Congratulations on conquering Act 3 on Cruel Difficulty in Path of Exile 2! You've proven your mettle and are now ready to dive into the thrilling endgame content. The Atlas of Worlds awaits, offering a vast array of challenges, rewards, and opportunities to further hone your character. But where should you start? P4wnyhof shared a video on his YouTube channel to walk us through essential tips and strategies to make the most of your endgame experience. Let's dive in!
First, you will start your endgame play in The Ziggurat Refuge (Past). Walk up from the Waypoint to the Map Device. Then, put a tier-one map in the fortress map. Then, you can begin playing through it straight away. The monster level will be 65. Keep in mind the bigger the difference between you and the monster level, the less XP you're going to get. The way to beat a map is simple - find the rare opponents and kill them. Don't worry if you can't find all of them. As long as you keep killing the encounters on the map, they'll be revealed at some point. If you kill all of the ones available on the map, it will say "map completed."
Unlock a Hideout
Now, there are two goals to fulfill in the beginning. First, unlock a hideout, which is a special customizable area where players can design their own personal space. With a hideout, you can set up however you want, like moving the Waypoint or the Relic Locker to any location you wish. Set it up in a way that allows for the best gameplay flow in your case.
Burning Monolith
The second goal would be the Burning Monolith. To enter the Burning Monolith, you need to insert the three Crisis fragments to gain access to the Monolith, and then your final quest pops up: travel to the Iron Citadel, the Copper Citadel, and the Stone Citadel, which you'll need to find, and they could be anywhere.
Before that, the second quest you're getting is called the Cataclysm's Wake, where you have to complete tier 9+ maps. Finish them at Doryani, and he will give you Atlas skill tree points, which will enhance your whole endgame experience. The most important thing you want to get is to increase the quantity and the tier of Waystones found on your maps. In order to keep mapping, you need to keep finding Waystones in your maps.
You can upgrade a normal Waystone by putting an Orb of Transmutation on it (69% increased gold found in the area) and an Orb of Augmentation (75% more Waystone drop chance). You can also keep increasing the rarity with a Regal Orb to turn it into a rare item and then use the Exalted Orb to make it a 170% and 250% Waystone drop chance. Slot it in, and hope that you're dropping more Waystones to keep mapping.
The problem is that the Waystones that are dropping could be anything. It could be a tier five dropping out of a tier 2 or out of a tier 14. That's why we have the Atlas skill tree: to increase the quantity and tier of Waystones found, so you truly have a better chance to get something to keep you mapping higher and give you higher-level opponents to level up further.
Guarantee Good Map Drops
The trick to guarantee good map drops is taking your highest-tier map and doing something with a boss on it. In P4wnyhof's case, he took his tier 14 map to the Woodland, the boss of which can drop up to three new maps, generally the same tier or higher than your map tier.
Generally speaking, there are a bunch of symbols on maps, like the hand symbol for a monster breach. You could have the rituals going on, just like with the King of The Mists. Keep in mind that if you die on a map, like the Abyss in the first 2 minutes, you can still do the map afterward, just that the ritual will be gone. It won't be a breach ritual map anymore.
If you die from level 70 onwards, you also lose 10% XP every time you die, which means your number one priority in the endgame is getting the right amount of elemental resistance and defense. Boost your Chaos Resistance up because that is more common than ever in the mapping stage. Chaos resistance is truly what will tear you apart.
Boost Maps
As you keep playing through the maps, you'll get Precursor Tablets. These tablets can only be magically upgraded, so you can take an Orb of Transmutation to make a white one into a magic one and give it another multiplier. These Precursor Tablets can be slotted into the towers to boost up maps around them. In P4wnyhof's case, he put one into the Lost Tower, and he got "six maps in range are irradiated, drop 6% more gold, and 13% increased quantity of Waystones found in the map". The same goes for breach tablets. You can get "nine maps in range contain breaches, more magic monsters on the map, and your maps which contain breaches have a chance to contain three additional breaches." If you have towers next to each other, they can overlap. Use your Precursor Tablets to get multiple maps updated to have some areas with many bonuses.
Ascend & Upgrade
Another thing in the endgame is the tokens you get, like the Djinn Barya and the Inscribed Ultimatum, which are also the ones that give you the third ascendency, which would be the number of trials three, and your fourth ascendency, the number of trials four, so you can claim your next ascendency points. Keep in mind that there's ample reason to keep doing the Inscribed Ultimatums because, in the Temple of Chaos, you'll get the dropping of Soul Cores. These Soul Cores are amazing as we can have chaos resistance, charm charges, maximum mana, maximum life, elemental resistance, lightning resistance, maximum fire, and the rarity of items found. If you don't want to keep farming it, you have the currency exchange where you could get the chaos resistance one, for example, for four Exalted Orb.
