Path Of Exile Ice Nova of Frostbolt

It has been a month since the official release of Path Of Exile 3.26: Secrets Of The Atlas. How do you think this expansion performs, which has made everyone wait for nearly a year? Is it really worth your expectations?

To be honest, the response to POE 3.26 expansion is generally not ideal. Although this update brings a lot of new content and Atlas expansion after nearly 3 years, most players have a bad gaming experience because of update delays and performance issues.

More importantly, the developers seem to always think that Path Of Exile 2 takes precedence over the original game, which can be seen from the repeated postponements of the 3.26 update. It can even be said that the sequel is so successful now because the previous game was suspended for too long, which made most players turn to POE 2.

Current Comparison Of POE 3.26 And 2

According to the current data from Steam, the number of online players in POE 3.26 is about 32,000-33,000, with an average of about 67,000 online players in a month and a peak of about 68,000. In contrast, the number of online players in POE 2 is about 53,000-54,000, with an average of about 11,700 online players in a month and a daily peak of about 10,000 online players.

But from a broader perspective of active players, POE 3.26 has about 349,000 daily active players and a total of about 53 million registered players, while the sequel has about 437,000 daily active players and a total of about 31.7 million registered players.

Therefore, we can clearly see that since the release of Secrets Of The Atlas, users have been more active in PoE 1, but PoE 2 may have a wider user base on the overall platform. However, compared with its predecessor, PoE 2’s real-time user activity is still much lower.

Because basically since the early access release of PoE 2 last December, the number of daily online players has been shrinking, but it has gradually stabilized between 10,000 and 15,000. This means that although the release of the sequel was discovered by more players because of the popularity of the original, it still retains some players with its own gameplay and style.

What Is The Difference?

However, with the release of Path Of Exile 3.26 league, the difference between the two games has become increasingly significant, and basically most players have a clear preference for them.

Although PoE 3.26 and PoE 2 are closely related, whether because of the series of games or because the development team itself may be temporarily formed and the personnel overlap, if you actually experience them, you will find that they are completely different.

Path of Exile 3.26 is more suitable for some veteran action role-playing game players who are familiar with complex systems. Especially for players who are keen on custom builds and like to spend a lot of time trying out unique skills or builds that are not well known, you will find unique fun here.

As we all know, POE 1 has always been famous for its complex currency economy system, passive skill tree and huge Atlas system, and the newly added mercenary mechanism and memory loops in 3.26 have deepened this feature.

Therefore, if you like new mercenary partners, deeper production mechanisms and flexible league economic systems, and are happy to earn countless POE currency with your own strategies in a short time, then Secrets Of The Atlas will provide you with a rich and satisfying gaming experience.

However, if you like streamlined and easy-to-use gameplay, smooth combat experience and fascinating storyline, then believe me, the 3.26 expansion may only bring you pain, instead POE 2 may be a better choice for you.

Although POE 2 is still in the early access stage, the current updates can show that the developers want to continuously improve the Path Of Exile series universe through it. Because this sequel has not only updated the combat and storyline, but also the game performance and visual effects to make it more in line with the needs of players at all stages.

It’s clear that Path Of Exile 2 is aimed at beginners of the series, who often felt overwhelmed by the original, but prefer to explore the story, visuals, and real-time gameplay. The sequel offers a smooth combat experience and a deep but easy-to-understand progression system, allowing them to experience a challenging campaign without being bound by complex mechanics and outdated tutorials.

As a result, Secrets Of The Atlas now seems to be more focused on veteran players and continues to be designed for players who have supported it for the past decade, while PoE 2 attracts new groups of players, of course, there is also a certain degree of crossover.

Why Did Many Players Leave PoE 3.26?

To be honest, before the release of the 3.26 expansion, most veteran players had high expectations for it because the previous Settlers of Kalguur league was so popular. As expected, at the beginning, when POE 3.26 was released, the peak number of online players surpassed Settlers of Kalguur, indicating that this classic game still has a very active player community, but the subsequent situation is not optimistic.

Due to a large number of server problems, delays and frequent DDoS attacks, the growth of players has been greatly hindered. In addition, although a lot of new content has been added in the 3.26 update, it is still centered around the typical farming equipment game style, and the playability has not met the expectations of players, which has caused a large number of players to leave.

Although the developers are trying to solve the problem of server instability and are committed to improving the overall DDoS protection of the server, this has caused some legitimate traffic to be blocked, resulting in some players being unable to play the game. In addition, various account thefts and visual flickering issues have a negative impact on the user interface for some players.

The frequent occurrence of these problems has led to constant complaints in the player community. Many people said that they might restart the game later, but definitely not now!

In fact, since the release of POE 2, the developers have been slowing down the update speed of the original game. However, the team is still continuing to support the old game, and hopefully these issues will be resolved soon.

Final Thoughts

In general, Path of Exile 3.26 has been hit hard by frequent connection issues after a major update. However, PoE 1 has been around for a long time, and the previous Settlers of Kalguur league never had such server crashes.

And I have never seen any development team not communicate with players during a serious DDoS attack, or even respond so casually to a server problem that has lasted for nearly a month, which may be the real reason why the feedback on the 3.26 update is getting worse and worse.

On the other hand, although PoE 2 did not perform well, this highly anticipated sequel is still in the early access stage, and the overall gaming experience is still smooth. Therefore, all reviews are still positive for players.

Therefore, as far as the current situation is concerned, Path of Exile 3.26 is already in a situation where it is obviously lagging behind the sequel. This may be because the updated content did not meet the expectations of players, or it may be the negative impact caused by many problems, but in the final analysis, the developer ignored the feelings of a large number of old players because of the release of the sequel.

If the developer does not want to destroy the foundation of Path of Exile series of games, it is best to rebalance the parallel development of the two games, otherwise it will only lose everything.

In POE 3.26, Rituals are still a very profitable endgame strategy, and players can still interact with Ritual Altars in the map and defeat monsters to get Tribute. So here, we will share how to run Rituals on T17 maps to get more benefits. Let’s take a look!

Skill Tree Setup

In this guide, we run Ritual in 30 T17 maps. In the passive skill tree, we need to unlock almost all Ritual nodes, including some Scarab nodes, as well as nodes that increase modifier effects on the map.

In addition to this, we also use two Ritual Scarab of Selectiveness. This Scarab allows us to reroll a total of five Rituals, of which the first four are free. Then, we get two Ritual Scarab of Abundance, so that we can get more items in the Ritual.

Finally, we used Blood-filled Vessel to get better rewards, more monsters, and more Tributes.

Ideally, we can also add special affixes to Blood-filled Vessel to get more Tributes, but this is not mandatory.

How To Run?

Defering Item

Please note that during Ritual, once any valuable item appears, we need to defer the item before claiming it.

This ensures the safety of the item and avoids losing it. Especially if the item has a red border, we must defer it, otherwise it will be almost difficult to see it again in the later stage.

Defering Item feature was introduced as part of the mechanism in the Ritual league. This feature allows you to immediately mark rare items that are currently unavailable for Tribute and make them reappear later. However, in order to defer the item, the player must pay 15% of the original price of the item.

So, we can defer a bunch of valuable items from Tier 17 maps, and then to claim them, we can use Scarab of Wisps and Immutable Dogma Keystones on Tier 16 maps, which will give us more Tributes.

Nameless Ritual

But the problem with using Immutable Dogma is that if you get a Nameless Ritual with Keystone active, you won’t be able to reroll Ritual and lose some nice gains.

Nameless Ritual is a special Ritual that has a chance to drop An Audience With The King on each reroll, which allows you to enter Crux of Nothingness and encounter The King in the Mists. Currently, it costs a little more than a POE Divine Orb.

On top of that, you can also get Ritual bases and corpses in these Nameless Rituals, which is usually where you make the big money.

Tribute Farming

For each map, it really depends on your situation. If you have unique monsters in both your Ritual and Blood-filled Vessel, you can get more Tributes.

I think 6000 Tributes should be enough to reroll and defer almost all quests, so just make sure you have at least 2500 Tributes left when you reroll for the last time. As long as you have all Ritual passives in Atlas passive tree, you can defer any quest with this much Tribute.

Investment & Profit

Now, we will talk about total investment and profit.

Regarding Ritual, I would say that your profit will vary greatly depending on the random number generator (RNG). Because Ritual mechanism is usually very unstable, but I think on Tier 17 map, as long as we invest moderately, we can guarantee a good profit, and have a chance to complete some important Ritual, or Nameless Ritual.

During this run, our total investment was 14 Divine Orbs. This number is for when I try to take everything into account, including Scarabs, Vessels, Maps, Chisels, T16 maps, and some Chaos Orbs for re-rolling T17 maps.

After all maps are done, we get a profit of 54.3 Divines. It is important to note that we only count items obtained from Ritual window, and do not consider items dropped from monsters, Uber Boss fragments, etc.

Of course, this does not mean that if you complete 30 T17 Ritual maps exactly as shown here, you will get the same results. As I said, the success or failure of Ritual depends on luck.

To be fair, I found two Nameless Rituals on 30 maps, which is very lucky, because each one gave us a profit of about 10 POE Divine Orbs. So, if you don’t want to include these, then subtract 20 Divines from the final profit.

Run Time

If you want to know how long this took, it really depends on how fast you finish T17 maps and how fast you map in Ritual maps. For reference, we averaged about 7 to 8 minutes to complete each T17 map, and about 1 to 2 minutes for each T16 map.

In T17 map, we chose Fortress Map and Sanctuary Map to layout. In T16 map, I chose to run City Square Map because we can get three Ritual drops from unique enemies in the boss battle here, and this layout is very suitable for Ritual.

Finally, I must emphasize that during Ritual run, if not necessary, please skip all items worth less than 10 Chaos Orbs, because it will actually just waste your time.

There are more profitable things waiting for you to explore on the map, some Omens, Fossils, Resonators, Gems, Maps, Unique Maps, Divination Cards are all valuable.

In addition, in POE 3.26 league, Archdemon Crown is also quite valuable. Currently, they are targeting 0.9 Divines, which is basically one Divine. Then there are Fractured bases, Synthesised bases, and generally rare items with good modifiers, which can bring you a good profit.

In short, after running 30 T17 Ritual maps, we can get at least close to 50 Divines, which may not be exactly what you expect, but it is indeed an easy and profitable way to make money.