General Guidelines: How to sustain a map pool.

Yeah, I agree this is mostly common sense and "buy yer bad RNG spaces".

I tried the whole "complete a tier before moving to the next" in SSF and eff that noise. I made it to T5 with 5 empty spaces and spent several days unsuccessfully running EVERYTHING T5 and below and gave up when I managed to fill 2 of those empty spots.

So, yeah, strategy is "buy your maps".

Like you said, there is no magic in sustaining or building a map pool. But embarking on the SSF journey means you will have a really hard time to get started.

Most people who play SSF already know that this is going to be harder, so they are usualy ok with it.

But in reality, the system is designed to have more lower tier maps drop than higher tier, making it statistically harder to obtain a higher map tier for each tier you progress by default. On top of that the shadow system with the "increased quantity" levels needed to keep on par with the escalating curve of drop RNG.

What I'm saying is, they could simply have had a 33% chance to drop 1 map tier lower than the one you're playing, 33% to drop the same and 33% to drop a higher map tier than the one you're playing. Insert your own numbers as you please, the context is; Don't have tier 1 map drops from tier 10 maps. That's just.. Why?

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majesw wrote:

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.

“Yes it sucks” is basically admitting the complaints are justified.

If you can’t sustain without trading for maps and trading for maps sucks, there’s a problem.

I think the difference between 20 and 25 is negligible and it's silly to spend much currency chasing after it.

Think of the default packsize as being 100.. a 20 bonus gives you 120 while a 25 bonus gives 125. This give a (125/120) 4% increase in packsize. A 4% increase in drops is unlikely to recoup the difference in investment.

blah blah blah

blah blah blah

BUY MAPS

blah blah blah

you could just write "buy maps" and that's it

i'm running 70-80% IIQ maps ( chiseled to 20%) with sextants and fragments when i get those from cards and i can hardly sustain t8 lol
now i just don't want to play the league

Buying maps. Ok. I can live with that. Buying maps is easy, just copy/past some text into the game. But can anyone tell my why? Can anyone tell me what values this "requirement" adds to the game?

Not a bad common sense guide... but will add a few things and make one correction.

1) Zana mods: Beyond mobs actually do not drop maps, but give great XP. So roll Bloodlines for packsize aka more maps or run Beyond if you want to push your XP.

2) In a trade league the important thing to completing your atlas is having a good league starter that is not gear dependent (i.e. can perform in all or mostly rares). Use this character to FIRST push your map progression. Pay for maps and once you have unlocked the bonus, SELL those same maps in order to buy the next tier. If done properly, you will see that the negative impact on your net wealth is WAY lower. i.e. If you buy a 5c tier 11 map, run it and if you drop another in there that is the same map or a tier lower SELL it IMMEDIATELY while those maps are still worth good money. This alone will help you quickly progress your atlas completion

2a) Shaped Strategies: Plan your shaped map strategies in advance and BUY PAST the tiers you need. i.e. if you are sure you want to run shaped toxic sewers, for example make sure you are not buying t11s and go straight to buying t12s. If that means you have to farm garbage T4-T7s for the currency to buy those maps then DO IT. It is worth the investment.

3) Once your atlas is in a "decent state" which in the new atlas world is around 125-130 completion, then start buying the shaped map of the tier lower then you want to run and shaped maps of the same tier you want to run. Since they are shaped maps the only maps they will drop are the shaped map of the tier you want to run eventually.

4) Buy Shaper/Guardian Map kill completions in Global 820 Early. ALso any T15/T14s people are selling. The reason for this is that is much cheaper in chaos to buy the completion over the map. Once you have your atlas at 125ish THEN run all of the difficult maps you want to run... by this time the price of the maps will have dropped and a T15 map won't be 12 chaos.

In SSF, there is a very good strategy document posted by Karv (a twitch streamer) that outlines the keys to atlas progression.

https://pastebin.com/7dtsb09N

This is a very, very long-winded wordy guide.. HOWEVER... at the bottom is a very good quick reference to how to unlock maps "properly" so you can complete you atlas with better success and much quicker.

Good luck exiles!!

I would add the fact that you should run maps under shaper/elder influence to get better returns. It's really important.

I run 90% of my maps like this and it means that, even if I'm lvl 93, I still do run low tier maps (even t5) to shape this shaper/elder influence.