Path of Exile - Into Maps and Merciless Lab Finished

It was a holiday here today so I spent a good chunk of my day off playing PoE. My wife was binge watching cooking shows so I figured I would just see how far I could get in PoE.

I finished up the story on my totem dude and proceeded to begin mapping. I got my ass kicked. I was a bit pissed and had no clue what was going on. I decided to go check out my gear and discovered that I had been playing with almost no resistances, whoopsies! I had swapped in a few unique items while I was leveling and never realized how much defense I had casually sacrificed. Wasn't a big deal as I was overdue for some gear upgrades. I spent a few chaos orbs and grabbed a few items to help me out. After my shopping spree, I had over tripled my dps and shored up my defenses.

I'm now doing quite well mapping, still learning lots about the whole map system and doing my best to progress without just buying a bunch of maps. I understand the basic principles and really just want to complete my atlas before delving too deeply into any sort of mapping strategy.

I have lots of upgrades and improvements to make with my build so I should continue to steadily gain power as I continue playing over the next few weeks.