I have read posts by a few players who only used items found in the Codex to farm or climb floors, but if you plan to go to really high floors, you need to craft your gears, changing your affixes, because most items have a theme, and they don’t always do what you want them to do. and the farm gears in the Codex are good at farming, but not too good at killing monsters. when I started Ascending for Perks, I started with items from the Codex. I had been playing for awhile, so I had some Gold and enough Dust to get started. as I moved up the floors, I would change 1 or 2 affixes as I climbed, until I had a build that got lots of experience, did some farming, and killed monsters fast on floor 110. one thing that helped was I read a lot of posts on the Forums before I started Ascending, and as I was Ascending I read even more to get advice and good ideas, and for the rest of it, I learned by making mistakes and doing my own crafting. just so you know, a lot of the builds shared in the Forums require good farm builds to even make. beginner players are stuck with random items they get from monsters or the shop, and when they get Crystals and Myth Stones, making a few changes to change an item that sucks into a decent item, and maybe a better than average item. and when you find your first 2 or 3 Legend items, you don’t want to change anything because you don’t want to mess up a powerful item.