Patch 0.3.1 has been live for a few weeks now. As a beta update for patch 0.4.0, the main selling point of 0.3.1 was to test potential game changes before the next major update and, based on player feedback, to try to fix some bugs before the start of the new league.

Honestly, I think patch 0.3.1 was quite successful, but there are still many areas in the endgame that need to be fixed before the release of 0.4.0, which is what we will discuss here.

Patch 0.4.0 Release Date Speculation

The release date for Path of Exile 2 patch 0.4.0 has not yet been officially announced, but based on the developers' previously stated four-month league cycle, we can expect it to be released in late December 2025, with the possibility of it being pushed back to January 2026.

Since Patch 0.3.0, The Third Edict, was released on August 29, 2025, and given the developers' usual Friday release schedule, 0.4.0 will probably go live on January 2, 2026.

In any case, based on the updates in Patch 0.3.1 and player feedback, we'll discuss the much-needed changes to the endgame in the next League.

Delirium Mechanics

For this first section, we'll of course be discussing the changes to the endgame mechanics, especially the current Delirium, which absolutely destroys your FPS and turns the game into a complete mess.

For us, at least, the biggest positive change in Patch 0.3.1 was the removal of Delirium's incessant humming music. Honestly, I wish it had carried over to PoE 3.27.

Unfortunately, the visuals in Path of Exile 2's Delirium are just as terrible. The constant fog caused by Delirium Mirror turns the world into a gray haze and cuts our FPS in half or a third. However, the goal is to kill enemies in the fog, and there's a reward counter that determines the number of Distilled Emotions you'll receive after the fog clears.

These Emotions are currency for character enhancement and can also be used for crafting and upgrades. By killing monsters, especially those unique to Delirium encounters, you can increase the amount of Distilled Emotions dropped at the end of the encounter, and potentially even higher-level Simulacrum Splinters.

What's more, in PoE 2, Distilled Emotions, in addition to providing Delirium, also provide a significant bonus to the spawn rate of rare monsters in the map. This is effectively double dipping, meaning that if you don't use Distilled Emotions on every map, you're missing out on a very powerful loot multiplier. So, there's almost no reason not to use Emotions.

The problem is Delirium Mirror has always been criticized for its high difficulty, as it makes monsters more powerful while adding new, powerful monsters, and the challenge increases the further away from Mirror you are. Because of the extremely high difficulty and the fog's tendency to cause enemies to deal more damage and take less, players find these encounters frustrating and overly painful.

This would all be fine if Delirium Mirror itself provided some valuable PoE 2 currency, but since it only provides Distilled Emotions, why not just farm Simulacrum instead? It's not only easier to obtain, but also more cost-effective.

Simply put, in PoE 2, Delirium Mirror only provides Emotions and Simulacrum Splinters, but there have always been better ways to obtain both, making Delirium Mirror's existence essentially pointless.

Delirium Mirror is the only mechanic still wearing these special handcuffs. So, in Patch 0.4.0, either the Delirium Mirror reward needs to be buffed, or Emotions reward needs to be nerfed, or both.

Map Rolling Mechanics

On the other hand, Path of Exile 2's map rolling mechanics can be quite frustrating. The high-risk modifiers, the wide variance in map outcomes, and the poor layout of many maps make play throughs too long or too difficult, making them unpleasant.

Currently, map rolls in the game are polarized. Some map rolls with high-risk modifiers, such as a large number of monsters dealing increased damage, shock effects on hit, or a very high freeze chance, can make a map impossible to play, depending on the player's build.

Some map rolls may contain beneficial modifiers that are friendly to new players, but these offer little to no tangible benefit. Some of these junk items and minimal currency drops make the risk and effort seem meaningless.

Because of the wide variation in modifiers and the varying number of beneficial and harmful modifier effects, the differences between maps can be significant, often leading players to waste significant amounts of money and time trying to find a manageable map.

Furthermore, poor map layouts are a significant contributing factor to players' perceived endgame experience being so poor. Many maps not only feature narrow, winding paths and numerous obstacles, making navigation cumbersome but also increasing the chances of being cornered by monsters.

The combination of larger maps and slower movement speed modifiers means that even completing a single map can take a long time, which many players find tedious and uninspiring.

More importantly, the high-risk, low-reward nature of many maps, coupled with harsh death penalties, makes the game feel punishing rather than rewarding success. Some players feel that the current endgame map system is less rewarding and engaging than Path of Exile 1.

Atlas Passive Skill Tree

The next issue is the skill tree, which is currently quite confusing. This is because the new map system in patch 0.3.0 adds one to three additional items to each map. Unfortunately, these additional items can be anything: Essence, Breach, or other strongboxes.

This new randomized item system overrides the effects of many passive nodes, which in turn increases the chances of spawning the same item type. Furthermore, because of exploits and overwrite mechanics, numerous Atlas passive nodes, such as Essence, Strongboxes, and Rogue Exiles, appear to be bugged and not functioning as intended, rendering many nodes useless.

Furthermore, the cost of certain bosses required for Atlas progression and the single-portal nature of Atlas progression make Atlas Points prohibitively expensive for average players, leading to frustration.

To unlock new Atlas Points, players must defeat bosses like King in the Mists, which costs approximately six PoE 2 Divine Orbs per attempt.

Since these bosses only have a single portal, if the player dies, they lose the portal fee, Atlas progression, and the opportunity to unlock that specific point. This makes the process particularly challenging for average players who may not have the gear or skills to guarantee victory on their first try.

Thus, the 0.4.0 patch's changes to the passive tree are urgently needed. These are fundamental changes that will directly impact players' ability to earn loot, currency, and waystones, making the endgame more interesting and meaningful.

Regardless, as of update 0.3.1, Path of Exile 2's endgame setup in patch 0.4.0 still needs a major overhaul, but this also proves we're getting closer to the full game's release.

If you want to gain an advantage in patch 0.4.0, you need to prepare now. Not only will you need to learn new build strategies and explore Atlas settings, but having enough currency is essential for everything. However, there's a shortcut: you can buy cheap PoE 2 Currency on POECurrency.com platform for a better gaming experience! Good luck!

Exiles, today we're taking a look at the build that won Build of the Week on PoE 2 Forums this week: Grape Soda Power Washer by Toastji!

Actually, Grape Soda here is the purple chaos damage converted by Blackflame Covenant Passive after Acolyte of Chayula Monk uses Incinerate skill! This intriguing concept is perhaps one of the key reasons why this build was named Best of the Week. Here, we'll take a closer look at how this Powerwasher Acolyte of Chayula endgame build works.

How Does It Works?

First and foremost, Power Washer Acolyte of Chayula build relies heavily on collecting fuel to incinerate enemies, clearing everything in your path. Meanwhile, the purple flame beams stacked with Volatility boost your damage to the max.

Incinerate is quite simply a flamethrower. To use it, you first need to accumulate fuel, which is collected by spending mana.

We can spend mana on Living Bomb, which not only causes enemies to explode upon taking enough damage or dying, but more importantly, it also drops Fire Remnants, which empower Incinerate with Burning Ground buff, effectively killing two birds with one stone.

Furthermore, to maximize mana consumption and generate more Remnants, we can actually use two Living Bombs, one of which is automatically triggered by Casting on Elemental Ailment. Since Ignite is also a Damaging Elemental Ailment, using Incinerate allows us to continuously cast Living Bombs and generate Remnants.

And, as mentioned earlier, Blackflame Covenant Keystone converts 100% of the fire damage dealt by fire spells into chaos damage, turning its visual effect purple and causing it to scale based on the chaos damage modifier instead of the fire damage.

While the visual effect isn't essential, it's certainly a nice touch. More importantly, this conversion also means that any Ignite dealt by these spells will now deal Chaos damage and benefit from the increased Chaos damage modifier and spread.

Skill Tree Setup

This Grape Soda Acolyte of Chayula Monk build centers around the reworked Incinerate skill, paired with the new keystone passive, Blackflame Covenant, to convert fire spells into Chaos damage and apply Chaos damage over time.

This unique interaction allows for simultaneous adjustment of Ignite power and Chaos mechanics, creating a powerful and flexible build that, when combined with spells like Fireball, can create a trendsetting purple Monk build.

Additionally, this skill works in conjunction with the new Elemental Infusions mechanic, allowing Incinerate to ignite the ground and deal increased Ignition damage to enemies passing through it.

To enhance the effectiveness of our AoE attacks, we can also use Cast on Elemental Ailment Gem to apply Living Bomb to the target during mapping.

Additionally, Volatility mechanic of Acolyte of Chayula Ascendancy in PoE 2 grants you additional Volatility stacks, detonating every 4 seconds, damaging the player and dealing 1% Chaos damage over time, significantly increasing mapping efficiency.

To maintain mana consumption for long-lasting Incinerate spells, target enemies affected by Elemental Ailments, as killing them has a chance to spawn a Mana Remnant, instantly replenishing mana, even exceeding your current mana cap.

However, keep in mind that during Incinerate, movement is limited, which is where Ghost Dance comes in handy. This skill allows you to instantly consume energy upon being attacked, restoring energy shield based on your evasion value.

Finally, Despair and Ball Lightning synergize perfectly. While Ball Lightning's own damage output is low and not a powerful primary damage skill, it can be used to trigger Effigy of Cruelty, which curses enemies upon impact. Despair reduces Chaos Resistance of all targets in the area, allowing us to easily clear all enemies.

Jewels

For Jewels, you should focus on investing in Ailment Magnitude, Ignite Magnitude, Chaos Damage, and Critical Hit, as these directly impact the damage output of most of your skills. Notably, Ignite damage from Incinerate scales with critical hits, which is why it's so effective.

Alternatively, if you have enough PoE 2 currency, you can also equip a Heart of the Well Diamond with Ailment Magnitude stat.

Gear Selection

Weapon Set

In PoE 2 patch 0.3.0, weapon switching has no delay or time penalty, meaning we have even more gear options. To take advantage of weapon switching, this build uses two gear sets to stack powerful debuffs.

• Weapon Set 1: Non-Unique Wand and Focus
• Weapon Set 2: Wicked Quill Withered Wand and Effigy of Cruelty Antler Focus

Whichever weapon set you choose, remember to focus on stats that increase damage, particularly spell damage, spell skill level, and chaos damage.

Armor

For armor, you'll want to equip items with higher Evasion, Energy Shield, and Deflection stats. Since this build doesn't require unique armor pieces, you can easily craft or swap in items with your preferred stats.

Runes

For your runes, be sure to equip Fenumus' Rune of Agony on your wand and Greater Body Rune on your shield to help you gain more chaos damage and life leech, thereby improving your survivability.

Also, equip Greater Iron Rune on your helmet and armor to increase your weapon's physical damage by 20% and armor, evasion, and energy shield by 20%.

You can also place Farrul's Rune of Grace into an empty rune slot on your weapon or armor, reducing the movement speed penalty for using Incinerate by 6%.

Belts

If budget is of no concern, Headhunter Heavy Belt is definitely our best bet. This allows you to gain temporary strength after killing rare monsters, lasting 60 seconds, allowing your character to become temporarily stronger while clearing the map.

Charms

For Charms, prioritize defensive options to maintain Incinerate casting. Ideally, choose a charm with a defense chance modifier when activated to further enhance survivability while channeling skills.

In short, Grape Soda Power Washer build in Path of Exile 2 combines the power of Chaos-themed Acolyte of Chayula Ascendancy with the fire spell Incinerate, providing high-speed casting and potentially massive Chaos damage. This build, with its combination of damage and visuals, truly deserves its spot as the best build of the week!

If you're considering this build, I must warn you that while Incinerate Acolyte of Chayula has impressive damage output, it also comes at a considerable cost. However, you can also visit the cheap PoE 2 currency for sale page on POECURRENCY.com, which will allow you to complete the build at a much lower cost!

In Path of Exile 2, Evasion is a defensive stat that grants a chance to completely avoid physical attacks, making it crucial for characters who rely on this mechanic for survival. This is especially true for builds like Hollow Palm Monk and Lightning Arrow Deadeye, which typically maximize their defensive capabilities by stacking Evasion and Energy Shield.

Therefore, players using high-evasion builds can maximize their chances of dodging incoming attacks by crafting Pure Evasion Body Armor. Especially for new players, using Evasion Body Armor wisely can provide a more direct defense against one-shot attacks than stacking Energy Shield and Life.

So, how do you craft the best Evasion Body Armor in Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.3.0 to effectively boost your build's overall defense? This guide will provide the answers!

Step-By-Step Guide

What do we need to start crafting this armor?

Slipstrike Vest Base

First, we need Slipstrike Vest Base Body Armor. Note that it must be Slipstrike Vest, as this is the base with the highest evasion rating; it should be at least level 79, preferably 80, as this is the most common level available.

Next, we need a chest with the prefix Tier 1 Flat Evasion Rating or Tier 1 % Increased Evasion Rating. Please note that the prefix cannot be hybrid.

For the suffix, we need at least 30% resistance or a deflection rating of around 20%.

Once you have these bases, you need a Greater Essence of Ruin. This essence grants chaos resistance to our body armor, which upgrades it to a rare item.

Infusing Chaos Essence

But what if you already have armor with both evasion and chaos resistance? In this case, you can choose one of Fire, Cold, and Lightning Resistance Essences. It really doesn't matter which one you choose - it's entirely up to you.

Next, we'll crush Chaos Essences. This is because by the end, you can roll anything from Tier 5 to Tier 1. These are the only mandatory requirements, and this makes the crafting cost of this Evasion Body Armor lower overall compared to other materials.

So, we've infused four Chaos Essences into each piece of armor.

Adding Prefixes And Suffixes

So, what's next? We'll add Desecrated Suffixes. To do this, we need Omen of Dextral Necromancy and Preserved Rib. You can select Omen of Dextral Necromancy and then hit each piece of armor with Preserved Rib to ensure it gets the suffix.

However, you don't have to reveal this mod right away. In fact, we even recommend not doing so, as you'll most likely want to use Omen of Abyssal Echoes later to achieve this. However, not every piece of armor is worth it.

Now that our body armor has a complete set of suffixes, we need to add our prefixes. So, what do we do with our prefixes?

If you already have flat evasion, we'll look for the highest% increased Evasion Rating and a hybrid evasion.

You can slam both hybrids, as you have a chance to hit all three mods. However, if you lose, you'll have to repeat the previous steps. However, the crafting cost is really low, so it's worth a try.

Also Read: Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.3.1 Update | All Maps Have Bosses, Orb Of Alchemy Rework & Major Atlas Changes

Omen Of Homogenising Exaltation

Next, we take Omen of Homogenising Exaltation, which grants us the evasion modifier. We can combine it with Greater Exalted Orb to add the desired higher-level modifiers, which share tags with the existing modifiers on your item.

A quick explanation for why we used Greater Exalted Orb instead of Perfect Exalted Orb is that the difference between the two Exalted Orbs is only one tier, which isn't worth it. Don't waste your PoE 2 currency; it's better to start over.

Now, let's bash through all of them. If you don't hit anything good, I recommend recombining them or throwing them away, then getting new bases and repeating the process again.

Desecrated Modifiers

So far, we've managed to achieve a 2400 evasion rating, which is pretty good. But we still need to further optimize this body armor with Desecrated Modifiers in Well of Souls.

Desecrated Modifier system allows you to improve items without risking them being ruined, giving you a lot of autonomy in your crafting. We can take this armor to Well of Souls in Mastodon Badlands to reveal three modifier options.

Note that the three modifier options you receive are random, but are designed to provide useful upgrades for your character. Finally, choose the modifier that best suits your build and select Confirm to add it to your armor.

Cost

Finally, for budget, this Pure Evasion Body Armor costs approximately 5 PoE 2 Divine Orbs, as we only used Omen of Homogenizing Exaltation + Greater Exalted Orb, and Omen of Abyssal Echoes. Aside from the base, the rest is completely affordable, requiring only around 20-30 Exalted Orbs, depending on when you acquire them.

These are the complete steps and cost breakdown for crafting this Evasion Body Armor. Overall, Evasion Body Armor is crucial in PoE 2 because it grants a chance to completely dodge incoming attacks, which is very effective for defending against multiple smaller attacks and reducing critical hit chance. If you're struggling with incoming physical damage, prioritizing crafting this unique armor is an excellent strategy.

If your budget is limited or you don't have the time to craft this armor, there's actually a great solution: visit Cheap PoE 2 Currency Items for sale page on POECURRENCY.com, where you can buy everything you need with lightning-fast delivery!

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!