How To Handle Your Unique Encounter With Mektul In POE 2 Dawn Of The Hunt? - Preparation & Strategy

Path of Exile 3.27 Keepers of the Flame, besides introducing new unique items, also introduces a new mechanic: Foulborn Unique Items. These replace one or more affixes on existing unique items with entirely new ones.

Because the stats of these unique items' affixes are increased or changed, they provide affix combinations that were previously impossible or nerfed, thus giving rise to a large number of new builds.

Of course, the value of these unique items isn't uniform. Some are very useful but require too much currency, while others are practically worthless. So here are some of the most useful and cost-effective Foulborn Unique items.

Foulborn Tulborn

The core affix of Foulborn Tulborn is "To Level of all Cold Spell Skill Gems," ranging from 2 to 4. You can roll for the highest value using one or two Divine Orbs. It only provides a fixed amount of cold damage, and +4 versions are very common in Trade League. Therefore, an untainted Tulborn with the +4 affix only requires a few Chaos Orbs.

However, this item itself doesn't provide a percentage increase in spell damage, but you can compensate for this by adjusting your character's passive talents or using a 12-passive large cluster jewel. In short, it's one of the most cost-effective items for Cold Spell builds in the game right now, and you can even consider dual-wielding it to increase damage.

Foulborn Xoph's Heart

Foulborn Xoph's Heart reduces physical damage from hits to fire damage, with a perfect roll of 15% (range 5-15%), effectively reducing physical damage.

You don't need to take a lot of currency on Foulborn Xoph's Heart; even if it is the perfect roll, its value is only around 30 Chaos Orbs. Even without Foulborn affix, Xoph's Heart is still a decent piece of gear.

Foulborn Berek's Respite

Foulborn Berek's Respite exists in three versions, two single Foulborn affixes of which are particularly outstanding:

Double Foulborn Affix

Berek's Respite with two Foulborn affixes combines the effects of "exploding upon killing an Ignited enemy" and "exploding upon killing a Shocked enemy," with the fire damage from the explosions capable of electrocuting and the lightning damage capable of igniting.

This allows for chain explosions in builds like Elementalist, which can electrocute non-lightning damage and ignite non-fire damage, resulting in very high map clearing efficiency. However, it requires around 35-40 Divine Orbs, which most players may not have enough PoE currency for.

Shocked Version

This version transplants the iconic explosion affix from Inpulsa's Broken Heart to Foulborn Berek's Respite. The ring itself retains the ignite transmission affix, crucial for ignite builds.

This allows you to focus on ignite damage while frequently electrocuting enemies. The explosion can ignite enemies, and the damage spreads through the ring's conduction effect, so the more enemies on the map, the faster the damage increases. This item isn't particularly valuable, costing only about 1-2 Divine Orbs.

Ignited Version

The Ignited version of Foulborn Berek's Respite causes ignited enemies to explode, but retains the weaker Electrocution conduction affix of the original. It's primarily a budget alternative, costing only 60 Chaos Orbs.

If you want the effect of two Foulborn versions but don't have enough PoE currency, you can equip both the shocked and ignited versions simultaneously, using two ring slots to achieve a similar effect.

Foulborn The Embalmer

The core affix of Foulborn The Embalmer is Poison Transmission, which has the same effect as Master Toxicist talent from Bino's Kitchen Knife or Pathfinder. If you kill a poisoned enemy, nearby enemies will also be infected with poison.

Meanwhile, Foulborn The Embalmer allows classes other than Pathfinder to quickly clear maps using poison, and it's also a glove, allowing players using poison builds to use weapons other than Bino's Kitchen Knife. It's very common; even trading it won't be worth more than 10 Chaos Orbs if you don't want to farm it yourself.

Foulborn The Embalmer also has two Foulborn affixes. Its other affix increases the rate at which poison effects you apply take effect by 15%, a very powerful damage-boosting affix. The Embalmer with the double Foulborn affix requires about 2-3 Holy Stones; you can choose to upgrade it if your budget allows.

Foulborn Kikazaru

Foulborn Kikazaru's Foulborn affix significantly increases mana regeneration rate. This item is suitable for very specific builds, primarily Hierophant and any build that increases damage by stacking mana.

For the playstyle it suits, this item is extremely difficult to replace, providing a large number of core attributes and remaining usable until the endgame. Its value is determined by the mana regeneration rate roll (60-120), ranging from 10 to 60 chaos orbs, making it affordable for virtually all players.

Foulborn Intuitive Leap

Similar to the original "Intuitive Leap," Foulborn Intuitive Leap offers a wide-range effect on par with Thread of Hope (Massive Ring), allowing you to jump long distances to select a keystone.

This item saves a significant number of passive talent points and synergizes well with Timeless Jewel and Glorious Vanity. However, it's only suitable for a very niche build, applicable to approximately 2-3% of builds that require extensive keystone selection across the talent tree.

Foulborn The Surrender

Foulborn The Surrender has two Foulborn affixes, meaning it has three versions, and all are excellent.

• Energy Shield: Grants an energy shield on block, which can replace Aegis Aurora.
• Maximum Chance to Block Attack Damage: Provides +3% to maximum chance to block attack damage, a very rare and powerful defensive affiex.

Whether it has one of Foulborn affixes or both, it is incredibly powerful for defensive builds, and it's affordable for the average player, taking only around 100 Chaos Orbs.

Overall, POE 3.27 added many unique Foulborn items, but it's currently uncertain whether they will be added to the core game after the league ends. Therefore, builds relying on these items may be limited to this league. If your build can use them in this league, then go and try them out!

Path of Exile 3.27 Keepers of the Flame introduces a brand new crafting system: Genesis Tree. Players can find it in Monastery of the Keepers and unlock a passive skill tree of the same name, allowing for different builds through customization.

As a league-exclusive mechanic, Genesis Tree allows players to cultivate unique items, rare gear, or currency with highly customizable outcomes. It ensures or significantly increases the chance of obtaining specific items that would otherwise be extremely difficult or impossible to craft.

If you're interested in Genesis Tree crafting system, let's take a look!

Enhancing Early Item Quality

First, let's discuss the power of Genesis Tree in gear crafting.

When it comes to crafting gear, the first thing that comes to mind is linked items, which are often obtainable early on, but these items often just end up piling up in your inventory.

Typically, you'll see a 5-linked item early in the campaign, but it's unusable because it's based on all Dexterity stats, while you're playing a character focused on all Strength. This leaves many 5 & 6-linked items useless.

However, Genesis Tree now offers a very efficient way to obtain usable linked items, especially 5-6-linked ones. This is because it has some tweaks that allow you to randomly generate sockets and links when crafting gear, retaining the highest stat, repeating this 10 times.

Meanwhile, you can combine this with Jeweller's Orb from PoE 3.27 to randomly reset the number of gear sockets. The new number of sockets depends on the gear's type and level, improving with each 1% increase in gear quality. Alternatively, you can use multiple Jeweller's Orbs in Crafting Bench to obtain a specific number of sockets.

You'll find that when you combine these two methods and level up slightly, say to Act 4-5, you'll often get 5-link items. Of course, with continued experimentation, getting 6-link items is just a matter of time, depending on how frequently you craft.

Therefore, as you progress through the game, you have more opportunities to obtain usable 5-6 link equipment. This is undoubtedly a very powerful feature of Genesis Tree.

Item Modifiers

Furthermore, Genesis Tree influences the crafting system by allowing you to customize passive skills that determine the modifiers of items generated from Wombgifts. Through nodes, you can influence the type of modifiers, such as increasing or decreasing the spawn rate of certain modifiers. You can also specialize in crafting unique items by having items generate with Foulborn modifiers.

Genesis Tree can also influence the level of modifiers. Some nodes can increase the overall level of modifiers, while others focus on eliminating low-level modifiers, which can be beneficial or detrimental depending on the specific situation.

Because blindly removing passive skills with low-level modifiers can lead to losing desirable stats like +1 to gems on a wand, resulting in an item with fewer modifiers. Alternatively, you might end up with an item with the correct modifiers but a low level, which may not be sufficient for a late-game build.

Fortunately, Genesis Tree itself can be reset for free, without costing gold or any penalty for undoing. So you can experiment with different modifiers completely free of charge.

It's worth noting that the skill tree has a unique crafting subsection that allows you to generate Foulborn versions of existing unique items. These unique items can replace the original modifiers, potentially creating powerful items suitable for specific builds.

Grafts System & Graftblood

Next, we'll discuss Grafts mechanic in Genesis Tree, a new type of equipment item that provides passive skill bonuses. In PoE The Keepers league, Grafts system adds a new layer to item crafting, offering unique skills and attributes and requiring special crafting methods.

Players can craft items using Grafts exclusive currency, and even mutate existing unique items into Foulborn versions, creating a powerful but potentially gamble-like equipment system.

To craft items with Grafts, you can either use them directly to gain unique abilities or collect Graftblood, which can be used in Genesis Tree to influence crafting results and customize Grafts' effects.

Therefore, Graftblood, the exclusive currency for Grafts, is another important component of Genesis Tree, used to enhance and modify Graft items in the skill tree - a part that many players understand the least.

Since the release of PoE 3.27, some players have frequently boasted about obtaining piles of Divine Orbs or Mirrors-level items, but frankly, this is the most tedious part of the skill tree. Fortunately, we can still use it for some things.

Because some new currency items can only be obtained from this part of the talent tree, and Graft items cannot be crafted using regular PoE currency; they must be crafted using Graftblood from the talent tree. Therefore, this part of the skill tree will always be useful, as these currency items should be very practical, especially in the late game when players want to maximize gear stats. So, the currency section of Genesis Tree will always have its place.

Furthermore, the 3.27 expansion introduced a new type of currency item, somewhat similar to Greater & Perfect Jeweller Orbs in Path of Exile 2. While they look very similar, they function quite differently.

In Path of Exile 2, those Greater and Perfect Jeweller's Orbs essentially meant you couldn't obtain modifiers below a certain level. In Path of Exile 1, these new currency items indicate a higher chance of obtaining higher-level modifiers. So, they function more like Fossils in the game.

Fossils indicate a higher spawn rate for a particular modifier, therefore its wait time is longer than other modifiers. This is essentially what's going to happen: it will increase the wait time for these higher-level modifiers. We don't know exactly how much it will increase, but it will definitely increase your chances of obtaining higher-level modifiers.

In summary, the main advantage of Genesis Tree in PoE 3.27 lies in its high potential for crafting and gear acquisition, especially in crafting 6-link items and unique gear, and the fact that resetting talent points is completely free. However, certain nodes and modifiers can still have negative effects and severely hinder your crafting results.

Path of Exile 3.26 was one of the most lucrative seasons ever. However, in PoE 3.27: Keepers of the Flame, players will see a significant decrease in overall currency acquisition due to direct nerfs to Map Modifier Effects, Item Quantity, and certain farming strategies.

So what should you farm in this league to maximize farming efficiency? This depends on which strategies and mechanics remain unaffected and which methods are more stable.

S-Tier Farming Strategies

Awakened Harvest

Awakened Harvest focuses on maximizing Lifeforce from Harvests using Crop Rotation Harvest strategy. It is unaffected by the general nerfs this season because its gains primarily come from fixed crafting.

Lifeforce is always an essential crafting resource, so its value remains stable. This strategy directly leads to increased demand for Horned Scarab of Awakening, making other strategies using this scarab unprofitable.

Blight Map Farming

This strategy focuses on Blight encounters on specific maps, yielding large amounts of currency and items from monsters and Blight chests.

This was considered the best map farming strategy last season. While affected by the reduced map count and affix effects, all map farming strategies are impacted, so it may still remain the strongest map farming method.

Expedition (Early League)

This strategy primarily involves interacting with Expedition Logbooks, defeating monsters, and completing quests for Dannig, Gwennen, Tujen, and Rog.

This is one of the best currency production methods at the start of the season. Expedition Logbooks are in high demand, and the new asynchronous trading changes make them easier to sell, but this will decrease later in the season.

Ultimatum

You gain stacking rewards by completing Ultimatum trials. While this mechanic hasn't been weakened, its strength depends on player builds and strategies.

Its profitability is limited by its extremely high difficulty. However, there are specific builds that allow players to cheat or AFK to complete the trial, such as CWDT Chieftain. If you have such a build, Ultimatum becomes very easy and highly rewarding.

Strongboxes High Investment

This method primarily uses scarabs and map affixes to strengthen Strongboxes on the map, especially Ambush Scarab of Containment, to obtain a large number of items. This is considered the meta strategy of the season, extremely stable and reliable, and a core part of high-end item farming.

A-Tier Farming Strategies

Essence

This strategy primarily involves capturing Essence monsters on the map to obtain various Essences. It is ideal for accumulating initial currency at the beginning of the season. The returns are stable because Essences are a hard requirement for crafting and are not affected by map quantity or affix effects. Although Remnant of Corruption has changed, the impact is minimal.

Blight Currency Farming

Blight Currency Farming is similar to Blight Map Farming, but focuses more on quickly completing Blight events on regular maps to obtain currency. This was one of the strongest strategies last season, but it has been downgraded from S to A due to the reduced map quantity and affix effects.

Strongboxes Low Investment

Simply put, this is a strategy of investing in strongboxes at a lower cost. It remains A-tier, just like in patch 3.26, because its base returns are very stable and substantial.

Allflame Ember Of The Ethereal Scarab Farm

You need to use Allflame Ember of the Ethereal to enhance monsters on maps to increase the drop rate of specific types of scarabs. This strategy is popular among players, but because its returns depend on map monster drops, it is affected by the reduced quantity and affix effects. Also, the supply of Allflame Ember of the Ethereal is limited, and its value will adjust itself to maintain profitability.

Delirium Orb Farming

This strategy primarily involves farming Delirium Orbs in large quantities by running Delirium maps or encountering them. It's especially effective late in the season when demand for Delirium Orbs is high. Delirium Orb Farming is also decent early in the season as it drops other items. It can be done on rare maps and has lower build requirements.

Divination Card Farming

This mechanic requires you to farm high-value Divination Cards on specific maps and bosses. You'll need to combine this with Strongboxes strategy, especially Scarab of Containment, to increase Divination Card drops. This strategy is quite profitable but requires strong builds.

B-Tier Farming Strategies

Alva Temple Farming

You need to invite Alva into the map through Master Quests or Scarabs, build The Temple of Atzoatl, and obtain rewards such as double Corruption Rooms. This strategy is poor early in the season but becomes extremely profitable late in the season when players start gambling on double Corruption Rooms.

Kalguuran Map Farm

This is a simple map farming strategy focused on encounters with Kalguuran warriors. Your build shouldn't be too strong or too weak, and can be paired with useful scarabs.

Bestiary

You need to capture red beasts in Bestiary to sell or use for your crafting. This method is similar to Essence, providing a stable, quantity-independent drop rate with consistent market demand, especially good at the start of the season.

Harvest Carnicopia

Harvest Carnicopia is a more stable harvest farming strategy, but with a lower hourly yield cap than Awakening Harvest. It's better suited for players who prefer low randomness and consistent returns.

Legion (Late League)

You need to activate Timeless Monolith on the map, release and defeat Eternal Empire warriors to obtain badges and loot. This is the best farming strategy for days 1-2 of the season, but its value drops rapidly afterward. While Legions remain decent in the later stages, they require top-tier builds, and better options may exist at this point.

Stacked Deck Farming

You'll need to acquire Stacked Decks through various means and sell them, or start your own gamble. The significant quality-of-life improvement this season may increase demand.

Ritual

You'll need to complete Ritual Altar challenges and exchange tributes for rewards. This method is reliable but not particularly outstanding, except for the occasional Nameless Altar spawn, which are worth multiple POE Divine Orbs. The recent changes have slightly nerfed this, but the impact is minimal.

Betrayal

By interacting with Einhar's betrayal members, you'll build a network to target rewards such as Allflame and Medallions.

Due to the nerf to Graves and the complexity of setting up networks, PoE 3.27 focuses on zero-setup strategies that only farm Allflame and Medallions. Medals have been buffed, but the value of Allflame is expected to decrease.

These are some of the juiciest farming strategies. There are many other farming strategies besides these, but these strategies are highly dependent on luck and may even result in losses, so they are not recommended.

In Path of Exile Patch 3.27 Keepers of the Flame update that will arrive on October 31st, the most notable change was undoubtedly the complete rework of Shadow's Assassin Ascendancy. 

This update aims to fundamentally reshape Assassin, replacing most of the existing passives with new nodes that offer different or more powerful effects. Even the nodes that are retained have undergone balance adjustments to improve their usability.

Preliminary analysis suggests that these changes are expected to elevate Ascendancy from a niche pick to a top choice, boasting both exceptional DPS and robust survivability. Let's take a look at the changes.

Critical Strike And Poison

Assassin's core role has always revolved around critical hits and poison. This rework strengthens this feature while also making its builds smoother and more powerful.

Critical Strike

The brand-new Assassination Style Notable is the cornerstone of this new power system, providing massive Critical Hit Chance and Damage Bonus bonuses, and allowing players to make meaningful choices between two powerful child nodes:

1. Knife In The Back

This option enhances your initial attack, granting 100% additional Critical Strike Chance against enemies that are not at low health. More importantly, it provides an amazing 100% additional Critical Strike Multiplier against low-health enemies.

This is essentially equivalent to having a built-in finishing move, allowing you to eliminate tough enemies at an astonishing speed, further enhancing efficiency.

 2. For The Jugular

This option reverses the logic above, providing 100% extra Critical Strike Chance against low-health enemies, ensuring you can land consistent critical hits on dangerous, dying enemies.

Meanwhile, the 100% bonus Critical Strike Multiplier applies to enemies that are not low on health, allowing you to unleash devastating opening attacks and quickly reduce enemies to low health.

This flexibility allows players to make relative adjustments according to their needs – whether it's quickly cultivating the map or focusing on boss battles.

Poison

The poison build has also received a revolutionary update. Although Toxic Delivery node's poison damage from critical hits has been reduced from 25% to 20%, it has gained extremely valuable utility.

The previous conditional critical strike chance bonus has been replaced by a new mechanic: each 4-second poison effect you apply will grant you an extension of the poison duration, up to a maximum of 100%. This significantly increases damage uptime, especially against bosses with long phases.

In addition, the new effect of restoring 0.5% health for each poisoned enemy killed provides players with a stable and considerable health recovery in dense groups of monsters.

Crucially, the new node Infused Toxins, located after Toxic Delivery, now allows all attack damage to inflict poison. This design makes poison builds smoother than ever before.

Survival And Functionality Enhancements

The main weakness of Assassins lies in their relatively weak defenses compared to other Ascendancy instances. Path of Exile Patch 3.27 updates directly addresses this issue by adding several powerful survival-oriented nodes.

Shadowed Blood

This is a landmark defensive node that converts 40% of Physical Damage into Recouped as Life, a capability that fundamentally changes Assassin's resilience against physical damage.

Unaffected by Damaging Ailments is also a great advantage. For example, it grants immunity to Bleeding, Poison, and Ignite effects. This single point provides significant recovery and damage reduction, allowing Assassins to confront enemies who unleash these effects head-on.

Opportunistic

This node has been significantly enhanced and now provides 35% damage reduction when there are at least two Rare or Unique Enemies nearby. This is an extremely powerful defensive bonus, making Assassins surprisingly resilient in the most dangerous situations.

Deathmarked

This new node is a top-tier, practical damage-boosting tool that automatically triggers a level 30 Assassin's Mark when dealing critical hits to Rare or Unique Enemies, a huge improvement to the experience.

It eliminates the need for manual mark application, simplifying the process and ensuring key bosses are always marked. Its additional benefit - making your mark ability mana-free and preventing marked enemies from dodging attacks - further enhances accuracy against highly evasive opponents.

Other Mechanics

This rework also introduced some mechanisms, opening up entirely new build possibilities:

Unstable Infusion

Its chance of gaining energy charges on non-critical hits is increased to 30%, and the chance of gaining energy charges on critical hits is increased to 15%, making it more stable to maintain critical hit charges. This, in turn, leads to more stable Critical Hit Chance and Damage Bonus.

Mystical Infusion

This node is revolutionary for hybrid playstyles. It makes Base Spell Critical Strike Chance of spells equivalent to the critical strike chance of Main Hand Weapon, which means that some critical strike-dependent playstyles are no longer entirely reliant on specific high-critical-strike spells or daggers.

This allows players to creatively use high critical strike rate weapons to drive spell critical strike effects.

In conclusion, Assassin rework in Path of Exile Patch 3.27 is not a simple numerical adjustment, but a complete overhaul of the concept. It retains the core characteristics of the class while solving its previous weaknesses.

The updates clearly show that Assassin is no longer a single-function class, but a versatile, powerful, and robust top-tier option. Get ready to shine in Keepers of the Flame release!