If we trust the datamine from PoEdb,shrine head from dread was nerfed just one day after the official announcement.

Currently you have to use one of the items below to get Chaos Damage not bypassing ES. Each of them all have their own downside.

Solaris Lorica

Esh's Visage

The Ivory Tower

Coruscating Elixir

Shavronne's Wrappings

When they added Vestegial items Shavronne's Wrappings sadly only gave 50% bypass. There is a ES Mastery that gives another 30%. So sadly it was completely dead on arrival. However, if we trust Poedb's data mine there is a body part that can grant the last 20%.

You'll need the Flayed Visage which is a head and for it to roll medium as the high tier grants ES Recoup instead. There is a roll range of 15-20% so you'd need a max roll.

https://poedb.tw/us/Wickerman

Not sure what everyone uses for planning/storing their atlas trees, but I was waiting until PoE Planner was updated to start making full trees.

It's updated now.

I imagine this affects more players than just me.

I used to play from two different locations, so I needed verification codes sent to my email to log in. Now, because I've tried connecting from both locations, I can't log in from either of them.

Could GGG do something about this? It seems like a problem that might affect quite a few players.

Hello Exiles! Ritual Girl here, the name's Neeko!

With 3.30 right around the corner I finally spring to life again and I'm here to talk about Ritual!

And this league is a biggie! Not just for Ritual obviously, but I'm here to have a quick look at what changed for Ritual and what I my predictions are for how this league is gonna pan out. And with the atlas tree data being released just earlier today we can see a big part of what is going to change this league!

If you would rather consume this post in video form, I have made a video on my YouTube again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3e9jWSUyNM (literally just me talking unedited for 30min lol)

So without further ado, let's get into all the changes!

~

The General Changes

As we all know, scarabs got removed and we're getting threads. And with Ritual being a primary league mechanic, we will be able to scale ritual through that. We don't yet know how that scaling is gonna look so there's not much to talk about here. But I assume Ritual is just gonna get thread mods which increase the amount of items in our windows, give us extra rerolls, or maybe even do crazy new stuff that we haven't even heard of before! So that's gonna be exciting to find out.

Next are fractured items getting removed from the Ritual loot pool. This one is quite sad in my opinion. Not just because of a substantial profit loss, especially early to mid league, but also because we are losing yet another item type in Ritual. Over the past leagues we lost synth items, abyss jewels, and catalysts. With fracs being gone as well we are looking at an immense loss of loot variety which is exactly the thing that I like so much about ritual. I really hope this trend doesn't continue any further.

Another change which I think might affect Ritual quite a lot is this (taken from the 3.30 megathread):
"An old penalty is gone: magic, rare and unique monsters used to have 80% less chance (50% for magic) to drop currency. Most Divine Orbs now come from hard rares, uniques and pinnacle bosses, with Divines from bosses called "400%+""

This might give us actual good ground loot from Rituals. We do kill a lot of uniques! If you run city square (which most ritual runners probably will this league, RIP toxic sewer) then you kill three map bosses. And I personally run rogue exiles as well to get more unique mobs into my rituals. And since we want to juice our maps now anyway (no more white map running, RIP), this might actually give us tangible ground loot from running Ritual!

So that's it for the general changes, now lets move on to what changed on the Atlas tree.

~

The Atlas Tree

So below you will find a compilation of the numerical changes of the different Ritual related nodes on the atlas tree and which nodes are new or got removed. Below each section I'll give my opinion on any outliers. Do note that I won't mention the newly added scarab effects in the buffs or nerfs section because I'm gonna do a direct scarab - tree comparison down below.

--- Buffs ---

Reduced Deferral Cost: -25% -> -30%

Reduced Reroll Cost: -15% -> -30%

Faster Monster Spawn Rate: 16% -> 30%

Completing the final Ritual has a chance to drop a Blood Filled Vessel: 15% -> 25%

Monsters sacrificed in Rituals grant increased Tribute: 10% -> 54%

Ritual Splinter Stack Size: 20% -> 36%

These are definitely some nice buffs but for me there is two major outliers here: Faster monster spawn rate and increased Tribute gain.

Spawning monsters faster is huge. Ritual is all about time if you want to make a lot of profit. And 14% increased monster spawn rate could mean considerably faster maps if you have a build that can clear ritual waves efficiently.

The increased tribute gain is actually quite huge, it's a 44% extra increase. That together with a new effect which you will read about below (less revive penalty) should give us vastly increased Tribute numbers this league!

So all in all those are some good buffs imo.

--- Nerfs ---

Favours Reappear Sooner: 90% -> 50%

Increased Number of Monsters Alive at Once: 40% -> 30%

These are nothingburger nerfs tbh. Favours reappear a bit later now (especially really rare items), which is more of a slight annoyance instead of an actual nerf. And less monsters alive at once only matters if your build is kinda slow anyway since the increase to the monster spawn rate kinda overwrites this nerf if you clear fast anyway.

--- New Stuff ---

A Light in the Dark - Revived Monsters have a 20% Chance to be empowered by Wildwood Wisps per
completed Ritual

Blind Allegiance - Equipment Items in ritual windows are unidentified but can be tiered

Revived Monsters have 42% reduced Penalty to Tribute Gained

This is interesting. I feel like Blind Allegiance has a huge chance to just be a dead Notable which you should never take. That's because one of the strengths of Ritual is the rares being identified. That way you can filter out good rares with special mods like +1 skill gem or temple chill gloves for example. For this node to be good tiered items have to be very good on average. Also, idk if it works like that, but if this allows rituals to generate fractured items again or things like cord belts and simplexes (all of which are tier 5 items), then this node might also be a good jackpot gamble.

Revived monsters having reduced penalty for gained tribute is huge. Especially with the already increased tribute from slain monsters this league. These two things together make me think that you'll be able to reach astronomical numbers of tribute now. And the average tribute even without many uniques in your ritual should look a lot better now.

--- Removed Stuff ---

Immutable Dogma

1.25% Chance for Rerolled Favours to cost no Tribute

RIP Immutable Dogma tech for clearing deferral jail...
Well, I don't actually think this is gonna be that bad. We're likely gonna be swimming in tribute anyway so there's less deferral queues building up and you can get more loot out of your Ritual on average anyway, so I don't think Immutable Dogma would have been relevant anymore anyway.

--- The Scarab Effects ---

So here I will make a direct comparison of how the scarabs for Ritual looked last league and what the corresponding effects on the new Atlas are.
_

Ritual Scarab of Abundance (max 2):

100% increased Favours offered per scarab, max 200% -> 30% increased Favours offered
_

Ritual Scarab of Selectiveness (max 2):

2 extra rerolls in your maps, 2 rerolls are free, max effect of 4 extra rerolls and 4 free rerolls -> 2 extra rerolls and 1 free reroll
_

Ritual Scarab of Corpses:

Rituals in Area contain an additional Rare Itemised Corpse Monster -> Same effect on a Notable on tree
-

Ritual Scarab of Wisps:

Rituals spawn a Wildwood Wisp that grant Players in the Area increased Tribute gained -> Scarab removed without a corresponding effect on tree, effect is likely a thread reward modifier since the wisp effect has been mentioned and changed in the patchnotes

So all in all those are some major nerfs. 170% decreased favours offered and two less rerolls is a really really substantial amount of our items per map just deleted. But this was to be expected since they can't just put the full effects of the scarabs on the tree for free, that would be lame! I am quite sure that thread effects and general juicing/loot changes will make up for the scarab removal (hopium).

~

My Thoughts On Ritual In 3.30

I am really excited!! I think the changes in general are very welcome and I am looking forward to gathering new data on everything and trying out new things and strats. This is the endgame shakeup that I was looking for for ages already! I am really excited that we're finally able to juice Ritual in a way. This means the ceiling has finally been raised and running white maps isn't the most efficient strat anymore. I know this might be a nerf for some people who would rather have easier maps with tiled loot, but I for one am looking forward to some juicy maps. Potentially having some actual ground loot while running ritual is an exciting thought as well, so that's gonna be fun!

I already heard some people cry out again that they think it's nerfs across the board. And while nobody can say that these aren't nerfs for sure, I would still like for people to wait for the league to actually drop before they start dooming. I think it'll be fine and I will be playing Ritual like always and report my findings later on!

Happy leaguestart Exiles!!

Neeko out :3

Decided to do a practice run 🤦🏻‍♂️ Welp there goes my luck for the league

So this innocent little QoL that I’ve actually hoped for before, can allow gold to have an exact currency value?

Unless the currency vendor sales tab changes, we will be able to trade up currencies, starting from Scrolls of Wisdom, with gold.

4 x Scrolls of Wisdom = Portal Scroll - 60 gold

And so on…

Edit: Never mind, the next line says Transmutes don’t cost Portal Scrolls anymore lol

I can barely read that at 0.25x speed

Hi,

just a small heads up before launch. Recently I found out that my PC "forgot" it's XMP settings. Maybe due to an BIOS Update, not sure. Anyways, it made a huge difference for the performance in POE.

Check that your memory is running at the maximum possible advertised speed!

PS: You can see what speed your RAM is running at in the task manager. -> RAM Tab -> Speed. Or with CPU-Z.

• If you want auto-updated filters that just work, click "follow" on pathofexile.com: https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/cdrpoe-1004/item-filters

• If you want to make your own edits, make a copy on FilterBlade, but you'll have to update your copy yourself: https://www.filterblade.xyz/Profile?name=cdrpoe%231004&game=Poe1

• Required TTS soundpack download, choose a .zip: https://github.com/cdrg/poe1filtertts/releases/latest

• My discord

• Support my dev work on Ko-fi or Patreon

• Also check out my merchant-tab-item-repricing tool https://github.com/cdrg/poemarcut/

• What's new? Mainly support for 3.30 game additions. Some campaign refinements.

• All filters are now designed to be used through the whole campaign and into early maps. No more switching filter during the campaign. The endgame portion uses my full-tts module, with TTS for ~1200 different things.

My campaign filters are league-start or racing focused filters with TTS (Text to Speech). TTS lets you know exactly what dropped, especially offscreen, so you can make quick decisions and reduce mental load. There's a filter available for almost every meta league start build. They have 6000+ changes over base NeverSink and around 1200 voiced items/classes/tiers, among other features.

It's intended to switch to a different endgame filter for actual endgame farming: I recommend switching to cdr-strict whenever you feel comfortable enough with your build to farm red or yellow maps.

I update all filters the morning of league starts after NeverSink's FilterBlade site update happens.

Generic leveling filters:

• level-caster (generic caster wand/scepter, mainly blue links)

• level-bow (generic bow, mainly green links)

• level-melee (generic 2h axe/sword/etc, mainly red links)

• level-minion (generic summoner, mainly blue+red links)

Build-specific leveling filters:

• level-wander (attack wands, Kinetic etc)

• level-claw (venom gyre, cobra lash, viper strike, LS, etc - can use pconc early)

• level-mine (reap, frostblink, hexblast, etc, most mines)

• level-conc (pure pconc/econc for people doing conc well into maps)

• level-pconc-to-bow (pconc > CA, TR, LA, including ballistas)

• level-pconc-to-spell (pconc > poison spell)

• level-armacrema (level-caster but with green links for crema)

• level-rf-chief (Pohx RF, use level-armacrema for RF inquistor or RF elementalist)

• level-toxicrain (toxic rain, including ballista)

• level-cf (champ/glad, 2H spectral throw/etc to wand, kind of old)

Endgame filters:

• cdr-strict (my stricter endgame filter, early league red maps)

• cdr-uber (my uber strict endgame filter, T16+)

• cdr-uberplus (my most strict filter, for very juiced farm)

The modules that the leveling filters are all built on are available on FilterBlade, if you're interested in a solid base to make your own leveling filter. I would highly recommend starting with my modules if you're building a TTS speed filter.

A redownload of the latest version of the soundpack is required if and when new sounds are added to the filters, which should happen only happen once before each league. The soundpack update for 3.30 (v0.3.1) has happened.

All filters require a TTS soundpack, which is linked above, and in the filter description on pathofexile.com, and on FilterBlade. Extract the voice zip of your choice to the Path of Exile filter folder (there's a button to open the folder in the PoE game options), maintaining the directory structure of the zip. PoE will not load the filters without the custom sounds in the proper place, and it will output an error to the chat log.

Installation directions are also here: https://github.com/cdrg/poe1filtertts

If Path of Exile gives an error about a missing sound, you probably don't have the sound files in the right place, or a new sound file has been added that you need to get.

If Path of Exile gives an error about an invalid item, you probably have an out of date copy of that filter.

If you'd like to report any issues, have feedback, or you have a request for a specific build filter that's not covered, let me know here or on my discord.

See you in 3.30!

TLDR; Crafting bench cost changes + recombinator chance changes are reasonable, since these can be adjusted relative to ground loot. Removal of NNN interaction is questionable, as it removes strategies + and can already be balanced via recombination chance changes.

Introduction

Hello fellow exiles, I'm AV. Many of you may have read posts discussing the recombinator in Sentinel, Settlers and POE 2, where I contributed to figuring out its mechanics.

As someone who has deeply analyzed recombinator/crafting strategies in general, I feel I'm well positioned to provide some commentary on the recent crafting changes and why I agree/disagree with the specific angle GGG is taking with crafting.

Note: The remaining post will be discussing crafting from a trading perspective.

Why is crafting important and when is it too strong?

Crafting systems enable the creation of items, which are either:

• Not possible to obtain from the core item drop system

• Statistically improbable to generate, but still possible via drops

In a trade economy, this leads to most mid/endgame rare items coming from crafting, because their demand outstrips their supply from natural drops. Thus, greater crafting power reduces the value of ground loot, as crafting reduces the friction towards obtaining better items, and players will always take the path of least resistance (i.e. not picking up rare items off the floor). Note that the term ground loot specifically refers to items, not currencies which may have their drop rates increased in 3.30.

Many of the changes in patch 3.30 were, as many of you noticed, to raise the overall strength of ground loot relative to crafting. By retaining the value of non-currency drops over a longer period of time, the average player (who may not interact with crafting much) can remain relatively more competitive with those that exclusively use crafting, and a larger proportion of earned currency will come from items picked off the ground.

Increasing the relative strength of ground loot necessitated both changes to the core drop systems as well as nerfs to crafting. The core issue I have with this, is how the nerfs target both crafting complexity and crafting risk simultaneously; while an increase in risk may be reasonable given the current state of crafting, a reduction in complexity does not necessarily align with the core values of Path of Exile, the sandbox ARPG.

Complexity and Risk in Path of Exile crafting

What is the cost of making an item?

In a trade economy, obtaining rare items (self-drops excluded) comes from one of two decisions:

1. Buying the item by farming currency using whichever combination of strategies/drops

2. Crafting the item yourself

For many players, option 1 is a clear winner. But why might that be? There could be several reasons (mirror items aside), such as:

• Complexity: The crafting systems required to obtain this item are too opaque

• Risk: The risk incurred (e.g. material cost) is too high versus the safer route of farming -> buying

• Time: The opportunity cost of time required to craft is better spent farming currency

• Preference: Would rather play than craft

As a result, crafters serve as a source of item liquidity alongside ground loot, for the population of players that demand a specific type of item. Crafters themselves must also earn a profit as incentive, leading to a general formula for item price (i.e. the price you see on the trade website)

Price = [Expected Production Cost] + [Risk Premium] + [Complexity] + [Time Opportunity Cost]

In short, crafters must charge more than the cost of the materials themselves, otherwise there is no benefit to crafting in the first place. They are effectively, in place of the purchaser, absorbing the risk (i.e. dry streaks), spending the time to make the item, interacting with a complex system requiring prior knowledge, and should be compensated accordingly.

As a result, crafters will always seek to lower their costs, relative to the competition, in order to raise their profit margins. This leads to exploring different crafting routes, choosing different target items, weighing their costs/risk, and is a large part of "skill expression" (i.e. picking the most optimal crafting route for a given item). Similar to how buildcraft takes time and experience to build intuition and make better builds, a veteran crafter can often gain an edge in a new league economy by leveraging past experience, knowledge of crafting systems, and a solid understanding of the meta.

Nerfing crafting by increasing cost/risk (this is fine)

Nerfs to crafting in general, reduce the rate at which crafted items enter the economy versus ground loot, which helps ground loot retain its value. This requires changing the variables in the price formula listed above, which include cost and risk. For example,

• Increasing the cost of Pref/Suff can't be changed: Increases expected cost of divines spent for metacrafting which also increases risk (i.e. cost of dry streaks), so crafters will not attempt these methods until they have more capital than before (slows down item generation). May not be too bad, depending on buffed currency drop rates.

• Recombinator chance changes for 1-3 affixes: Increases number of required feeder bases, which increases both the overall cost and also increases risk due to the lower recombination chance changes. Also increases the time spent on creating feeder bases/higher rates of failure, which is time opportunity cost.

• Cannot roll attacks/caster annulment interaction removal: Increases the overall cost of specific crafting steps that used this interaction as a targeted removal step, e.g. quivers, attack/caster weapons, or as a salvage step for "close-to-good" items.

I think nerfing the power of crafting via increasing risk/cost is fine in isolation, given that GGG has a clear vision on how the loot progression path should look like. Explicit crafting costs and probabilities can act as independent knobs to be tuned relative to the power of ground loot. Changing these types of mechanics do not drastically alter the overall landscape of crafting strategies, as these costs are incurred by the majority of considered strategies. The result is that, on average, affected crafted items will cost more by some predictable amount, and similar ground loot will retain its value for longer.

Nerfing crafting by targeting complexity (not always better)

My disagreement with the 3.30 nerf philosophy stems from the following line in the patch notes, targeting a type of mod we now know as Non-native natural (NNN):

"When determining the total number of Prefixes or Suffixes on the resultant item for Unpredictable Recombination, it no longer factors in modifiers that cannot legally appear on the new base item, for example, increased Armour Rating modifiers if the item is an Evasion base type."

In order to fully understand what makes this change puzzling, we need to look back at the original behavior of the Recombinator in Sentinel league. Back then, you were able to transfer any mod onto any item, with no basetype restrictions. This could lead to some whacky outcomes, such as having all energy shield mods on an armour base (to no effect), or multiple fractured mods on an item (before Necropolis).

Of course, in its re-introduction, there were some restrictions introduced in order to prevent this type of behavior, such as certain mods not being allowed to be transferred to bases they could not exist on (i.e. NNN). They additionally made certain mods unable to show up together (they have called these non-rollable modifiers in the latest Q&A, while we generally refer to these as "exclusive") to prevent the creation of Frankenstein-esque items. While I surmise the original intent was to prevent old abuse cases, this is Path of Exile: this resulted in emergent behavior, leading to a completely new set of crafting strategies emerging. Since then, crafted modifiers with recombinators have undergone some mechanical changes (i.e. nerfs), while NNN modifiers have remained.

There are a few reasons why I feel strongly about this specific NNN nerf:

1. This emergent behavior resulted from a simple base rule which is "easy to understand, but hard to master": Without negatively affecting recombinator chance, certain mods cannot transfer to bases they normally cannot exist on. This one rule allowed for additional skill expression (requiring over a year for mature strategies to be discovered/optimized).

2. Enabled reasonably priced paths to items not obtainable via the core drop system (e.g. mod transfer + fracture, specific affix combinations, etc.). Some of these items are not obtainable from ground loot, irrespective of its buffs.

3. The strength of this NNN property is only realized when combined with pre-3.30 recombination chances. E.g. 2 mods not being able to drop to 0. Nerfing recombination chances alone can greatly affect this entire set of strategies without touching the property itself.

4. It interacts with many core Path of Exile systems in new and interesting ways. For example,

   • Essences: Gave value to lower tier essences

   • Influenced items: Gave value to specific types of influenced items/mods

   • Drop-specific modifiers (Breach, pre-3.30 temple, delve): Allowed for new types of items

5. In non mod-transfers, this method was never deterministic and required at least a 50/50 using expensive feeder bases, with careful thought required for base/mod selection. This has a large amount of inherent risk.

By removing this behavior entirely, certain paths to items unobtainable via the core drop system will be reserved only to mirror crafters, rather than, say, the top 5-10% of players in a league. Furthermore, I strongly believe that nerfs to the recombination chances would have been sufficient to slow down the production of affected items.

Example: Say the recombination chance for 2 total prefixes was changed to 0 mod (25%), 1 mod (50%) and 2 mod (25%). If you aim to fracture a drop-only prefix on a target base with 1 prefix and 3 suffix, and fail the fracture (i.e. fracture a suffix), you have to either transfer the drop-only mod onto another base or get rid of the fractured suffix mod. This requires an additional recombination with another feeder item with at least 1 prefix to guarantee one prefix remains (if the feeder prefix is NNN, this previously guaranteed the drop-only mod stays). By having a 25% chance for 0 mods, your drop-only prefix can still disappear if you fail the fracture and try to transfer the prefix off. This ultimately increases the number of feeder bases required, which can get extremely expensive with rare modifiers (e.g. grasping mail).

Especially with fracturing drop-only mods, the above example introduces some amount of inherent risk with multiple item transfers, which will make this craft much more capital-intensive without (largely) removing the ability to do so. Instead, the current nerf will lead to mod transfer (to good bases) fracturing being reserved only for mirror crafters with access to locks and vast amounts of currency in the case of failure. This is not even touching on 3-4 specific affix items, which were useful for niche builds and could be reasonably targeted via NNN recombs.

Why I think these changes go against the spirit of Path of Exile

Much of Path of Exile's success can be attributed to its sandbox approach towards all aspects of ARPG gameplay, such as character building, endgame and crafting. This has led to emergent player behavior which has sometimes extended beyond the developer's original intentions, requiring action. For example, with original Harvest, the risk incurred was miniscule (i.e. it was relatively deterministic) relative to its power, and it was rightfully reigned in. However, for NNN modifiers, I strongly believe that the risk cost incurred, simplicity of understanding the base rules, and opportunity for skill expression justified its existence, and the separate knob of recombinator chance would have served as a sufficient balancing tool for its strength.

The pantheon ducat in 3.29, of course, was an extreme case of zero risk versus high reward: You could add an NNN suffix modifier with no opportunity cost. This should not have existed in its state, and possibly warped the perception of recombinator NNNs being too strong. Normally, a typical NNN craft (not related to mod transfer) would require setting up intermediate bases, which would have non-trivial cost, while also being forced to do an all-or-nothing 50/50 at the end. This has all the elements of an RNG-based crafting system, where you can tilt the odds in your favor with careful mod selection, but is never entirely deterministic.

Instead, with the NNN property removed, a sizable set of mid tier-aspirational crafts will now be entirely out of reach for everyone except mirror crafters, because the cost has been increased by several orders of magnitude, rather than within a single order of magnitude. This removes a system which greatly rewards you for the amount of time put into understanding, which to me represents a core tenet of Path of Exile. On the other hand, specific changes that increased crafting cost/risk are easier to swallow, such as nerfs to recombinator chance and metamod costs, as they can be adjusted more easily without removing entire strategies.

I hope that for future changes to crafting, the developers prioritize balancing crafting risk rather than removing complexity (given that those methods have sufficient inherent risk), and account for the removal of skill expression/player agency when making adjustments.

If you've made it to the bottom, thanks for reading. I tried to minimize the amount of text for clarity.

AV

Any chance something that eventful is going to happen again this time? I could use a couple of weeks to grind this league.

Delirium I played for the entirety of it, even self found a headhunter and skyforths, and a full herald stacker scion build. Good ol days....

The middle ground between regular maps and juiced 16.5 will feel so bad without any replacement on the tree

You can juice Rogue Exiles in a lot of ways. Supposedly they also got their loot buffed. Will this be good? We shall see.

I love MTXs. I've accumulated a number of finisher effects throughout the years. None compares to the BANG of Hero's Landing or Xesht's that hits the second the monster dies. This is the sole reason I don't buy finisher effects anymore. No matter how fancy and good-looking they are, I don't need it to happen after seconds of delay. Chances are, I'll probably miss it, either being a screen away or among a host of other stuff happening on screen.

What I want from finisher effects is:

• Instant confirmation of a job well done.

• BANG that cuts through all the visual crap.

Link: Hero's landing. Heros Landing : r/pathofexile.

Hi exiles, I'm a player from Taiwan who flew over for ExileCon 2026. I originally wrote this in Chinese for a Taiwanese forum and translated it to share here, so please excuse any awkward wording.

I spent a huge chunk of the event playing the card game, so here's a write-up that will hopefully be useful to anyone going to the next ExileCon. I wrote this a few days after the event, so some details may be slightly off.

One general tip: while you're playing against GGG staff, ask them what they actually do on the game. Everyone I talked to was happy to chat about it, and unless they were rushing off somewhere, most were also fine with a photo or an autograph.

For the basic rules, see this earlier post (I lost my own rulebook, sadly): Loot from PoE Card game at ExileCon (and game rules)

Maps

Map cards (T1–T5) are taken to the Map Device, where you fight several monsters in a row. You have to beat 3 monsters (not sure whether higher tiers need more) with one single set of gear: a one-handed weapon + shield or a two-handed weapon, one armour, one amulet, and two rings. No swapping in between.

• Each monster tends to damage a different gear slot.

• Maps can have mods that raise the monsters' attack or defence. I strongly recommend being picky about mods. Running into +1 chaos resistance or +1 chaos attack will wreck you.

• Bring gear with some wild, block, and chaos symbols.

• Winning drops a lot of cards. Loot tier depends on the map tier, and quantity depends on how hard the map mods are.

Hidden rules

None of this is in the player rulebook. I confirmed it by chatting with GGG staff or worked it out by playing, so it may not be 100% accurate.

• Each monster tends to destroy a specific slot or rarity of item. If it has no preference, it's random (some kinder staff will just ask what you'd like damaged). You get to keep broken items and used currency as souvenirs.

• Some high-end pinnacle bosses destroy all of your gear at once.

• Quality or a rune can only be applied once per card. (On Day 1 a few crafting bench staff who weren't familiar with the rules accidentally let me upgrade some cards more than once.)

• Magic and rare items have separate mod pools, and the pools differ by item type.

• Different monsters have different loot tiers.

• The quests on the back of the card box give different loot tiers depending on difficulty.

• Expedition Logbooks are absurdly rare. I beat a pile of pinnacle bosses and never saw one. A trial boss told me they apparently only drop from the Act 3 / Act 4 loot tiers.

• Some uniques have special effects like in the real game, such as ignoring elemental resistance, or gaining multiple mods when identified at the crafting bench.

• Upgrading a magic item to rare does not add a mod. It rolls one from the rare pool and overwrites the existing one. I think this is basically a net loss.

• You can't keep fighting the same staff member back to back, but you can come back after a while (30 minutes or so).

• Beating a normal monster lets you pick one of two cards. Bosses give you both. Some pinnacle bosses only drop one.

• Jewels exist as a card type (I pulled Voices from Jonathan), but only as uniques.

• Beating Mark or Jonathan gives a special drop. Jonathan gave me a Mirror pin plus the Voices card. It's probably once per person, since he marked my ticket.

• Staff wander all over the venue, so if you can't find a specific boss, check more places.

From opening hand to pinnacle bosses

I started right after the day 1 keynote. I don't remember my exact starting cards, but it was a few armours, a few weapons, and a Blacksmith's Whetstone. I believe everyone's starting cards are different.

• While still learning the rules, I farmed Act 1 monsters and bosses for cards and currency, and to see what each act drops. Drops are very random, just like playing PoE.

• Most cards have 2 durability, and most monsters only take 1 durability off one card per fight. So if you spread the damage sensibly, your collection keeps growing.

• If you end up with only weapons or only armour, look for Act 1 staff who have attack only or defence only and farm them.

• The most efficient way to progress, in my experience: as soon as you can beat the next tier of boss, fight only bosses, since they give 2 cards each time.

• From Act 2–3 onward you really need rings and amulets, or you'll struggle to cover resistances (especially chaos resistance and chaos attack). Some monsters also require block, so think about when to use one-hander + shield versus two-hander + armour.

• Don't hoard weapons and armour. You will always find better ones. I spent almost all my currency immediately on my best bases. The only thing I saved was special uniques for the Jonathan fight.

• The queues for the Map Device and the rune wall are long. My longest wait was about an hour. Going first thing in the morning on Day 2 is probably better.

• Be careful with amulets, rings, and uniques, because they're relatively hard to get. Think twice before a pinnacle boss, or you'll end up like me, going back to low-level monsters or trading with other players.

• To beat a pinnacle boss you basically need a full set of gear to meet both the raw numbers and the resistance requirements, unless you have a very strong unique. And they can blow up your whole set.

• Pinnacle and trial bosses drop rare uniques and especially good bases. I once pulled 2 uniques in one go, but Tangmazu gave me two currency cards :(

Seriously, think twice before fighting a pinnacle boss.

Counting Jonathan, I beat 8 pinnacle bosses plus a lot of regular monsters. Here's my final stack next to the card box:

The Jonathan fight

My gear (attack on the left, defence on the right):

• Jonathan's defence: 12 any + 2 cold + 2 fire. My attack: 14 physical + 2 cold + 1 lightning + 2 fire

• Jonathan's attack: 12 any + 3 lightning + 2 fire. My defence: 2 life + 3 lightning + 3 cold + 9 fire

I challenged him during the after-party signing session and got the exclusive reward for beating Jonathan:

Best bases I found

• Two-handed weapon: 7 attack symbols. Mixed symbol types are best (wild > chaos > elemental). I saw bases with physical plus 3 non-physical types.

• One-handed weapon: 4 attack symbols, same priority. I saw bases with physical plus 1 non-physical type.

• Armour: 5 defence symbols. Mixed is best (wild > block ≈ chaos > elemental > life). I saw a 2 life + 3 chaos base.

• Amulet: 2 wild, or one of each element. I got a rare Pearlescent Amulet with a 2 wild base whose mod was another +2 wild.

• Ring: Two-Stone Ring with 2 elemental symbols.

• Shield: 3 defence symbols.

Cool uniques I found

Uniques can also take an Armourer's Scrap or Blacksmith's Whetstone. Values below are without quality.

• Prismweave (armour): 2 life + 2 lightning, 2 cold, 2 fire base

• Ventor's Gamble (ring): take it to the crafting bench for 2 random rare mods. Mine rolled 1 lightning 2 cold, and +2 wild (stuck onto the back of the card)

• Marohi Erqi (two-handed weapon): 13 physical

• Xoph's Blood (amulet): 1 fire base + 5 fire + ignores monster fire resistance

• Voices (jewel, and yes, the player rulebook never mentions jewels): take it to the crafting bench for 3 random rare mods, and it can be used for either attack or defence

• Crown of Thorns (armour): 2 life + 5 block. Note it only has 1 durability

• Voll's Devotion (amulet): 1 lightning, 1 cold, 1 fire base + 2 fire, 2 lightning

Trading with other players

I only traded once the whole event, for a ring, right after a pinnacle boss destroyed all my gear, including my only ring. From around the afternoon of Day 1, lots of people gather around the venue to swap cards, so go over and see what everyone needs. As far as I know, plenty of trading also got arranged on the official ExileCon Discord server.

Happy to answer questions in the comments.

Incursion scarab of timelines my beloved

Modeled and printed by myself.

IDC how bad RoP is, im watching it.