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In Path of Exile 3.26: Secrets Of The Atlas, the developers have launched a new Challenge League, Mercenaries of Trathus. In this league, you will encounter evil mercenaries from Trathus and have a duel of courage and faith with them. If you lose, only death awaits you, but if you win, you will be able to harvest them as powerful helpers on your exploration.
So, as your most important companions on the road, the ability of these mercenaries is related to how far you can go and whether you can survive in the mysterious Atlas of Worlds. Although these Mercenaries have exclusive skill configurations, we can still provide them with other equipment to maximize their potential.
Here, let’s talk about the unique items that are best suited for your mercenaries at different stages to help you better kill enemies and win loot! Let’s take a look!
In the early stages, if you have a higher budget, Kingmaker has a significant effect that will satisfy you! This is a two-handed axe that is very popular in Animate Guardian.
It will also be very popular for mercenaries in the 3.26 league, so this weapon will be worth a lot of currency in Trade League. But if you can get one, you can get amazing bonuses from this weapon and it gives +10 Fortification to allies near you, which is especially useful.
If you haven’t played melee yet and don’t have access to Fortification, it also has 50% Critical Strike Multiplier, Culling Strike, and 30% increased Rarity of Items found, which is why this weapon is so popular.
Another high-budget option is The Dark Seer, which applies Malediction debuff to enemies. Both Blind and Malediction are useful effects for your mercenaries, reducing the damage done by the target by 10% and increasing the damage taken by 10%.
As such, you can also invest in ways to trigger Blind debuff, such as Blinding Aura prefix on Redeemer Body Armour, and this weapon also provides universal spell gem levels.
This unique ring increases your curse limit to equal your maximum number of Power Charges.
Although the full game is still unreleased, we can see from the trailer that there are several mercenaries with curse skills, and using Anathema can increase the mercenary’s curse limit to three.
If you want, you can even go a step further and increase the maximum Power Charges scaling by investing POE Currency. However, it is incredible for a mercenary to have three curses, even if you are unlikely to increase the available skills through items.
So, if you find a mercenary who already has a good curse that fits your build, you can use Anathema to add two more curses to it.
This is an interesting defensive Unique Belt that allows nearby enemies to convert some of their physical damage into fire damage. This is very powerful when combined with the new Elementalists ability Shaper of Flames, which causes enemies you set ablaze to have 40% of their physical damage converted to fire damage.
Since both damage conversions are made in the enemy calculation, they stack, for a total of 65% of damage converted to fire damage, which you can mitigate with increased fire resistance.
For shields, Mutewind Pennant is a brilliant choice, and works extremely well with mercenaries using Warcry with buffs attached. This sets the cooldown of Warcry to 4 seconds and also provides some enhanced buffs.
Additionally, it provides additional clearing when your mercenaries are actually taunting an enemy, which is when they use Warcry, but may also be using other abilities they have at the same time. They create an explosion on death that deals chaos damage equal to 8% of their maximum life.
For weapons, Dying Breath is a great all-around support option, providing a lot of curse scaling for any curses cast on nearby enemies, while also giving you a small damage bonus.
On top of that, it also provides a pleasant bonus to auras used by mercenaries, and those auras also have a larger radius of effect, so you’re less likely to be out of their range.
Of course, we haven’t forgotten some of you who don’t have a lot of POE Currency budgets early in the game, so let’s get back to some more affordable options.
Among them, Belt of the Deceiver is a heavy belt that reduces the extra damage you take on critical hits by 30% and increases global physical damage by 15%-25%. Especially early in the gear upgrade, it can trigger Intimidated debuff, causing nearby enemies to take increased damage from attacks.
Shaper’s Seed is another item that is very suitable for early gear upgrades, as you can equip it very early and provide a lot of life regeneration and mana regeneration.
Both The Ignomon and Eclipse Solaris are great defensive gear that are great value for money, and both grant Blind Aura, so they're great for evasion-focused characters.
If you’re building a fire-based build, you can use Dreadarc early on. It’s a great value weapon that you can equip on your mercenaries to easily gain Flammability while reducing enemy fire resistance.
Next, let’s move on to some of the more interesting mercenary gear choices for the endgame.
Perquil’s Toe is a Gold Amulet that grants a lucky damage roll to nearby allies, meaning the damage roll is rolled twice and you can choose the more favorable outcome. This works really well for Lightning Strike builds, especially since they usually have a very large damage roll range.
Beyond that, it’s also great for bleed builds using Volatility Support and Ryslatha’s Coil, and is great for strength sackers using Replica Alberon’s Warpath, as they get increased chaos damage for every 80 strength, and it rolls from 1 to 80. So luck damage is incredibly valuable for those builds as well.
We don’t know how tanky mercenaries are going to be at this point, especially with more endgame content. So you might want to consider equipping your mercenaries with something like Eternal Damnation, especially for mercenaries that don’t have any charge-generating gear.
If you need to limit their chaos resistance with other gear, this amulet can also provide some incredible elemental damage reduction and has a similar effect.
There’s also The Untouched Soul, which is another very interesting amulet. We don’t know what the life of a normal mercenary is at this point, will it be similar to a normal player character, or more like an Animate Guardian?
If the mercenary ends up being very fragile, The Untouched Soul is an interesting option, as this doesn’t seem to take up any of their equipment slots, meaning you can make the most of every empty slot on every piece of equipment you give them. You can use white slots to boost their elemental resistances, or red slots to boost life.
If you’re more concerned with the survivability of your mercenary, you can pair it with something like Doppelgänger to take advantage of the strong life regeneration it provides, or block shield, or even Gruthkul’s Pelt to gain life. This should greatly increase their survivability.
Xoph’s Heart is a talisman for fire-base builds that can trigger Covered In Ash, which causes nearby enemies to be covered in ash, slowing their movement speed and increasing the fire damage they take by 20%.
Polaric Devastation is a ring slot option that you can place in a specific slot to get Covered In Ash for fire-base builds or Covered In Frost for cold-base builds.
But unlike Xoph’s Heart, this does require more investment and a little more focus on the specific mercenary you’re using to make sure you’re either setting fire to or freezing enemies to benefit from these debuffs. Honestly, setting fire is pretty easy to get with mercenary skills or items equipped by the mercenary, but freezing is a little more difficult.
You can also use another powerful ring on your mercenary, Call of the Void. This ring makes all of the mercenary’s damage have a frozen effect and causes enemies frozen by the mercenary to shatter upon death.
But most importantly, freezing enemies will deal half the damage and half the frozen effect. So this is a very powerful defensive choice, it will not only make enemies move slower, but also deal less damage. You can pair Winterweave with another ring slot on your mercenary so that all damage they take is frozen.
In short, there are a lot of different equipment that mercenaries can use, so you have endless possibilities in terms of weapons and equipment choices. Here, we only provide you with the most suitable items for your reference based on different stages of the game, but all of them need to be based on your game style and play style. Hope you have a nice day!
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Dear Exiles, the long-awaited Path of Exile 3.26 is finally here! Although the developers have promised that the release cycle of POE is 4 months, POE 1 has really experienced a super long pause in updates, perhaps because of the release of the sequel, or perhaps because the developers have run out of inspiration.
However, everything will soon return to normal, because Path of Exile 3.26 will be officially released on Friday, June 13.
Here, we will take you to take a deep dive into the new Secrets of the Atlas League update, explore the new challenge league - Mercenaries of Trarthus, the much-anticipated Betrayal system upgrade and a series of game experience improvements. Let’s get started!
In POE 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas, strange cracks begin to appear in Atlas. In the meantime, Zana returns, but she seems to be trapped in it.
Halfway through the endgame, you meet Eagon, a wise man with a mysterious lineage. He discovers that these rifts in reality are actually threads of memory, twisted by Atlas, and turned into reality. Eagon is able to connect these threads and open portals to them.
So, we have to work with Eagon to find Zana or any of her remains based on these threads.
In Secrets of the Atlas, Eagon’s pursuit of Zana is a brand new storyline that will appear in high tier maps. Once you meet Eagon and find the rift, he will transfer it to your map device and display a Thread of Memories on your Atlas.
Now, in order to access each map in Thread of Memories, you just need to talk to Eagon when you are ready, and he will open these areas in order. These areas can be fully affected by Atlas Trees, Scarabs, Fragments, and all similar items.
As you progress along Thread of Memories, you’ll discover that these maps contain dangerous threats that are influenced by Zana’s own memories.
Monsters here are infused with Memory Petals, and defeating them absorbs this power, which can be unleashed as a special ability in combat. Different maps in Thread have different abilities, which are displayed on an extra mini-skill bar next to your regular abilities.
As you progress, your maps can have multiple memories, so you can have multiple powerful abilities. When you consume Memory Petals, you can use these abilities at the same time.
But that’s not the only extra content these maps offer. When you defeat the boss of each map on the Thread, you’ll be presented with an Altar, which applies a modifier to all subsequent maps in the thread, and these modifiers stack as you progress. So the deeper you dig into the memories, the more modifiers you get. These modifiers, combined with special abilities, will make it possible to run some juiced maps.
The final map of each Thread is a real challenge, with all the altar mods applied to it and guarded by a powerful boss. If you manage to defeat Sirus or other warped memory bosses, they’ll drop a Map Fragment that Eagon can use to continue exploring the memory rifts.
And with these fragments, you can take on three brand new Pinnacle Bosses: Incarnation of Dread, Neglect, and Fear.
After defeating all three new Pinnacle Bosses, you’ll be able to find new memory-influenced tier 16 maps. These maps come with the aforementioned special abilities and monsters infused with Memory Petals, but can also roll with the same modifiers normally found on tier 17 maps, making their rewards even more generous.
All in all, in POE 3.26, you’ll need to fight Guardian and Pinnacle Bosses that torment Zana, find crazy Pinnacle Uniques, and craft powerful new items as you try to free her from the warped memories scattered throughout Atlas.
As we look at the rich rewards that come with the new endgame system, you may have noticed a lot of gold dropping.
Gold is a currency introduced in Settlers of Kalguur expansion, and it is mainly used for the development and operation of Kingsmarch, as well as various new features, including Currency Exchange, Black Market and Passive respec mechanics.
Although town construction is no longer ongoing, gold is still used for town services. And the developers also plan to add new ways to use gold in the upcoming leagues, which may be a new shock to POE currency system.
Now it’s time to talk about the new Mercenaries of Trarthus Challenge League. You will meet mercenaries who have trekked all the way from the city of Trarthus, ready to provide evil services, but not for free.
These mercenaries have different personalities and different builds, skills and equipment. After meeting them, they will challenge you to a duel. If you win, you can choose to hire them, take one of their items, or exile them.
If you choose to hire them, just pay a certain amount of gold, and they will accompany you as a skilled warrior to assist you in fighting monsters everywhere.
But if you lose the duel, don’t worry, you don’t need to give them any items. You’ll just die. So, it’s a test of strength and faith!
As we mentioned before, Settlers League update introduces a gold-based Passive respec system. You can now also reset passive points by talking to multiple NPCs throughout Wraeclast.
In addition, Black Market item gambling, which was previously only available in Kingsmarch, is now available at the same NPC in every town, allowing players to unlock a randomly generated a pool of items with gold. This will be very useful especially when you are having trouble leveling up, or are looking for a specific unique item.
It is worth noting that there will be no more town building in POE 3.26! However, when you start running maps in the endgame, you will start to find different mineral veins. You can mine minerals and transport them to Kalguuran and Karui ports to get return rewards.
Let’s first briefly explain what Betrayal is. This is a mechanic introduced in Act 9, which is about Jun Ortoi and her investigation of Immortal Syndicate.
Syndicate is a mysterious group of exiles who seem to be able to return from the dead. You must help Jun find their leader, Syndicate Mastermind.
Immortal Syndicate has four different divisions. As you encounter these members, you will gain intel on each division, thereby discovering the location of its leader and tracking them to their respective safe houses. Defeating the leaders of these divisions in the safe house will gain intel on Mastermind.
In your journey to hunt down Syndicate, you will control the members of Immortal Syndicate: change sides, make friends or confrontations, and even temporarily expel them from Syndicate.
Previously, after encountering and defeating Syndicate Mastermind, the status of Immortal Syndicate would reset and you would have to start your investigation from the beginning. This mechanic has been complained by players as the biggest drawback affecting the gaming experience.
But in POE 3.26 expansion, Mastermind will be separated and players can approach this boss through a new fragment, which has a chance to drop from high-level safe house bosses.
And defeating Mastermind will no longer reset the state of Immortal Syndicate! Now you can build Betrayal Board to your liking, optimize it, participate in Mastermind battle and get rewards without losing all your progress every time you can explore and experience at your own pace.
In the 3.26 expansion, many new features that players have been asking for to improve the quality of the game have also been added.
Of course, there are many other quality of life improvements in this update, and you can keep an eye on the patch notes.
In any case, the new battle is about to begin. Are you ready to enter the game at any time to cooperate with many powerful mercenaries and uncover the mystery of Atlas’ origin? Looking forward to seeing you in the game!
As the relevant press conference progressed, more specific new information about Path of Exile 3.26 was further revealed. Not only can you take this opportunity to get a deeper understanding of the new league, but you can also prepare for the expansion in advance.
Among all the new features that have just been revealed, a new storage system related to mapping is worthy of your attention. In fact, mapping is your main source of loot after entering the endgame, and it is also challenging and interesting because of the increased difficulty.
So how does this new system work? What changes can it bring to your 3.26 experience? Let us introduce it to you!
After entering POE endgame, place the map in the relevant device to create a random copy, and earn POE currency by fighting the monsters in it. These maps will bring you different difficulties and loot according to their different rarity and special affixes.
Faced with this kind of gameplay, you can choose to make many maps at once and then run them continuously; you can also make a map first and run it, and then make and run the next map.
From the perspective of experiencing the game, both ways are correct, but if you want to be a more hardcore POE player, it is better to make dozens of maps at once and then utilize them at once.
But in this way, you will be faced with many messy maps, scarabs, and fragments, and you need to manually organize or retrieve them between each run, which is very troublesome.
Fortunately, the new storage system is here for this! The system will localize all the necessary map components to the corresponding inventory in the game, making the process of making and organizing maps smoother.
That is, when you make a batch of maps, you can store the relevant components in the corresponding warehouse, and then continue to make new maps. After this batch of maps is run, continue to repeat the step with higher efficiency than before.
In fact, the messy map components will not cause any major obstacles to your gaming experience, but to be honest, when you think about the many tense battles waiting for you later, these repetitive sorting tasks are particularly annoying!
But after the new storage system is launched, you will no longer have to pause your progress to find warehouse tags or sort out maps, so you can focus more on completing related dungeons and improve your gaming efficiency with a more coherent rhythm.
If you were tired of dealing with mapping because of sorting components before, the storage system will re-mobilize your combat enthusiasm. In this way, the enthusiasm of players in the entire game community will actually be improved in the end.
In addition, although the system is more suitable for hardcore players, it is not a limitation - casual players can also benefit from it. Because no matter how many maps you plan to store, the system will fully serve you, but in terms of overall efficiency, the more maps you store, the more value the system can realize.
As an ARPG that has been running for more than ten years, what really matters to Path of Exile 1 is how to make the game experience more comfortable, rather than blindly adding new content. The addition of the map storage system is a good reflection of this concept.
Due to the focus on the development of POE 2, the release of 3.26 league is actually more than half a year later than expected, so it must provide enough effective upgrades such as the map storage system to avoid disappointment.
In addition, endgame can be said to be the core content of POE series, and mapping is the “core of the core”. Therefore, if its playing experience becomes better, it actually means that the quality of the game has also been steadily upgraded.
Of course, the new storage system is only one aspect. In order to give back to the players’ support and waiting, Secrets of the Atlas has also launched upgrades for other aspects. We will introduce some of them to you.
Usually, after the new league is launched, the gameplay of the game will also be updated and changed, so the item system must also be added/deleted to better cooperate. Taking 3.26 as an example, the new items expected to be introduced include:
It is worth noting that some new Uniques can only be obtained by dueling with mercenaries, which is related to a new gameplay: Mercenaries of Trarthus Challenge League.
Previously, the passive skill of Atlas increased the probability of your map containing main content or additional content, but 3.26 patch will also increase the probability of bringing you this type of content through scarabs. Other changes include:
The above is 3.26 League related content introduced to you this time. I hope it can be helpful to you!
After more than a decade of release, Path of Exile has introduced League Mechanics to the game, bringing a ton of new activities that can earn you tons of high-quality loot and crafting materials. Given that each League lasts for 3-4 months, there are about 20 League Mechanics to explore so far.
With POE 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas coming next week, players have expressed their desire to have the developers suggest changes to some League Mechanics, as well as discuss which options are the most and least worth exploring.
In order to make it easier for all players to get the most high-quality loot and spend less time in the new League Mechanics, this guide will list some of the best and worst League Mechanics in POE 3.26 based on current player comments and their performance in the previous leagues.
Strongboxes were introduced with the release of Ambush League in March 2014 and have become one of the most popular mechanics in POE. They were also added in the first major patch and league of the sequel and have been well received by players of both games.
The maps containing this mechanic are scattered with locked chests that contain some loot, the specific type and quality of which depends on the type of chest. Of course, like all items you pick up in the game, you can buy POE Currency to modify the modifiers Strongboxes have to improve the quality of the loot inside.
Before claiming your rewards, you need to defeat some monsters that appear after interacting with Strongboxes. Since they are really easy to defeat, only need to cast some crowd control and group damage skills to complete this battle, Strongboxes are praised by players as one of the most effective ways to obtain large amounts of currency, gear and experience points.
Similarly, Essence, one of the most popular league mechanics in the original game, has also entered the sequel with the previous 0.2.0 patch, because it also can appear in the early stage of the game, rather than being exclusive to the endgame content.
In Essence mechanic, after you break the crystal that envelope the monster, Essence you can obtain will be displayed above the monster’s head, and you need to defeat the monster to obtain them. All Essences can upgrade a common item to a rare item and add a guaranteed affix.
Low-tier essences will limit the random affix pool generated when using Essence, but note that the maximum affix level needs to be lower than the actual level of the equipment. Essences of Tier 5 and above can also be used to re-roll the affixes on rare items or add an affix to them, just like POE Chaos Orbs.
Although you will not obtain higher-tier Essences during the main campaign, Essence you can pick up is enough to satisfy your exploration of the early game content. For higher quality Essences, you can trade three Essences of the same level with an in-game merchant for a higher level Essence.
Although Heist mechanism is not very well known, the story and fun in it make some players willing to cultivate it multiple times. Here, you will plan Heist with several other NPCs, which are usually unlocked when you reach Act 6.
By interacting with Lily Roth, it will give you a side quest, which requires you to find a Smuggler’s Cache, which contains Rogue’s Markers and contracts. After you quickly complete it and interact with Lily again, another NPC named Kurai will take you to The Rogue Harbour to fulfill this contract.
After you reach your destination, you will find that this contract is a trial Heist mission, the purpose of which is to let you understand the operating principles of most of the mechanisms in this game, so most of your time is not fighting but watching cutscenes.
But in this relaxing process, you can still earn a lot of POE currency and gear, and the amount and quality of the loot contained in it has not been weakened by the reduction of combat scenes, which may make some casual players very satisfied.
While everyone is impressed by Einhar, Beastmaster the first time they see him in the game, as it introduces you to beast hunting, and how to perform beast crafting with them, Bestiary mechanic that comes with it is not very friendly.
In this mechanic, you need to capture all the beasts in it and add them to Menagerie, where different beasts can be combined to create some currency and item rewards. But it is worth noting that you need to kill all the monsters in one go.
Once you die in it, all the beasts you have killed before will disappear, which means that the time you spent hunting them will be wasted. The most disappointing thing is that the quality of the random rewards they can bring you is not very good.
While Delve mechanic is unlocked once you reach Act 4 and Highgate, and contains loot that you can aim to farm, the difficulty of the encounters in Delve is far beyond what the player can currently handle.
This can lead to players desperately wanting all the rewards in this mechanic, but constantly dying and trying, losing a lot of experience points, which completely deviates from the principle of leveling up.
But if you insist on making an effort, it is recommended that you fill up your Voltaxic Sulphite first and find Azurite nodes to increase your Sulphite capacity for a more powerful build.
These are some of the league mechanics worth exploring and ignoring in Path of Exile 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas. Of course, with the league still a week away from its official release, and the developer livestreaming the new content and changes it has in store, we’re looking forward to improving the two mechanics that are labor intensive and unprofitable. Have fun playing!
As we all know, one of the biggest features of the game Path of Exile, which has been released for over 10 years, is that players need to select the appropriate nodes in a super-massive passive skill tree and combine them with specific gear to create different builds.
In the current game content, many passive skill nodes are divided into four categories: Small Passives, Notables, Masteries and Keystones. They all have their own uses and will show different effects.
However, relatively speaking, some Keystones have very noticeable and specific effects that make them very suitable for important parts of your build and can therefore have a huge impact on your playstyle in POE. In some player communities and social platforms, they are called build-defining nodes.
In order to let you choose and make the most suitable build for yourself more quickly after Path of Exile 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas League begins, this guide will introduce you to the currently most popular and most interesting nodes. You can choose a node to accord with your play style.
Survival is always a player’s number one priority, both during leveling up and endgame content, making Mind Over Matter passive one of the most popular nodes, as it allows you to transfer 40% of damage from health to mana.
However, it is important to note that this passive will be very disadvantageous for classes that focus on mana-based spell damage, so you may need to buy POE currency to upgrade gear that can provide you with good mana recovery in your build and maximize its effectiveness.
In addition, you can also use other passive skill nodes to reduce mana consumption. For example, Eldritch Battery allows the energy shield you can generate to protect your mana from damage, which can ensure that those spells can run stably in your build.
We just mentioned that you can use Energy Shield to protect your mana from monster damage, but if the monster has Chaos damage type, it bypasses energy shields and deals serious damage directly to mana and health.
However, if you equip Chaos Inoculation passive node, these problems will be solved. This passive skill will limit your maximum health to 1 point, but will help you to be immune to all chaos damage you receive, which is very suitable for encounters that only deal chaos damage.
In this case, you will be able to focus on the generation and duration of Energy Shield to ensure that you don’t die quickly in the battle. In view of this, you may need to choose a node with faster recharge speed and faster recharge startup speed buff to match it.
For example, Zealot’s Oath, which can convert health regeneration into Energy Shield regeneration, is the best node for you to strengthen this important protection, because health regeneration will be more easily obtained in this build.
For some classes that focus on ranged spell damage, mana storage may be more important than health in the build, because their mana consumption is huge when attacking from a distance. Therefore, you may need to choose a passive node that can keep mana in a healthy state for them, such as Blood Magic.
It will first remove all your mana, but your skills that originally cost mana to cast will become health under the influence of this node, and even aura skills like Purity of Elements will only consume your health instead of mana.
Although the passive effect brought by this Blood Magic sounds unfavorable for long-term exploration, it costs much less POE currency and is simpler to have the ability to increase health recovery during the builds process than to increase mana recovery.
This node will be more suitable for players who can only focus on one task, because they don’t have to spend too much time and energy on a huge skill tree.
The first few passive nodes focus on your damage and build durability, but that doesn’t mean that PoE 1 doesn’t welcome builds that focus on defensive abilities in combat.
Once you have Iron Reflexes node that converts all dodge rating into armor, your gear that combines both properties will effectively help you reduce the amount of damage you take.
While Iron Reflexes may make you give up flexibility in your build, if you stack multiple armor values with it as the core, you will be invincible in some low- and mid-level encounters.
By the way, you can choose some gear or passive skill nodes that can increase your Strength attribute to make it easier to deal with monsters that are not resistant to physical damage. Then you can active an Unwavering Stance passive to reduce the chance of being stunned.
Likewise, Avatar of Fire is a passive node that can be used to enhance your build’s defensive capabilities, converting 50% of all damage types you take except chaos damage into fire damage. While this may seem like a nerf rather than a buff, this is not its true effectiveness.
With the help of Avatar of Fire, all of your attacks will also deal additional Fire damage to enemies, which can make you lean towards Fire damage when choosing some skills gems or others build options to maximize this elemental damage.
Above are the build-defining nodes and their effects, based on the developer’s update trailer for Path of Exile 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas League and leaked information about changes to the game’s content.
As the specific changes will not be revealed until the developer’s livestream on June 5th, the specific statistics and attributes listed in this guide may change until the official release of the league.
