Yeah my gear is horrendous and the additional hit to the resistances from clearing the game is obviously not helping either. It's kinda funny how you get punished from beating the final boss - I get it, it's how it's always been since the early Diablo days but in those games you noticeably restarted the game in a higher difficulty. The map Zana gave me was actually a boosted one, I just did assuming it's not a big deal since it's the first one the game officially gave me to introduce the system.
So in terms of crafting and spending currency items, it sounds like it's pretty much whatever until you get into the range of chaos/regal orbs. I haven't found a good sword in a long while, can I just blow my orbs of alteration and hope I eventually get a good phys mod on it to replace my old crap?
And yes even at lvl 91 there are mods I don't run even on low tier maps like certain reflect damage and suff. Will develop and eye on which mods to run and which ones to reroll or sell 3 alike to a vendor for a standard map one tier higher and such. Just like items you can reroll magic maps pretty cheaply. Rare maps will require a scour to start over, or as mentioned sell 3 to a vendor for one of the next tier. If the league was lasting longer you can save maps for another class as well. Reflect will kill my gladiator almost instantly, but is nothing to my scorching ray necro since it's a DoT. Just random ideas.
I try to finish the merc lab right before finishing act 10 to avoid the downgrade of resist. Normally get all the ascendancy done except for uber lab done. You can use a flask to up resist as well if you need to. Always flask, all the time. Join trade 820 chat channel if you need a carry for the various labs including uber. Ascendancies heolp a lot. in trade 820 it's all about getting lab carries (sometimes for a fee sometimes free), locate the trials needed so you can do uber lab, get help with challenges and such. Nothing like the regular trade channel which is infested with price fixers and such.
If you are in the guild there are several weapons in the guild stash that would fit a new player, at least for short term. I'm always broke and always super slow, cause I take the time to look at stuff as I go when I get done with a map instead of throwing it in a stash tab.
Some people will reroll the item class they are looking for with the mod they want. Then augment it and hope they get what they want. Relatively easy to reroll it at this point. Then when they get those where they want they regal it and hope for the best as opposed to alch from normal to rare. Don't forget you can scour rare items and start over.
Suggest path of building as well. Can really help narrow down what can roll on a certain item instead of hoping for something it can't even roll. Looking at the various class of items for say 1h sword will give you an idea about implicits, prefix, and suffixes and what each class of 1h sword can roll to give you an idea on what to keep an eye on.
If the league wasn't ending in two weeks or so I would say at that point trade/sell your achs for chaos and buy what you are looking for with the chaos till you get an idea of how to craft and get more into higher i-lvl items to craft. Just me tho. Early in a league you can buy items that will be an upgrade for just alchs. At this point guessing most stuff listed on poe trade for that will be someone afk/not interested but never cleared out thier bank tab.
If you really get into PoE and crafting, wait till stash tabs go one sale (I thnk on average once a month) and get a currency tab (best stash tab in game), and premium tabs so you can sell stuff easily. I think I paid $20 one time for currency and premium stash tab bunch. Money well spent if you play the game at all and care for it. Will improve quality of life a LOT.
I also suggest POE trade macro, it will allow you to hover over an item and ctrl C to see how many sockets it can have, how high the rolls all for each suffix and prefix. Super handy, will also ctrl D to lookup prices on poe trade for the item. It can be hit or miss on prices, but works well for stuff with limited number of rolls like uniques. Will give you an idea quickly what is vendor stuff and what might be worth selling. There's also some youtube videos on it and how to use it. Can be really helpful to a new player. This late in league tho not nearly as helpful as early league when people are buying stuff much more.
GitHub - PoE-TradeMacro/POE-TradeMacro: Price checking script for Path of Exile.
Hopefully that will help, but I'm a scrub so.... and probably some screw ups in my info. If you're not a member of the guild, join. Of course it's deader than shit right now going from 20+ on at a time to 1-3 at most because end of league. But learning the ropes now is the best time so you can hit the ground running at start of new league.