Your goal is to have fun in the SSF. This guide will help you to have some success while you playing Path of Exile.
Most important! Choose a fun league starter that doesn’t require any non-trivially farmable uniques and doesn’t need Uber Lab to map efficiently. Lots of streamers play SSF and have appropriate guides. Safe uniques would be very common uniques or ones that are fast to farm via div cards: Tabula, Stormcloud, Sire of Shards, Whispering Ice, etc. There are plenty of guides that mention they are SSF-friendly, so go for one of those if it is your first time. As you get the hang of it you won’t need to follow SSF-specific guides, but it helps a lot in the beginning.
That said, you have access to a lot more uniques than you think. Because trade is the easiest method to get most uniques, it’s what most people do and you never learn the other ways. A surprising number of uniques have divination cards that can be farmed. Additionally, every recent league has had access to Ancient Orbs, or access to an identical mechanic (Incursion = T3 Sacrifice, Bestiary = Beast craft recipe, Delve = Harb nodes), which can make it fairly statistically straightforward to get many uniques with the right iLvl. Finally, add Chance orbs to your loot filter as well as any bases for your most desired uniques, and chance them all. For context, my SSFHC DP Heiro had a 6L Soul Mantle, 2x Kikazarus, and a Self-Flagellation. And my TR Heiro had a 6L Quill Rain, 2 Abyssal Tombfist, and a Kintsugi.
Try to fit increased item rarity (IIR) into your build. This is much more powerful than most people realize in SSF, because it gives you significantly more build-enabling uniques, significantly more alchemy orbs (via alch shards from vendors), and significantly more T1/T2 rares to identify. If you can, fit Item Rarity gem in your main skill, or swap it in for clearing. If you freeze, HoI+IR is a great combo, or if you DoT, Contagion+IR (the first DoT gets the kill credit and this includes spreading w/ ED). If you end up with an Ambitious Bandit Prophecy, this is a great one to follow through on for The Ascetic for an MF build.
You’ll get more items overall than you might expect (including uniques and currency), because SSF feels like a league with inherent IIQ. I don’t mean the zones themselves have IIQ of course, but because there’s no time to spend on poe.trade, looking up items, whispering for trades, doing rotas, and leaving maps for trading, etc, you simply spend more time killing monsters and will find an increased number of items. It can be a really refreshing experience, and you should generally be swimming in everything you need to map (chaos / alc / scour / sextants), not only from killing more monsters, but from having more currency you aren’t spending on trades.
If playing an attack-based build, you’ll have the easiest time choosing a skill which provides added damage as it levels, so you aren’t dependent completely on your base weapon damage. 3.7 gave a lot more attack skills added damage as they level! There are also very useful Vendor Recipes for % physical damage and added damage so you can occasionally use these on better bases as you level.
So you’re short on a currency you need? Make sure you are alching every 6+ map you run for quant sustain, and Chisel + Vaaling whatever the highest tier red maps you are running/sustaining. Take any reasonably close Currency or City Delve node. If that isn’t enough, let’s see what you need:
With Added Chaos and Detonate Mines from vendors now, the only thing you have to worry about is Enhance/Empower/Enlightens. Generally I find them each league, but sometimes not. I wouldn’t run a league starter that absolutely depends on them. To help find them roll Gemcutter strongboxes for “only support gems” and run gem Delves/Temple rooms. (GGG, can we buy these for a Divine please?)
You have a ~25% chance to get one with a Vaal orb, so don’t be afraid to spend vaal orbs to get your Vaal Summon Skeletons / Vaal Blight / Vaal BV for sweet, sweet leveling, if you don’t quickly get it from Vaal side areas.
These are the hardest to plan around in my experience, because they can’t be reliably chanced. Obviously many are quest rewards, and if you need two, just race another character to A5 if it doesn’t drop. Some are common than others, but don’t exactly plan a single-element Elemental Hit build in SSF. Some do have Div cards, so that’s a great option for those (A Mother’s Parting Gift for Ice Storm, for example). Generally I play a solid league starter and then base my future builds around which of these (and other items) drop.
Filling out your atlas is much easier in recent updates, with the Zana map rewards and non-deterministic 3:1 recipe. The most important thing is to add Chance orbs to your loot filter while leveling so you can buy Zana out after her daily missions as you progress through the Atlas. For red maps, 3-to-1 will help a lot as you farm them (I do this each time I hit 5 of a map so I always have at least 2 of each), and the various source of Horizon Orbs (drops, Delve, Zana missions) make life a lot easier. These are especially valuable at the higher tiers where you are more likely the get the map you want as the pool is limited! Note that the Zana “alternate of same tier” (doesn’t appear to be in 3.10) is very helpful and seems to follow drop rules such she has an increased chance to give you an uncomplete map. Don’t forget that Vaaling a map has a 12.5% to upgrade it as well. For filling out your unique maps, Ancient orb mechanics are also great once you’ve got the unique gear you need!
3.8 fixed a lot of issues here! Run more maps, login daily, and get lots of missions. You’ll want to check Zana’s inventory after every mission of hers (it resets when she open the portals), grabbing any missing/needed maps. The only minor thing to keep in mind is that when the servers roll over at midnight UTC and you get a new mission, it will be based on the tier you last ran a map on. So if you are logging out for the day, make sure the last map you run is the tier you want to receive your daily missions at.
Use one! For league start: Filterblade.xyz > Presets > Leveling > Wands/Bows/1H as appropriate, I prefer Semi-Strict. Then quickly transition into Strict once you are all rare gear, and then potentially Very Strict around maps. For a league start, the only changes I make are to move Chance Orbs and Silver Coins to the Fusing tier so I don’t miss any. Make sure to add your chancing bases, div cards, and remove any T1/T2 rares you won’t use. That last bit is especially critical if you play with IIR/IIQ. Generally I keep only the top 2–3 tiers of each gear slot of the right type for my build (Evasion, ES, etc) in my loot filter, and once I have a great item for a slot, I remove all but the top tier base for that slot.