Path of Exile 3.30 Covens of Umbra brings the biggest endgame rework in years. Scarabs are gone, Threads of Creation take their place, the Atlas passive tree has been fully redesigned into a radial spiderweb, and nearly every league mechanic has been reworked to interact with the others. With so much changing at once, let's is start from scratch when it comes to Atlas progression and map farming strategies. Here we sort out the new PoE 3.0 Atlas and Map Guide, that serves as a structured reference to help you plan your Atlas passive tree and map farming strategy for both Trade and Solo-Self Found (SSF) in the Covens of Umbra League. You'll find optimal tree routes, mapping tricks for smoother Atlas progression, threads farming mechanic, early-game mapping setups, and mid-to-late game strategies for farming currency and completing your Atlas.
Since the league has not yet started and patch notes drop on November 11th NZT, this guide covers what we currently know based on the ExileCon reveal, the official pages, the Q&A, and press kit extracts.
PoE 3.30 Best Farm Strategy Guide - Early, Mid, End League Atlas Tree & Map Plans
Path of Exile 3.30 Covens of Umbra brings the biggest endgame rework since the Atlas passive tree first launched. Scarabs are gone, Threads of Creation take their place, and the Atlas tree has been fully redesigned into a spiderweb layout radiating outward from a central hub. Mirage returns as a core mechanic, Harvest moved into maps, and nearly every league mechanic has been changed in some way to interact with the others.
Related Read: PoE 3.30 Best Builds for League Starter & Endgame
To help you get clearer understanding of the new endgame farming in PoE 3.30, let's take a look at the changes to atlas and maps in the new league:
Main Changes to Atlas & Maps in Path of Exile 3.30 Covens Of Umbra
The 3.30 endgame has been rebuilt from the ground up. If you played 3.29 Secrets of the Atlas or any earlier scarab-based league, almost every habit you had around map prep is now obsolete. Here is what has actually changed.
Scarabs Are Gone, Threads of Creation Replace Them
Every scarab has been removed from Path of Exile. The replacement system is called Threads of Creation. Each thread can be applied to a map, and you have up to 3 thread slots, with each slot holding up to 8 threads. The more threads you stack into a slot, the harder the mechanic becomes, and the more rewards it pays out.
A single thread forces a primary mechanic to appear in the map. Adding threads 2 through 8 scales both difficulty and loot. Threads can target 10 primary mechanics in total: Abyss, Blight, Legion, Breach, Incursion, Betrayal, Bestiary, Expedition, Ultimatum, and Ritual. Threads drop in maps at a rate similar to the old scarab system, around 20 to 30 per map in gameplay footage, and they are tradable through Kirac and other players.
Shaped Regions Are Already on the Atlas at League Start
You now begin with shaped regions already present on the Atlas. These regions guarantee a specific mechanic in every map within that region without needing to spend a thread, so you can engage league content immediately after your first map.
Atlas Passive Tree Is Fully Reworked
The tree layout is gone. The new tree starts you in the dead center and spiderwebs outward into clusters. Octavian confirmed around 150 total Atlas points are now available, up from 132, with points doubled from existing sources (for example, your first Maven 10-way now gives 2 points instead of 1).
Every League Mechanic Was Changed
Nearly every core mechanic received changes:
Beyond: Portals no longer stop spawning after killing a Beyond boss. Beyond demon bosses have a 15% chance to open a portal to The Swarmforge, a sub-area where you fight a stronger version with inherited map mods.
Harvest: The Sacred Grove is gone. Harvest now appears directly in maps as Tangled Roots that behave like strongboxes and can be modified with currency. Killing the Harvest monsters releases Wildwood Wisps.
Incursion: Atziri has moved into the Temple of Atzoatl. The Locus of Corruption and Lapidary Lens now allow a second corruption on already-corrupted items. A new device called the Dais of Corruption lets you double-corrupt maps for even higher mod counts.
Expedition: Gwennen now offers a coin-flip crafting service on your rare items instead of base gambling.
Bestiary: Yellow beasts are gone. Beast recipes no longer require them.
Ritual: Final altars can transform into Bodach's Ritual Altar with larger radius and more monsters. Remaining tribute can be sacrificed to spawn a mini-boss.
Ultimatum: New Double Down option doubles your current round count, with rewards gated behind completing the full extended run.
Mirage: Added back as a core random map encounter covering the whole map, and also rollable as a map modifier (chaos sink). Saresh returns as the pinnacle, and the Scream of the Desiccated shrine belts are back.
Delve, Heist, Sanctum: Specific Atlas maps are now marked with guaranteed Sulphite Veins, Heist Caches, or Forbidden Tomes. All Delve and Heist nodes have been removed from the Atlas tree.
Mechanics Now Cross-Pollinate
Primary mechanics interact with each other and with secondary mechanics. Expedition can spawn Torment Spirits that empower Runic Monsters, Mercenaries can appear inside Abyss encounters as the Chaplain of the Well, and Strongboxes can appear Blighted and drop Oils or Blighted Maps.
Loot and Rarity Have Been Reworked
Magic and rare items can now drop with tiers, similar to Path of Exile 2. Higher tiers roll higher-level mods and more sockets. Fractured items no longer come from league mechanics directly, but drop as a chance on Tier 5 magic items. Map difficulty now directly scales rewards for almost every mechanic, so an 8-mod juiced map is intrinsically more rewarding than a bare alch-and-go. Item Rarity on gear no longer affects currency drops, only rare and unique monster drops, which removes the pressure to stack MF stats on your character.
Pinnacle Boss Drops Were Reworked
Mobs that previously barely dropped raw currency (like pinnacle bosses) had their drop system reworked. GGG estimated roughly 1000% more Divine Orbs dropping from pinnacle encounters.
PoE 3.30 New Atlas Tree with Nodes
The new Atlas tree is a radial spiderweb starting from a center point, with cluster wheels fanning outward toward the edges. The press kit image shows almost all nodes, and the community has already annotated most of the clusters.
Credit to u/antilogos
Up to 150 points can be allocated. Each primary mechanic has its own cluster, and the cardinal directions contain gateways plus keystones that lead to specific mechanic trees. The Vaal Side Area nodes have been fully removed, and Delve and Heist nodes are also gone since those mechanics now get sustained through dedicated Atlas maps.
New Clusters and Wheels
There are 8 new wheel/cluster types with 2 wheels each. Three are known so far:
Astrolabes / Shaped Regions cluster (contains the Synthesised Stability node)
Mirage cluster
Sentinel cluster
The other 5 remain mysterious at this stage, with one likely dedicated to the Viridian Wildwood based on the mechanic changes.
Identifiable Clusters on the Tree
From the ExileCon reveal images and the press kit, players have mapped out most of the tree. The clusters confirmed so far include:
Primary mechanic clusters for Abyss, Blight, Legion, Breach, Incursion, Betrayal, Bestiary, Expedition, Ultimatum, and Ritual, each with multiple wheels for scaling that mechanic's rewards and modifiers.
Secondary mechanic clusters for Strongboxes, Shrines, Essences, Harvest, Mercenaries, Rogue Exiles, Beyond, Torment, and more.
Pinnacle boss clusters including Shaper, Elder, Maven, Synthesis, Searing Exarch, Eater of Worlds, Uber Elder, and the new Covens of Umbra pinnacle boss.
Specialty map clusters for Delve maps (Geode), Heist maps, and Sanctum maps, since those resources now drop from specific map tiles.
Map progression clusters for scaling map tier, pack size, item quantity, item rarity, and map drops.
New Atlas Nodes Worth Noting
Several brand new nodes have been previewed. Here are some confirmed ones with their effects:
Fate Bespoken: Divination Cards which drop in your Maps are stolen by the Final Map Boss, with 30% chance to duplicate dropped cards. This is the new Divination Scarab of Pilfering baked into a node.
True Terrors: Unique Monsters in Area have 2 additional Monster Modifiers, with a related node giving 4 additional modifiers.
Ancient Machinations: Ultimatum Encounters in your Maps can have random Rounds replaced with Oversouls Rounds, which allows dropping Mirage-exclusive catalysts.
Affluent Parasites: Map Bosses have 50% chance to spawn a Golden Volatile on death.
Suffused with Darkness: Abyss Jewels found in your Maps have 25% chance to be Corrupted and roll 5 or 6 random modifiers, or alternatively have a Veiled modifier.
Architects of Demise: Incursion Architects have 100% increased Item Rarity, 100% increased Toughness, are Possessed by a Tormented Spirit, and gain an additional modifier for each Incursion completed in the Area.
House Supremacy: 200% increased chance for Mercenaries to be of a chosen class (multi-choice between all 7 classes).
By the Lanternlight: 8% chance for Veiled items found in your Maps to drop as Allflames instead.
Ghostflame Communion: 25% chance for Shrines in your Maps to be Tormented.
Keystones and Unknown Nodes
A new keystone has been confirmed that adds +2 threads to a single thread, but blocks threads from dropping in your maps and prevents using more than one thread type at a time. This is aimed at hyper-specialist farmers who want to push one mechanic to its ceiling.
Four unknown wheel icon types still remain on the tree, each with 2 wheels. Based on their position and the surrounding nodes, these appear to be tied to mechanics that spawn randomly like Wildwoods, Sentinels, and the new Mirage encounter. The Vaal Side Areas nodes have been removed entirely from the tree.
Now that we have a rough map of the clusters, the first thing most players will want to figure out is how to unlock their 4 Voidstones as fast as possible on day one of the league.
PoE 3.30 New Thread Farm Mechanic
Threads of Creation are the single biggest system change in 3.30. Here is how they actually work based on the reveal and Q&A.
How Threads Work
Each map has 3 Thread slots. Each slot can hold 1 to 8 Threads of the same primary mechanic. One thread forces that mechanic into the map. Every thread from 2 to 8 adds difficulty and reward. You can run three different mechanics all dialed to 8 in the same map, for example 8 Expedition threads + 8 Blight threads + 8 Abyss threads on the same tile.
Random Modifiers and Jackpot Rolls
There are 80 total Thread modifiers across all mechanics, with each mechanic having between 5 and 8 unique modifiers. Each modifier rolls individually and the chance scales with the number of threads. You can hit every modifier for a mechanic with a single thread if you are extremely lucky, and if the roll fails on all of them the game forces one random modifier so you never get a blank result.
Known Thread modifier examples:
All Veiled items drop Fractured (Betrayal)
More Veiled items drop (Betrayal)
Ultimatum spawns a Heart that grants Adrenaline once killed (Ultimatum)
Double down your current rounds (Ultimatum)
Blighted Chests have twice the contents (Blight, from Mycotic Lanes)
Mechanic Interactions from Threads
Threads also create cross-mechanic events. Expedition threads at high counts can turn every Runic Monster into a Rare. Blight threads can add new Mycotic Lanes where every monster has Onslaught and chests drop double rewards. Ritual threads can turn the final altar into a Bodach's Ritual Altar for a second larger ritual.
Drop Rates and Economy
Octavian stated during the Q&A that threads should be quite common. Gameplay footage showed roughly 20-30 threads dropping in a single not-particularly-juiced map. Threads will be tradable, purchasable through Kirac, and available in the currency exchange. Expect the strong meta threads to be more expensive, but the ceiling should be much lower than past scarab metas because supply is so high. Weaker threads will likely sell for a few chaos each.
The +2 Threads Keystone
The Atlas tree includes a keystone that lets you push a single thread slot up to 10 Threads, with each thread past 8 providing a large reward and difficulty jump. The tradeoff is harsh: you cannot drop threads in your own maps and you can only use one thread type per map. Players running this keystone become natural buyers of threads from the open market, which should keep thread prices from fully collapsing on at least a few mechanics.
Baseline Juice Moved to the Tree
GGG's stated goal is that the tree alone gives the average player the effective juice of old scarabs. Threads then layer on top of that baseline. If you build a full mechanic tree without using any threads, your maps should already feel comparable to a lightly-scarabed map in 3.29. Threads are the ceiling, the tree is the floor.
Why This Matters for Farming
The economic implication is huge. Scarab cost used to gate access to the best farms. In 3.30, the only gate is character power. If your build can clear a triple-juiced 8-thread map, you can run the best strategies on day two. If your build cannot, no amount of currency will push you past that wall. Early-league profits will shift accordingly, since threads drop from day one and the strongest mapping builds will push ahead immediately.
PoE 3.30 Fastest Atlas Progression & Unlock 4 Map Voidstones (League Start)
Since the full Atlas tree is not publicly browsable yet, this section is based on the press kit image, confirmed node positions, and progression patterns from previous leagues. We will refine it with exact point allocations once the tree is fully datamined.
Build Choice Matters More Than Scarabs
With scarab gating gone, your league-start build determines how fast you can progress. For raw voidstone speed, strong candidates based on practice runs and community testing include:
Static Strike Slayer with Ambush axe swap. Nearly auto-bomber playstyle in the campaign, extreme single-target with Spectral Helix on bosses, and gets you to red maps with almost no gear.
Static Strike Guardian for a tankier version of the same archetype.
Explosive Arrow Totems (Ballista) scaled as direct damage rather than DoT. Clears maps fast, tanky baseline, and transitions cleanly into Shrapnel Ballista later for pinnacle bosses.
Lightning Arrow Deadeye or Kinetic Blast Deadeye for pure map-blasting speed.
Absolution of Inspiring Guardian / Lightning Tendrils Elementalist if you want a caster start that converts into a Herald stacker later.
Frost Blades Slayer for a safe, nerf-proof melee option.
Campaign Pacing
Patch notes arrive November 11th NZT, so most players will have less than 48 hours to adjust their build. Aim for a campaign time of 4 to 5 hours on league start. Static Strike builds have been measured at around the 4-hour mark with practice.
Early Atlas Priorities
Once you hit maps, the first goal is simple: get all 4 Voidstones as fast as possible so Nightmare maps start dropping and your Atlas points pile up. Rush straight to the Elder/Shaper quadrant and run the Pinnacle fights. The Maven and the four Eldritch bosses are in opposite regions of the new tree, but there is a gateway only 2-3 points of pathing from the Maven cluster to the Elder cluster, so you can still farm invitations efficiently.
Early Point Allocation
Based on the press kit image, the shortest path to Voidstones runs through:
Map Drop + Map Sustain nodes near the center spider web, so you never run dry of maps.
Pinnacle Boss nodes in the Elder/Shaper and Maven regions.
Primary mechanic cluster of your choice for currency generation on the way to Voidstones.
Shaped Region (Astrolabe) nodes since shaped regions are already pre-placed and give you free mechanic coverage.
Avoid spending points in Delve, Heist, or Sanctum nodes since they no longer exist. Avoid Vaal Side Area nodes for the same reason.
Which Mechanic to Pick During Progression
For currency generation alongside Voidstone rushing, the three strongest options at league start based on past league patterns and the new changes look like:
Blight with Cassia Sprite Discontent for very easy clear, great XP, and oils/blighted maps for early currency. Blight will not make you rich, but it funds your first few divines reliably.
Betrayal for veiled items that upgrade your gear and heavy XP from Syndicate kills.
Expedition with the new Gwennen crafting coin flip. The reworked service pairs well with early-league bases that have no high-end crafting options yet.
Threads During Progression
While rushing Voidstones, use 1-2 threads per map at most. Threads are cheap and dropping thickly, so you can afford to apply them, but 8-thread maps on a league-start character will usually brick you. Focus on consistent clear first, then scale thread count once your build is comfortable in T16s.
Pinnacle Boss Rush Target
If you plan to speed-run Voidstones, expect to need:
4 Guardians + Shaper
4 Elder Guardians + Elder
Maven for the final two Voidstones
With the new 10x divine drops from pinnacle bosses, these fights are now genuinely rewarding to run instead of being pure Atlas unlock checkpoints.
Avoid the League Mechanic Until Red Maps
The Covens of Umbra Fate mechanic empowers bosses and drops Viscera for the Wickerman. During campaign and early maps, the Viscera you get are Lesser tier and the fights slow you down. Only engage Fates seriously once you have a stable 4-link clear setup, or on specific bosses that drop Viscera your build wants (for example, Lesser Warden's Arm from Brutus for +Maximum Life).
PoE 3.30 Best Atlas Tree & Mapping Plans for Trade Mode (To Be Updated)
With 3.30's removal of scarabs, the new Threads of Creation system, the fully reworked Atlas passive tree, and the cross-pollination between league mechanics, farming strategies will look nothing like 3.29. Full trade league farming strategies for 3.30 will be posted here after league launch once thread prices, mechanic profitability, Viscera values, and Atlas tree interactions have been tested on live servers. Below is the first strategy setup for early mapping:
Expected Top Farms for Trade Mode
Based on how the Threads of Creation system scales and how mechanic rewards have been shifted, these are the farms we expect to rise to the top in the first two weeks:
Blight thread farm with Rogue Exile lanes: the new Mycotic Lanes with Rogue Exile spawns are expected to drop a lot of uniques, and Blight has historically been a strong trade farm for oils and blighted maps.
Breach thread farm: Genesis Tree Saplings can now drop Wombgifts and Foulborn items in Breaches, adding chase drops on top of the usual splinters and catalysts.
Ultimatum with Double Down and juiced maps: Ultimatum rewards scale with map rarity now, and the Double Down option doubles your rounds for massively increased payouts past round 10. Mirage catalysts can also drop from the new Vaal Oversoul rounds.
Expedition thread farm with Gwennen crafting: the new coin flip crafting means Expedition pays twice, once in logbooks and once in direct item crafts.
Mirage rolled maps: since Mirage can be rolled onto rare maps through chaos spam, players will likely farm maps specifically for the Mirage modifier, which doubles the content in the map.
PoE 3.30 Best Atlas Tree & Mapping Plans for SSF (To Be Updated)
The 3.30 changes are among the most friendly to SSF players in a long time. Tiered rare drops mean better base items from natural play, Simplex Amulets and Cord Belts have been added to the core drop pool at Tier 5, and specific maps always drop Sulphite, Heist Caches, or Forbidden Tomes for players who want to run those side mechanics without trading. Here is what we currently expect for SSF Atlas plans.
Expected Top SSF Farms
Betrayal Veiled Item Farming: Veiled mods are one of the most build-defining crafting options in SSF, and the new Thread modifiers (All Veiled items drop Fractured, More Veiled items drop) could produce fractured veiled bases that would be impossible to buy in SSF.
Expedition with Gwennen Coin Flip: The reworked Gwennen service lets you gamble crafting outcomes on your own rares. In SSF where crafting access is limited, this is a free crafting layer.
Harvest Tangled Roots: With Harvest spawning directly in maps and modifiable with currency, SSF players can target-reroll crafting lifeforce without needing to find a Sacred Grove.
Specific-Map Delve / Heist Farming: Dedicated maps that always drop Sulphite, Heist Caches, or Forbidden Tomes mean SSF players can plan Delve or Heist sessions without grinding dozens of maps for sustain.
Wickerman Viscera Target Farming
In SSF, the Wickerman system is one of the best power sources since Viscera drops are deterministic (one per Fate-empowered boss, no RNG from a drop pool). Prioritize Fates on bosses whose Viscera your build wants, since you cannot trade for them.
Full SSF Atlas trees, Viscera farming routes, and self-sustain plans will be posted here once the league is live and the full tree is public.
This guide will be updated continuously throughout the first two weeks of Covens of Umbra as the Atlas tree is datamined, patch notes release, and the first strategies solidify in the live economy. Check back after November 13th for full point allocations, meta thread setups, and SSF breakdowns.