It was time to head into red maps. They would be a lot harder than what I've faced so far. Before doing so it was time to get around to a couple of last remaining loose ends. Some changes would end up making a powerful impact on the build and help ease me into running red maps.

I’ve been rather glad the main currency used for trading has been divine orbs. I’ve ended up looting a couple more of them this league then I have exalts. While it took a little while to get into the mindset of wanting them over exalts. Every time now I see a divine drop it brings a smile to my face.

One thing that has been annoying me for a bit was the struggle with running out of mana. Since I have a few buffs that reserve mana. My mana pool is not that huge. My main attack also uses a decent amount of mana per swing.

One way of trying to fix that issue is getting a crafting mod from Aisling in betrayal. I have never been a huge fan of that mechanic so when it has not been showing up in my maps, I've been rather thrilled about it.

I however attempted to start target farming for betrayal and more importantly Aisling. The mod I need to unveil drops from jewelry. An old trick I used to do back in the day is run back and forth in some non-map zones hoping to get betrayal to spawn in.

For whatever reason I was just not having any issues with that. So, I went back to running maps. Usually, I try and avoid doing anything betrayal as it can still lag things out for whatever reason. Since I needed to unveil the mod, I was after I started to run them any time I could. Only the one NPC from betrayal drops the items I need that can have the mod I'm after. It was at least nice to get a bunch of other veil mods unlocked as well just in case I need them later on.

While I ended up getting a few rings off her to unveil them. None of them ended up being the mod I needed. So, I decided to just buy some rings I needed. Rings were however a bit of an issue slot. I needed both high resistance and I was going for chaos rings. I had some plans with this character that would require having some decent chaos resistance.

With the freshly looted divine orb, I had acquired. I now had enough to buy a new ring for a couple of divine orbs I noticed quite a huge difference in mana issues. Just having one was still not going to be enough so I started to keep my eye out for getting another ring that had reduced mana on it with some different resistance.

This had not been the only improvement t I could make. I don’t know why I did not do it sooner. I should have added an anointment to my amulet. Getting the oils to add Hatchet Master for increased damage and attack with axes was not the issue. The issue was I had yet to unlock the ability to do so.

Blight is one of those random things I run into on maps that I always avoid doing. They take a while and since I’m playing melee, they are not the best type of thing to do usually. So I tend to just skip over them.

Thankfully I did have a blight map saved for whenever I would get around to running one. Once I run a blight I can add Hatchet Master to my amulet.

Blight itself is just a tower defense game. Over time it expands and new routes that monsters fall to destroy point you need to guard called a pump. It was no shock to me with how rusty I was with running a blight map that I ended up losing the pump.

Thankfully I did not need a successful run. I just needed the ability to talk with the NPC to do what I wanted. I also still got some loot out of it. Lots of oils. While I already had bought what I needed I now have a few extras if I ever change my mind or need some for an alt.

This was also much harder than just a random encounter on a normal map. Since this was a special blighted map. Everything else was removed. So, this thing ended up getting massive.

With some better gear now, it was time to take on red maps head-on. Some of the loot I was getting off kills was starting to get rather nice as well. Such as two scarabs and two map drops off a pack of creatures. Red maps are where it sometimes started to rain scarabs.

The biggest issue with red maps is the objective of getting the atlas passive from them requires the maps to be corrupted. This can make them a bit hard to get since my one method of using Kirac missions will not always have corrupted maps.

It is at least a good thing I have been saving any Kirac rolling options that give you corrupted maps till I got into reds. This ended up coming quite in handy. Just finishing an uncorrupted version of a map would help make it easier to get as a drop. I’d rather just be done with the bonus objective for the first round.

With uncorrupted maps, if I get a modifier, I don’t want to run like reflect physical damage. I can just wipe that map and attempt to roll it again. Once a map becomes corrupted you can no longer do that.

So, I ended up losing out on a few maps with them getting exactly that. Reflect physical damage. I always make sure to look at a map before running it. If I don’t notice it, I will after hitting one creature on a map and getting killed.

The other issue is that corrupted a map can change what map it was. I don’t know how many times I was going after this one map I was just struggling to get from kirac missions, it not showing up on the kirac vendor. Even worse when I would get it I'd end up corrupting it into a different map.

On one particular map, it took me five attempts just to get a corrupted version I could even run. It however had a double boss and at the time they rocked me. I ended up getting killed on my last portal back into the map with just one hit remaining on the second boss to get it. That left me quite frustrated.

Final thoughts

While I did get killed on quite a few red maps. They are so much more rewarding and thrilling to run. It would also be time soon enough to start working on unlocking atlas stones to increase the tier levels of lower maps. I no longer wanted lower-tier maps to drop and some that I'd prefer to be running were far too low-level to make it worth my time anymore.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Path Of Exile.