I’m in act 4…

I have found ONE orange drop so far which was a belt…

When do I start getting better gear? And how?

Wait until you find the banana tree.

You find better gear as you progress, items power of items allows better tier of mods to be found.

the thing about poe is, its crafted in such a way that by the time you find better gear, you will have progressed enough for that gear to be useless to you

this will always be the case for a beginner, everyone who tells you otherwise is full of shit
and speaking of shit, expect your char to be shit until you either grind enough to get good gear, or simply buy it. poe will force you to spend either time or money to get items, and in the current economy, i recommend spending money (ofc not talking irl money here, dont do that)
oh and speaking of spending money, one more thing! game isnt free and again everyone who tells otherwise is full of shit. poe will eventually force you to spend money (real money in this case) to keep those items because you will have nowhere to put them


tldr: IT DOES NOT GET BETTER. your char will always be shit until you invest a lot of something, be it time or money. my advice is, if you dont like the game before you feel forced to buy stash tabs, its not a game for you

This post was edited by Snyft2 on Jul 14 2024 10:24am

So, just for info if you are moving over from any diablo game.

orange items are not necessarily the best items. Itemisation in POE is leagues better than any Diablo title. Your average top tier build will use maybe somewhere between 1-4 unique items, maybe a bit more but you won't likely see a build that has all orange items like in diablo.My build last league had 4 unique items and cleared everything in the game. ( excluding jewels )

Unique items in POE are not generally designed to be best in slot. They are designed to grant mods that are unique to that item and can enable certain interactions and builds. Orange does not equals better in this game. A rare weapon can and will have more DPS than unique ones. The unqie ones will give you something else though and whether or not that is better depends on your build.

So to answer the question, you probably found 3 or 4 yellow rare belts that are better than the orange one you are wearing.

What does that even mean?