What am I supposed to be doing to increase my power?

Learning to farm expensive items to buy more expensive items.

Learning to craft stronger items.

I think GGG has to do a better job showcasing crafting. And giving players, especially new players, at least hints on how to get stronger. It’s almost like they assumed the player base was from poe1 so we would know what to do.

So once you reach endgame you actually start playing the game and all of its possible scenarios, first

Giving you probably don’t have a lot of currency the first thing you need to figure out is: which build are you aiming towards and what kind of content are you aiming for?

You want to join the temple farm simulator? Learn crafting your own gear (can get pricy) Want to go and tackle pinnacle bosses?

Once you have your “goal” in mind then you start setting up little milestones to help you get there, “ok I need to farm for this unique bc gives me the passive to tie up X build”

Usually the first “league starter” is the slowest (but most regarding) progression in the game. Your upgrades feel very expensive and progress is slow. But the best advice I can give you is have a build in mind and try to notice the certain breaking points for any given build, for example, Spark BM needs Choir and decent crit and then the builds feels comes online.

Lmk if you have any more question, hope I didn’t ramble m nonsense too long

You must let your hatred flow through you and embrace the dark side of the Force.

I just started maps and have started to scour the trade site for specific rolls on budget but improved gear. Im returning since launch and my god am i happy that the market is accessible thru the client on console nowadays

Getting your bread up. Endgame is adventure capitalist

It depends on what build you're playing. As you get more currency to craft and buy gear, you can evolve your build or change your build completely. When you're early on in mapping, you'll be playing what's called a league starter. This is a build that functions well with very little investment to allow you to farm T15s and pinnacle bosses for high tier currency or items. As you get wealthier, you can transition to a more advanced build or a higher damage/faster moving build

It's highly unlikely you will just happen to find upgrades as you get farther into the game. You're going to have to buy or craft most of the items you will use once you have completed the campaign. As others have said, the first step is figuring out what you need.

For example, capping your elemental resists (75% Fire/Cold/Lightning resistance) should be your first priority, defensively speaking. You'll want to prioritize gear that allows you to cap your resists efficiently, so that you can squeeze other stats out of it. For example, a ring that has two resists at 40% each is likely much better than a ring that gives you three resists at 20% each. Anyway, it's up to you to find out how to cap your resists while also getting enough damage and utility out of your gear.

As for uniques, they tend to fall into one of four categories: crap (most of them), leveling uniques, build-enabling uniques, endgame uniques (the ones you see people using in busted builds or selling for a ton of currency). Depending on what you are playing, you might use none or a few uniques. If you post your poe.ninja character link, people can take a look and let you know what you might consider trying to replace/upgrade first.

Here's mine: https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/Auturgist-8134/character/Kellistara

Anyway, once you have your resistances capped and you've got any build-enabling uniques you need, you shouldn't have any trouble making noticeable progress. If you want to DM me any questions, I'd be happy to help you further. I can maybe even throw you a couple divs to buy some gear if you need it, too.

You can get through the campaign easily enough by just picking up rares off the ground, but at some point you’ll have to switch gears to either crafting or buying gear on the trade site / in-game market (I’m not sure how it works for PS5 but on PC you can use either one interchangeably). Either way you will want to get an idea of what 5 or 6 affixes you’d like to have on each piece and then either search for that on the trade site or learn some crafting methods to target them yourself. I strongly recommend just buying gear on the trade site at first because that process will give you a good idea of what exactly makes items more expensive, which almost always corresponds to how expensive/difficult it will be to craft. Another important factor is that crafting something specific is often much more expensive than buying it already made unless you are selling your valuable “misses” along the way. Simply blowing currency to get exactly what you want while rolling over everything else will be very wasteful.

In short: buy stuff on the trade site.