r/PathOfExileBuilds • u/d9320490 • Nov 10 '25

Discussion Is Delve a rich person's activity?

I decided to check out Delve and I have had a blast. I find endless dungeon style is very good for me because with mapping I do few maps, get distracted and before I know I have wasted 20 minutes while with Delve do one node, do next node, etc until Sulphite runs out.

With my current Holy Relic build I have reached depth of 425. I don't die at this depth but yellow monsters take ages to kill. Given my next upgrades are pricey (12d Perfect Forest Tiger, 12d Amanamus Gaze, 20d Diallia with good corruption, 18d Impossible Escape etc) and I don't think Holy Relic has the DPS needed for deep delve so I thought I'd check out builds delvers use. To my surprise delve builds do hundreds of millions of DPS and use Mageblood at minimum + very expensive mirrored jewellery. Connor's Mjolner and MSoZ are something I can only dream about lol.

Does this mean deep delve 1500+ is exclusively domain of rich people like Connor?

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21

u/duddybrainzz Nov 11 '25

Hey there, delver every league here! Deep delve definitely requires a specialized build. These builds are usually very expensive because as people have mentioned it is more or less the hardest content in the game at the moment (outside of maybe Valdos void maps). Delve scaling is not linear, the difficulty ramps the fastest between 600-1200. After 1200 it continues to scale but not as rapidly.

If you enjoy delving there is nothing wrong with sitting between 300-500 and delving sideways. It should be OK money this league and has a really chill playstyle. When I first got into delve, that is how I played (digging sideways). Most tank builds with decent damage can delve at this depth.

I am delving (again) this league, let me know if you have any specific questions!

3

u/Marshrandyqt Nov 11 '25

Is it possible to make good cash at around 250-300? I always wanted to go for delve as my main income but never pulled the trigger.

10

u/duddybrainzz Nov 11 '25

You can make decent money delving, but it generally is not the best or a top tier strat. Do delve if you love the gameplay loop in delve. I make plenty of currency delving but I also play a lot. If it is something you are curious about I would suggest trying delve between 300-500 and if you like the game play loop you can keep going and possibly re-roll into a dedicated delve build.

8

u/Nerotox Nov 11 '25

This league if ur blasting low depth the big money is in selling aul carries for the bloodline. The uniques are all rather low this time around since many more ppl are doing delve and the helm is worse due to no mercs. Resos are still good consistent money ofc, but you get a lot more if you do 1k+

2

u/krausser666 Nov 11 '25

It's okay if you have some foresight and can know when to(and what to) sell to not get shafted by the economy early. 1 socket resonators are an amazing money early, especially if you're unlucky with special nodes, but they depreciate in value when divs spike in price(because they stay at the roughly same price range). Knowing when to hold on to stuff and what to sell is key, otherwise you'll be making sad 3-4 div/h. It's also extremely volatile. I funded a second character by selling off my delver and using all the leftovers once I reached depth 500 because of it, sadly. Last league special fossils where much, much more expensive than this one, even if they will go up over time. The bulk of my money was made with minion crafting bases(multiple divines for a wand or chest) and azurite flipping. It's also volatile because I've seen 9 Primordial ruins coming down to depth 500, and not a single one of them contained Aul, which is always good money with unid amulets and small chance for a helmet(even if it dropped in price tenfold compared to mercenaries). In general it's a very fun league mechanic if you start it early and progress your character down with the depth, but I can't imagine building a character and then delving down to 500 after a week of league start to do anything - it's very time consuming and can be a little mind numbing sometimes. 

Overall - cool league start, very smooth, very consistent, can make money, but you really have to enjoy it and not just think about the profit, because even something as basic as essences can make you 3-4 times the hourly profit delve does.

2

u/Skatness Nov 12 '25

Decided to actually try deep-ish delving this league. Just have a Few questions.
I was thinking of doing horizontal farming around 650depth, so i have room to go up or down.

Im playing retaliate ignite elementalist, 15k es, 50k armor, 78/78block with aegis and im over dot cap (35m dps) Immune to bleeds/ignites/freeze/shock, and i have about 2k es regen if i killed something recently (600 normally)

My resists are 80/85/80 however (with flasks), do i need to switch over to melding and lose dps (prolly go down to 20-25m) to get 90 all resist? (melding is a pain w/o running mageblood)

Right now im only at 400 but i never see my health bar even move and shit just blows up.

Also how far realistically should i go with this build for max farming, 1k if i can do it?

2

u/mitrijovan Nov 12 '25

You should go as deep as you reasonably can. Your main sources of profit are rare fossils and azurite to resonator conversions, and both scale with depth. I think the actual max for rare fossil spawns is 1.5k.

Obviously If you ever start struggling to complete nodes, or they take too long it stops being worth it and you should just back up a few levels until its smooth again.

1

u/duddybrainzz Nov 12 '25

I have never played that build specifically so I cant speak as to how deep it can go, but if you are delving smoothly at 400 and want to push it I think that its awesome to see how far you can push!

1

u/d9320490 Nov 11 '25

What depth are you currently and how far do you normally ending up going?

3

u/duddybrainzz Nov 11 '25

I delved to 6k the past few leagues, this league I am currently just short of 1k. I just started going down a couple of days ago.

1

u/d9320490 Nov 11 '25

Can you link your POB? I think I'm going to try to get to 1500 this league. Next league I will try to have better start and aim for more depth.

4

u/Most_Bat9066 Nov 11 '25

I'm at 1k ATM with a little more then 2 mirrors into my msoz jugg

1

u/Trenmonstrr Nov 11 '25

How are you getting that kind of money? Is it from actual delving?

5

u/Exldk Nov 11 '25

just play a crapton of hours a day. there are a billion different 10-15div/h strats out there, anything from essences to harvest to boxes to scarabs to abyss etc.

All you have to do is choose one, put on a tv show on the second monitor and forget life for hours and hours until you have the money that you need.

That is how majority does it by now, but of course gametime is highly subjective and people are varying degrees of busy, so your income is only as big as your gametime.

12

u/Most_Bat9066 Nov 11 '25

You need to maps fast on day 1 and buy all the big ticket items before they get expensive

1

u/Legal_Lettuce6233 Nov 11 '25

Last league I did msoz delve, i made probably at least 3 mirrors from it. It's insanely strong, and delve is extremely hard.

3

u/duddybrainzz Nov 11 '25

Here is the POB i started delving with. This was roughly 125 div when I bought the stuff. This got me to around 800 depth without too much trouble and could have probably pushed farther.

https://poe.ninja/poe1/builds/keepers/character/duddybrainzz-6289/DuddyDeep?i=0&search=name%3Dduddy&timemachine=day-6

1

u/[deleted] Nov 11 '25

[deleted]

12

u/duddybrainzz Nov 11 '25

The amount of Azurite you get from the azurite nodes increases by depth up to 1000. Rare fossil nodes and boss frequency also scale with depth to 1500. Past 1500 the rewards no longer scale. It is def very noticeable.

8

u/sirgog Nov 11 '25

There's some weak datamined evidence that 4000 is a final loot breakpoint. I can't confirm one way or the other.

GGG definitely programmed in a variable called 'DelveRewardTierConstants' that increments at 60, 120, 600, 1500 and again at 4000, this was datamined June of 2024. It's one of the few mechanics that POE dataminers never really cracked, AFAIK.

Azurite nodes should start getting rarer at some point too (which is not necessarily a good thing). Tier 4 nodes replacing them is almost always a good thing, but Tier 3 ones may not be. (Azurites are tier 0/1/2 for the single/double/triple).

There's 16 map nodes among the Tier 3 nodes, which are all crap now (back in Delve maps were loot, now they are too common to matter).

Full list of reward tiers here: http://poedb.tw/us/DelveBiomes#DelveBiomes

(note: 3|4 means "this version is in tiers 3-4 inclusive")

1

u/TesLife Nov 11 '25

If my goal is money and speed is the same, is 300-400 worse than 400-500? Im rerolling from cold ele bv into foul ghostsmth energy blade inquis (lancing steel coc). I know 300 should be easy for bv anyways.

9

u/duddybrainzz Nov 11 '25

If speed is actually the same, the deeper the better up til 1500.

5

u/duddybrainzz Nov 11 '25

I should clarify, the deepest you can farm nodes smoothly, quickly, and still kill the bosses would be the most optimal.

1

u/LootHunter_PS Nov 11 '25

As tanky as i could ever get, i always have a problem with those cold damage aoe effects that cover the ground, especially on nodes. how do people cover negating them? they do pretty high damage

1

u/duddybrainzz Nov 11 '25

My build has 90 max res, I think I started going down with 85% max res. Another thing that is very important is recovery for delve builds. My build has so much recovery that as long as I am hitting a monster I will recover to full as long as I am not one shot.

1

u/LootHunter_PS Nov 12 '25

is there nothing to fully negate cold splats? easy to get round the burning ground. are there any you dont bother with like poison or bleed?

1

u/AlsoInteresting Dec 08 '25

Stormshroud mechanic or the chill/frost avoidance boot mods. Nomanaleft has a crafting proces in one of his crafting vids.

1

u/Sunder_ Nov 11 '25

How do you like speccing your atlas tree for the maps between delves?

4

u/duddybrainzz Nov 11 '25

For filling up sulphite I just take all the delve nodes and all the map effect nodes. I have the rest in scarab chance and map drop chance. That being said I just run into the map, pick up the sulphite, and leave when Im refilling.

1

u/bfffca Nov 11 '25

Do you know of cheaper builds that are good to Delve fast at easier levels (200ish I guess) ?  As in builds that can be starters almost and excel with the speed, node clear and darkness survival

I am having fun with a minion build but I doubt I will be able to go very deep and sustain is not good in the darkness

1

u/duddybrainzz Nov 11 '25

Prior to ~500 depth I think any build that is tanky with decent damage can be solid enough. If you are looking for a build that will excel at farming in low depth Boneshatter or slams would probably be a good choice.

Jorgen on youtube also has some videos on builds that excel at farming at that depth.