News Tag: POE Currency

A month ago, a teaser trailer for Path of Exile 3.27 was released, announcing its October release date. As expected, 3.27 is scheduled to release on October 31st., and Secrets of the Atlas League will conclude on October 27th, leaving players with approximately three weeks to continue polishing their builds.

So, should you relax and enjoy the game during this time, or make a few extra bucks? What happens to your character after the league ends? How should you prepare for the new league?

How To Prepare For The New League?

PoE 3.26 lasted for almost five months, which naturally brought in a number of new players. Some of these players may not be fully aware of what the league transition represents.

Simply put, it's similar to the season transition in Diablo. When 3.26 transitions to 3.27, all characters, items, PoE currency, experience, and progress in the current challenge league will be transferred to the permanent standard league. When you create a character in a new league, it won't be able to use any gear or currency from the previous league. This means any hard work you put into 3.26 won't carry over to the new league.

If you want to prepare for 3.27, you can pay attention to the official announcements about the new league content and skill adjustments, note your desired build and the best upgrade build, and find a suitable loot filter to save you time searching through junk during gameplay. This will help you prepare early.

Your first build shouldn't be the strongest in the meta, but rather the one you most want to play. Once you successfully reach the endgame with your desired build and accumulate some PoE currency and gear, you can switch to a Meta build, which will allow you to upgrade faster.

Is 3.26 Still Worth Playing?

Secrets of the Atlas League has fewer content updates than other leagues, leading players to call it the worst season.

Judging by Steam online users and views on various streaming platforms, PoE 3.26 has fewer players than previous seasons. This may be due to the period of inactivity leading up to PoE2's release, which caused some players (including veterans who never switch leagues) to skip or join later.

However, despite the decrease in total players, player retention is very high. Even amidst severe server issues (especially on European servers), a large number of players continue to play. So, if you continue playing now, you don't have to worry about finding someone to trade with. You can sell all your PoE currency before the league ends, and you might even make a small profit.

Tier 16.5 Maps

Tier 16.5 maps are one of the best features of 3.26, primarily due to the map layout options. Tier 17 maps have closed corridor layouts, which often restrict player movement, hinder ranged and AOE builds, and make certain activities (such as Breach and Legion) a poor experience.

Tier 16.5 maps allow players to choose their favorite old map layouts, which greatly improves the gameplay experience. Furthermore, better layouts allow for more interesting builds that rely on area-of-effect effects, rather than just targeting specific Tier 17 meta builds.

While Tier 17 maps may offer higher returns per map, Tier 16.5 maps, thanks to their efficient layouts, narrow the payoff per unit time, so even if you don't challenge Tier 17 maps, you won't lose much. Furthermore, farming efficiency on Tier 16.5 maps isn't much lower than Tier 17. Even after the mid-game fix for the bug that guaranteed Tier 17 modifiers with eight affixes, Tier 16.5 maps still offer good returns. Tier 16.5 maps are expected to be carried over to 3.27.

Mercenaries League

Mercenaries are a new mechanic added in 3.26. Mercenaries can serve as powerful support. You can equip them with special equipment to grant you auras or taunt enemies. You can even have them serve as your primary damage dealer, with you supporting them.

When choosing equipment, you need to balance making your mercenaries powerful enough to enhance your own abilities with ensuring their survival. The mercenary system makes many previously unpopular Path of Exile items valuable.

However, mercenaries significantly increase the power of all builds, making 3.26 easier. If this mechanic isn't added to the core game, players in 3.27 might struggle to adapt. If it is, the disruption to game balance caused by mercenaries could be devastating.

Doryani's Prototype is a classic example of a design error. If you put this item, which grants negative lightning resistance, on a nearly indestructible mercenary, it overpowers the lightning build, disrupting the balance. Therefore, 3.27 may only retain a few mercenaries or their corresponding gems, while most mercenary-related content may be removed.

Beyond the content of 3.26, there has been no official preview or announcement regarding 3.27's content. However, it is expected to include new bosses and PoE currency. Another long-awaited feature that will probably launch in 3.27 is Path of Exile 2's current asynchronous trading system. It performed almost flawlessly in 0.3.0, and this feature promises significant improvements to the trading system, making it well worth the wait.

Currently, Path of Exile 3.26's player base isn't at its peak, and with 3.27 still about three weeks away, finding players willing to trade with you might be challenging before the new trading system launches.

However, IGGM will offer trading services from the start of the season until the end, allowing you to buy reliable PoE currency and items to complete your build.

It's been almost three months since the release of Path of Exile 3.26 (June 13, 2025 PDT). Recently, they released a soft announcement that 3.27 will arrive in October.

While they haven't yet announced a specific date, we can make some inferences based on their update schedule and habits.

Path Of Exile 3.27 Release Date

Most Likely Dates:

• October 24th
• October 31st

The official goal is to release 3.27 at the end of October, with the specific date to be announced via a livestream in a few weeks. The current Mercenaries of Trarthus League typically ends about a week before the new league exam, leaving players plenty of time to complete their current league's challenges.

PoE developers typically release updates on Fridays US time, officially announced as the end of October. Therefore, an update on October 17th is unlikely. If October 21st is considered late October, then both the 24th and 31st are possible new dates.

Given that Path of Exile 2 wasn't announced until the end of August, October 31st is the most likely date.

Path Of Exile Development Cycle

Before the release of 3.26, the developers explained their upcoming update cycle for Path of Exile 1 and 2 in an interview. PoE 1 and 2 will release new content every four months, adding new mechanics and a new PoE currency. This alternating cycle means players will be able to enjoy new content every two months on average.

This model provides players with predictability and reliability; even if a particular release isn't satisfactory, players know there will be new content to play a few months later.

However, given the late release date of Path of Exile 2, subsequent updates may be delayed until the end of the month. That means Path of Exile 2 patch 0.4.0 will be released at the end of December, and PoE 3.28 will be released at the end of February 2026.

However, Path of Exile's development staff is clearly insufficient. Currently, only about two developers can make class balance changes without review.

These core balancers need to constantly switch focus between POE 1 and POE 2 projects. While they're balancing PoE 2, POE 1 may not receive meaningful balance updates. Furthermore, due to the holiday break, I strongly suspect both patch 0.4.0 and POE 3.28 will be delayed.

Possible Content In Patch 3.27

The league theme and new features for 3.27 have not yet been announced, but the next patch is very likely to bring Path of Exile 2's asynchronous trading system (Merchant Tab System) to Path of Exile 1.

This new trading system allows you to place your items for sale, acting like a merchant. Other players can trade with you using PoE currency even when you're offline, without both players being online. This functionality is similar to an auction house in an MMO.

This will significantly change the gameplay experience in PoE 1, as trading is much more frequent in PoE 1 than in PoE 2. Currently, trading in PoE 1 can be frustrating, especially when you find an item that perfectly matches your build, only to have it rejected. Time zone issues also make trading quite inconvenient. Merchant Tab System will effectively address these issues.

Furthermore, for players who want to succeed in the trade league economy, quickly reaching the endgame and then progressing to farm will be more important than ever.

What Content Will Be Retained In 3.27?

PoE 3.26 is a good and fun League, but it still gets a distance with a real big expansion. With each League update, not everything from the previous League is retained, as this could affect game balance and the economy.

Mercenaries of Trarthus will definitely not be retained, as these mercenaries are too powerful and would disrupt the game balance, making it too easy. However, most of the mercenary skill gems are weak, but they may be added to the core.

Other contents, such as new PoE currency, Tier 16.5 maps, new bosses and unique items, are likely to remain, as they all have a positive impact on the game.

Comparison Between POE 1 And POE 2

The current Path of Exile 1 league has been running for three months, and some players may have already shifted their focus to Path of Exile 2. Other players, lacking the energy to play two complex APRGs simultaneously, are undecided between the two.

As an unfinished game, Path of Exile 2 is improving faster and is the current focus of the developers, allowing you to experience more new content.

Path of Exile 1 currently has a faster pace in leveling and endgame, and its boss battles are less immersive and challenging. It's more suitable for newcomers and is currently the better of the two.

Path of Exile 3.27 is still a while away, but even if you're tired of patch 3.26, you won't be bored while you wait. Currently, there's Last Epoch Season 3, and the recently released Path of Exile 2 patch 0.3.0, and Diablo 4 Season 10 is coming at the end of September, so you can wait in busy.

While the popularity of Path of Exile 3.26 seems to have waned recently, as long as you’re still playing, you’re likely to discover and utilize many powerful new builds! These will help you achieve even greater progress in the latter 3.26 battles.

This time, we’ll introduce Spectral Throw Trap Build. As a trap build, it not only provides ample DPS but also offers excellent durability and resiliency, and you can continuously optimize it if you wish.

Next, we’ll explain the combat effectiveness of this build and how to craft it in-game.

How To Choose The Right Gem?

Undoubtedly, in Path of Exile, gem selection often represents skill. As the name of the build suggests, the essential gem is Spectral Throw of Trarthus.

As an attack trap skill, when triggered, it fires multiple penetrating projectiles with the same effect as your current melee weapon through the trap, creating a nova of projectiles that then return to the trap location, damaging enemies in its path.

It’s important to note that Spectral Throw of Trarthus is essentially Trarthus version of Spectral Throw. This mechanic, exclusive to League 3.26, completely changes the skill’s properties, even down to its gem tags and mechanics.

Since Spectral Throw of Trarthus throws copies of your weapon at evenly spaced intervals around the trap, you can use it to create a more defensive build without having to worry about positioning like you would with Spectral Throw.

What makes this skill unique compared to most other skills in POE is that you can hit the same target multiple times with the same bullet, allowing you to deal increased damage. If you can keep the bullet on target, you can even hit enemies approximately 4.4 times per second per attack.

This way, if you utilize Spectral Throw Trap Build in enemy-heavy maps or quests, you’ll complete battles faster and earn more POE currency, helping you upgrade your gear quickly for tougher stages.

Glove Mod

Assuming you have sufficient dexterity and intelligence, you can enhance your build and character by adding mods. The glove mod, based on the core Spectral Throw of Trarthus, randomly increases or decreases bullet velocity by 50%.

First, the duration of a projectile is directly related to its velocity. Without the glove mod, projectiles are symmetrical; they launch and return simultaneously. If the trap is centered on an enemy, it might hit the enemy two or three times: once on launch and once on return.

However, with the glove mods increased projectile velocity, you’ll see a change in projectile duration, eliminating the need to reposition yourself. The varying return time of the projectile means you can score extra hits and a higher chance of hitting with your throw.

Another important benefit of the glove mod is that it increases your damage effectiveness by reducing the rolling speed of your projectiles. This allows you to hit at least 10 enemies with almost every trap you throw.

In this scenario, the projectiles don’t actually leave the monster’s attack range, but instead attack at their maximum damage of 4.44 times per second until they are depleted. All projectiles with longer range and duration then enter range to deal even more damage.

How To Choose The Best Gear?

There are many gear combinations suitable for this build, and you can choose based on your needs. A top recommendation is Marohi Erqi, which has decent physical damage and allows you to convert it into lightning or cold damage through the damage conversion mechanic.

Rakiata’s Dance is a good unique greatsword that can be paired with Marohi Erqi, or you can get Ephemeral Edge for even better tanking. However, if you’re looking for even more damage output, Energy Blade is a better choice.

Most of this gear can be obtained through combat drops or traded with other players. After assembling your gear, you can combine three mod prefixes and then roll them with different types of POE currency.

How To Defend And Recover?

Typical trap builds rarely offer recovery, but Spectral Throw Trap Build is an exception. It grants a 90% dodge rate through grace and mage blood flask, allowing you to gain approximately 2500 energy shield (ES) each time you’re hit with Ghost Dance.

If you want to avoid being hit, it’s recommended to use Titanium Spirit Shield at maximum block to gain 5% ES recovery when blocking. Tempest Shield and Replica Reckless Defense can increase your block rate to over 50% and spell block rate to 31%.

Suitable Passive Skills

First, I recommend acquiring Trap Support. This gem allows you to set a trap instead of directly casting a skill. The trap is invisible to enemies, and the first enemy to enter the trigger radius triggers it, creating an additional trap area effect.

The area effect means all traps trigger simultaneously, giving you a wider reach and a significant amount of bonus damage. This also increases your damage to a single target by 10%.

Finally, if you’re not used to melee trap builds, it’s important to ensure your accuracy is high when utilizing Spectral Throw Trap Build. Ideally, your accuracy level should be equal to your intelligence mastery.

We hope this introduction to the build’s crafting and its utilization is helpful. Thank you for reading.

After August arrives, you’re likely increasingly anticipating the release of Path of Exile 2 patch 0.3.0 at the end of the month. However, Path of Exile 1 actually welcomed a new event just a few days ago!

Called Merciless Gauntlet, it’s launched by renowned Path of Exile streamer Zizaran. It officially began on July 31st and will run until August 10th.

This isn’t the first time Zizaran has launched such an event in the game, but each event’s gameplay varies depending on the related league’s mechanics.

To help you earn event rewards, or at least get a taste of the fun, we will introduce Merciless Gauntlet to you, and some tips for playing it.

About Merciless Gauntlet

Think of it as a hardcore solo, self-found Mercenaries league. During your playthrough, you’ll earn points by defeating bosses and other enemies, and rewards will be awarded based on your points.

It’s important to note that some Merciless Gauntlet gameplay rules are inconsistent with Mercenaries of Trarthus League:

• There are no banned skills.
• Doryani’s Prototype cannot be obtained in any way.
• When challenging bosses, you can only use up to three portals instead of the normal six, otherwise you won’t receive points even if you kill the boss.
• The available Ascendancy classes are based on the previous Legacy of Phrecia settings.

Fortunately, you should still be able to consume existing POE currency to upgrade your gear’s rarity or refresh affixes, thereby enhancing it and earning more event points by killing bosses.

Event Battle Mechanics

In addition to the point-based reward mechanics and main rules mentioned above, most bosses in Merciless Gauntlet have different skills (either enhanced or swappable) than in regular 3.26 gameplay, and it’s even possible to encounter multiple bosses simultaneously.

Furthermore, different campaigns and maps in different acts will have different modifiers. However, Tier 17 maps will not have any additional modifiers and will drop five times more Uber boss fragments.

The following are the playable areas and bosses in this event:

• Campaign (Act 1 - Act 5)
• Campaign (Act 6 - Act 10)
• White Maps (Area Level 68-72)
• Yellow Maps (Area Level 73-77)
• Red Maps (Area Level 78-83)
• Tier 17 Maps (Area Level 84)
• Atlas Bosses (Non-Uber Sirus, Maven, Exarch, etc.): (Area Level 84)
• Uber Bosses (Area Level 85)

All bosses have unique abilities and mechanics. If you plan to fight to the end, it’s best to know which bosses will appear in the next area and their characteristics in advance so you can plan your responses accordingly.

What Tips Might Help You?

Due to the hardcore nature of Merciless Gauntlet, your character only has one life, and once you die, you can’t restart. Therefore, you must stay as safe as possible, even if this initially slows your progress.

Based on this, while killing more difficult bosses will grant more points initially, it’s perfectly acceptable to focus on farming the most basic boss, Hillock, to earn points and useful drops in the early stages.

This boss can be found in Act 1’s Twilight Strand. When fighting this boss, be aware that he will spawn Unstable Aberration via Leap Slam in phase 2, constantly disrupting you. Ranged classes are generally better suited to dealing with him.

To ensure your attack and defense capabilities continue to grow, you must not only obtain loot from bosses but also continuously trade with NPCs for more and better gear to replace your existing gear and upgrade its affixes.

It’s worth mentioning that if you’re interested in the event bonuses described below, it’s best to enter the event in your strongest class, as this will increase your chances of finishing at the top of the leaderboard and winning rewards!

What Are The Event Rewards?

First, if you participate in this event and your character reaches level 2 during the event, you’ll receive a Gauntlet Glove Effect, which will track your highest level achieved during the event. If you complete all event campaigns, you’ll also receive a Dawn of the Hunt Mystery Box.

As for the actual prize, a portion will be allocated for special bonuses, such as first kills of pinnacle bosses. The majority of the prize will be distributed to the top 1 scorers (12%) and the top 2 scorers (4%).

In addition, if you rank well in your class, you’ll also receive bonuses: the top 1 scorer in each class will receive 8%, and the top 2 scorer in each class will receive 4%.

Even if you’re not as skilled, you still have a chance to get prize through your luck! There will be a raffle for the event, and if your character reaches the corresponding level range, you’ll have a chance to win the following physical/in-game items!

• Reach Level 50: 5x $20 Food Delivery Gift Cards, 250x Dawn of the Hunt Mystery Box
• Reach Level 60: 1x Keychron K4 Pro Wireless Keyboard, 8x Mist Portal Effect, Divergence Portal Effect, Astral Portal Effect, Heritage Portal Effect
• Reach Level 70: 1x Logitech G502X Wireless Mouse, 8x Divergence Weapon Effect, Deepwater Weapon Effect, Winter Dragon Weapon Effect
• Reach Level 80: 1x Samsung 9100 Pro 1TB, 8x Divergence Cloak, Siren Cloak, Starfall Cloak
• Reach Level 90: 1x NVIDIA RTX 5070, 1x Winter Dragon, Nightfall, Rapture, Siren, Mercurial, Necrolord, Lightning Stygian Armor Packs
• Reach Level 95: 1x NVIDIA RTX 5080

The above are the main information and tips for Merciless Gauntlet event. The event won’t last long, so be sure to seize the opportunity to claim the rewards! Good luck!

As you know, crafting builds in Path of Exile series is usually centered around a class/Ascendancy class, or a single skill, because skills in the series are obtained by equipping skill gems, not determined by the selected class.

Therefore, in order to make the game more content-rich, POE will occasionally add new skill gems when releasing new leagues or patches. In POE 3.26, Wave of Conviction of Trarthus was added.

This skill is actually Trarthus gem version of the old skill Wave of Conviction - this is also a special mechanism introduced by 3.26 Mercenaries of Trarthus league.

This time we will introduce you to the mechanism and Wave of Conviction of Trarthus skill, and bring you a guide to craft related builds.

What Are Trarthus Gems?

Trarthus gems are actually replacement versions of existing skill gems, which are expressed as adding the suffix “of Trarthus” to the original skill name to change its function and balance.

In terms of overall skill effect, Trarthus skills are basically the same as default skills, but they will change the characteristics of the skills from other angles, and even change their gem tags and mechanics, which is similar to transfigured gems.

To obtain Trarthus gems, you need to duel with mercenaries in 3.26 league. After winning, in addition to the regular POE currency, you will also receive a random Trarthus gem. There are currently 12 Trarthus gems in the game:

• Sunder of Trarthus
• Chain Hook of Trarthus
• Heavy Strike of Trarthus
• Bladefall of Trarthus
• Blast Rain of Trarthus
• Dark Pact of Trarthus
• Spectral Throw of Trarthus
• Spectral Shield Throw of Trarthus
• Storm Call of Trarthus
• Spectral Helix of Trarthus
• Siege Ballista of Trarthus
• Wave of Conviction of Trarthus

What Is Wave Of Conviction Of Trarthus?

This skill is actually a physical/fire spell. It creates a ring of energy that can damage enemies twice as it spreads out from you for a while and then returns. Only one ring can be active at a time through this skill.

Unlike the original Wave of Conviction, Trarthan version has lower base damage, damage effect, and duration, but it does not cause exposure and converts 50% of physical damage to fire damage instead of directly outputting 25% fire damage and 25% lightning damage.

How To Craft Related Builds?

For Wave of Conviction of Trarthus, the key to its exclusive builds is to invest in scorch, exposure, penetration, and curse effects as much as possible to reduce enemy resistance.

Based on this, you can defeat and hire a mercenary equipped with Doryani’s Prototype and The Admiral Varnished Coat, or Fallen Reverend mercenary is also a good choice, because he can give you a free aura and cover enemies with ash.

In terms of class selection, it is recommended that you match Witch’s Ascendancy class Elementalist for the entire build, because this class can give you powerful damage, defense, and recovery capabilities at the same time through the reinforced puppet army.

Unlike the original version, since Wave of Conviction of Trarthus converts 50% of the damage to fire damage, you should utilize the appropriate items and passive skills to convert it to 100%, and trigger a linked spell every 0.3 seconds during the channeling skill.

This way, by reducing the duration of your energy wave, not only can your damage effectively kill the enemy, but it will also bring you a large amount of extra health and energy shield.

It should be noted that although this build has good damage effects against single and group enemies, it is not recommended to use it in the early stages of the league because it requires you to unlock the appropriate mercenaries and utilize skills proficiently.

What Items Are Suitable For This Build?

Compared with general POE 3.26 builds, the build dominated by Wave of Conviction of Trarthus does not require much in terms of gear, jewels, or flasks, and only a part of the primary gear can improve the overall effect.

For example, the already mentioned Doryani’s Prototype and The Admiral Varnished Coat can counteract the enemy’s elemental resistance, and Replica Dragonfang’s Flight amulet and The Light of Meaning jewel can greatly increase the damage you deal.

In addition, when you choose a defensive gem in Sciona area, The Light of Meaning jewel increases the fire damage by more than 200%, making the fire damage output of Wave of Conviction of Trarthus more effective after conversion.

Another good jewel is Watcher’s Eye, which is actually a common supplementary jewel for most builds using multiple auras. For the builds introduced in this article, Zealatry, Grace, and Clarity aura modifiers can increase your damage and defense.

In addition, since you chose Ascendancy class Elementalist, it is recommended that you activate its passive skill Bringer of Ruin, which can enhance the effect of Herald buffs you receive and increase the mana reservation efficiency of Herald skills.

The above is Wave of Conviction of Trarthus skills introduced to you this time, as well as its main build crafting core ideas and recommended items. If you think this plan is good, please try crafting in 3.26 league!

Although craft builds are an important and complex task in any ARPG, the complexity of crafting builds in Path of Exile series is particularly obvious, perhaps because there are many classes and skills in the game.

POE 3.26, which was launched on June 13, continues the complex style of the game. It combines the essence of the previous leagues and introduces more new content for you to experience, which makes craft builds more difficult.

Based on this, this time we will take Marauders Ascendancy class Juggernaut as the basis to introduce you to Tornado Shot Shine Build that is suitable for this class to utilize, based on different items.

The Core Gear That Make This Build Work

The first thing you need to know is that as an Ascendancy class, Juggernaut’s main advantage lies in its reliable tank attributes, and its armor, life recovery, damage reduction, deceleration and stun defense are all very good.

Therefore, the build suitable for Juggernaut is usually based on adding various item effects to it, which requires you to constantly farm more different types of POE currency during crafting, so that you can make builds more powerful by constantly optimizing these items.

For Tornado Shot Shine, its core gear is Spinehail vile arrow quiver and Coiling Whisper amethyst ring, both of which are new items brought by 3.26 and can only be dropped after defeating specific bosses:

• Spinehail: Catarina, Master of Undeath
• Coiling Whisper: Incarnation of Fear

Spinehail Vile Arrow Quiver

Spinehail’s attack will sacrifice a minion to fire three additional arrows at the enemy. Although this sounds a bit complicated, in fact you just need to make sure that Herald of Purity skill is running to obtain a steady stream of minions.

If you want to make the arrows from Spinehail more effective, you can pair it with Widowhail bow to get a 10-arrow multiplier at once, increasing the damage output of the build.

Coiling Whisper Amethyst Ring

The effect of this ring is that when your hex lasts for 90% on an enemy, for every 1 point of enemy strength you increase, you will devour 1 soul, which means you will gain Soul Eater stacks equal to the enemy’s strength. And this effect is not affected by Hexproof.

If you can control the duration short enough, Manaforged Arrows support means that it can help you do this job. And when you attack, if you have Hextouch support, you will continue to curse the enemy.

Based on the above effects, as long as the enemy survives long enough, you can immediately obtain all the souls of the enemy, and the higher the difficulty of the battle, the easier it is to work.

In addition, I believe you have noticed that specific skills or support gems also play an important role in the process of utilizing the above gear. But even without them, you can ensure that the build works properly by adding the following items.

Other Reliable Gear

In addition to the two core gear and Widowhail bow that can be paired with Spinehail - their main function is to increase your damage output, there are other gear in the game that can increase your defense or health that are worth adding.

The Iron Fortress

As a unique crusader plate, the function of this item is to change the damage bonus of strength to increase your melee physical damage by 3% for every 10 points of strength you gain. If it is used with Crown of Eyes, the effect will be even better.

Eyes Of The Greatwolf

This item has two random talisman implicit modifiers. Although the two benefits it brings to you in the end are random, it is very likely to bring you a turning point at the critical moment of the battle.

Related: What New Challenges Does Path Of Exile 3.26 Bound By Destiny Modifier Bring?

Appropriate Flasks

As an important type of benefit item in Path of Exile, properly matched flasks can improve different aspects of the build in unexpected ways. Here are the flasks for Tornado Shot Shine Build:

• Progenesis: When you are hit while it is active, 25% of the health loss from the damage taken will occur over 4 seconds. Drops from Uber Maven.
• Bismuth Flask: It is actually a utility flask base type, equipped on your belt to replenish your energy at any time. It will drop anywhere.
• Quicksilver Flask: As a base type, it works and drops in the same way as Bismuth Flask.
• Jade Flask: Same as above.

The Most Important Gem

As you know, gems in POE are actually available skills (skill gems and support gems), and as the name suggests, the most important skill for this build is Tornado skill.

This skill can create a tornado that continuously damages nearby enemies. While it moves forward, your projectiles can collide with it to continue damaging enemies.

After that, the tornado will chase the enemy for a second period, and reflect a portion of your damage in addition to the existing damage output.

If you are worried about what build to utilize in POE 3.26, this guide about Tornado Shot Shine Build should be able to help you. Thank you for reading.

It has been a month since the official release of Path Of Exile 3.26: Secrets Of The Atlas. How do you think this expansion performs, which has made everyone wait for nearly a year? Is it really worth your expectations?

To be honest, the response to POE 3.26 expansion is generally not ideal. Although this update brings a lot of new content and Atlas expansion after nearly 3 years, most players have a bad gaming experience because of update delays and performance issues.

More importantly, the developers seem to always think that Path Of Exile 2 takes precedence over the original game, which can be seen from the repeated postponements of the 3.26 update. It can even be said that the sequel is so successful now because the previous game was suspended for too long, which made most players turn to POE 2.

Current Comparison Of POE 3.26 And 2

According to the current data from Steam, the number of online players in POE 3.26 is about 32,000-33,000, with an average of about 67,000 online players in a month and a peak of about 68,000. In contrast, the number of online players in POE 2 is about 53,000-54,000, with an average of about 11,700 online players in a month and a daily peak of about 10,000 online players.

But from a broader perspective of active players, POE 3.26 has about 349,000 daily active players and a total of about 53 million registered players, while the sequel has about 437,000 daily active players and a total of about 31.7 million registered players.

Therefore, we can clearly see that since the release of Secrets Of The Atlas, users have been more active in PoE 1, but PoE 2 may have a wider user base on the overall platform. However, compared with its predecessor, PoE 2’s real-time user activity is still much lower.

Because basically since the early access release of PoE 2 last December, the number of daily online players has been shrinking, but it has gradually stabilized between 10,000 and 15,000. This means that although the release of the sequel was discovered by more players because of the popularity of the original, it still retains some players with its own gameplay and style.

What Is The Difference?

However, with the release of Path Of Exile 3.26 league, the difference between the two games has become increasingly significant, and basically most players have a clear preference for them.

Although PoE 3.26 and PoE 2 are closely related, whether because of the series of games or because the development team itself may be temporarily formed and the personnel overlap, if you actually experience them, you will find that they are completely different.

Path of Exile 3.26 is more suitable for some veteran action role-playing game players who are familiar with complex systems. Especially for players who are keen on custom builds and like to spend a lot of time trying out unique skills or builds that are not well known, you will find unique fun here.

As we all know, POE 1 has always been famous for its complex currency economy system, passive skill tree and huge Atlas system, and the newly added mercenary mechanism and memory loops in 3.26 have deepened this feature.

Therefore, if you like new mercenary partners, deeper production mechanisms and flexible league economic systems, and are happy to earn countless POE currency with your own strategies in a short time, then Secrets Of The Atlas will provide you with a rich and satisfying gaming experience.

However, if you like streamlined and easy-to-use gameplay, smooth combat experience and fascinating storyline, then believe me, the 3.26 expansion may only bring you pain, instead POE 2 may be a better choice for you.

Although POE 2 is still in the early access stage, the current updates can show that the developers want to continuously improve the Path Of Exile series universe through it. Because this sequel has not only updated the combat and storyline, but also the game performance and visual effects to make it more in line with the needs of players at all stages.

It’s clear that Path Of Exile 2 is aimed at beginners of the series, who often felt overwhelmed by the original, but prefer to explore the story, visuals, and real-time gameplay. The sequel offers a smooth combat experience and a deep but easy-to-understand progression system, allowing them to experience a challenging campaign without being bound by complex mechanics and outdated tutorials.

As a result, Secrets Of The Atlas now seems to be more focused on veteran players and continues to be designed for players who have supported it for the past decade, while PoE 2 attracts new groups of players, of course, there is also a certain degree of crossover.

Why Did Many Players Leave PoE 3.26?

To be honest, before the release of the 3.26 expansion, most veteran players had high expectations for it because the previous Settlers of Kalguur league was so popular. As expected, at the beginning, when POE 3.26 was released, the peak number of online players surpassed Settlers of Kalguur, indicating that this classic game still has a very active player community, but the subsequent situation is not optimistic.

Due to a large number of server problems, delays and frequent DDoS attacks, the growth of players has been greatly hindered. In addition, although a lot of new content has been added in the 3.26 update, it is still centered around the typical farming equipment game style, and the playability has not met the expectations of players, which has caused a large number of players to leave.

Although the developers are trying to solve the problem of server instability and are committed to improving the overall DDoS protection of the server, this has caused some legitimate traffic to be blocked, resulting in some players being unable to play the game. In addition, various account thefts and visual flickering issues have a negative impact on the user interface for some players.

The frequent occurrence of these problems has led to constant complaints in the player community. Many people said that they might restart the game later, but definitely not now!

In fact, since the release of POE 2, the developers have been slowing down the update speed of the original game. However, the team is still continuing to support the old game, and hopefully these issues will be resolved soon.

Final Thoughts

In general, Path of Exile 3.26 has been hit hard by frequent connection issues after a major update. However, PoE 1 has been around for a long time, and the previous Settlers of Kalguur league never had such server crashes.

And I have never seen any development team not communicate with players during a serious DDoS attack, or even respond so casually to a server problem that has lasted for nearly a month, which may be the real reason why the feedback on the 3.26 update is getting worse and worse.

On the other hand, although PoE 2 did not perform well, this highly anticipated sequel is still in the early access stage, and the overall gaming experience is still smooth. Therefore, all reviews are still positive for players.

Therefore, as far as the current situation is concerned, Path of Exile 3.26 is already in a situation where it is obviously lagging behind the sequel. This may be because the updated content did not meet the expectations of players, or it may be the negative impact caused by many problems, but in the final analysis, the developer ignored the feelings of a large number of old players because of the release of the sequel.

If the developer does not want to destroy the foundation of Path of Exile series of games, it is best to rebalance the parallel development of the two games, otherwise it will only lose everything.

As you know, Secrets of the Atlas expansion brought a lot of changes to Path of Exile. And perhaps because it has been so long since the last update, 3.26 league has a lot of new content, covering all aspects of the game.

Some of these new additions are based on the optimization of existing mechanics, and make the original mechanics work better in a new way similar to upgrades, such as Runegraft.

Based on this, we will introduce you to the specific role of Runegraft and how to get it.

What Is Runegraft?

In general, Runegraft should be considered an item in the game, but because of its special role, you can also think of it as a certain currency. The main function of Runegraft is to convert passive masteries in your existing passive skill tree into other masteries.

How Does It Work?

Before figuring out how Runegraft works, you need to first understand what passive mastery is. It is actually a special passive skill in the skill tree that belongs to the passive skill clusters and is not part of the class starting areas.

Once you have assigned the notables in the relevant skill clusters, you can assign the passive mastery. You can then select the bonus you need from the list of passive bonuses in the relevant skill clusters.

If you want to change your Runegraft later, you can only utilize another Runegraft to replace it, or utilize Orb of Scouring effect to remove the existing Runegraft. Since the bonus provided by passive mastery is quite powerful, any Runegraft will be useful.

How To Get Runegrafts?

The way to get this item is related to Settlers of Kalguur’s shipping mechanic that was saved from 3.25 league to 3.26 league. The mechanic requires you to load the collected resources and the crew onto the ship, and when the ship returns, you will find that the resources have been exchanged for the required POE currency and items.

After entering Mercenaries of Trarthus League, Runegraft has been added to the rewards that can be obtained in this way. However, the reward drops are random, which means that you may not get Runegraft you want after multiple transactions.

At this time, you need to repeat the transportation process until you get Runegraft you want. As for the repeated Runegraft, don’t worry about wasting it. You can trade with other players in exchange for currency or other items.

It should be noted that the goods may encounter accidents such as pirate attacks or bad weather during transportation, and the higher the value of the goods, the greater the possibility of encountering risks and the more serious the consequences, causing you to lose a certain proportion of the goods.

When encountering pirates, they will hijack your crew and cargo. In the face of this situation, there are three countermeasures:

• Fight the pirates: After winning, not only will the crew and cargo be released, you will also get rich loot! Of course, if you fail, everything will be lost.
• Give a ransom: Usually in the form of gold, and then the pirates will return the goods and crew. Although this approach is less risky than fighting, you will not get loot.
• Abandon all ships: You will lose everything.

What Runegrafts Are There?

There are many Runegrafts available in the game. Their names and specific functions are as follows:

• Runegraft of Bellows: If you have not utilized Warcried recently, your Warcried speed will be increased by 100%.
• Runegraft of Blasphemy: 30% chance to curse an enemy with a random curse when hitting them (provided they are not affected by other curses).
• Runegraft of Gemcraft: +1 level for all non-special support gems.
• Runegraft of Loyalty: When you are affected by elemental ailments, you have a 40% chance to transfer them to nearby minions.
• Runegraft of Quaffing: Non-instant mana recovery in flasks is also restored to health.
• Runegraft of Recompense: When the projectile ends, each unconsumed chain restores 10% of the skill’s mana consume, up to a maximum of 50%.
• Runegraft of Restitching: When you take critical hit damage, 40% of the damage is restored as health.
• Runegraft of Stability: Your lucky or unlucky effects are instead unexciting.
• Runegraft of the Angler: All attacks made while holding a fishing rod are critical hits.
• Runegraft of the Bound: Increase the bonus gained by 20% with gloves equipped and decrease the bonus gained by 20% with boots equipped.
• Runegraft of the Combatant: When you attack an enemy with a higher percentage of health remaining than you, you deal 50% more damage.
• Runegraft of the Fortress: Reduce attributes by 10%, increase global defense by 40%.
• Runegraft of the Jeweler: When you equip a two-handed weapon, you deal 10% more damage per unlinked socket.
• Runegraft of the Novamark: Nova spells have a chance to be cast around a marked target.

• Runegraft of the River: Grants you a 20% chance to heal to full health when at low health.
• Runegraft of the Sinistral: Increases your off-hand attack speed by 10%.
• Runegraft of the Soulwick: Grants you 1 Vaal Soul per second.
• Runegraft of the Warp: Causes debuffs on you to expire 30% faster and debuffs on you to expire 30% slower.
• Runegraft of the Witchmark: Utilizing a spell consumes an additional 8% of your maximum life, but also deals 2% of your maximum life as chaos damage.
• Runegraft of Time: Utilizing a skill has a 20% chance to not consume a cooldown.
• Runegraft of Treachery: Your skill auras affect allies as well as enemies, and your skill retention is 15% increased.

That’s all about Runegraft. If you want your character to become stronger by changing passive mastery, don’t miss this item! Good luck!

Winter Orb has long been considered one of the most powerful mapping skills in Path Of Exile. Because it doubles your character’s casting speed, not only do you get faster movement speed on the map, but your damage is also significantly increased.

But when an item or skill becomes ridiculously powerful, it will also be greatly weakened. After all, the developers cannot let a certain mechanism dominate, and balance is what they pursue.

Winter Orb Buff

After the nerfs to Winter Orb in the previous league updates, it has been difficult to adapt to today’s builds, so in POE 3.26, they have once again buffed Winter Orb.

Winter Orb is a channelling skill that summons an orb above you and shoots projectiles at nearby enemies. Once the projectile hits the ground, it explodes and deals area damage. Continuing to channel will increase the skill level, but the skill level will gradually decay when you stop channeling.

Winter Orb now has a damage increase of about 26%, which is a strong damage buff that is definitely worth trying at the start of your league. Let’s take a look!

Is Winter Orb Build Worth Trying?

To be honest, Winter Orb is a good skill choice for a league starter build, but it is obviously not as strong as other meta skills that many people are using.

Although only 0.6% of players are using Winter Orb build, it is good enough for me to reach Tier 16 maps and get two Voidstones.

Unique Items

And the build budget for this skill is very low, not even a POE Divine Orb. We used four unique items, but don’t worry, they are all very affordable at the current price.

Bitterdream

I think the first and most important unique weapon is Bitterdream Shadow Sceptre. It basically makes our Winter Orb be 9-link, and it has some nice extra features, such as it allows us to get Frenzy Charges from Ice Bite Support when we kill an enemy.

Carcass Jack

Since we don’t have to use 6-link body armour, we can use a cost-effective unique item like Carcass Jack, which also gives us 40%-50% area of ​​effect.

AOE effect is necessary for Winter Orb, which allows our projectiles to overlap and fire consecutive projectiles unaffected by shotgun defense. Ideally, our area of ​​effect radius needs to be at least 2.6m or larger.

Badge Of The Brotherhood

Also, since we are stacking Frenzy Charges, we can also use Badge of the Brotherhood Turquoise Amulet to get a lot of Frenzy Charges for free.

Now, currently this build only has Bitterdream Sceptre and Ice Bite Support to generate Frenzy Charges, and it generates charges on kills, which is not ideal.

Ideally, we want to get Frenzy Charges on hit, which means we can also get enough charges in boss fights, but this requires more POE Currency investment. Because the key to getting Frenzy Charges is influenced body armor, and getting 6-link body armor at the start of a league is going to be very expensive.

Mark Of Submission

Finally, one more item we need is Mark of Submission unique ring, which allows us to curse enemies with Frostbite when we hit them, so that we can benefit from Occultist’s Profane Bloom.

How To Improve Survivability?

In general, this version of the Winter Orb build is a good mapper, even if its single target damage is not very good, it will be painful to not have Frenzy Charges in boss fights, but we have a 4-link gear and a Spell Totem Support to help boost single target damage, so the overall survivability is okay.

Also, Frost Shield really helps a lot in this build, and the benefit is that since we scale such a large area of ​​​​effect, our shield radius is very large, so we have more room to move. And we can also help improve survivability by adding Endurance Charge generation and Life Leech and Cluster Jewels, and a little spell suppression.

Now, in POE 3.26 leagues, we can even kill some mercenaries on high-level maps with this build, even killing them in one shot.

If you have a mercenary with Determination and Molten Shell, you can also get more survivability.

In Path of Exile, these two are a powerful defensive combination, especially when paired with high armor values. Molten Shell absorbs damage based on your armor, and Determination is an aura that significantly increases your armor. This synergy allows Molten Shell to absorb more damage and may trigger more often, reflecting damage back to the enemy, so that you will not die even in Tier 16 maps.

Final Thoughts

Of course, there is still a lot of room for improvement in this version of Winter Orb. To further push the upgrade optimization of Winter Orb build, we must get rid of Bitterdream, Carcass Jack and get some more typical endgame items. You know, all Occultist equipment that can stack Power Charge is what this build needs.

In any case, if you are interested in Winter Orb and want to complete a build around this mapping skill, then try it out as soon as possible. I believe Winter Orb buffs for this league update will not disappoint you!

With the start of POE 3.26, we are about to embark on a new Challenge League cycle. As always, at the beginning of the league, the first thing we have to do is to farm and reserve enough currency, which is the most important resource in our game process.

Here, we will explain to you the first currency farming strategy we have planned in PoE 3.26. This is a proven strategy that can help you earn a considerable amount of currency in the early stages of the league and is suitable for almost all builds. This is because it was designed immediately after we cleared Atlas and obtained the first two Voidstones, which ensures that it not only requires extremely low investment, but also is extremely easy to get started.

The core of this strategy is Searing Exarch Atlas, which can drop a lot of valuable currency at the beginning of the league. This strategy works best in the early stages of a league before some of PoE currency depreciates, especially in the first 5-7 days after the league starts, you should be able to harvest an average of 2-4 PoE Divine Orbs per hour, depending on how fast you play.

Honestly, this isn’t groundbreaking, but early league currency is hard to come by. Not to mention that this strategy doesn’t require Scarabs, just pure Atlas farming, so you should be able to maintain your map in most situations unless you’re really unlucky. Now let’s take a look!

Atlas Tree

First, let’s take a look at Atlas Tree, which you only need a few points to build.

Here, I think you can give up Essences, because most characters probably can’t handle T16 Essence farming at all, and they really slow you down. But if you’re really good at handling Essences, then keep them. What we mean is that even if you give them up, it’s not a big deal, I don’t count them in my profit.

Anyway, you can invest these points into Scarabs or other relevant map drops.

Additionally, we utilize Shrines to help our lower-level characters and grab all the added map drop nodes. Then we just need to grab all Quantity & Rarity wheels in the middle, and then all Searing Exarch nodes, including Wrath of the Cosmos.

This strategy is simple, you just click on Atlas and Shrines to clear the max monsters as quickly as possible, but you may die occasionally if you encounter very strong monsters on a not-so-good map.

But since we usually plan to do this early on, when the characters may not be level 90 yet, you can get a lot of XP from running these maps, and as long as you don’t die too often on a map, you can still level up.

Map Runs

Let’s move on to which maps to run.

Jungle Valley is a natural Tier 11 map, while Mesa is a Tier 10 map, which is connected to Jungle Valley, and when you insert two Voidstones, they both move to T16, which means we can force the type of Atlas we want on the map.

When you play a T14+ map, you can choose one of three influence types: Searing Exarch (red button), Eater of Worlds (blue button), and The Maven (middle button).

First, we’ll be using Searing Exarch. When you play these maps, once you kill a few groups of enemies, it will trigger an influence. You’ll then see something like minor explosions and Influenced Monster Packs spawn around the map. You can choose these rewards, but they also come with some negative effects that will be applied to your map.

Atlas Types

Currently, there are three types of Atlas: Boss, Minion, and Player.

• Boss Atlas only adds bonuses to the boss and will make the boss harder in some way.
• Player Atlas tends to apply debuffs to the player or increase the damage they take, but it gives you bonuses when you kill monsters. These rewards are very tempting, but I recommend not choosing them early in a league.
• What we want in this type is Minion Atlas, they give you a chance to get a reward for every Influenced monster you kill on the map, and these are exactly what we want to appear.

Normally, they will only appear two of the three random options on Atlas, but we can actually force only two of them to appear by running two specific maps, Jungle Valley and Mesa.

How To Run It?

Let’s start with Jungle Valley map and see why we chose it.

The boss in Jungle Valley map doesn’t actually spawn until you enter his arena, it only spawns in the middle of the fight, so the altar doesn’t register their presence, so all Atlases are Minion/Player Atlases, which gives a higher chance of getting a good effect.

You just have to make sure to click on Minion Atlas every time. If the reward is complete garbage, you can even skip that Atlas.

As for Mesa map, the boss does start on the map, but he’s always in the center of the arena, and you can just run right there and kill the boss about 10 seconds before any Atlas is triggered, and then you’ve eliminated Boss Atlas spawn again.

Then, you either get Minion Atlas again, or Player Atlas again, and then just finish the rest of the map.

Minion Atlas

So, why go for Minion Atlas? We’ll explain it now. It’s the best way to get a lot of rewards on the map.

While the rewards from Boss Atlas can be good, the rewards are onetime, and the rewards from Player Atlas are just too crude. In comparison, while the rewards from Minions are also crude, if you get the good stuff as a reward, you’ll keep dropping it on the map.

So the rewards you can expect are some very rare raw Chaos Orbs, Exalted Orbs, and Orbs of Annulment. You may also get Gemcutter’s Prisms, Orbs of Regret, Vaal Orbs, Orbs of Fusing, or Searing Exarch specific currency, which are all valuable in the early leagues.

In addition, there is a large number of Lesser, Greater, and Grand Eldritch Embers that can drop early in the league, and even Lesser Ember is worth more than 1 Chaos Orb in the first few days.

Divination cards are also common rewards. In my 2 hours or so of playtime, we have received The Taming, Berek’s Respite, and Ryslatha’s Coil. The total value of these Divination cards is far more than 2 Divine Orbs!

Not only that, there are also a lot of Scarabs that drop here, which can also be sold in bulk on Exchange, making it even more profitable.

All of these drops can be sold on the in-game Currency Exchange.

Selling Loot

So, now let’s start selling loot!

Note that you don’t need to waste time liquidating everything, because you may have some items that are worth less than one-tenth of a Chaos Orb, and it’s not worth the time to sell them, just put them in the stash tab.

You can select the items worth selling in the stash tab and then sort them by single item value or bulk item value.

As we said before, we can sell these loot directly in the in-game Currency Exchange, almost without interacting with the trade, which means you can keep running the map and selling these loot.

Finally, I must remind you that every strategy RNG will play a role, someone may drop very rare items and get dozens of POE Divine Orbs in the first hour, but this certainly does not mean that if you complete the map quickly, you will get such expected currency.

However, at least you can earn 2-4 Divines per hour with this strategy, so it is a strategy that everyone can do.

All in all, if you’re not the type who wants to blow up T17 map early, or is ready to farm Legions with all the Scarabs and all the investment, then this is a great way to earn money to keep your build going, and then have the ability to run some more difficult strategies to get a little better with this character.