When comes to playing Path of Exile, most players spend the majority of their time running maps in an effort to upgrade their character, get Poe currency, and progress in the game. Rolling your own maps is one of the best ways to ensure that you get the most value out of your time, and it is a process that is accessible to all players. In this article, we will discuss some foundational systems, tips, and tricks that you can implement to roll your own maps and prepare for running them as seamlessly as possible.

• What is Rolling Your Map?
• Understanding Map Mods
• Fragments and Sextants
• Pick a Strategy
• Good & Bad Map Mods
• Using the Horizon Orb
• Bulk Rolling Maps
• - Setting Up Your Maps
• - Bulk Rolling Your Maps
• - Using Awakened PoE Trade
• Using xMouse Button Control
• Organize Maps

 

↖ What is Rolling Your Map?

Maps in Path of Exile are regular items that you can craft much like anything else in the game. They have a quality factor that you can improve using cartographer's chisels, going up to 20. A white map will go up by 5%, a blue map will go up by 2%, and a yellow or unique map will go up by 1% per chisel. You usually want to ensure that the item is of normal or white quality before you use those chisels to conserve them. The quality will directly improve the quantity of items that drop from monsters in the game. So, 20 quality directly correlates to 20 increased items dropping from monsters in the game.

 

In addition to cartographer's chisels, you can use other crafting items to roll your maps, such as transmutes, augmentation orbs, alterations, regals, scours, and alchemies. If there are fewer than six modifiers on the map, just like a regular rare item, you can even use an exalted orb to get that final sixth modifier to really improve the quantity on the map. The quantity, rarity, and pack size of items that drop will all improve based on the modifiers of the map.

 

↖ Understanding Map Mods

The modifiers that you roll on the map are almost all negative for the character, so in general, they will always make the map harder for you. Some of them you can ignore, while some are generally beneficial, like "map contains sea witches," which might make the map easier because it limits the monsters to easier ones to fight. Generally, the intention is to make the map harder to run. This is a risk and reward system where the risk is what you see as the explicit modifiers, such as "chris within feeble boss has more life" and "boss has increased AoE." However, you get increased pack size, which makes the size of monster packs larger, more monsters to kill, and item rarity will go up as well so items that drop will have a chance to be a higher rarity tier.

 

Some map mods are very dangerous for your character, and this is where a little bit of subtlety and the systems come into play. For example, monsters reflect elemental damage, and if your character is not reflect immune, you will immediately die if you attack any monster with this reflection on it. Therefore, you should avoid running a map with this modifier. There are lots of ways to get around certain downsides. For instance, you can run a sextant that makes you reflect immune.

 

↖ Fragments and Sextants

Fractured map fragments can be used to modify the maps you run. You can put in at least four emblems to unlock the fifth slot in your map device. Scarabs guarantee content in the map, improving drops with more div cards, maps, guaranteed abyss, and guaranteed legion stuff. Sacrifice fragments have a hidden mechanic that gives you five percent quantity per sacrifice fragment and ten percent with the uber zero ones. You can also use sections to give you more monsters on the map and more quantity. Sextants are tradable and sellable, and you can buy specific sections for your strategy using surveyor's compasses, which cost one chaos per from curac once.

 

↖ Pick a Strategy

Once you understand what fragments, sextants, and sections are, you should pick a strategy that works for you. A good strategy should tell you the atlas passes you want to go for, including sextants, scarabs, fragments, and the specific type of map you want to run. By over-sustaining specific maps, you can sell those off for additional profit as well. Once you've picked a strategy, you will need the maps, scarabs, sections, and fragments to execute it. You can buy them in bulk or farm them yourself.

 

↖ Good & Bad Map Mods

It's crucial to understand the map modifiers in Path of Exile and which ones you can and cannot run with your build. Poe.re is a great list of all the map modifiers. A simple flowchart for deciding which map mods are good for you is, do you do elemental or physical damage directly? Will those kill you? If the answer is yes, then you don't want to run maps with those mods. There are many ways to prevent reflected damage, such as woke gems, sextants, rings, and pantheons. Any Poe build can become reflect immune with a couple of modifications if it needs to.

 

↖ Using the Horizon Orb

The humble horizon orb is an orb that is often overlooked. It re-rolls a map as another map of the same tier, but it is restricted by the natural map drops on an atlas. If you remove all your void stones, you will see the natural tiers that maps will drop at. These are the maps that you can hit with the horizon orb. If you want to know what the tier 16 maps are, you can just type in the number 16, and any tier 16 map that you use a horizon orb on will re-roll into only those four maps. Once the map is one of these tier 16 maps, it is a 33% chance to turn into the one you're going for. Use horizon orbs on bad maps to turn them into the one you're targeting.

 

↖ Bulk Rolling Maps

Bulk rolling your maps can save you time and effort. Crafting a lot of stuff can be tedious, and it interrupts your flow of gameplay. By rolling several maps at once, you can get the annoying stuff out of the way and run your maps efficiently. 

 

↖ - Setting Up Your Maps

First, identify all your maps by using the Skull of Wisdom. Then, type "normal" in the search bar to filter out all items that are not normal quality. Use Scours on all maps that are not normal quality. This will ensure that all maps are at their base quality.

 

↖ - Bulk Rolling Your Maps

The goal of bulk rolling is to get good modifiers on your maps as quickly as possible. The process involves spamming Orb of Scourings and Chaos Orbs on your maps until you get desirable modifiers.

• Step 1: Use Orb of Scouring on all maps that do not have good modifiers. This will remove all modifiers from the maps.
• Step 2: Use Chaos Orbs on all maps until you get good modifiers. A good modifier is one that increases pack size, monster density, and item quantity. Other desirable modifiers are increased rarity, increased experience, and unique bosses.
• Step 3: If you get a good modifier, use a Blessed Orb to lock it in. This will prevent the modifier from being changed by any future crafting.
• Step 4: Use Sextants to add extra modifiers to your maps. This will increase the chances of getting good modifiers.

 

↖ - Using Awakened PoE Trade

Awakened PoE Trade has a useful feature that allows you to mark maps with different symbols to indicate their quality. Pressing Ctrl+M brings up a visual interface that allows you to mark maps with a skull and crossbones for dangerous maps, a warning symbol for okay maps, and a green checkmark for good maps. This can help you quickly identify which maps to run.

 

↖ Using xMouse Button Control

Using xMouse Button Control or other software to rebind your scroll wheel to a left click action can save you time and effort. You can use your scroll wheel to transfer items quickly, use your jewelers and fusings more efficiently, and perform all actions more quickly.

 

↖ Organize Maps

Organize your maps into logical segments for how they will be run. This typically involves running specific sections in sets of four at a time. By pre-rolling all of your maps, setting up your scarabs, and organizing your sections, you can efficiently run through one chunk of maps at a time. 

It is also important to consider the loot you are farming for and adjust your map running accordingly. For example, if you are only farming for divines, you may not need to take multiple sets of maps at a time.

Additionally, using vaal orbs on maps can yield some impressive results, but it is important to be cautious as it can also brick the map. If you are willing to take the risk, using a vaal orb on a map can make it go unidentified, which actually gives you additional quality. However, this can also add additional modifiers that may be risky to run, so be prepared with contingency factors like using flasks.

If you need to re-roll a corrupted map, you can spend 200 wild crystallized life force to create a new one of the same tier and rarity. This is particularly useful if you are playing solo self-found (SSF) and have a low map sustain.