So you've rolled up your character, battled past innumerable horrifying monsters, and thrashed Doryani's machine. Twice. You've got your free waystone, clicked on the map device, and opened up the Atlas of Worlds. Now what?
Path of Exile 2's mapping can be intimidating, but after reading this, you'll have all the information you need to progress your Atlas, sustain your waystones, and reach the true endgame.
When we talk about sustain in Path of Exile, we're referring to maintaining a healthy supply of waystones to keep progressing. Running out can be frustrating, but with these tools, you should be able to keep mapping to your heart's content.
How to Get Waystones
Starting at the beginning, you'll need waystones to navigate the Atlas. You'll first find them as random drops in Cruel difficulty, and get one for free from Doryani after you complete the campaign. Waystones are items that you'll place in map nodes in order to move there and battle the monsters. Each one provides you one attempt—whether you clear the map or die horribly, you get one shot per waystone. If you're able to kill all the rare (yellow) monsters, the map will be completed and you can move on.
As items, waystones can be modified with currency like most other items. This means they can have rarity and roll prefixes and suffixes. Prefixes are generally upsides; things like extra monsters, gold, or rarity. Suffixes are generally downsides; like cursing you or adding extra damage to the monsters in the map. However, these downsides also come with an increase to the percentage of waystone drops, which is key to looting enough waystones to keep progressing.
Waystones are divided into tiers from 1-15. Each tier corresponds with the level of the monsters inside, and they get harder as you go up the line. Clear enough maps of each tier and Doryani will award you with a skill book to add two points to your Atlas passive ree. This is like your regular skill tree, but instead of adding power to your character, it affects your maps.
The Atlas Passive Tree
How you spend the points you get on your Atlas passive tree makes a huge difference in whether or not you're able to sustain your waystones and keep progressing. Here's how I recommend spending your points:
- Constant Crossroads: Your first three points should lead you to get this node, which buffs the quantity of waystones found in your maps by 20%. It's a huge chunk for one point, and worth taking a couple of kinda stinky travel nodes that just give rarity.
- Teeming Horde and Precursor Influence: After you've got Crossroads, head up to the top of the tree and take all the small nodes that give % chance for waystones to be a higher tier. Teeming hordes adds more monsters, which is always good, and in order to take all the small nodes we'll have to take either more tablets or more essences. I chose Precursor Influence here for more tablets, but if you like essences that's a fine choice. The main point is to get all the nodes that make your waystones drop at a higher tier.
- Bountiful Bloodlines, waystone quantity: We want the cluster of three 6% quantity nodes at the bottom, and it's better to get magic monster density rather than going on the right side through rarity (it's way fewer points). If you're feeling really strong in your build, grab Deadly Evolution while you're down here. Adding modifiers to rare or unique monsters turbocharges their loot, and thus their waystone drops.
- Rising Danger: Most of your waystone drops will likely come from rare monsters and bosses, so this helps a ton.
With Deadly Evolution, that's 20 points. You'll get 30 all told, so this gives you a good foundation to progress your Atlas and still leaves you some flexibility. From here you can choose to lean into added content like Shrines, Essences, or Strongboxes. Alternatively, you can take generically helpful nodes like Lucky Pillage or Local Knowledge.
Mapping with Intent
Now that we've got a plan, it's time to get moving. The first thing you're going to want to do is find a map node that contains a hideout. Maps in Path of Exile 2 have all kinds of icons over them that indicate what kinds of additional content they contain, and there's a legend in the top left if you click the info icon that tells you what they all are. The hideout icon looks like a fleur-de-lis, and will provide you with a cozy base of operations for your adventures.
Moving on from there we're going to be focusing on two things: towers and bosses. The Lost Towers you'll see all over the Atlas do a couple things for us. First, completing them removes a large area of the fog of war, and lets us see what's going on. Second, completed towers have a slot in them where we can put precursor tablets.
These tablets can drop from anything, but you'll most often get them by killing monsters associated with additional content—Breach, Expedition, Ritual, and Delirium. These tablets can also be modified, but only with one prefix and one suffix. Slot them into your towers and you'll juice up the surrounding maps with additional waystone drops, level of monsters, items, and all kinds of other tastiness.
Clear towers close together and you can overlap these tablets, creating a zone of super juicy maps ripe for big loots and excellent waystone returns. As you progress higher, be sure to use lower level waystones to clear the towers themselves—they don't have too many monsters, so using your best waystones is a waste.
After we've got an area all juiced up, it's time to farm for big returns. Use your highest tier waystones on maps with bosses in them, preferably with one or more tablets in the area. Bosses almost always drop a waystone, and with good suffixes and tower setups, you can get multiple higher tier waystones that will really get you going.
Tips and Tricks
Here are some additional tips and tricks to keep in mind that will help you sustain your waystones and keep movin' on up to tier 15:
- Doryani sells waystones: He's got an unlimited supply of tier 1, so if you find yourself in a bind you can always buy those. He's also got a few higher tier maps, and I recommend always purchasing all of them. His inventory refreshes when you level up.
- Combine your waystones: The reforging bench can be used to turn three waystones into one of a higher tier. Put three tier 1 waystones in and a tier 2 pops out. Use this if you've got an abundance of lower tier stones, or if you've got some with mods that give you the ick.
- Watch out for league content: Breach, Expedition, and the like can be rewarding, but are super dangerous when you're starting out in the Atlas. Feel free to take them on, but I recommend clearing the map first and then circling back to give them a shot.
- Roll your waystones: Make sure you're using an Orb of Transmutation and an Orb of Augmentation on your waystones. As you progress, you'll probably want to start hitting them with Regals as well, especially when you've got a juicy boss map all ready to go.
- Full clear, but only on the good ones: Killing every monster in a map may seem like a good idea, but it's only really useful if you've got a real juicer. Spend too much time tracking down the last ten white monsters in a map and you're losing out on completing more maps, scoring more Atlas points, and killing more bosses. If it's a lower tier travel map with no additional content or tablets running, get in and get out.
