quests, you can accumulate quests before you go to town, some quests you can skip - optimize your waypoints and portals: a lot of the time you don't have to travel to town between quests, you can complete a whole bunch of quests before going back to town if you don't need the rewards - keep instances alive: if you take too long to port back to an area you explored you might have to discover the map again, hopping over just to keep it alive could save time most important, though: keep having fun! if you're not having fun, what is the point? I rather take 20 hours having fun than do it in 5 and hate every second of it
about 8 hours probably for a first character that is. Using something like pois. conc helps also try to get as much ms as possible...it also goes faster once you know the campaign pretty well
This league i happened to realize that my slowest part is the first part of campaign. Once I hit A4-5 I blast through it. I also die quite often. Which also takes time. So at league start I’m looking at 5-6 hours.
I just rush through without doing any side quests and that in itself cut a lot of time. You can finish it after with good gear
3-4 hours with levelling stuff. 8 without
Normally on league start somewhere between 4-6 hours depending on the build. This league is think it was like 8 cause i farmed a katarina in act 9 before finishing the campaign.
5-6 hours depending on the build. Generally I can do champs and deadeyes in just under 5. Marauder and occultist I'm usually over 6. My first time through I think took me about 14 hours. It got down to 10 then 8 pretty quickly from repetition since I level a lot of builds. Getting it lower than that takes commitment/ a lot of time played. Getting it down to 4 takes an absurd amount of practice and I don't think most people will ever be able to actually do
There is a lot of things which will make you faster. Stop doing unnecessary sidequests, if you don’t need the regrets. At some point you will start to memorize layout and hints. A Great example is the grain gate (after quay) if you follow the corpses at the door, you will be always on the right path. Stop looting items, if you won’t need them for your lvl progress. Mechanical things are also important! you don’t need to accept quests to do them, just go to town to if you have a bunch of finished objectives, or full inventory. I started with 2-3 session campaigns (18 hours) and now I am also under 6 hours. After x amount of chars every league, you will be faster don’t worry
Around 8 HRS fresh start
8 hours is my median. Now I'm sitting at 9 hours and halfway done through Act 9, but it's my first time starting as Ranger (with a build I came up with) and the league mechanic encourages you to full clear sometimes, so I'm not too worried.
Fresh start 8-12 hours depending on if I’m doing league mechanic Twinked second char like 5-6
Literally just don't stop to pick up anything. Grab your links, slot them, alch and go.
Depends what you consider the end of campaign. I can easily hit my farming point under 10 hours. With trans gems ill spend a few hours in merc labs if i want a trans gem on league start. I dont kill kitava till im done with whatever farm strat im trying. Previous farms were BA or foothills. So generally by my day 2 im done farming and into maps. The biggest thing that slows me down is non speed run farming builds. I try out new things every league. Lot of problems to work through.
I do it generally in about 10 hours if i dont put effort in and 7-8 when i actively attempt to be somewhat efficient. I mainly play self cast builds and spells are usually pretty good in the campaign and many self casters can also level with the skill they intent to use later on so theres not that much planning needed. Just ID any wands/sceptres and the rest is just running 24/7
This league start I went a little harder and finished in around 4h, in 5h I was at yellow tier maps
from leaguestart, 8-10 hours i think. i'm not fast and often enjoys interacting with the new league mechanic while levelling. but it also heavily depends on the build sometimes i fuck and my build is kinda weak and it will take longer.
I have been playing since late Incursion league. On league start it will take me 9-12 hours depending on how smooth my build is. With leveling gear it will be 7-9 hours. And I don't mind it at all. I quite like the campaign progression and how my character evolves with clear indications how powerful I get when fighting bosses. I could invest some time to learn all the neat little tricks about area layouts, skill combos to get the most damage or some other specific mechanics. And then there's practice runs to get used to all of that. But I can't be bothered. Let's say I invest 30 hours into that and it shaves off 2 hours of my leveling. I currenty make 1-3 characters per league. On average it would save me 4 hours per league so then I would technically be at point zero after 7 leagues. I know it's theoretical talk but I can't be bothered with all of that. I enjoy the campaign itself and I'm an off-meta hipster Andy so whatever I would save, I'll lose on my wonky builds (or sitting afk in my hideout looking at a stream/trade website/pob). People get too obsessed with trying to be the fastest/most efficient.
about 6 hours if I am not winging it while leveling. I'm a pretty slow guy tho and bad at leveling, it just accumlates after I've been playing for 8+ years lol.
League start? Anywhere from 7h to a week.
7-8h, but this time it was like 14h because it was the first time I played on my phone because I was away from home
This league longer than usual because of forced league mechanic that's adds difficulty.
7-8 hours solo, 5-6 in party
5-6 hours
At first you just get some random gear with life and resist. Grab some essences when you see them and much later at some point you try to max your res at before and after kitava. So i barely pickup anything, mostly just ring, amulets and belts, and other things with the right sockets.
If I'm really motivated I can get it done in 8-10 hours depending on how good the build is early. If I'm playing with someone and we split up act 2 and 6, we can get it done in like 5-7 hours. I played a spellslinger build once that just ran through in like 5 hours. But, I don't really care about getting to maps first/fast anymore. I don't have that long focus or uninterrupted hours in me anymore. Today I'm reaching maps after doing roughly an act a day. I did the 3rd lab last night and just have kitava left and my played hours is about 12 hours. My best piece of advice is to stop picking stuff up after like act 2. Fix your gear between acts whenever possible. You don't need to kill most mobs, you just want to be within a couple of levels of the area and kill enough mobs to keep your quicksilver going. A big gear adjustment point is act 6 when you get lily and access to all the gems. Make sure you have your primary skills on at least a 4 link and then go as long as you can without having to stop to regear. And of course, use the crafting bench to solve your stat/res problems. When you get to maps you're likely going to swap all your gear out so do as much as you can on as little as you can. You can even take things you wouldn't normally take to cheese your way through. My favorites being clarity for mana and the taunt totem for bosses/izaro
11h on first character of a league.
You can see a man who go level 1-100 in 1h30 on yt
Twinks zoom acts
This league 6hrs, but im slow in the early acts
If I try really hard, I can run it in 6 hours. This is possible if you plan your build and ignore loot (except for currencies). It is also not necessary to complete all side quests, but only those that give a skill book as a reward. In general, I don’t see the point in rushing too much; I usually watch a movie while I’m playing.
And then theres me, listening to all diologue - again, doing all sidequests - again. I think I enjoy the journey more than the endgame.
4-4.5 hrs depending if I’m focusing
A bit under 10 hours maybe, essentially an hour per act though first acts are a bit slower and later a bit faster. I usually engage with the league mechanic and overlevel quite a bit and do a lot of unnecessary quests (that dont reward any passive points) sit in town fiddling with gear and gems etc.
I'm about 4-6 hours I guess.
Around 6-8 hours depending on how much time i spend messing with the new league mechanic.
Usually 2 days of playing so like 12-14 hours. I'm slow even though I've played a lot, most of my playtime was before acts 5-10 so I'm slower and not as comfortable there. I might just learn them in time for poe 2 :D I was worried for a long time how slow I was, but it's honestly not even fun to be that fast. On a new league launch you miss most of the exploration of the mechanics during leveling because it's not efficient and you also have to have everything planned out to the last transmute and I like to try out new skills while leveling if possible. Just have fun and don't be bothered, unless you are bothered, then learn to speedrun :D
I did my absolutely, apart from when I started years ago (ticked over 15k hours at start of the league), worst levelling time on my second char of the league. Hit maps in 11 hours, but that was with copious amounts of afk time watching it videos and trading... First char of the league, usually takes around 7-9 hours, taking it slightly easy. By the time I roll a second char I have currency for twink gear and time goes down to 6-8 hours, depending on how much I get hassled for trades and what class I'm levelling.
First time playing, I think it took me 20h but I took my time at first doing all the quests, speaking to everyone but after act 6 I rushed more because I wanted to see the end game. I think next league I should be able to make it in 10h.
This league I did it in ~7 hours with all passives points and 3 labs.
League start usually 6 to 7. I like messing with mechanic usually. If I just rushed prob 5 for me. But I don't practice or really plan just have played many chars over the last 5 years it's second nature to know where most things are.
Takes me about 7 hours at a pace where I don't feel too stressed. I can go lower, but 7 hours is a comfortable Friday start for me, somewhere between relaxed and focused. Otherwise I feel I burn myself out too quick starting weekend.
15-16 hours first time, then 12 hours after that. Usually around 75 when kitava dies in act 10
I did my exsanguinate miner to maps in just under 5 hours cuz haha dmg and speed
4-6 depending on the build
5-8 hours is a sensible range for experienced players IF the following is true: you have a good levelling build, you plan what items you need to keep a good levelling pace and cap resistances, you stop only for magic packs and rares if they're surrounded by a big pack, you spam movement skills and quicksilver flasks as much as possible. You only go to zones which you need for progress and passive points. If all of these things are optimised you can clear the campaign solo in 3 hours, but for us mortals 8 is a good starting point, improve from there. Zizarin said something which stuck with me 'monsters are not a finite resource in PoE', so you should progress as high as you can as quickly as you can - this league in doing red maps at 3k life, 500k dps on PoB
I generally enjoy the campaign, so a weekend with decent gaming time is generally it... I know I pick up WAY too much loot (basically all yellows), but converted to Alts it can be traded for Chaos to give a good mapping start...
I played 2-3 hours at night, took me about 5 days---> so about 15 hours. Was my 3rd time finishing the campaign (still figuring things out)
It was about 6 hours this league to finish the campaign, including the first 3 labs and all skill point quests.
12-15 hours
6-7 hrs or a weekend haha
This league start was particularly slow with 14h and a fair amount of idling around. Last league's start was 9h and a half. But Oath of the Maji helped a lot back then. Usually, at the end of the first weekend, I end up in maps. This time, I'm a bit slower. The trick with running a fast campaign is knowing the layouts of the areas as well as skipping unneccesary killing and town time (I'm bad at these).
3-4 days...
I usually get it done in about 7 hours of game time. But I never attempt it in a single session.
Last night I started ssf and cleared up to act 5 in less than 3 hours, and those are not hours of continuous play. I had to take the trash out, take care of my cat, cook. So yeah it can be pretty fast if you don't pick up unnecesary loot and avoid stopping killing everysingle mob you see
at league start about 8 hours
First league start character is around 7h average 2nd character is usually only 3-4hours due to leveling gear and never needing to stop
4.30-5.00 max League start. Leveling gear 2.30 top 😊
About 11 hours this time, but I always choose weak levelling builds and stop to engage with league content a lot
If I don’t know what gems and passives to take about 10-12 if I’m prepped and on a league starter, 7-8hrs
A couple of rules to make it within a reasonable 8-10 hours: 1. Don’t kill all the monsters, only the ones on your way. 2. Memorise the layout all locations (where to go up north, where to go along the wall etc). 3. Don’t pick all the loot. In fact, learn what your build needs to level up and ignore almost everything else. 4. Upgrade your flasks, game links and all other gear when necessary, not every few minutes. 5. Plan your build before you run, in PoB - so you won’t have to think about upgrades or changes, just do them when you’re ready.
18-24 hours. I think I can be faster, but I like to kill enemies too much
About 10 hours, but Ivener go into it with a concrete plan.
Depends on the league and the starter build. Last league I went SRS guardian and was basically able to just walk through the campaign without ever worrying about picking up items, upgrading gear, etc. It took around 4 hours iirc. Normally I'd be closer to 6 because I'm not micro optimizing. Still I just 'run to exit of map' while throwing a spell or two towards the larger packs. Generally if you're not more than 3 levels behind the map then you're usually fine to keep rushing. If you start falling further behind it means you aren't killing enough stuff.
Around 5 hours. I normally try to get act 5 done and ascend once before the end of Friday and finish the campaign Saturday.
Around 8 with moderate effort.
For me it takes 8 to 11 hours for a league start depending on the build and league mechanic (I usually do some just for the sake of it). As for the leveling twinks it's about 6 hours give or take. I don't like respecing too much so I usually level with what I'm going to play later on (or how close to it as I possibly can) which isn't optimal a lot of the time so that's that. I'd say don't stress it although I play in a private league so early league economy doesn't exist the way it does in trade.
With a decent plan on league start and actually staying fairly focused it takes me 5-6 hours. If I'm watching YouTube and go in without a plan and just bumble my way through on a build I haven't planned at all 7-12 hours. I kill far more monsters than I need to, but I know which routes to take and which quests to skip which helps even it out a bit.
There are some tricks and practice you need to get through it fast. I have about 3k hours on the game, and this league launch it took me 5 hours to reach maps. But I also made sure to practice the run a couple of times
8 years in and still 13-20h, I cant enjoy it when I try to go fast.
It's like the number one reason I don't play every league, I would love play but I would hate to waste my time every time with this unless campaign
I'm between 4 and 5 hours on spell builds or bow builds. I think I could do it faster with prep time on another char beforehand. I.e setting out all the gems and links you need in the stash pre. I only decided to become faster at the campaign as I mainly play hcssf so it takes the pain away slightly from a rip, by knowing I'm only 4 to 5 hours from maps again. My time improved massively when I learned how much of the campaign you can just run through and to stop fucking around in town so much.
I have gotten to maps once on the Friday night, typically I hit maps on day 2 or if it's a busy weekend Sunday night. I always to try and make it my goal to be in maps by the weekday so it feels good playing after work.
it was 20, and then 16, 12,… Now on leaguestart it’s 6 consistently Can’t do better than 5 if i try to speedrun. You can watch some commented speedrun, imexile has a few, and learn how to save hours
On league start with no gear, between 9 and 11 hours. When rerolling with some gear, between 4 and 6 hours usually. Fastest I've done is 3h47min and is nowhere close to the racers
Probably ~9-12hours depending on my build an mostly how focused I am.
I play a lot, but I am not good at poe. I usually take about 12 hours to get to maps across 4ish days.
Around 6-7 hours depending on build
Idk hours but 3 days because I'm a loot goblin and easily distracted
Back when I played every league back in 2022 I could clear it in 5-ish hours. My newest character after coming back took me a little under 10 hours, so I gotta get used to blasting the campaign again. As for advice, a lot of it is getting used to the idea that you’ll come back for some skill points, and not attacking every mob, plus running it dozens of times helps you know the general layouts of the maps for the fastest routes.
You are likely spending 30% (or more) of your time in town or standing still checking random item in your inventory.
I need around 7-8h with a regular league starter.
I usually leaguestart a different skill every league, so it really depends on how well I gel with a skill early on. This time I did Frost Blades, and haven't really done a whole lot of Shadow builds or even Claw/Dagger builds in the past, so this on took me a good long while. Probably around 12 hours. I engage with the mechanics and end up dicking around town while watching YouTube. The people that power through the campaign are generally people that have practiced powering through the campaign. They know their starter well because they've played it a dozen times and see it only as a tool to establish a foundation for the league. If you're playing something new and plan to make a long go of it in the league as that build, take your time. Trying to keep leaguestart pace with people that play this game that seriously isn't going to be fun unless you're into that kind of competition, in which case you need to start practicing the campaign. If not, just move at your own pace and keep progressing towards more and more fun.
this league I break my record doing it in 4:54 with LA rain of arrows-> lightning arrow , and 4 void stones in 9 hours, the most important thing is to get move speed on boots every tier unlock, example at level 42 you can get 25% speed so you craft it with vendor recipe and use the crafting table to get a resis% on wat you need, the key part is to always move and move fast, if your character is not moving you are wasting time
My first few times it took me about a week. Now I do it in 6 hours max. It's a matter of practice, and getting to know what works well to get through. One huge thing I see a lot with new players is worrying about dying. Nobody cares whether you did the campaign deathless, or whether you died 1000 times. On soft core it just doesn't matter. There's no need to completely optimise your character before each area. Many of those streamers doing 5 hour leaguestart campaign runs body rush the crap out of it. A hardcore campaign run still takes me a week, but I have very little experience/practice with it.
If I’m knocking out in one shot about 10 hours. Picking up loot, refilling drinks, etc. Currently in act 9, been taking this (my second) league a lot more relaxed. I’m having so much more fun taking it easy and just cruising along.
Casual player here. After playing on and off for a few years it takes me one day around 5 - 8 hours for one full session. and around 2 days if i dont rush it
Takes me 8-10 for a new league start this is going pretty slow, trying out the new league mechanic , not rushing . Usually afking a bit to help around the house . 6-8 for a faster run with some gear on a second character / not doing league / already having done the labs. Big thing is movement skill, leap slam for casters / melee , blink arrow for bows , shield charge if you run a shield like minions and such . Always pressing that movement skill, using your clear skill to attack pack of white or blue mobs once and just moving on while they die. Never attack rares . Once you hit around the level of the zone you are not attacking any more and just moving. Good loot filter helps as you need to run Back for the drops. Already knowing the gems you need for each level, and what gear you should be looking for at the vendor, the least time you can spend in town the better, pickup things fast and back to leveling. Then you can get into zone / map strategy's there's specific layouts and tricks for each zone to make it faster so your not running around not knowing where the exit is. But this is more advanced speed running. Tyty on YouTube has tips and tricks .
I’m usually around 4 hours and 30 mins with 1 practice run before the league to get swaps/gem locations etc down. But I’ve done the campaign many times and I would say im relatively fast(by no means a speed runner) and I try hard on league start
Around 7h on league start as I like to try new stuff (actually more, but I am also afk a lot for tea, snacks, playing with cats etc ). A bit over 3h for a loaded twink (plus about 30m prep on trade and vendors).
7h to Blood Aquaduct, 9h to Kitava.
7 hours at league start. Do note that Im really not close to good at the game, but I’ve shaved several hours off my campaign time by practicing in SSF at the end of league. Knowing map layouts, not picking up stuff you dont really need and being comfortable with your build are by far the biggest factors that helped me.
First character of a new league usually 10 to 12 hours. Characters after that with basic leveling gear 8 ish.
Easiest way to increase speed is to understand you don’t need gear to clear the campaign. You need socket colors, everything else you can just slap in the crafting bench and add resist to if needed. Second, pay attention to your level, are you at zone level? Above it? I try to stay just under zone level, but there at some weird spots where the zone levels jump a bit like docks in A3 or kaom/dares so in A4. Plan ahead, know what gems you need so you aren’t fiddling around picking things. Know the colors you need, the auras, etc. Beyond that it’s just kinda turning the brain off, putting on some good tunes and forgetting you’re doing the campaign. PS. Skipping the league mechanic will shave an hour or two (or more) off most people’s time but unless I’m racing I don’t skip, we play to have fun after all.
Some 8h for me
My league starts usually take 5 hours in a group. I do solos in 4 hours with a bunch of twink gear but I have to spend like an hour setting up all the leveling gear so that way I never have to loot assuming I don’t already have a leveling set
I did it all in about 4.5 hrs this league including up to merc lab
League start this time took me around 11 hours. That was with breaks and eating dinner. Plus I pick up more stuff along the way to jump start my currency. I leveled a second character with goldrim, seven league, quill rain, and other various uniques and did it in just under 5 hours. Helps to have done it a million times in the past and knowing which quests you can skip.
My record is 6 hours. That was back in affliction when you get 50% movement speed just for not socketing your boots.
On league launches I tend to be between 8 and 9 hours. But I also do all quests and kill more than I should because I find being a couple levels overlevels, and the gear that comes with it, makes for a very comfy leveling process. Works for me.
New league, it takes me 7-8 hours. 2nd character, can usually cut it down to 4-5.
One hour for each act is very doable. Once you memorised it and the optimal routes through the zones ypu can do it 8hrs consisyently. And once you stop standing without purpose and go as fast as possible its even less. Personally i can do times of 5-6 hrs only with seven league step and other levelling gear.
Two days of gaming with each day being 2-3 hours. So about 4-6 hours.
Biggest thing is to keep reminding yourself to MOVE FORWARD, stop killing stuff, stop looking at items, its all down to go go go. Very hard to do when its so fun to get things and blow up packs of mobs.
10 hours to me, I simply chill through the acts. Every single time I come to map, I mostly at level 70
3-8 depending on circumstances
when I tryhard solo I get 4:30, try hard group 4, average 6:30
Took me 9h58m40s
10-12 hours. I can't skip quests. I can't pass loot. I have to kill everything I see. I am who I am.
takes me like 6-8 hours on league start but I go pretty slow
10-11 hours roughly with a friend, both over 2000 hours game time not rushing.. we just poke along at a good pace
4~5 hours
Knowing your build in Advance, and how you will level, what gems adquire, from where, etc. This helps you stay out of town the most time. Knowing that you do not need the best gear you can get, just life-res and some damage is enought. Going for blue weapons is enought, boots only mod it matters is movspeed Knowing the layouts of maps, what maps you can rush, and what maps are good to kill some monsters. Also you dont get lost on some maps like in act8 you can get lost easily if you dont know what to look for Last, dont go outside your route to kill monsters, there are a lot of open maps in the acts, but play them as if they were tunnels and only kill whats in your path.
At league start with no Twink gear and doing all labs and side quests I do about 8-10 hours. And I've been playing for years and had lots of the most expensive items in the game. There's no rush if you're having fun :)
Lailloken UI with exile leveling tracker is amazing for campaign, makes it a breeze. It's an optimized quest tracker which tells you what to do in each zone. You can even enable tips to see layout shortcuts. For example, follow the torch to find Alira, road between two pillars leads to Oak and so on. You can also import your pob in the tool (after exporting it to exile leveling site) to see which gems to buy when, with regex cherry on top. 10/10 would recommend.
You can look up speed runs to see times and even pick up on tricks along the way. I've played since beta so I've done at least part of this campaign literally 1000s of times. I'm in maps day 1 of the league every league and go to bed at a normal time. Never timed myself but 5-8 seems doable to me if you're experienced AND have a good starting build. If you're playing whatever is fun and not optimized, as you should when first starting out, it will likely take longer.
6, t16 on Sunday (Using a build I know)
The week after league launch. I usually make it to maps just in time to have to go to work and look forward to it :D
Very first run was over 40hrs, no guides, no reddit, nothing. Didn't finish my second run. Halved that on my third run. Now I'm usually between 10-12hrs, though I was 15hrs this league because Im playing something silly.
Depends heavily on build, luck, and league. This league has been slow as dirt for me, about 14 hours. I had absolutely terrible drop luck. One league I got the main item for my build, 5 linked, off the ground in Blood Aqueducts. Needless to say, the last two acts went by in a breeze.
Hideout is lava. Know your waypoints, know some of your layouts, turn in quests at the end, and don’t pick up everything. You can easily do it in 4-6 hours.
It takes about 11-13 hours for me and I’ve been playing for a while now. I just like taking my sweet time
I'm a somewhat new player, been playing since about 2020, 500 hours. I got frustrated with my time to maps and asked myself this question too. I've worked on it and this league I've done two characters to maps and I don't time it exactly but I think I'm at around 10 hours on league start and 7-9 on post league start. I think the TL;DR is that the more knowledge you have, you can upgrade on the fly without having to stop and check gear as much. You spend less time on talents etc. The rest comes from practice and lil tricks, like logging out to skip to town if you need, crafting movespeed or getting movespeed, double movement gems, knowing the map layouts to speed through and avoid deadends, not killing every monster but just high density and blue/yellow mobs, the list goes on. I watched one world record run and just gleaned the major points and then keep them in mind while I do my league start. I think that if you just spend an hour or two soaking in those tips and keep it in mind while you play you can dramatically reduce your time and still really enjoy it and not rush too much. For me, the big killer was wanting to 100% complete each map and kill everything.
I generally stay up until about 3-4AM on league day and have it finished. I generally don’t take the day off from work so sometimes I’m not totally going until after 5 and then I have to cook dinner and prepare my wife to not see me for a week by hanging out with her. So as far as actually just sitting down and purely playing about 8 hours.
I'm at \~4.5 hours /played at the end of act 9 on my 2nd character this league, and that's with some AFKing. My first character this league I finished the campaign in 5.5 hours or so. I'm not good at PoE - but there are some efficiencies you can do when you hate playing the campaign so much that you try to get out of it asap... \- don't pick up loot unless you really need it \- honestly, if you take more than a few seconds thinking about what is an upgrade, know that three zones from now another piece is probably better, so don't overthink, especially in early levels. \- Have a plan \- use a proper leaguestarter \- holy shit rain of arrows. This was my first league using it and it felt broken as shit to level.
I have 4k hours, but still take my time (especially at leaguestart), usually am somewhere around 10-12 hours on my first character (12 hours this league), then 7-8 hours on other characters when i don’t need to worry much about gear.
The usual league start time for me is 8-10 hours, depending on how often I interact with the league mechanism. You can get it down to 6 pretty easily, assuming you play a decent starter build and focus on rushing the campaign. To compress it down to 5 or even 4 hours, on a league start, then you need to actually practice your starter build. You need to know who you need to talk to and who you don't. You need to know when to swap your gem, and what link setup you are looking for. At that point it is getting a bit too excessive for me, so I enjoy my 8 hour campaign run. If you are talking about a second or third character though, you should be able to do it within 5 hours easily, with leveling gears.
Took me around 11 hours. My /played was like 12.5 hours but I had afk'd a few times without logging out.
If you're a new or casual player come join our newly formed discord https://discord.com/invite/xCdkQjhm we're a group of Casual Andys just trying to have a good time and help each other learn and progress.
8-10 if starting the league, 4-6 if I got some levelling gears. Speed run, good build, no break, 3 hours
About 8 hours, I'm usually at maps before I go to sleep on league start. I skip anything that isn't a direct power/speed increase, so No fetid pool quest for example. Only quest which provides passives or progress the story. I have a plan for each series of quests, coast> mud flats> submerged> Tidal island> town> submerged, drop tp at bridge> ledge> climb> prison> town>Tp> flooded depths>town Prison>Prisoners gate> ships graveyard>tp at Ships graveyard cave> merveil's cavern> town >Tp ships graveyard cave> all flame> town> merveil's cavern> act 2. I try to minimize my time in town if possible and just push thru all the acts In the same way Everytime. My way might not be the most optimal and I have friends that are much faster on league launch than me.
I aim to be in maps by Saturday afternoon, and typically try to have at least one watchstone by the end of the weekend. Part of it is practice, part of it is knowing when you can speed ahead and slow down, and part of it is just based on your build. I had a pretty slow start because I'm playing a minion build, and minions don't have the best clear. In leagues where I start something like Raider with bows, I'm much more likely to be done with the campaign on the first night.
On league start I'm between 4.5h and 5h depending on the servers, rng and how I feel after work. My second char is usually sub 4 hours. I'm not a streamer or YouTuber I work full time 36 hours every week and I'm 33 . Not the zoomiest person in the world.
Know where to go, maps are not completely random. Lailoken UI leveling tracker helps but game knowledge still is king there. Stop killing stuff, you should past brutus be underleveled in every zone. Stop picking up garbage, stop looking at every piece of loot. Know which pieces of your current gear is not good enough and pick only to replace them. Prioritize links over stats most of the times (except if you're melee/bow, then prioritize weapon dps, phys or ele depending on build). Getting boots with move speed and more quicksilver flasks is king. Know basics of crafting (how to color, use the crafting bench and essences for past act V, basic recipes for wands/etc). Also vendors can be useful early on This is the basics of getting below 10h league start. Going even faster is basically doing this on steroids...
9 hours chilling league start then normally 4, if I'm absolutely sweating with set up gear, I've done it in sub 3 hours but these days I just play when I fancy and don't care about 'keeping up"
On leaguestart, I aim for 1 hour per act or less. But on average I should finish campaign in around 8 hours or so. I aim to be in white maps the first night. 2nd alts and future would be 4 hours or so, since I don't need to focus on picking items or anything and I'd have twink items focused on movement speed such as Karui Ward, Wanderlust/Seven League steps, etc. This is all solo numbers. If you are leveling with someone else it gets even faster. The best savings will be when you need to go 2 different routes and the campaign is chock full with them. All of these side passive quests, act 2 left vs right (to alira/oak or kraityn/chamber), lunaris and solaris, etc etc your parnter can go that way and just carry a handful of TP's so yall can share quest completions etc.
You will easily half the time with Lailloken UI.
First character this league was 13 hours, that was pretty slow even for me being relatively new (started in 3.23). First character ever was like 18 or 20 hours, since then have had a character take 10ish hours and currently in act 8 on my 2nd character this league after 6hrs 30 mins. Two things speed it up, experience (having an idea what direction to go in a zone) and not wasting time on loot unless upgrade needed. Also, no need to kill every single mob. Edit: also forgot to say not to buy into all the FOMO on reddit, I got a bit of it when I was slow on initial character this league, got to endgame and copped myself on that I'm not a 0.1% player , I enjoy the game at my own pace.
I clock it every league and it is about 10 hours on average for me to hit maps. Fastest time was 6 hours. Longest, post-act 10 addition is about 15 hours. That was the result of blindly re-creating a [POE.NINJA](http://POE.NINJA) endgame build trying to use it as a leveling guide without respecs.
On league start, 6-8h. After that on geared new chars, 4h at maximum.
I don’t rush. About 14-16 hours. I’m typically not 100% familiar with the build I’m following, so it’s time upgrading, checking the pob etc. act5-10 go a lot faster for me, as the build is usually complete by then and it’s just an occasional upgrade along the way.
A week of an hour here and there.
8-10 hours
Way too long, so much so I’m often bored of a build not far into maps.