Welcome to this guide, where we'll discuss the reasons why you might be dying frequently in PoE 3.21 Crucible and how you can prevent it from happening. Whether you're a new player or an experienced one, it's essential to have a basic understanding of defensive measures to avoid dying. We'll analyze 1500 deaths and identify the common causes of death, and provide some tips and tricks to help you survive in maps and avoid dangerous mods. So, let's dive right in and learn how to stop dying in Path of Exile.

• Basic Defensive Checklist
• Map Mods
• Eldritch Altars
• PoE Regex
• Final Thoughts

↖ Basic Defensive Checklist

The world of Path of Exile can be brutal and unforgiving, especially when it comes to defence. To help you survive in this harsh environment, we've put together a basic defensive checklist that you can use to ensure that you're as prepared as possible.

• Positive Chaos Resistance: In version 3.21, GGG added a rare mod called Profane that makes it essential to have some form of positive chaos resistance. Monsters dealing extra chaos damage can be deadly, and the Profane mod inflicts a debuff that makes you take more chaos damage the more debuff stacks you have. Make sure you have positive chaos resistance to counter this.
• 100 Spell Suppression: To be immune to elemental damage, you need to have 90 max reses and 100 spell suppression. This is almost mandatory, so make sure you're aiming for this.
• Evasion Rating: Many people, especially bow builds, are running around with no evasion rating at all. Without any form of evasion, every single mob projectile will hit you, and when mapping, many hits are tiny small hits, which can add up quickly. Running Grace and a Jade Flask can increase your evasion rating and reduce the number of hits you take.
• Physical Damage Reduction: If you want to survive in Path of Exile, you need to make sure you have some way of mitigating your physical damage reduction. Running a Granite Flask or using Endurance charges can help you with this. You can also get gear with the physical damage taken as an elemental affix or use Taste of Hate, Gravicious Chest, Corel Helmet Craft, or Lightning Coil to reduce the impact of physical damage.
• Ailment Immunity: Shock is extremely deadly and can increase damage taken by 50%. To protect yourself from this and other ailments, such as freeze and chill, you need to aim for ailment immunity. Running Purity of Elements and inspecting the two pantheons that give you reduced effective shock and immune to freeze can help you with this.

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↖ Map Mods

Map mods can be a complete game-changer in Path of Exile, and they are one of the main reasons why players die. These mods can increase monster damage and make them faster and more deadly, reduce your defences, and even affect your recovery and regeneration. In the following, we will go over some of the most dangerous map mods and how to survive them.

• Minus Max: This mod reduces your maximum resistance, making you more vulnerable to elemental damage. To survive this mod, you need to cap your elemental resistances and avoid taking too much damage.
• No Regen/Less Recovery: This mod makes it harder to recover your life or mana, so you need to make sure you have enough sustain or refrain from using skills that rely on regen.
• Extra Elemental Damage: This mod adds extra elemental damage to monster attacks, making them hit harder. You can survive this mod by capping your elemental resistances or using flasks that provide temporary resistance.
• Extra Physical Damage: This mod adds extra physical damage to monster attacks, making them hit harder. To survive this mod, you need to stack armour or evasion or use skills that mitigate physical damage.
• Monsters have increased Critical Chance/Multiplier: This mod increases monster critical chance and multiplier, making them deal more damage on critical hits. To survive this mod, you need to have enough life and avoid getting hit by critical strikes.
• Monsters have a chance to avoid elemental diseases：This mod makes it harder to apply elemental ailments to monsters, such as freeze or shock. To survive this mod, you need to have enough damage to kill monsters quickly or use skills that do not rely on elemental ailments.
• Increased Monster Speed: This mod makes monsters move faster, making it harder to avoid their attacks or kite them. To survive this mod, you need to have enough movement speed or use skills that slow down monsters.
• Increased Monster Life: This mod increases the health pool of monsters, making them harder to kill. To survive this mod, you need to have enough damage or use skills that deal percentage-based damage.
• Reflect: This mod reflects a percentage of your damage back to you, making it harder to deal with reflected damage. To survive this mod, you need to have to reflect immunity or reduce reflected damage taken.
• Cooldown Recovery Rate:  This mod reduces the cooldown of monster skills, making them more dangerous. To survive this mod, you need to avoid being hit by monster skills or use skills that mitigate the damage.
• Desecrated Ground:  This mod creates an area of desecrated ground that damages you over time, making it harder to regenerate life or mana. To survive this mod, you need to avoid standing on desecrated ground or use skills that mitigate the damage.
• Monster Steal Frenzy/Power/Endurance Charges:  This mod steals your frenzy, power, or endurance charges, making you more vulnerable to damage. To survive this mod, you need to avoid being hit by monster attacks or use skills that mitigate the damage.

↖ Eldritch Altars

Eldritch Altars can be a huge factor in the deaths of many players. People tend to become obsessed with clicking these altars, often disregarding the potential downsides that can come with them. This can lead to tragic consequences, as even the toughest of characters can become defenceless against certain map mods. For example, one of the most dangerous map mods to look out for is the chaos damage dealt by the Stealing Exarch. During any flask effect, this can cause up to 600 chaos damage per second and a 30% chance of being targeted by a meteor when using a flask.

Other Eldritch Altar downsides can also drastically alter the game, such as the reduction of armour, evasion, fire resistance, chaos resistance, cold resistance, and lightning resistance. Even players who are typically capped in these areas may find themselves needing help when facing these modifiers. Some downsides can also include a reduction in physical damage reduction, reduced defences per endurance charge, and a reduced recovery rate per endurance charge.

It's important to read and understand the effects of these mods before clicking on them, as they can be game-breaking and lead to the death of your character. If you are not concerned about dying, then it may not matter as much, but for those who want to avoid untimely deaths, it's essential to be cautious and consider the potential downsides.

To learn more about the different player and monster Eldritch Altar downsides, check out PoE db for a full list. Keep in mind that some disadvantages will even change any build you create with a lot of PoE Currency, causing projectiles to be fired in random directions or non-damaging ailments to be reflected back to you without ailment immunity. In short, be mindful of the potential dangers and make an informed decision before clicking on an Eldritch Altar.

↖ PoE Regex

If you're playing Path of Exile and looking to increase your mapping efficiency, there's a useful website called Poe.re that We highly recommend. It allows you to select the map mods that you don't want to do, such as the "reduce effect of non-cursed auras" mod, which can be particularly bad if you rely on auras for defence. You can also choose the quantity of your map and even select specific map mods that you want, like "beyond."

Once you've made your selections, you can copy them and paste them into the website's search bar. This will highlight all of the maps that meet your criteria, so you can roll them in bulk and avoid accidentally rolling a map with a mod you don't want, like "reflect." Overall, using poe.re can significantly improve your mapping efficiency and help you avoid frustrating deaths. 

↖ Final Thoughts

Attempting to read eldritch alters during combat can be incredibly frustrating and is often the leading cause of our deaths. It would be helpful to have a filter or indicator system that highlights dangerous alters, such as making them appear in red. However, this may be wishful thinking. If you follow the basic defensive checklist outlined here, which includes reviewing map mods and eldritch alters, you should be able to level to 100 on almost any build. 

It is important to ensure that map mods are never too extreme and that eldritch alters do not have overly negative effects. Sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice safety in order to gain more loot, but always ask yourself if the risk is worth the reward. Freeze and chill mechanics are underrated defensive mechanisms and should be taken advantage of. I f you are dying frequently, it is likely because you need to follow these basic defensive guidelines.