Recently, GGG finally unveiled the mystery of Path of Exile Crucible League. But there are all sorts of minor details hidden in Q&As, patch notes, previews, and more. So, in this article, I compile everything we know, and give early thoughts on Crucible strategies, ideal POE 3.21 builds, and Atlas strategies, so you can have the best league start possible!
Crucible Forges
First up, let’s go over everything we know about the league mechanic. We will be encountering a Crucible Forge in each zone and map. These Crucible Forges will allow us to add a Crucible Passive Skill Tree to an equipped weapon, and gain experience towards unlocking passives by killing monsters.
The way this works is that we select an equipped weapon – either one we’re currently using, or one in our off-set. And then, click and hold on to the passive we want to earn experience towards. This is also how you add skill trees to weapons that don’t yet have them.
While we click and hold on a passive, monsters will begin to spawn in the area around the Forge. These monsters won’t activate and start attacking until we leave the circle around the Forge. The longer we click and hold to “channel” the forge, the more difficult the encounter will be. But the more experience we will get as a reward!
Crucible Passive Skill Trees
These skill trees are randomly generated, and can contain differing numbers and types of Passives. The Passives available depend on the item base of the weapon, with 2-handed weapons being approximately twice as powerful as 1-handed weapons, and special bases such as Convoking Wands having appropriately-fitting passives.
Some of the previewed passives look incredibly powerful, like a bow with “+1 to number of arrows”, or a wand with “socketed gems are supported by Level 2 empower”. Some passives will have minimum item level requirements, so you’ll want to be leveling the highest item level weapons that you can.
In addition to simply crafting powerful weapons, Crucible can also be used to generate raw currency. There will be some passives that don’t increase the power of your weapon, but instead grant you POE Currency upon selling it, once allocated.
I think the idea here is that if you reveal as skill tree with one of these passives but nothing else you want, you have the option of simply deleting the item and moving onto the next one, or sinking some more XP into it for a currency payout.
Forge Of The Titans
But what if we get a Passive Skill Tree with passives we don’t like? How do we farm for better passives? The answer is something called The Forge of the Titans, which allows you to randomly combine the passive trees of two different weapons. One weapon will be destroyed in this process. But you get to choose which one?
It seems the general idea here is that you’re going to want to be leveling weapons in your off-set, searching for Passive Skill Trees with desirable skills, and then combining them with your current weapon. Or, if you get the perfect Passive Skill Tree, using that item as a crafting base to make your Best-in-Slot weapon.
Notably, this combination process isn’t entirely random. Chris noted that, like Recombinators, there will be rules to how the skill trees combine, that we can take advantage of to tilt the odds in our favor. For example, Chris mentioned that skills that you have allocated will be far more likely to be kept in the combined skill tree.
Primeval Remnants
So, how do you access the Forge of Titans? You can gain a single use of the Forge by completing a special map called a Primeval Remnant, which you can get from cracking open Geodes that drop in Crucible encounters.
These Primeval Remnants come in two tiers. Tier 1 remnants come from “Igneous Geodes”, while Tier 2 remnants come from “Crystalline Geodes”.
Primeval Remnants are always rare, with a number of modifiers on them, and are unmodifiable. The tier 1 Forge allows you to combine two uncorrupted rare weapons, while the Tier 2 Forge allows you to combine rare OR unique weapons as well as corrupted weapons.
Forging Uniques
Next, let’s talk about Unique weapons. While Unique weapons can have Crucible Passive Skill Trees, they cannot be granted skill trees through a Crucible Forge the same way that a Rare weapon can.
In fact, the only way we know of to add a Crucible Passive Skill Tree to a Unique weapon is through a special modifier that can appear on Primeval Remnants.
Not only that, but when combining the skill trees at a Forge of the Titans, you must use two of the same Unique Weapon. You cannot mix and match a Unique and a Rare, or two different Uniques with the same item base.
Additional Information
A few other notes: There will be an item called a “Magmatic Orb”, which is like itemized Crucible Experience, which can be traded to other players. Like how a Facetor’s Lens works for gem XP, we don’t currently know how to get these and POE Currency buy, outside of a single Primeval Remnant modifier.
Also, it’s been confirmed that items with a Crucible Skill Tree on them that are chanced into Unique items via an Orb of Chance will retain that skill tree. It’s not yet confirmed whether this is also true for Ancient Orbs. That’s it as far as what we know about the Crucible mechanics so far.
So, to recap: do Crucible Forges in maps to level up Crucible Skill Trees, run the Remnants that drop from these encounters to merge Crucible Skill trees, and add skill trees to uniques.
Item Bases
What are the implications of this, as far as strategy goes?
You’re probably going to be spending most of your time leveling weapons in your off-set, with the intention of merging ones with excellent skills together.
Early on, you’ll probably want to just merge anything with a good passive into your currently-equipped weapon, hoping to improve the skill tree you’re currently using.
Later on, you’ll probably want to be merging these off-set weapons together to create a base item with the perfect skill tree for you to craft on. This means that collecting appropriate bases to craft on will be very important in this league.
Given that some passives are confirmed to have minimum item level requirements, if those item level requirements are high (item level 86+ for instance), that may cause item level 86 items to be quite valuable this league.
You’re going to want to make sure that you have item level 86 normal weapons with good bases showing up on your filter at the very least, for the weapon types that you intend to use on your build.
Unique Weapons
The next major takeaway is Unique weapons. Unique weapons (and shields) are going to be much harder to get good Crucible Passives on.
For a non-unique, all you have to do is run maps with any item with the correct base in your off-set, to add a skill tree to it. And you can keep doing this for free, forever, as you run maps normally.
For a Unique item, you will have to find or buy a Remnant with the special modifier, and successfully run that map every single time you want to add a passive skill tree.
Then, in order to get additional trees to merge, you will have to buy additional copies of that unique item, additional remnants with the special modifier, and pay extra for the Tier 2 Remnants, which allow you to merge unique items.
The result is that you will be forced to buy POE Currency, if it’s a valuable unique in order to fish for these good passives.
Not only that, but the fact that rich players using these Uniques are going to need to consume multiple copies of a Unique weapon, is going to drive the prices of unique weapons to new, all-time highs. You might find yourself unable to afford a rarer unique, even if you don’t intend to spend the POE Currency merging them yourself.
To me, the big takeaway here is that you do not want to play a build that utilizes unique weapons in Crucible League. If you play a build that uses unique weapons, you will be forced to pay extra, every step of the way.
Whereas, if you play a build that uses a rare weapon, not only will you not be spending extra, but you’ll be able to sell all of those Remnants with the Unique modifier, and Tier 2 Remnants that let you merge Uniques, to other players who need them.
You simply have the choice of whether you want to spend extra money on Crucible, or make extra money. Besides, it’s not like builds that use Unique weapons are inherently more powerful or anything to justify this extra cost.
Ancient Orbs
In fact, it’s quite common that builds that use rare weapons have a much higher top-end with investment, as you’re able to min-max a rare weapon much more than a Unique one.
On the topics of Uniques, there’s an unanswered question that may affect how you go about getting good Crucible Passives on one. And that is whether Ancient Orbs preserve Crucible Passive Skill Trees.
GGG has confirmed that Orbs of Chance do preserve the skill tree. But Ancient Orbs are a little different, in that they can actually change the item base. And we also know that the pool of passives is tied to the item base – Convoking Wands will have minion passives, for instance, while other wands will not.
If Ancient Orbs do preserve Crucible Skill Trees, it opens up a world of options. You could get the perfect Skill Tree for the unique you want on a rare weapon. Just utilizing the free Crucible Forges in maps, then chance it into a unique, and spam Ancient Orbs on it until you get the Unique you want. This may turn out to be far more cost-efficient, as you won’t have to buy tons of copies of the unique item, and tons of tier 2 Primeval Remnants.
Not only that, but this might allow you to smuggle Crucible passives onto Item bases where they don’t belong. If you can turn a Convoking Wand into another type of wand, for instance, you could have a unique wand with minion-related passives that could not otherwise have them. This could be useful for certain Unique items that are on bases that don’t necessarily synergize with what the Unique does.
You could even go a step further, and then brick that unique item into a rare corrupted item with a Vaal Orb, and combine it onto another wand to get those passives onto a rare item.
Depending on what passives are available on what item bases, this may allow you to get powerful combinations of passives that would otherwise not be possible.
Also Read: About The Latest Vaal Ice Shot Info And The Worst Unique So Far In Path Of Exile 3.21
Build & Atlas Considerations
Finally, we have the question of what sort of build and Atlas strategy you want to choose to get the best use out of the league mechanic. Because Crucible Forges will be in every zone, there’s going to once again be an emphasis on faster Alch and Go strategies over high investment ones.
If you’re spending 15 minutes clearing a high-investment map, you’re going to do far fewer Crucible Forges than someone clearing a map every 3 minutes. This means that if you want to make the most out of the Crucible mechanic, you’re going to want to build a character with a focus on mapping, and an Atlas strategy that lets you clear maps as fast as possible.
For builds, that means you should pick one with high clear speed, even at the cost of single-target damage. For Atlas strategies, you’ll want to choose mechanics that are quick to complete.
Essence, Strongboxes, Heist, and Metamorph are all on the Atlas Device this league, and would fit this sort of mapping strategy well.
Harvest and Expedition, on the other hand, take significantly longer, and may be something of a trap if you’re trying to engage with Crucible.
