New to Path of Exile? Here's a Beginner's Guide for Windripper

If you’ve gotten this far, you might have heard of Windripper farming. It’s no secret that the best way to optimize your Vault profits is with Item Quantity (IQ) gear. Adding more IQ means more drops, plain and simple. Increased Rarity doesn’t do a ton for us because we don’t care that much about Unique items. We’re farming for pure path of exile orbs drops and divination cards, neither of which are affected by rarity. So IQ all the way!

This is where Windripper comes in. Windripper is a bow that grants 15% IQ from frozen enemies. Since we freeze nearly every enemy with Herald of Ice and our critical hit probability, this is basically a 15% increase in IQ across the board. With IQ farming being the best way to get gold, this is just one more IQ item that pushes our farming to the next level.

Basic Gear
Windripper isn’t an incredibly strong bow, as far as meta bows go. But, as we’ve discussed, using it allows you to have a much higher profit through the IQ on it. As for an amulet, you’re going to be using a Bisco’s Collar. It’s hard to get away from using Bisco’s at the best of times, so in an IQ build it’s unavoidable.

For your helmet, you’ll need one with the “2 Secondary Tornado Shot Projectiles” enchantment. Preferably on a Devoto’s Devotion, since it gives you the movement speed you’ll desperately want. If that’s too expensive for you, a Starkonja can work as well. For your quiver you have the choice between using a strong rare quiver (potentially a +2 arrows Shaped quiver), or a Rigwald’s Quills.

Lastly, use two Ventor’s Gambles to fill out all your extra resistances, as well as increased quantity. Increased rarity on the Ventors doesn’t really matter, it’s fine if it’s reduced, as long as the other stats are good. Quantity will obviously be your most desired stat, but you still have to hit 75% of all resists. For Jewels, use the new Abyss jewels with increased flat elemental damage to both attacks and bow attacks. Make sure that every jewel has a critical strike multiplier on it, as that will be your biggest boost.

Skill Trees and Leveling
First of all, for bandits, help Alira for the resistances and critical strike multiplier.

Now, this build has several potential trees. I’ve used three different ones. There are also options to take Phase Acrobatics, which I have elected not to do in favor of having four extra points. Here are the three that I have used: Queen of the Forest without Headhunter, Queen of the Forest with Headhunter, and Kaom’s Heart without Headhunter.