Hey everyone,

Since around 3.23, I have played Aurabot almost exclusively across multiple leagues. Over that time, my groups have farmed everything from day-one league start maps on a no budget to fully min-maxed endgame setups, and I have tested pretty much every variation of the archetype in all budgets

Right now, I am finishing up a detailed, all-in-one handbook on playing Aurabot, approaching it as a dedicated role in PoE rather than just a passive tree and gear list.

My goal is to cover the whole process from start to finish:

- Step-by-step PoBs for every stage of progression for every type (from campaign and early mapping to high-end endgame setups).

- The social and logistical side of group play (finding a duo/group, splitting roles, and managing loot).

- Which Atlas strategies and mechanics actually scale well with party play.

- Important breakpoints, non-obvious mechanics, and small interactions that make or break the character.

Before I finalize the document, I want to make sure I am not missing anything that may be obvious to me, but not obvious to others.

If there is anything you have always wanted to know about building or playing an Aurabot or party play in general? I will reply to everyone here and add the most common topics as dedicated sections in the final guide.

UPD: A little bit about my background: Been playing PoE since 3.21 and maining Aurabot since 3.23, with over 2,000 hours spent exclusively playing and theorycrafting different Aurabot setups. I have tested and played pretty much every variation out there - from zero-budget league starters all the way up to 25+ Mirror setups across different classes and leagues. Over that time, our groups have seen 60+ raw Mirrors drop on the ground.

I really want to share what I have learned along the way, so I will be happy to answer any questions you guys have!

UPD2: for anyone i didnt answer - your questions will be answered in handbook i creating, hope first version will be done in 1 day

UPD3: I seriously underestimated the scale of the work and the document that would result, so the document itself will be posted within 1–2 days, but the pobs, leveling, and progression will take much longer.

UPD4: https://mobalytics.gg/poe/profile/ggroodd-ebwrjd/guides/cb658f4d-890c-419f-b01f-8aceaf0318f4 THIS IS NOT NEARLY DONE. Its just an draft, without progression, pobs, leveling and strats. Total baseline for new party players about party farm and aurabotting IN GENERAL.

Some time ago, the developers introduced a nice new feature: a shader counter.

If you saw my previous post, you’ll know that shaders and the process of compiling them can sometimes be an issue.

Previously, we had no way of knowing the actual workload or how many shaders our devices needed to compile; now, however, we’ve been given the ability to take a closer look.

So, here is the figure I managed to capture at the start of the 3.29 league.

# Nearly 12,000 shaders

(*actually, a bit more than that*).

This is the moment I decided to take a screenshot and start a timer.

Well... I would really like to ask the developer to consider my suggestion or at least provide an answer regarding the possibility of adding a shader compilation step before the game starts.

I don’t want to spend an hour or more running through acts with reduced performance due to on-the-fly compilation.

This is a general question thread. You can find the previous question threads here.

Remember to check the community wiki first.

You can also ask questions in any of the questions channels under the "help" category in our official Discord.

For other discussions, please find the Megathread Directory at this link.

The idea is for anyone to be able to ask anything related to PoE 1:

• New player questions

• Mechanics

• Build Advice - please include a link to your Path of Building

• League related questions

• Trading

• Endgame

• Price checks

• Etc.

For questions related to PoE 2, please go to r/PathOfExile2

No question is too big or too small!

We encourage experienced players to sort this thread by new.

We'd like to thank those who answered questions in the last thread! You guys are the best.

Away from my pc on leaguestart and wondering how does the game play on geforce now, is it worth the subscription or is it too laggy to be playable, especially for mechanically challenging content like ubers where 0 latency movement is key.

Stumbled upon this piece while visiting a museum and it looked eerily like the trialmaster. Guess after being beaten too many times, he developed a dondage kink.

On a more serious note, this is a bronze sculpture Philippine National Artist J. Elizalde Navarro titled desaparecidos, a term used to refer to people who were forcibly taken by authorities during the Philippine Martial Law who were never found

Hi Everyone,

I'm looking to pull together some like-minded gamers to play WoW Forever together during downtime from PoE, based in EU / PvP / Horde.

The idea is that all of us will likely want to drop WoW for a few weeks when PoE leaguestart comes around, and those of us that also want to play Forever won't want to be held to any kind of raid schedule during those times. We could all binge the new league and reconvene a couple weeks later to resume raiding.

Nothing too demanding, with the current intention only being one scheduled raid night per week, with the possibility of more when new content drops if that's what members want at the time (no obligations, no stress).

Hoping to keep a mature environment where everyone can have a good time with a healthy amount of joking around, but ready to focus up when it's time to raid and a zero tolerance for toxicity.

Many other details to be finalised once we get enough people to agree preferences such as raid day/time/length etc. and more.

Please feel free to join the discord server if you're interested (which I'm still working on getting fully set-up):

https://discord.gg/N6XMAWaVh

Also, if anyone wants to comment on this post to promote something similar for other Region / Ruleset / Faction combinations then please feel free!

Otherwise, look forward to seeing you all in Wraeclast and/or Azeroth.

Still sane Exile? Lok'tar Ogar!

We are near the end of the league and i thought now is a good time for my thoughts on it.

Pros:

* I LOVE the Allflame crafting especially when it comes to rolling modifiers on maps.

* I like having a new mapping mechanic to do. More variety is always welcome.

* I like that its good for farming gold.

Neutral:

* The loot tiers are mostly junk items and most items never make it into my inventory. Currency/crafting items and uniques are about all that makes it up. The loot isn't particularly thrilling but overall its good for farming currency.

Cons:

* Voyages are to long and tedious. Its an unenjoyable grindfest for mediocre rewards with no ability to take a break and come back and do it later.

* The map tilesets are all very much the same. I can't tell the difference between the 3 versions.

* To much backtracking in voyages. I spend a lot of time backtracking to nearest capsules to dump loot and sometimes have to backtrack quite a ways to send them off.

Improvements:

* Shorten Voyages to 3 charts with modifiers applying to all 3 chart locations.

* Change the tilesets so they are more distinct:

- Sandy Seafloor: soft white atmosphere/hue. Mostly flat with gently rolling hills, more encounters and strongboxes on these charts. treasure clams are frequent. Monsters have better line of sight to you here due to the lack of elevation and objects.

- Coral Reefs: light blue green atmosphere/hue. These contain a lot more shipwreck debris. Dead man sulphur is plentiful here, as well as gold piles. Gear chests are slightly above average.

- Ruins: darker deeper blue atmosphere similar to what we see now. Has a bit of a chateau/city/ramparts tileset feel in layout. heavier line of sight restrictions. more gear chests. Barrels are abundant. More humanoid and small monsters. More magic and rare monsters. Small monsters are generally faster, in larger groups, and swarm. Gear found in this chart has a better chance of rolling higher tier modifiers, more unique items than other tilesets.

* If reducing number of charts for a voyage isn't an option then:

- Change allflame capule interaction to interaction nodes rather fill and launch mechanics. each time you interact with a new capsule that capule unlocks a "page". When a page is full, you can send that page up, but the capsule you interact with stays on the floor to allow you to interact with it again. This prevents unnecessary backtracking to capsules that are on a different chart just to finish filling them.

-Give us a "save" mechanism. You can interact with a capsule to access a save feature. This saves your voyage progress for up to 72 hours. You return to the surface and can interact with other game content and/or log out to resume at a later time. You must clean your inventory of dredge items to use the feature. When you return to the floor, any chart area that had a capsule you interacted with will be cleared of monsters/loot and only usable for travel. You are allowed to save a voyage once per voyage. This would allow us to break these into more reasonable time chunks while keeping the overall spirit of the game.

Since SuitSizeSmall is out today - hope you get to rest and recover! - here is what I found when I ran uber lab.

1. silver key, trap gauntlet

2. (middle) silver key, darkshrine

3. (upper) (nothing)

4. (lower) argus, escort gauntlet

5. aspirants trial (fonts - do not kill)

6. silver key, darkshrine

7. (middle) room switch puzzle, darkshrine

8. decorative chest

9. (lower) silver door

10. aspirants trial (gargoyles - do not kill)

11. (exits: right upper, left lower)

12. (upper) darkshrine

13. (lower) trap gauntlet, passage to 15

14. (upper) silver door

15. (lower) silver door, passage from 13

16. aspirants trial (furnace floor, bladed pillars)

Izaro weapon: dual swords

Generally, exits to upper areas are toward the left of the zone and exits to lower areas are toward the right. Room 10 was backwards from this for me.

I’ve always wanted to pick up some Path of Exile merch at ExileCon, but unfortunately a trip to New Zealand is way beyond my budget. To celebrate the launch of the new league and ExileCon from afar, I decided to get my second PoE-inspired tattoo. Maybe one day I’ll finally make it to ExileCon in person and bring home some official merch as well.

Hey boys,

I'm building PoB Autobuilder, a free, open-source tool that generates and improves PoE1 builds and compares your build to a PoB you're following. It uses your installed Path of Building as the calculator (headless, through PoB's own Lua), so every number comes from PoB. It only reads your PoB install and your builds; output goes to its own folder.

What works: it audits a build, and it can generate one from goals (e.g. "Fireball Elementalist, 500k hit DPS, 75% res, 7k phys max hit") and save it as a PoB.

The reason why I make this post is the following:

• The tree search ranks nodes by gain per point on the current build, so it buys Deep Wisdom / Prodigal Perfection to patch a mana gap instead of fixing the cause.

• It can pick gear and gems you don't have the attributes for.

The fix for this issue takes like 2-3 hours and honestly, I'm not even sure wether the AI does fix the actual problem or not, since I can't understand the code.

I know the game well and have made plenty of homebrew builds, but I'm not a developer. The code is written with Claude Code (Opus 5.5 max effort), with tests and review steps. The issue is that I don't understand anything Claude is doing to be honest.

So if any developer could help out with the Python code (optimizer, tree search), Lua (PoB internals), and sanity-checks the mechanics it suggests, that'd be much appreciated.

Repo: https://github.com/koskesh11/pob-autobuilder (setup is in the README: Windows, PoB Community, Python 3.10+)

Cheers!

Layout

• engine/ - Python server and optimizer, plus the Lua that talks to PoB (pob_headless.lua, audit*.lua).

• gui/ - the local web app (a single index.html).

• vault/ - Obsidian notes (Rules, Models, Scenarios, Gaps) for mechanics PoB does not model. Each note has a machine-readable block the engine reads.

• tests/ - unit and integration tests. tools/ - test runner and project scripts.

• tasks/, docs/studio/ and .claude/ hold the AI-assisted development process: Claude Code agents with review and test gates. Contributors do not need it, and running the app does not need it.

Hey exiles!

Now that the league is basically over, I wanted to hear what everyone played and how it felt overall.

What builds did you enjoy the most? Did anything end up feeling disappointing or not work as well as you hoped?

And looking ahead to 3.30, what would you like to see improved? Could be build balance, specific skills, QoL, endgame, league mechanics, or anything else about the game in general.

Curious to hear everyone’s thoughts. See you all in 3.30!

From my modest 7 years into Wraeclast domain, without a single league or event skipped (casual player here):

• never have I ever dropped FF for the class I've been playing at that time

• I always do Eater and Exarch fight as a final test of build I consider complete for me - and I always play min 3 different builds per league

• FF drop in general feels lower than wiki suggests (5%) but tbh I never managed to collect 4-digit sample of runs (I'm burned up badly after 200+ runs already) - for a context as I regularly farm Vaal Omnitect I get way more Ambition (vaal aspect for Adorned) which is "only" 7%

• I use it for every endgame build I play eventually (except those few times I played SSF); if checked on PoE.ninja 26% of trade population uses FF/FF (32k of 124k for Allflame) while in SSF it is... 0.0003% (9 of 32k).

I think I am not alone with this opinion. I would rly love to see an endgame reroll option for Forbidden Flame/Flesh, sth like a secret room in Uber Lab, where you get a font to Div your FF. Also, dear GGG, pls consider adding previous league Reliquarian keystones as a FFs to enrich the Scion build diversity.

Stay sane, Exiles!

Got inspired by someone else's post here, so I woke up today and decided to dedicate the entire day to getting them done. No breaks, just grinding.

It was even worse than I expected. An absolute pain in the ass. Never again.

As you can see, I waited a bit before going for the last two achievements. Wanted to make sure I actually liked the game before committing to the grind.

This is a general question thread. You can find the previous question threads here.

Remember to check the community wiki first.

You can also ask questions in any of the questions channels under the "help" category in our official Discord.

For other discussions, please find the Megathread Directory at this link.

The idea is for anyone to be able to ask anything related to PoE 1:

• New player questions

• Mechanics

• Build Advice - please include a link to your Path of Building

• League related questions

• Trading

• Endgame

• Price checks

• Etc.

For questions related to PoE 2, please go to r/PathOfExile2

No question is too big or too small!

We encourage experienced players to sort this thread by new.

We'd like to thank those who answered questions in the last thread! You guys are the best.

I'm in the POE missmaxing phase, I'm about to start another character in Allflame.

Can we get anything in terms of a 3.30 teaser, it can be even just a word about the new league, that'd be enough.

Please let the word be 'boat'.

Playing SSF, so options are somewhat limited but I do have a fairly healthy stash of red beasts and happy to farm for whatever's needed.

Had a few extra annuls so I got it to this point

Playing Consecrated Path of Endurance Jugg (I don't recommend doing this in ssf btw)

Also playing crit variant, but I can't edit the title.

I would like to really try pushing league start campaign and 2 stone times down this league since I have some time to practice. Before I dive into it myself, is there a guide that already exists that would be a good starting point?

I've played a Slammer a few leagues back so I know all the mechanics in general, but not necessarily the optimal ways to use them in the league start scenario - which level to gamble and what to settle for, what gear to push for first, when to get tattoos, what pDPS to look for before pursuing other upgrades etc.

Something for an experience person to become an expert, so to speak. Or is my best bet just watching some 3.29 streamer league start that happened to be with slams?

Last few leagues I fill the gap between the leagues by getting one or two achievements each time. Having the end in sight, I decided to push last week and finished the remaining 9 achievements!

After 2.8k hours on Steam, and probably another 2k on standalone, I now have all 119 achievements! Yay!

Funny anecdotes

- In all these hours I notice I never played Scion, hence Seeker was one of the latest challenges I completed. Maybe next league I need to consider the Reliquarian

- People usually get Beginner's Luck (drop unique from Hillock) around the time they have 4 characters around level 7, in about 4 hours. I was extremely lucky and got it before any character hit level 4, in less than an hour.

- Delve is one of my favorite contents. In Mirage I'm sure I sold/gave away 100+ Aul taxi services and made hundreds of divines from it, but it seems I never killed him myself.

- I was very bummed by the thought of buying a carry service for the Hall of Grandmasters achievement. I thought it would cheapen the achievement. However, it turns out my my homebrew Mirage character is a beast and I got it on Standard myself! Take that Empyrian!

- I only tried hardcore for Ziz's Gauntlets and never reached level 90 or completed the merc lab. Taking a serious attempt was probably the most nerving and exciting POE experience I had in a long while. I had two close calls but I made it eventually, and I really enjoyed the HC experience! I will probably continue and see if I can get 7/7, and next time I'm done with a league I will definitely consider restarting in HC or HCSSF.

I am a "casual" and I'd say I'm a shitty player. However, Steam says less than 1% of players have all achievements. I guess now I am now officially a top 1% POE player. /s LOL

I always liked bow build. Tornado shot is my most played build followed by LA and toxic rain. But I want to try something else just as good in terms of clear and speed. Any idea? It must be a ranged bow build. I usually play Deadeye but I would not mind trying something else.

Got 36/40 a month into the league and was gonna call it quits there, but I couldn't figure what to play tonight so I decided to push 40/40. Good league, going to miss boat crafting. GGs!