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PoE 3.18 Best Atlas Passive Skill Tree Strategy Guide (Early, Mid, End League Farm)

5/17/2022 9:28:44 AM

In Path of Exile, we've gotten the full reveal of the new atlas tree including all of the keystones, we do have to say that it's going to feel familiar but there are definitely some major changes that you need to be aware of particularly these keystones, as well as some very important notables that are going to make or break your current atlas strategy. So it's going to be extremely important to know how a lot of these keystones work (know when to take them, when to not take them), as well as maybe you need to just take some of them for a little bit and then inspect them later.


PoE 3.18 Atlas Tree Update Basics (Changes)

We are going to go over the thought process on what these three main trees are - there are a multitude of trees out there that are going to be available you can literally do anything that you like, however, these are going to be some good basic starter trees that you can then expand to do whatever it is that you want to do. 

The best thing about this atlas tree and the way that they've changed the end game now is that you can do pretty much anything, there are going to be some things that are just better than others but you can do pretty much whatever you want. Now there are two main things that we want to talk about before we actually get into the atlas tree itself, it's going to be these keystones that are all the way around the tree as well as these nodes here in the middle, these 10 nodes here are going to be probably the most important thing to your early mapping strategy out of everything that's on this tree. 

What are these Nodes? These are the new nodes that are going to allow you to customize your atlas and the kinds of content that you see, this is easily one of the best changes that they've put into the game so far.

What Do these Nodes Do? They're going to make it so they disable certain kinds of content and give you a higher chance to see all other kinds of content. Now the one interesting caveat here is there are some kinds of content that cannot be turned off, so if you notice here we have all 10 of these taken right and you might think but big ducks there's that's going to leave like literally nothing left why would you take every single one. So if you read these, we've got breach, abyss, expedition, sacred grove, legion, ritual, blights, mirrors of delirium, metamorph, as well as Rogues markers contracts and blueprints. 

You might notice that if you read through the list, there are a couple of extra things in here that aren't part of those ten, particularly rogue exiles, monsters in prison by essences, shrines as well as strong boxes. Those are the main things that most fast map clears early on are focusing on, so the vast majority of people are probably going to be playing some kind of map clearing build very early on in the league, and if you take all of these nodes that means your maps are going to be substantially more full of essences, and rogue exiles as well as strong boxes as well as things that are very important for early league currency.

Related Read:

PoE 3.18 Best Maps To Farm - Top 8 Maps To Favourite in Path of Exile 3.18 League


Path of Exile 3.18 Best Atlas Passive Skill Tree Strategies Guide (Early League, Midgame, Endgame)

We're going to go over three main atlas trees, none of these are set in stone, you will need to make small modifications no matter what tree that you're going to be doing. 


Best Alts Nodes for Early League Map Farming

This tree probably looks pretty familiar to you, you're just going to be rushing all of the early atlas and map nodes, grabbing the essence nodes strong box nodes, and the shrine nodes. These are the nodes that just work extremely well early on in the league, it adds guaranteed PoE currency and items to your maps as well as just give you some extra juice and things to do on top of having things like these sextant nodes here:

POE 3.18 Best atlas passive tree for early league farming

Notably, this does take some of these carrick nodes in the middle simply because atlas scouting reports can be pretty useful very early on, if you use them for extending your mapping at the very early levels say if you run out of particular maps or you want to play a very specific map and get some specific POE items, early scouting reports are very powerful for that. Later on, you'll see that we respect these.

Stream of Consciousness - Now you might notice that we don't have pretty much any of the keystones taken except Stream of Consciousness, the reason for this is that it depends on what you're going to be doing. One major keystone or set of keystones that you're going to have to choose between which are very close and available is going to be the wellspring of creation and dance of destruction. 

Dance of Destruction - If you are a build that is extremely tanky but doesn't feel like it does enough damage, you can take something like Dance of Destruction meaning that the monsters are going to have less life but they're going to deal more damage. 

Wellspring of Creation - If you're super tanky anyway and you're not dying, you might as well make yourself do a little bit more damage, however, if the build that you're playing has loads of damage, you don't need to worry about doing more damage but you're worried about maybe you don't want to die as often, you can take Wellspring of Creation to give yourself a little bit more safety.

Singular Focus & Shadow Shaping - Now beyond that we do have a couple of other things that you can choose between as well, there are these nodes up here called Singular Focus as well as Shadow Shaping. If you take Shadow Shaping, this is going to be something that you're going to customize significantly later on, in the league we don't feel like this is going to be an early league thing, you could probably do something like this much later. The same thing goes for Singular Focus, this is going to be something that you're going to use much later in the league when your map sustain is very good and you are focusing on that one favored map after you've gotten all of the favored map slots unlocked. These are not going to be super useful very early on.

Expert Reconnaissance - Expert Reconnaissance is going to be super important very early on but you should try to stop using this relatively quickly. If you are just getting into like yellow maps and red maps, you can use this, it's going to be substantially better than pretty much any of the base little fragments that you're going to find and this is going to make it so that you get a ton more of that extra content those essences and everything else going on very early on. But as soon as you're able to start actually using scarabs and such you should definitely drop this node, it's not good once you're doing your main farming strategy. However of note, in a bossing strategy where you may not be using scarabs, you could take this node once again if you really wanted to.

Standard Stuff - Beyond that, we take the Standard Stuff that you've seen from 3.17, we're taking the Shrine Nodes because they are extremely powerful early on in the league, it's going to make your character substantially stronger while mapping, substantially faster as well as tanker. Though shrine nodes, and excellent nodes add a lot of enemies to the map as well, essences are a guaranteed form of currency very early on in the league and a guaranteed form of just making better gear with those essences that you find.

Strongboxes - Then of course, you've got Strongboxes as well, these are all just guaranteed things. They're going to be pumping more currency into your early character, get you some of that gear very early on in the league, and get you going faster.

Sextant Nodes - Last but not least, we of course have these Sextant nodes such as Enduring Influence you should be using sections once you start hitting the end, but this is going to be close to the last thing that you would be grabbing. 

In our opinion, the way that you should be doing the ordering of this atlas tree it should be moving up grab like these essence and strongbox nodes at the bottom, keep moving up grab all of the map nodes, and then you're going to want to grab these nodes that turn off the extra content and then fill out everything else. Also you can get more of everything going, alternatively you can b-line for the Syncretism nodes first, the Syncretism nodes are very powerful but you do want to get Shaping the Seas, Shaping the Valleys and such very early, this is going to make your early map sustain substantially better, you really do need these nodes very early on.


Best Alts Nodes for Mid League Expedition Farming

The next tree that we're going to talk about is a little bit more of a specialized tree, this is going to be for some higher-end map farming. This particular tree is something that we kind of gravitated towards later on in the league, and it made us a ton of currency and that's going to be focusing on a lot of the similar things you're still going to get those essences, strong boxes, and shrines:

POE 3.18 Best atlas passive tree for Mid League Expedition Farming

Expedition - However you're moving more so towards going with the expedition as well as harbingers. Expedition is a ridiculous amount of money and it's mainly through logbooks, we do recommend expedition as a very large currency generator especially early on in the league. If you are able to learn how to use rog properly very early on in the league, you can make a ton of really powerful gear and a ton of really high-quality items that will sell for a lot of money.

Harbinger - Harbinger is the obvious choice because it is so close to the expedition nodes. Harbinger can get you a lot of just very good currency early in the league just pump some more enemies and more things into your map, and it synergizes well with the other things that are in the map. 

Eldritch Nodes - Now on top of all of this, we are taking the eldritch nodes that are over here, this is going to be the eater of world-type nodes. Notably, we take Eldritch Gaze which is going to be eldritch alters have an additional downside, 50% increase effective upsides, this is going to be a node where your character needs to be a little power to be able to handle it.

Singular Focus - We're going for more altas because more altas on the map mean more juice more currency, more items, and more enemies. Singular Focus is going to be something that you're going to be using much later on in the league because you're going to be able to farm that one map.

Nodes To Turn Off/On Content - When it comes to these nodes that allow you to turn off and on other content, we would make sure that you leave Expedition content on obviously here, but if there's some particular kind of content that you want to farm outside of this, maybe leave the heist note on and just collect some contracts and blueprints and things like that, that might be a good thing for you to do. You could also make a ton of money doing very particular things.

Delirium Nodes - If you wanted to focus maybe on Delirium farming early on, you could do a similar kind of tree get all the delirium nodes and just make sure that you leave delirium mirrors in a lot of your maps. The tropical island map is back this league, so delirium farming might be really good, especially with the chance to get delirium mirrors going way up high and among other things.


Best Alts Nodes for Late Game Boss Farming

Now this final tree that we're going to talk about is a bossing tree now. This one is for a character that is pretty well established in the atlas, they've got their big character with their good gear and their bossing information going and everything is solid, this still has a lot of the classic stuff in it a lot of the shrine nodes, essence nodes, strongbox nodes, these are just kind of easy go-to nodes to put some extra stuff into your maps.

POE 3.18 Best atlas passive tree for Late Game Boss Farming

Nodes To Focus On For Lategame Farming - You'll notice that this tree is very similar to the other ones except that we are focusing on a lot of these nodes up towards the top now. The idea for a character that's doing maps like this is that we're going to be pushing through these maps, killing the bosses really quickly, trying to clear through the maps as quickly as we can get that map drops the specialty map drops off of the bosses.

For example, we have a 3% chance to drop an elder guardian map or a shaper guardian map, and then we have a 30% chance for map bosses to drop a conqueror map, it's a 30% increase, so you're going to be getting these conqueror maps, and getting these shapers and elder guardian maps. You can run those to get the fragments. run the uber versions of the bosses, sell the items that drop, or maybe you just sell the fragments in the maps themselves either, or you can modify the tree in which way you like. We do suggest that if you're doing the bosses yourself that you are running invitations for them constantly as well, you need to be making sure that the maven is inhabiting all of these.

Associated Invitations with Height of Hubris - You are running the associated invitations with a height of hubris, this is going to be a really powerful build, but if you can get this going and you can run through all this content and get a ton of currency out of it, this is going to be most impactful very early on in the league.

When people are not able to get access to some of this content very early on and not able to get access to some of these items, so you'll be able to push towards the absence of symmetry and harmony get towards the eater of worlds, and maybe get the unique amulet that drops off of the higher version of that.


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