PoE Betrayal Guide for the 3.5 League

The Betrayal league is about to finish in Path of Exile, so it’s time that we go over the systems that it added, and how to properly interact with them in the upcoming leagues. This article will be primarily covering Masters, Atlas Objectives, and Syndicate farming. Welcome to our PoE Betrayal Guide!

Who are the new Masters?

Betrayal and 3.5 brought with it a full overhaul to the masters present in Path of Exile. Previously we had Elreon, Catarina, Vorici, Haku, Leo, Vagan, and Tora. All of those were scrapped and, true to the nature of the Betrayal league, became our enemies.

The new masters are NPCs we’ve encountered in recent league included these:

• Niko: provides sulphite to delve.
• Alva: allows you to do three incursion instances.
• Einhar: summons several beasts to capture.
• Jun: summons syndicate members for you to defeat and interact.
• Zana (returning as the final one): remains the same, although now she allows you to select which map you’d like to do, and gives completion on the atlas when you complete it.

Rather than doing the missions from the previous masters, now you interact with the old server mechanics through their masters.

This master swap is a huge boost to Path of Exile as a whole, and has allowed quite a bit more content to be available, without losing anything of real value. The previous masters were tedious and provided very little innovation, while the new ones indulge entirely separate systems. Niko and Alva in particular provide access to whole other sections of the game and can to some extent be farmed to engage in those sections nearly exclusively.

What are Atlas objectives?

Atlas objectives are a new system introduced in 3.5, as a way to deterministically farm certain masters – sort of. Atlas objectives are essentially daily missions. Once per day the atlas objectives reset, and four appear on the atlas. There is a different symbol for each master, and by running the map that has the symbol attached, you are guaranteed to encounter that master. This allows engagement with one of each master, guaranteed, per day. The atlas objectives will naturally spawn on the same tier of maps that you have been running, but if you have them spawn where you don’t want to run them, you can run maps of the tier that you want them to be, and they will gradually move over.

Similarly, every time you run a map there is an approximately 10% chance that a new atlas objective will spawn. This was useful in Betrayal league for the 400 atlas objectives challenge, but after the league is over it will likely just be a source of guaranteeing more masters. There is also a fairly high chance that you will encounter a master on every map that you run, but which master it will be is entirely random, unlike the atlas objectives.

Moving forwards, Jun will likely be included in the atlas objectives. It isn’t entirely clear yet how Jun will be added, but it is likely that it will be in similar fashion to the other masters. There is some speculation that she will spawn more frequently to allow Syndicate farming, but it is yet unconfirmed. Regardless of how Jun will appear, there are some things you should know when farming the Syndicate, primarily who you should target.

For more Path of Exile, check this out: PoE Starter Builds for the Betrayal League (Patch 3.5)

How should I farm the Syndicate?

When farming Syndicate there are some things you should know. Primarily you should understand that in the current form of Syndicate, most of the masters on the chart give terrible returns. If you just push people around without understanding what you’re doing, you won’t make any money, and will likely have a poor time. But if you understand how to interact with the system properly, you can make quite a bit of money out of it, as well as other rewards.

The core function of Syndicate is based around leveling up the masters and maxing out the strongholds. Once you get a stronghold to 100% and run it, each master in that branch will give rewards based on their level. The higher level the better, maxing at level three. The leader would also give double rewards, so pushing a high tier master there would be highly profitable.

So which masters should you push where for optimal returns? This will change every league, so you should always check the economy before you try to farm a specific master. You can use the PoE Ninja to check how much you can earn for each reward. For Betrayal league the most profitable masters to engage with were It That Fled, Cameria, Rin, and Gravicious. It That Fled wanted to be pushed to Research, while the other three wanted to be in Intervention. It That Fled in particular provided quite a bit of income by upgrading Breachstones. If you could push It That Fled to tier three and the leader of Research, you could buy two Breachstones, upgrade them, and then sell them for a 100c profit from each.

The other three masters listed all provided high tier Scarabs, selling for 20-40c depending on the point in the league. If you could push all of them to level three and one of them to be leader, you could easily get 100c+ from a single stronghold, no breachstone buying necessary. In all likelihood breachstones will be nerfed hard as of next league, so it is likely that running Intervention will be the stronghold that is most profitable to run moving forwards. Scarabs will only be more expensive as their rarity goes up!

Conclusion

Betrayal League added quite a bit of content to Path of Exile. From the new masters to the atlas objectives, it’s no wonder we need a PoE Betrayal Guide. The Syndicate itself has provided quite a bit of new content to the game, and it is highly farmable, if you know what you’re doing. With so much content in the game now, you can easily pick and choose what you farm, so do your research, pick something you love, and get yourself rich!

For more Path of Exile, check this out: Top PoE Builds for Patch 3.5 the Betrayal League