Glacial Cascade totem is what i'm using. Has a lot of description in it for new players. The 1L, 6L etc.. are # of sockets linked on an item. On that note if anyone has a Soul Mantle Spidersilk Robe they want to get rid of hit me up and we'll work something out.
Generally speaking, when using another entity to deal your damage(minions aka summons, totems, traps and mines), only the stuff that specifically states those apply will work. Traps, mines and totem use your own stats to determine relevant stuff like cast time(for totems) or damage %, but any sort of leech/life gain/mana gain is given to the entity itself, or stuff like gaining charges is given to the entity(which if it's traps/mines is irrelevant, and for totems it kinda depends). Minions are even further the spectrum in that they gain literally nothing from the player unless it's specifically minion based.
FilterBlade will show you, as well as letting you modify every aspect of it easily. FYI, "strict" is generally too strict for this early in the league unless you have been flipping currency or had something so valuable drop that you no longer need to care about anything or you are experienced enough to have a better plan for making money. I use semi-strict with some stuff added/some stuff removed.
Early on you probably just want to find someone selling maps and buy a bunch of their lower tier shit at once. A lot of sellers won't move to sell a 1alt map but if you buy say every map for T1-T6 for a couple of chaos or whatever it adds up to, they'll bother selling them I think and you can get all the early shit done at once. After that you can just pick a corner and progress through it.
Its probably some of the rooms being open that are buffing them. Not sure if that affects the incursions though or just the open temple. I've noticed that as well however. I've entered a few of the incursions in the area where I've seen teh HC wipe videos and just been unable to plow through which is unusual.
That's up to you, there isn't really a difference I think. You'll still have to run a bunch of maps to get progress, and if you feel stuck just buy the missing ones to keep going, but map progression and sustain is about running a ton of maps anyway, and you'll get stuff unlocked as you progress naturally.
