General Guidelines: How to sustain a map pool.

So I keep reading about people having troubles sustaining a higher tier map pool and while I agree that it is harder this league than in previous ones, I also think many of the commenters are either exaggerating or they are using flawed/inefficient systems to maintain their maps.

I personally believe it is often the latter so I thought I might bring up some general guidelines as I have never failed to build up a good high tier map pool, no matter how bad the league.

So first things first: Yes, this is an approach guided by efficiency. If you expect to magically turn a handful of yellow maps into dozens of red ones without much effort then I have to disappoint you. There is actual work involved in getting a decent map pool and wrong decisions will be punished by the game's RNG.

Second: I am not going to cover shaping strategies here. I have done that before but usually I just fill out my Atlas 157/157 because I like a bit of diversity. It should be even easier to sustain maps, when you follow a dedicated shaped strategy.

How to build up a map pool?

1. Order!

You start off with some Tier 1 maps in your pool and you are going to run those. You are probably poor at the start of a league so running them blue is just fine.

The key to the entire strategy is though: Fill out everything on your Atlas and do it step by step!
So what that means is we are only going to start running the next tier of maps once we have finished the current one. I read way too many posts here: "And then I dropped 1 T11 map and that dropped 1 T12 and then I ran it and in the end had nothing." Yeah well of course you didn't...just randomly moving through tiers without a proper completion bonus is going to kill your map pool. This includes unique maps btw (If a handful of maps are missing in the end that is not the end of the world though. So you won't have to buy Perandus Manor to sustain maps ;) ).

2. Trading sucks but it is key to our success.

To make sure you are able to follow step 1 you will have to engage in trading (so this is not a SSF guide).

2.1. The most important place you should know about is /trade 820. This is a trade channel originally created by and for redditors but is now a hub for exchanging progress in the game. So you will find a lot of people trading maps for other maps of the same tier here especially early on in the league.

2.2. Buy maps from people selling them. Yes it sucks, yes it can be tedious. Still has to be done. No excuses.

2.3. Use vendor methods to aquire maps. Zana offers a new map pool everyday so at least early on she is really helpful sustaining your pool. You can also trade up 3 of the same map for the adjacent next tier map.

3. How to roll maps?

Early on I usually just follow what the game is asking of me. So transmute white tier maps, alch the yellow ones. However sustaining a map pool once you reach red tiers is more tricky and simply alching them won't be enough anymore.

3.1 You have to spend money to make money! (Red tier maps)

So this is probably the point where most people fail. It is expensive to run maps, it really is. But it also pays off.

There are different methods to rolling maps to yield as many drops as possible and I am honestly not entirely sure which method is the best. I am not a fulltime gamer, but can only play after work so I try out different things from time to time and stick with what seems to be working. So take the next steps with a pinch of salt or try out your own system.

So what we want is as much packsize combined with as much item quantity as we can get on maps. Rarity doesn't really matter.

Chiselling: Is what I do to every red map. Yes, you will have to buy chisels, yes it sucks. Do it in bulk and you won't have to do it that often.

Rerolling with Chaos or Alch/Scour: I sometimes don't do this and start running those 50/20 (70/20) quantity/packsize maps. And then I immediatly regret it. You will notice how those maps on average will drop a lot less than maps rolled with 85/25 or more.

Sextants: I haven't used them a ton yet after the nerf, but still think they are very much worth it. And now you can just use a few at a time and don't have to worry about sinking dozens of chaos into them just to run a couple of maps. For now I am basically just accepting any mod they roll, but there is an argument to be made for rerolling these too, because as usual: packsize is king.

Fragments: Drop your spare Atziri fragments into your maps. Heck, buy a ton of them. There are people selling in bulk.

Zana mods vs Vaaling: Vaaling is cheaper but also less reliable. Since there are no off the charts good Zana mods right now though I would probably go with Vaaling my maps to get those juicy 8 mod ones. As for Zana Bloodlines or Beyond are usually good mods. I often go for Beyond when I already have good packsize rolls and am pretty sure the mob density on the map is going to be very nice (Seawitches maps anyone?)

4. RNG is a bitch!

Even with this method it happens frequently that I run 10,15,20 maps without dropping any good new maps. Then I will have phases where every map drops me 3 new ones of a higher tier. It is just RNG. So be prepared to buy new maps every now and then. At some point though your map drops should be plentiful enough that you don't have to buy new ones as long as you are willing to run whatever you have. Another method would be to sell the layouts you don't like and buy those you prefer in return.

I devised a little system for myself to be efficient and also have a sense of what progress I have been making: I will set aside 20,30 maps and roll them all at once, then run them all without doing anything in between in game. I will just drop everything I get from those maps into a dump tab and start the next. Then in the end I will check what my results are.

This helps you track how well you are doing with different kinds of investments and it also shows you that longterm the results will be positive, even if you had an unlucky streak over 5 or 15 maps. I sometimes make an experiment out of that: Run 50 Spider Forests and then 50 Vaults, compare results in the end. (I know there is plenty of Youtube videos like this, just felt like it was worth mentioning). It also helps you to develop a flow of running maps without longer interruptions. I think a big problem is that when people claim they have been "running maps all day long" what they really mean is they stood in their hideout checking forums, reddit, porn sites 80% of that time.

There is plenty more stuff that ties into this guide. Most importantly you of course need the money to spend on the investments I was mentioning. So selling stuff yourself is important, but that needs a whole other guide. Running MF gear is another thing that pays off big time if you can afford to use it on your build.

This was just meant to give you some general guidelines I have been using myself in the past and after roughly 2 weeks I have always built up a map pool that will carry me for the rest of the league.

Great post and generally common sense.

Sadly the people who would make most use of it are people who like to cry and moan on forums about GGG ruining their lives with low maps drops. They will ignore everything you said and keep moaning.

One more addition: Don't play for "best time". Pop chests. Full clear. Kill the boss. Vendor rares for Alchs.

That or quit complaining that you're not getting a good enough return on your map. Part of what we "pay" in mapping is our time.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

One more addition: Don't play for "best time". Pop chests. Full clear. Kill the boss. Vendor rares for Alchs.

That or quit complaining that you're not getting a good enough return on your map. Part of what we "pay" in mapping is our time.

So true! I always like to play in full and pick up and vendor all rares that my currently enabled item filter pops us.

It's so satisfying when the barrel drops

Good, solid advice - I followed basically the same tactic in Abyss, and didn't have any map sustain issues until T14-T15 (but then everybody complained about sustaining high reds in Abyss). The only problem is that, as always, buying maps is the key. Which means that if you're running a budget build and can afford to invest most of your currency earnings in maps, then you should be OK. If your build is expensive, though, then you're screwed :(

One suggestion I strongly agree with is to go to trade 820 and directly trade whatever extra maps you have for those maps of the same tier that you haven't unlocked yet. I've managed to unlock all T11-T13s this way, although I never held more than 3-4 red maps total in my posession. There are a lot of people doing this, and most of them won't even care if your maps are white, blue or yellow - as long as you have something they need and they have something you need, people usually will be willing to trade 1:1 :)

Buying maps is a shortcut.

Running lower tier maps is the long-cut (if that's a thing). You don't "sustain" T14-15. You get one occasional while running T12-13, and even that level is difficult to "sustain" playing SSF. That's ok. You have plenty of T10-T11 and can purchase those from Zana. At some point, no idea but probably T14, it's more efficient to trade up maps than to run them. When the expected return becomes less than 50% of the map's value, it's better to trade them up 3 for 1.

Common sense.

Most players do this. Even those that make threads about map drops. RNG can be HELL even if you follow these steps and more. I was desperate this league, and even chaosed my way to huge pack size, chisel and fragments on freakin' T7 maps. Did it work? No.

All these steps are ways to increase your chances of map returns. You invest into your chances. And when you fall into these "RNG valleys" or "RNG deserts", as I like to call them, it becomes VERY discouraging to play the game. As I've written in other threads; 36 consecutive alched maps this league without returns.

And when these "RNG deserts" starts lasting for over a week, way longer than you've ever experienced before, it's only natural to start thinking that something might have changed in the balance department. And most "whine threads" are searching for acknowledgement or answers. And when GGG refuses to bring an answer to the table, even though we can count 10-15+ whine threads about map drops, people will keep whining.

Why not a little "Map drops are where we want them to be", so people can deal with it or move on? Or "map drops are not quite where we want it to be. Stay tuned". The feeling of progression is a MUST in games like this. Without it, there's no point in playing. So a little more transparency from GGG on the matter would be welcomed. But maybe it's naive to even think about it.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

Buying maps is a shortcut.

Running lower tier maps is the long-cut (if that's a thing). You don't "sustain" T14-15. You get one occasional while running T12-13, and even that level is difficult to "sustain" playing SSF. That's ok. You have plenty of T10-T11 and can purchase those from Zana.

T14-T15s were difficult to sustain back in Abyss. In Bestiary, I can't even sustain T11s :( Obviously, part of the issue is that I'm running an expensive melee build and can't really afford to purchase maps. But I can't help feeling that map drops are more scarce in this league, too. Probably because there are fewer monsters per map in Bestiary compared to Abyss or Harbinger, as other people have pointed out already. Unfortunately, knowing the (presumed) cause doesn't help much. I guess I'll have to split this league in two parts: farming currency and gearing my character first, and then progressing throught the atlas.

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DGTLDaemon wrote:

But I can't help feeling that map drops are more scarce in this league

The man you are quoting do not play this league, and hasn't tasted the difference. He's debating from a "everything regarding drops is the same as always" point of view, without knowing anything. We don't know either, but at least we are able to compare based on experience. He is not. He has to carry around one stack of nets this league, so he refuses to play. We're having troubles playing because of the lack of available content.

We have experienced, so we are "biased". He hasn't experienced, so he's... Something, I don't know.

This guide could have been summed up by saying "buy maps".

Don't get me wrong, most of it is good honest advice, but it really comes down to the fact that you need to buy maps. If you try to run things on your own expect to run a lot of T9 and T10 maps, maybe even lower.