Path of Exile 3.29: Curse of the Allflame arrives on July 24, 2026 (PDT), bringing two major systems to Wraeclast: the Voyage league mechanic and a brand-new crafting layer. While the previous 3.28 patch reworked the endgame Atlas, this expansion turns its attention toward the core moment-to-moment gameplay, refreshing older league mechanics and giving each its own identifiable rewards again. Part of that direction pulls back the "everything drops everywhere" loot design that spread after Legion: Abyss now produces Abyss-specific rewards, Legion gets a full rework with its own loot, and Voyages sit alongside them as a fresh dedicated system.
The centerpiece of the league is the Voyage system, a repeatable seafloor expedition that mixes elements of Heist, Delve, and Synthesis into one connected activity. Players collect Charts across the campaign and endgame, then plan out routes on a Voyage Board to scale rewards, monster density, and drop identity in a controlled way. With so many moving pieces at once, knowing how each part works before jumping in will save time, currency, and Charts you might otherwise waste. So here we've sorted out the PoE 3.29 Voyage Plan Guide for you!
PoE 3.29 Voyage Guide (Charts, Area Mods, Rewards & Plan Strats)
Below, we cover the crew and setting, how the Voyage mechanic operates, how the Voyage Board and Charts function together, where to source Charts, why border modifiers matter, what loot you can actually expect, and how to build a Voyage plan that rewards your effort rather than punishing it.
Where & How To Access the Voyage?
The Voyage mechanic centers on The Sovereign, a ship crewed by three characters you'll interact with throughout the league:
Val - the NPC you speak with aboard The Sovereign to plan your Voyage on the Voyage Board.
Valerie - hands you your first Chart very early in Act 1, kicking off the mechanic.
Vesper - part of the crew that helps you pile up loot from your seafloor runs.
The vessel you actually dive in is the bathysphere, a submersible bubble described in-game as an implosion-resistant contraption you jump into before descending to Wraeclast's ocean floor. This framing matters because the entire lantern-and-bubble gameplay flow makes more sense once you picture it as a diving operation rather than a standard map.
How Does the Voyage Mechanic Work?
Before you plan anything on the Voyage Board, you need to complete the individual Chart expeditions that feed into it. Here's the loop in plain terms.
The Basic Loop
Find and complete individual Chart expeditions across the campaign or endgame.
Return to The Sovereign and speak to Val to open the Voyage Board.
Inspect each Chart modifier before placing it in a layout.
Check the current border modifiers (Corruption Currents) around the board.
Connect compatible Charts, using up to nine in one Voyage.
Run the combined seafloor excursion and clear the connected Chart content.
Extract with the loot you can safely reach.
Charting the Ocean Floor
Each Chart drops you into a small seafloor area from the safety of the bathysphere. You're given a limited number of Allflame Lanterns to plant in the water just outside your current bubble. Each lantern creates a new safe zone. Step outside a bubble without one nearby and you'll drown in about five seconds, similar to how the drowning orb mechanic behaves elsewhere.
There's no time pressure until you place the final lantern. Once the last one is set, the bubbles begin collapsing from newest to oldest, pushing you back toward the bathysphere to extract.
Lantern Placement Controls
The lantern system is more flexible than it first appears:
Hotkey placement - Manually drop a lantern with a keybind for precise positioning.
Autoplace mode - Enable this and lanterns drop automatically as you leave the bubble edge.
Movement skill placement - Even if you dash or blink out of a bubble, the lantern will be placed behind you rather than lost.
This flexibility lets you keep momentum during a Chart rather than stopping to line up every drop by hand.
Two Ways to Play a Chart
You can approach Charts in two very different ways:
Speedrun: Slam lanterns down in a tight ring around the bathysphere, place the last one close to your extraction point, and leave.
Loot run: Follow the ghost flame arrows that lanterns emit when a special reward (like a chest) is within roughly two screens. Play a hot-and-cold game to sniff out treasure before triggering the collapse.
The Loot Vacuum and Extraction Devices
When you place the last lantern, all dropped loot on the ground gets vacuumed up and spirals out on the boat after you leave. Loot also travels back to the surface through extraction devices during the run, letting you send piles of treasure up while you keep clearing. This makes intentional "leave stuff for the way back" runs viable and turns extraction into something more active than a simple exit portal.
One thing to note: if you don't kill or loot anything, there won't be a loot spiral at all. The vacuum only carries what you actually created during the Chart.
The Voyage Board (Core Mechanic) & Charts
Once you have at least nine different Charts scouted, you can begin planning a Voyage aboard The Sovereign. This is where the mechanic gets genuinely deep.
What the Board Looks Like
The Voyage Board is a grid where each Chart occupies a square. Every Chart has an implicit modifier that gets revealed once it's charted. These modifiers apply in one of two scopes:
Adjacent Charts: The effect only impacts squares directly connected to it.
Voyage-wide: The effect applies to every relevant area in the entire Voyage.
For example, one Chart might spawn three Diviner's Strongboxes in each adjacent area, meaning if you place it in the center of the board where it touches four other squares, you've suddenly generated twelve total Diviner's Strongboxes to open.
Chart Types and Anchor Pieces
A normal Chart introduces one area with one reward. Some Charts, marked with gold text under their name, come with bonus encounters or extra monsters. Rarer still are anchor fields, harder maps with better general rewards and exclusive loot options.
| Modifier Type | What It Affects | Placement Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Adjacent Chart modifier | Only Charts directly connected to it | Place beside the destination or reward Chart you want to improve |
| Voyage-wide modifier | Every relevant area in the Voyage | Reserve premium adjacency spots for local effects instead |
| Reward conversion | Changes a specified category of drops | Pair it with Charts that produce the named category |
| Monster empowerment | Raises encounter pressure and reward potential | Add only after checking build survivability |
| Extra encounter | Adds another event, enemy type, or destination | Value based on clear speed and reward demand |
Building Outward From the Reward
Rather than filling every slot with the strongest options, plan from the reward target outward:
Pick the Chart you most want to revisit.
Identify every adjacent or global effect that supports it.
Only then add optional difficulty.
A visually full board packed with conflicting modifiers is almost always worse than a lean layout built around one clear goal.
How To Get Charts
Charts are the currency of the Voyage system, and thankfully they're not scarce.
Sources in the Campaign
Every zone contains at least one Chart, and sometimes two.
You'll receive your first Chart from Valerie shortly after boarding The Sovereign, meaning access to the mechanic begins in Act 1.
Charts scale to your level in a way similar to the Temple of Atzoatl, boosting weaker ones up within a certain range so they stay relevant.
Endgame Sources
At endgame, Charts continue to drop from regular content encounters. The mechanic is designed to be genuinely accessible: you can do a little bit during leveling to power through zones faster, or save Charts in batches and hit them all at once between acts.
A Note on Pacing
You don't need to run every Chart the moment you find it. Batching them near the end of an act is often more efficient because you'll have around ten ready to go, letting you plan a proper Voyage rather than one-off Chart runs. Getting overly invested during the campaign could easily double or triple your run time.
Area Modifiers (Very Important)
Border area modifiers, sometimes called Corruption Currents, are properties of the edges of the Voyage Board itself, not the Charts. They affect Charts placed adjacent to them and are randomized each time you run a Voyage.
Why Area Modifiers Matter More Than You Think
Border modifiers can be extremely powerful. For example, one might cause all rare monsters in the adjacent area to drop an additional Exalted Orb. That's already strong, but the real payoff comes from stacking:
Place a Chart that increases the number of rare monsters in adjacent areas next to that border.
Add another Chart that spawns powerful rare Starfish monsters in adjacent areas.
Now you have three overlapping effects producing a massive Exalted Orb payout from a single edge.
How to Read the Currents
Because they shift every Voyage, a layout that worked yesterday might be suboptimal today. Always:
Read every border modifier before placing a single Chart.
Identify which board positions each one reaches.
Place your rarest or most valuable interactions in the strongest current zones first.
Wasting a strong adjacency spot on a mediocre Chart is one of the most common planning errors.
Voyage Chart Loot Types & Rewards
The Voyage mechanic offers a mix of general loot, category-focused chests, unique drops, and mechanic-exclusive rewards. Exact values are still being tuned right up to release, so treat pre-launch profit claims cautiously.
General Chart Loot
Charts contain a range of chests that drop specific categories:
Chests full of rare boots, jewelry, or armor.
Chests specialized in wands, bows, or melee weapons.
Chests weighted toward currency drops.
Unique versions of those chests, which produce specific unique item types.
Special Voyage Rewards
Beyond category chests, some Charts and destinations produce mechanic-exclusive rewards, including:
Ducats, the special resource that fuels the new 3.29 crafting system. This new crafting layer works on limited-use potential (similar to Last Epoch's crafting potential), letting you apply a small number of powerful crafts before the item locks out further ones. Ducats sourced through Voyages are one of the direct feeders into that system.
Diviner's Strongboxes from Chart modifiers.
Massive amounts of experience, enough that many players will use Charts to power-level between acts.
Rewards from Special Destinations
| Destination | What Is Known | Planning Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Abandoned anchor field | A special location tied to hidden treasure | Inspect reward modifiers before surrounding it with adjacent effects |
| Lost Kalguuran shipment | A recoverable shipment found through a special Chart | Anchor a layout around it when its rewards match your farming goal |
| Sunken Abyssal pit | An Abyss-themed underwater destination | Prepare for the encounter type before stacking difficulty |
| Other unique destinations | Additional special areas exist in the pool | Always read the live tooltip since exact rewards vary |
League Exclusivity
Voyages belong to the 3.29 challenge league only. According to the official Curse of the Allflame FAQ, its mechanics, content, rewards, and bosses are exclusive to the challenge league during its active period. Standard characters do not have access to the live Voyage system.
Best Voyage Plan & Chart Build Strategies
Planning a good Voyage is less about finding a single "best" combo and more about building consistent, repeatable boards that match your character.
1. Pick One Reward Plan First
Decide what the board is trying to produce before arranging any Charts. Effects can convert equipment into Gold, summon friendly jellyfish, empower monsters with Wildwood Wisps, release Tormented Spirits, or add new encounters entirely. Trying to hit all of these at once wastes strong Charts.
Start with the effect that determines the reward you want.
Add adjacent bonuses that directly support it.
Fill flexible spaces with Voyage-wide modifiers.
If a conversion names a category, connect it to content that actually produces that category.
2. Separate Rewards From Danger
Reward modifiers and difficulty modifiers should be judged independently:
First ask: does this modifier support the anchor Chart's rewards?
Then ask: can my build handle the added monster pressure?
Do not stack multiple untested empowerment effects on your first attempt. Add one, run the Voyage, and note clear time, deaths, and missed objectives before layering more.
3. Scale Consistency Before Difficulty
A layout you clear reliably beats an ambitious one that ends before its premium encounters. A defensive upgrade that turns failed Voyages into completed ones almost always outperforms another small damage increase.
Your character should:
Cap elemental resistances.
Have dependable life or energy shield recovery.
Move at practical speeds with reliable mobility.
Carry answers to ailments and disabling effects.
Retain enough single-target damage to finish resistant rare monsters.
4. A Practical Board-Building Sequence
Select the highest-value special destination or reward Chart in your pool.
Use that Chart as the anchor.
Place compatible adjacent modifiers next to the anchor.
Fit Voyage-wide modifiers into spots that don't consume valuable local connections.
Compare total monster pressure with your defenses.
Remove the least useful danger modifier when threats overlap.
Recheck every connection and border modifier before starting.
5. Common Voyage Planning Mistakes
Most Voyage failures come from the same handful of errors. Avoid these:
Filling every position without checking what each modifier affects.
Placing an adjacent bonus where it touches the wrong Chart.
Using a conversion beside content that produces few matching drops.
Stacking Wildwood Wisps, Tormented Spirits, and other pressure before testing separately.
Copying yesterday's board without rereading the border modifiers.
Risking a rare destination on a build that struggled with easier Charts.
Treating pre-launch profit estimates as guaranteed.
A Voyage can hold up to nine Charts, but maximum capacity is not maximum efficiency. Leaving a low-impact Chart out is often better than including one that adds danger without improving your reward target.
Voyage planning should adapt to the board in front of you, not follow a rigid template. Save premium adjacency slots for effects that support your chosen destination, place global bonuses where they don't block those key connections, and only raise danger once your current setup runs smoothly.
During the opening days of 3.29, keep notes on which combinations you complete, how long they take, and what they actually return. That personal record will serve you far better than copying a high-risk layout designed for a different character or a different market state. Once the league economy settles and the community identifies the strongest Chart interactions, you can refine your approach with real data rather than pre-launch guesses. Good sailing, and enjoy the loot spiral.
