Path of Exile releases new league mechanics every 3 to 4 months, which means no matter how good you are at the game you will always be greeted by a new mechanic that will leave you scratching your head if you don’t read the forums beforehand. In this article, we’ve compiled everything that you need to have a smooth league start for PoE 3.21.
Things to Remember before Starting the Crucible League
Before starting the league, you at least need to know about some things first so you will not run around the game like a headless chicken dying multiple times and delaying your progress. Here are some of the things that you should know before jumping right into the Crucible League.
- The number one thing that you should always try to learn first is what build you should make. There are tons of league starter builds out there and you can follow guides made by articles or by tons of streamers and content creators out there. Following creators on Twitch and Youtube is a great way to know what build is your playstyle. We suggest that you follow some content creators like Zizaran as they go in-depth with their character-build guides based on the current league.
- For a league starter build, you should choose the ones that do not require a lot of unique items and is not reliant on expensive equipment. It is quite hard to make currency on your first character, so try to make a build that can at least clear white maps so that you can farm Currency for your 2nd build.
- Dying during the early game is okay, the Crucible League will surprise you especially if you don’t read the mechanics early on. Holding the forge button for too long on the crucible forge will spawn strong mobs. This means the longer you press the forge button, the stronger the mobs get. So try to take it easy first, and if you fail don’t worry as many players probably died on their first try to forge mobs with the crucible themselves.
- Each weapon has its own unique weapon passives in the Crucible league, choose the ones that go well with your build to maximize the effects early on. Try to use the forge as much as you can as it helps you scale harder thanks to the passives the forge gives your weapon.
- Be careful of the guides you are following on the internet as some of them are just made before the league even started based on theory crafting, while some of them work like what most veteran Path of Exile streamers make, some unreliable sources often make too good to be true guides and it would just end up as a waste of time if you follow those.
- Tanky Characters work really well for the Crucible league as surviving the mobs is the most important part of this league.
Crucible League Mechanic Guides
The Crucible League mechanic is focused on crafting your weapons as an addition to the previous crafting mechanics within Path of Exile. Don’t worry as this crafting is not as daunting as the one in the passive skill tree. Crucible Crafting is pretty straightforward, the forge shows you different options you can choose from which after crafting, will make you follow the path that you chose. Here are some guides to maximize your crucible crafting.
Crucible Passive Skill tree
Each map or zone contains one Crucible Forge from which you can channel it and spawn mobs, upon defeating the mobs that you spawned, you gain an experience point for the weapon that you chose beforehand. This is really a simple and free way to forge passives into your character without spending tons of currency.
Every time you select a weapon for the first time in the forge, it generates a unique passive skill tree that is randomly generated. There are five depths to a Weapon passive skill tree generated by the crucible forge with depth 1 being the weakest and depth 5 being the strongest passives that you can craft into your weapons.
Crucible Passives does not only fortify your weapons, but it can also improve some skill gems making it an excellent mechanic that you can use so that your weapon can effectively synergize with your chosen skill gem. The crucible also provides passives that allow you to improve your vendor selling. For example, a passive may appear in your crucible passive tree which upon selling the item to a vendor, it will give you a divine orb.
How does the Crucible Forge work?
The crucible forge spawns at a random place on the map or a zone. This forge shows you the weapons you have equipped and lets you choose which weapon you would like to level up. Upon choosing the weapon, the crucible tree is shown to you along with the experience the weapon needs to level up. The forge requires you to press and hold the left mouse button on the passive tree to channel the forge. The longer you channel the forge, the stronger the mobs become.
This is a high-risk high-reward kind of mechanic as you can immediately complete and level up for the first depth of the weapon, but the forge will give you insanely strong mobs that might be hard to deal with, especially during the early game. So what you can do is just channel and fill up half the bar of the crucible experience so you can easily deal with the mobs, and completely level it up on the next forge that you encounter.
There is a new form of currency that is called the Magmatic orb which you can use to instantly provide a crucible experience to a weapon of your choice. This is a quick way to level up your weapons without having to deal with mobs on the forge.
Crucible League End Game Mechanic (Forge of the Titans)
The end-game content for the Crucible league is the forge of the Titans which you can access upon completing a new mapping mechanic brought upon by the Crucible league. Upon reaching the end of a primeval remnant map, you can then enter the forge of the Titans. This allows the player to traverse the forge of the Titans and find the forge itself within the map which you can use to forge insanely strong rare weapons.
The forge of the Titans allows you to combine the passive skill tree of two weapons, one can be placed on top while the other is on the bottom. Upon forging, one of the weapons will be destroyed yielding stronger passives for the remaining one.
Take note however that Titan forging only works for items of the same class, for example, a bow can online be combined with a bow, and the same goes for other item classes.
Final Thoughts
The Crucible League brought a new and fun way to make your characters even stronger making every map farming more satisfying and more rewarding. Also, take note that there are new unique items in the Crucible league that you should search for as they can be helpful for your future characters be it for leveling or end-game content. Don’t worry about committing a mistake upon selecting the wrong passive skill in the crucible tree of your weapon as you can simply use a scouring orb to respec the passive giving you complete control of the passive skill tree of your weapon. Now go out there Exile and have fun with the new mechanic, conquer the titans and be the strongest!