Which Ascendancy Class Should You Choose For Your Character In POE 3.26 After Passing Trials? - Best & Worst

Exiles, time has passed quickly. From looking forward to the arrival of Path Of Exile 3.26, to now being released for nearly half a month, how have you performed during this period?

Is your bank still full of dust, or is it overflowing with Divine Orbs? If your current currency balance is very tight and you are in urgent need of earning a lot of money to continue to advance the game, then don’t miss this guide!

Here, we will share five effective Divines farming strategies in POE 3.26, so that you will no longer be troubled by the lack of currency. We will quickly introduce each strategy, and you can find a way that works for you and is more profitable to practice as soon as possible!

1. Blight

First, we have the Blight map. The Blight map is basically a battle centered on the tower defense mechanism, which can be generated in Fungal Growths in any area, and Sister Cassia NPC will appear with it.

It’s worth noting that this encounter is considered extra content, so there’s a greater than 8% chance that it will appear in any non-unique map zone. And the best part is that you almost never need higher DPS or rare gear to play Blight maps.

In a Blight encounter, stalling the minions is the first thing we need to do. If a lane is unguarded, you’ll have to defend the pump alone, which will waste your time taking down towers.

Next, we need to choose a Blight map with good checkpoints, paint the appropriate anoints, and build towers. It’s recommended that you prioritize building stalling towers over damage towers, and use Empowering Towers for cover whenever possible.

An empowered Tier 3 Chilling or Seismic tower is usually enough to hold a lane. Note that Tier 4 stalling towers are not much more defensive than Tier 3 towers, and while other damage towers are not as damaging, they can still be useful in the right place. So if you have a delayed lane in a Blight encounter, wait until they spawn and see if you can find a suitable tower at the checkpoint.

After building your towers, you just sit back, hold your line, and wait for loot to drop. If you’ve never tried a Blight map, you’re missing out on an easy, low-effort, and profitable opportunity.

2. Essence

Straight into the second strategy, Essence farming, this one may require a small amount of DPS, and there may be a small learning curve to get the whole setup right. But you can expect to net around 50 Chaos Orbs per map after costs and Essence drops, and this seems to be true in almost every league.

In Path of Exile 3.26, farming Essence requires players to constantly run maps to find and defeat Essence monsters, and collect their drops.

To maximize your gains, you may want to consider using the Beyond atlas passive, which increases the amount and quality of Essence drops. Additionally, Scarabs can further improve the efficiency of Essence farming.

For this strategy, you’ll want to run on a well-laid, low-level Yellow map, especially one with two bosses. Note that this doesn’t work on the White map, as you can’t get high-level Essence.

Basically, you just need to kill the Essence monsters on the map, then defeat the boss and leave. In addition to this, we can also make some extra income by looting Smuggler’s Cache.

3. Abyss

The next way on the list is Abyss farming, which is a low-investment money-making strategy that can produce a lot of Divine Orbs, Scarabs and Divination Cards.

You will find that Abysses are usually marked with a green icon on the minimap. When we pass through an Abyss, a crack will appear on the ground and a lot of monsters will emerge from it. As the player advances, the crack will continue to expand and eventually generate an Abyss.

If the player follows the crack into the Abyss for too long, the crack will close, and then it will generate another crack, leading to another Abyss.

After clearing the last enemy, an Abyssal Trove will be generated, which can be opened to obtain a lot of loot. It is worth noting that in addition to the normal drops, this treasure chest will always provide at least one or more Abyss Jewels, which can be inserted into the passive skill tree or the Abyss slot on the equipment to scale the damage of bow builds and stack higher DPS.

Therefore, I recommend running Abyss with a spellcaster build, because when you cast spell mastery, there is a 25% chance to open Abyssal Trove.

4. Stacked Deck

Next, another low-investment Divines farming method is to collect Stacked Deck.

In POE 3.26, Stacked Deck is a currency item that can be used to obtain a random Divination card, and these Divinations can usually be exchanged for specific high-value items. Therefore, I think Stacked Deck is essentially a gamble to obtain a high-value card.

This farming strategy mainly relies on specific scarabs and map selection. We need to use 5 Divination Scarabs of The Cloister to summon a large number of monster hordes in your map, each of which has a chance to drop a Stacked Deck, making this an efficient and scalable farming strategy.

Note that you will need some layers of defense and focus on nodes in your chosen map that can increase the size and number of monster hordes, and while it is also more dangerous, the rewards are easily worth it.

5. Strongboxes

Last but not least is Strongboxes farming. Strongboxes are a special kind of treasure chest on the map that will release hordes of monsters to attack the player. We must kill all the ambush monsters before this loot chest will open. Of course, defeating these spawned monsters will also drop loot and gain XP, so this is a good way to level up in addition to farming currency.

In Path of Exile 3.26, farming T17 Strongboxes is still one of the most effective ways to get high currency returns, but there are more cost-effective ways to do it in T16 maps. And to reduce costs, it is recommended that you avoid using Containment-Scarab unless you are rich.

Honestly, this strategy requires some critical thinking, as the price of Scarab in each league tends to greatly affect the market cost of this strategy.

In short, the above farming methods are enough to help you get rich quickly in POE 3.26. Although the farming process is relatively long, please believe that the final result is worth your effort!

After entering the new Path of Exile league, in addition to getting familiar with all the new additions and changes, your first task is to earn enough POE currency and items to upgrade your character as soon as possible.

In Path of Exile series, the currency system includes multiple specific currency types with different functions. Among them, the more common ones include Divine Orb, Exalted Orb, Chaos Orb, etc., because in general, they can enhance your gear in a unique way.

For the entire POE 1, including 3.26 league, Divine Orb has a more friendly drop rate and effect, so it is also your key farming target. The maps in Atlas of Worlds are undoubtedly one of the best places for farming.

Based on this, we will introduce you to how to farm more Divine Orbs in these maps.

The Specific Role Of Divine Orb

As a high-value POE currency, Divine Orb plays a vital role in POE economic system, and most high-value transactions are also centered on it. Therefore, Divine Orbs are more suitable for exchanging other valuable equipment rather than consuming them directly.

Utilize Scarabs Properly

Atlas of Worlds’ map system is large and complex. Whether you want to unlock more maps or want maps to drop more Divine Orbs for you, you must carefully manage and arrange related props, such as scarabs.

A scarab is actually a map fragment that can enable or enhance additional content and masters, thereby enhancing various effects of non-unique maps. And most drop channels will provide you with this item.

There are many types of scarabs, and if you want to earn POE Divine Orbs by clearing maps, it is recommended that you utilize Divination Scarab of The Cloister and add the maximum number of available ones within the allowed range.

In fact, the higher the rarity of scarabs, the higher the monetary value you will eventually get. And you can unlock passive nodes such as Significant Troves and Skittering Swarm to get more scarab drops in battle.

Choose The Right Map

To increase the efficiency of the map dropping currency, it is recommended that you use a very small map while being close to all monster spawn points to increase the density of monsters spawning in Ritual, so that you can get more Divine Orbs in a short time.

At the same time, you should also try to ensure that the difficulty of the map you choose is not too high, because for the purpose of this guide, your goal is to earn specific currencies rather than challenge high-difficulty content, so there is no need to take a big risk.

There are currently 4 levels of Atlas maps in the game:

• Tiers 1 through 5, which are marked “White”.
• Tiers 6 through 10, which are marked “Yellow”.
• Tiers 11 through 16, which are marked “Red”.
• Tier 17, a special map tier.

Upgrade Your Gear In Time

As you know, the main currency types, including Divine Orbs, can be enhanced by adding/modifying modifiers to your gear, so that you can become more powerful to cope with more difficult maps.

Of course, you may be hesitant to do this because you don’t have enough currency, but if you are always too cautious and don’t invest in your gear, it will be difficult to earn more Divine Orbs through higher-level maps. Sometimes consumption is necessary.

Earn More Divination Cards

In Path of Exile, divination cards are items that can be collected and exchanged for other rewards. Different types of divination cards will drop at different stages of the game, and bring different rewards.

Or you can get stacked decks during exploration, which are a currency item that can provide you with a random divination card to help you complete the collection of a whole set of divination cards.

Only one divination card may not be very useful, but when you have a full set of divination cards, you can use it to exchange for specific items or currencies, such as Divine Orbs or weapons, but generally the exchange is highly random.

Not Just Any Player Can Utilize This Method

The whole Atlas of Worlds Divine Orbs farming strategy is all about scarab utilization, but one very annoying feature of scarab-spawned enemies on the map is that they form a melee shield around themselves.

On top of that, as the map level increases, these enemies will have stronger shields and more dangerous enemies. So you have to make sure your class and build are strong enough to handle this.

You can usually keep your distance from the enemy and wait until their melee shield breaks before killing them, or you can wait until the enemy is out of the melee shield and kill them in a safer way. In general, you need to adjust your combat strategy at any time based on your build.

In general, this Divine Orbs farming plan is suitable for players who are good and familiar with the specific mechanisms of Atlas of Worlds, divination cards, etc. If you think you meet the requirements, you might as well give it a try!

As always, a large number of new unique items have been added to POE 3.26 expansion, many of which are exclusive drops from the new Pinnacle Bosses. But we all know that the 3.26 Mercenaries of Trarthus league introduce a new mercenary mechanism. These mercenaries can not only be hired for our use, but also have the opportunity to drop unique equipment.

Here, we want to share the exclusive drop of Mercenaries under the new league mechanism, Azadi Crest. The drop location and method of this shield are restricted, and it is almost only equipped on mercenaries encountered in a specific area. You can loot them from them after winning a duel with a mercenary equipped with this item.

About Azadi Crest Modifiers

Azadi Crest is a pure evasion unique shield. This item is a bit of a surprise because it has a modifier we haven’t seen before in Path of Exile, Lucky and Unlucky modifier, which has three random values ​​instead of two, which has a major impact on those modifiers and their power.

But before we get into that, let’s take a quick look at the other modifiers on this shield and you’ll see that they have a very wide roll range, which is the core of this item.

It’s mainly based around RNG, so either 1 or 100 max life is pretty common in SC Trade League because it only takes one lucky hit to get it. But in the past, even if you invested a lot of POE Divine Orbs in this, you would only average out to about 50 max life.

Block Chance

There’s now some additional block chance on this shield.

I think most builds using this item will probably take advantage of Gladiator Ascendancy, but since its key node, More Than Skill, provides a flat 50% block chance and brings powerful bleed and explosion synergies, the extra block hit is meaningless in this case.

However, if you take More Than Skill and use Forbidden Flame and Forbidden Flesh jewels on another Duelist Ascendancy, or you just use shields on another class, you should have no problem getting a decent block chance again in Trade League.

But if you run in Solo Self-Found, you’ll get an average of 5% extra block chance, which is pretty ordinary and nothing to write home about.

Chance To Avoid Projectiles

Then, for its chance to avoid Projectiles modifier, it rolls from 1% to 10%. This modifier is actually very powerful.

Generally, Avoidance is divided into two types: hit type avoidance and damage type avoidance. Although they look very similar, they are calculated at different stages of the damage calculation.

If a hit is avoided, then that hit will not be counted towards the damage calculation, it is discarded completely and treated similarly to an evasion.

However, if damage is avoided, it is a form of damage mitigation, the attack still occurs even if all damage is avoided, the avoided damage is treated as blocked damage, similar to a blocked attack.

This modifier is the first type of avoidance. This will give you a chance to completely avoid any projectile that comes into contact with your character, and this happens before you block.

Lucky & Unlucky

Now, let’s look at the key modifier of this item, the Lucky or Unlucky effect, which uses the best or worst result of three rolls instead of two.

Lucky and Unlucky mechanic works by rolling three times and then choosing the best of those results as Lucky roll, or the worst of those results as Unlucky roll.

Lucky is a very powerful effect in itself, and some mechanics take advantage of this. For example, Lucky Block from Gladiator tends to be better than Spell Block.

When we are using Versatile Combatant, this will limit your Spell Block chance to 65%. However, Lucky Block will roll Block chance of any incoming attack twice and automatically choose the favorable result, so Spell Block chance is 65% after rolling, and Effective Block chance is 87.75%.

This is the normal rolling result, but when you have Azadi Crest equipped, it will be determined by rolling three times instead of two, and your Effective Block chance will be increased again from 87.75% to 95.71%!

This means that for a Gladiator with Azadi Crest, when blocking with Versatile Combatant, you have about a 96% chance of successfully blocking any incoming attack that is blockable. This is very powerful, especially for mapping.

Lucky Damage

But Azadi Crest doesn’t just apply this modifier to lucky blocks, it also applies it to any lucky or unlucky effects that exist on your character.

The most interesting of these are, of course the lucky damage characters, especially when you equip Perquil’s Toe on your mercenaries to get lucky damage.

But right now, lucky damage isn’t that useful unless you have a high damage roll range. However, we can also force a larger damage roll range by adding additional equipment, such as Volatility Support or Ryslatha’s Coil. And having a large roll range is where lucky damage really shines.

However, because many builds that use it in the current league are Gladiator, there seems to be a lot of controversy about whether lucky damage affects damaging ailments.

But this is essentially the same as double or triple damage not affecting damaging ailments, because they are just hit modifiers. In Path Of Exile, hits and damaging ailments caused by hits are two separate things that apply different modifiers to their results.

What Options Will Azadi Crest Synergize With?

Finally, let’s list some options that can be used with this shield and create powerful synergies.

• Spell Suppression Mastery gives you a lucky chance to suppress spell damage. This skill is useful if your build only has a small amount of suppression chance or you can’t reach the suppression chance cap in the early game.
• Viridi’s Veil is unique to Uber Maven. When you equip the magic ring, it will turn the damage caused by the enemy to you into misfortune. Therefore, when paired with Azadi Crest, its defense will be very strong.
• In addition, Vaal Grace will also apply misfortune damage rolls to suppressed spell hits.
• There is also Vaal Arc, which grants you a buff that makes normal Arc gain lucky damage rolls for a period of time.

The above is all about this unique shield Azadi Crest. Knowing how to use this unique lucky roll mechanic correctly will help your build dodge most of the damage in battle and gain better survivability. Perhaps, this will lead a build trend in the future, so try it out!

When starting any action RPG, leveling is an inevitable topic in the early stages, and this is also true for POE 3.26. However, some players only need a low level to complete the build, while others want to level up quickly and stay at a level they feel comfortable in order to continue to advance in the game.

Therefore, here we want to share some effective and low-cost strategies that can help you level up quickly, while running this fairly simple solo strategy, you can also earn some POE currency in the process!

If your build can handle this strategy, you will have an immense advantage in the early stages. It provides a very considerable XP gain, so you can reach the level you want very quickly. Without further ado, let’s take a look!

How Does This Strategy Work?

To achieve this goal, we will combine multiple mechanics and spawn monsters on the map as much as possible.

We will use a very cool thing called Evolving Shrine. This in POE 3.26 can increase the level of monsters on the map, which means that we can get as much XP as possible on each map by slaughtering monsters.

In addition to this, these Evolving Shrines also combine perfectly with the current mechanics of providing additional content for maps, of which Breach and Beyond are probably the best combination. In this way, by combining them, we can efficiently farm monsters and get additional multiplied XP by evolving monsters.

Scarab Selection

So, which Scarabs will we use initially? Actually, Double Breach Scarab is a good choice. Because this way we can get a decent number of Breaches, about four per map.

There is also Double Domination Scarab of Evolution, all of these basic Scarabs only require one Chaos Orb, so this is completely affordable for us.

The last Scarab here will be Beyond Scarab of the Invasion, which will provide us with rare and unique monster habitats, and killing monsters in this area will create 8 to 12 additional Beyond Portals. This way we have a very Beyond Portal on our map, which will greatly help us increase the number of monsters spawning from the portal.

This means that we only need to invest in a few POE Chaos Orbs in the map, and we can make our money back with the basic drops from Breaches alone, not to mention that the monster spawns here are as dense as bubbles, making it the best place to quickly farm XP.

Atlas Skill Tree

Now let’s talk about Atlas, which is basically a combination of Breaches and Beyond. But I strongly recommend adding Obsessed with Vengeance, which can increase the chance of encountering Syndicates on the map and increase the drop rate of Betrayal Scarabs.

In addition, Endless Tide is very important. This keystone prevents Beyond bosses from spawning, but it also halves the portal merging radius. This not only prevents Beyond mechanism from ending prematurely because of spawning bosses, but also reduces the number of extra Beyond monsters spawned during the portal merging process.

But we need to make sure that Beyond monsters appear as much as possible throughout the map, so it is very important to know how to distribute Endless Tide.

We also combine Scent of Blood with all Beyond opportunities and all possible Explicit Modifiers. It is very important to get all Explicit modifier bonuses, including Chiselled Perfection, Mounting Modifiers, and all small nodes. Because Explicit modifier will significantly increase your pack size, this is very important for the setup.

What Maps To Run?

We need to know what kind of maps to run for this setup. Generally speaking, I recommend running any map with a lot of space.

So a map like Mesa would be very effective, or a map like Strand would be good. You need to gather and defeat as many monsters as possible, and usually I aim for at least 30% on uncorrupted maps, so that we can more easily solve another interesting problem, which is about Delirium Orbs.

Delirium is an area-wide effect that spawns new enemies and strengthens existing ones, which is very useful for farming maps efficiently.

However, Delirium Orbs currently sell for about 9 Chaos each, so if you want to keep your strategy low-cost, you need to avoid adding Deliriums as much as possible. But if you just want to get as much XP as possible without regard to cost, then you can just click on any available Delirium Orbs on the map.

Is It Necessary To Run A Tier 17 Map?

Another interesting question is whether it makes sense to run a Tier 17 map instead of just a Tier 16 map?

In POE 3.26, Tier 17 maps may be worth a try, but be aware that this is not the best choice for every player. Because while Tier 17 maps offer larger monster pack sizes, more loot, and potential unique item drops, they also significantly increase the challenge.

So, if your build is not strong enough to handle these challenges at the beginning of the league, then you may turn the advantage of more XP into a disadvantage of more laborious farming and the risk of death at any time.

For these reasons, we would say that whether to try a Tier 17 map should depend on the strength of your character and your farming goals. If you are an experienced player, then don’t hesitate to run Tier 17 and push your XP farming efficiency to the top!

How To Optimize Your Strategy?

The last interesting question is how to make the entire run easier or faster.

Firstly, if you want it to be faster, I highly recommend using Flash Breach as this will make Breach on your map open and close 10% faster, which is a pleasant bonus.

Also, if you feel like you can’t finish the whole Breach in the allotted time, then it’s also a good choice to go for Heavy Breach, which will make Breach open and close 30% slower.

To make things easier, I think dropping Delirium is probably the best option, as Delirium currently adds a pretty big difficulty increase, which may affect our farming efficiency to a certain extent.

So, what we’re going to do is go for Heavy Breach, make sure to have Shrines, and drop Delirium completely. If your build can handle these Tier 16 maps quickly, you’ll also get a pretty decent amount of gold while running these maps, which is pretty nice.

That’s it! Hopefully, this leveling guide can help you reach higher levels in POE 3.26 as soon as possible to more comfortably advance any other content and have a better gaming experience in the endgame.