On June 13th, the new Mercenaries of Trarthus league launches alongside the Secrets of the Atlas Expansion. To help you tackle the new content, Maxroll has released a major update including their new PoEPlanner tool, new and updated league starters, PoB import/export, and much more!
Mercenaries of Trarthus
In the Mercenaries of Trathus Challenge League, players encounter one special Mercenary per zone, each with their own personalities, different skills, items, and builds. You may also find “Infamous” Mercenaries, which are far less common but carry far better items. Mercenaries have a lot of interesting buildcraft implications that we look forward to exploring more after the league launches.
Defeat Mercenaries to gain different rewards based on which option you picked before the duel:
- Hire
- Players pay an upfront gold cost before the duel begins
- Upon defeat, the Mercenary joins the player in combat
- Freely change their items once they join your team or dismiss them
- Only one Mercenary can accompany you at a time, with up to 2 more waiting in Town to swap between them
- Their level is locked to the area level you find them in so frequently upgrading them is recommended
- Revive fallen Mercenaries in Town for a Gold fee
- They do not lose items upon death
- Take Item
- Select one of the Mercenary’s items to drop on death, including currency items they’re holding
- Mercenaries can spawn with special “Of Trathus” versions of Skill Gems, which are similar to Transfigured Gems
- These can be selected as a reward
- “Infamous” Mercenaries may wear special Rares with the “Infamous” item modifier, granting brand new exclusive effects
- Exile
- An exiled Mercenaries archetype is blocked from appearing for the next ten encounters
- Up to two Mercenary attribute types (STR/INT/DEX) can be exiled at once
Learn more about Mercenaries of Trarthus and Secrets of the Atlas with Maxroll’s reveal overview post! Or take a deeper dive by reading the PoE 3.26 patch notes.
Build Guides
Here are all of the new and updated league starters for the 3.26 Mercenaries of Trarthus and Secrets of the Atlas update, straight from the experts at Maxroll.
New League Starters
Volcanic Fissure of Snaking is shaping up to be one of the most popular league starter picks for Mercenaries of Trarthus. Maxroll has 2 guides for this: a Berserker setup from Crouching_Tuna which is focused on speed and damage, plus the Slayer version from Carn that has continuous leech effects.
Zizaran’s new Earthquake Gladiator is a big bonk bleed build. Earthquake’s Aftershocks hit hard, making them perfect for inflicting a large bleed on tankier enemies. Gladiator provides explosions thanks to Gratuitous Violence, and easy defenses through Block scaling nodes like More than Skill.
The new Rolling Magma Mine Saboteur from Goratha is a hot league starter that unleashes bouncing balls of fiery destruction. This build takes advantage of the new Shrapnel Specialist node from Saboteur to push Rolling Magma and your GPU to the max!
The Glacial Cascade Elementalist from Aer0 takes advantage of all the golemancer buffs to bring a personal support squad to any fight. When you position correctly, Glacial Cascade deals immense damage with its final burst.
The Tornado of Elemental Turbulence Inquisitor from Velyna fills the screen with deadly vortexes that sweep across the battlefield. Thanks to the Inquisitor ascendancy, this build leverages both life and energy shield for a comfortable mapping experience.
Updated League Starters
Explosive Arrow Ballista Ignite has long been a league start staple in Path of Exile. You can play it as a tanky Champion from Zizaran, which excels in both Hardcore and Solo Self Found, or take advantage of the Elementalist buffs to play a higher damage version of the build from Palsteron.
Another ignite setup (more focused on the SSF experience) that benefits from the Elementalist buffs is Zizaran’s Wave of Conviction Ignite Elementalist.
Next up, Goratha’s Eviscerate Bleed Gladiator turns the entire screen into explosions of blood and monster guts. This mapping-focused build is all about going fast and clearing screens.
Maxroll’s Necromancer-in-Chief HelmBreaker has updated all 3 of his minion guides. The classic Poison Summon Raging Spirits is still a great choice in 3.26. Alternatively, if you want to go all in on the minion fantasy, use the Chaos Minion Army Necromancer to roleplay as a battlefield commander while your mindless dead kill everything for you. Last up, if you’re feeling a bit more experimental, check out the Poison Ranged Animate Weapons Necromancer build.
Lightning Arrow Deadeye is an incredibly consistent league start choice for players who enjoy bow builds. This setup from Crouching_Tuna gets you off to a strong start and can later be converted into Elemental Hit of the Spectrum.
If melee is more of your style, check out Carn’s Ground Slam of Earthshaking Slayer, a titanic build designed to shatter foes with ease.
Aer0’s Ice Trap Trickster creates icy doughnuts of destruction, trapping monsters within an icy grave. While a bit less tanky than some of the above builds, Ice Trap is easy to get off the ground and frozen enemies can’t fight back.
If you prefer mines to Traps Aer0’s Ice Shot of Penetration Deadeye is a glass cannon screen-clearing machine. Fire a barrage of icy arrows that explode into smaller projectiles, covering your screen in icy explosions.
Another miner on offer is the Exsanguinate Miner Trickster from CptnGarbage. This build leverages all of Trickster’s “don’t get hit” energy and combines it with Exsanguinate, a spell that chains through the entire screen in an instant.
Maxroll’s PoE Leveling Builds
Breeze through the campaign with leveling guides set up by the Path of Exile racing legend, Havoc616, to get you to maps quickly and easily.
Maxroll Currency Guide Revamp
In addition to the build guide updates, Maxroll is revamping their currency strategies to cut out the fluff and present more of the meta farming options. Check out the Maxroll Currency section, and keep an eye out for more updates to the currency guides in the future.
For example, Crop Rotation Harvest is a strategy for the Harvest League Mechanic where you play a mini-game of buffing your crops to get the most juice out of a single plot!
Maxroll’s PoEPlanner
Maxroll’s new PoEPlanner tool is fresh off the presses for 3.26. This tool works very similarly to their popular PoE2Planner tool, allowing Path of Exile players to theorycraft and share builds with ease while also providing a public build database to browse other people’s creations.
Getting started is straightforward; you can either select your ascendancy on the left to begin making a planner from scratch or link your Path of Exile account to import a character directly using the large blue button on the right. The gear on the right side is also where you go to save a profile.
The Maxroll PoEPlanner supports a lot of modules, but you don’t need to use all of them. If you leave a section blank, it won’t be visible when people browse the build. The exception here is required sections like passives, skills, or gear; don’t leave these blank!
- This is your passive tree; you can set your ascendancy nodes and even create variants. Add Jewels to your tree by left-clicking on the socket.
- Click the box in the top right to expand.
- Give the build a rating: red = bad, green = good.
- Write notes about your build. You can use this section to give people tips or explain the nuances of gearing and playing the build.
- What is the build good at? Where does it struggle?
- Include all of the skills and supports you are using. If you want to show build progression, you can do so by creating additional steps.
- Explain the order in which people should use their skills for optimal DPS.
- Select a major and minor Pantheon.
- Select equipment set(s) here. The PoEPlanner supports multiple equipment sets (created via the edit button on the top right) and stat weights for each set.
- What bandit should players use, or is the plan to kill them all?
- Link a Lootfilter, or if you want to go above and beyond, link multiple Loot Filters.
- Like with the Passive Tree, the Atlas Passive Tree supports multiple variants,
- The build’s author (hey, that’s you!)
- Link a build Showcase on Youtube, best practices include clear explanations of the mechanics and showing gameplay.
- If there’s a related build, link the relevant planner here.
- Changed the build? Update everyone with a changelog entry.
Want even more builds? Then check out more builds from the Maxroll Path of Exile team, or browse the Community Builds section to see what other Exiles are cooking up.
Example Builds
Here are a few planners from the Maxroll Path of Exile Team:
More Path of Exile News
PoB Import / Export
In addition to the new tool, Maxroll partnered with the Path of Building team to support importing and exporting directly from this popular community tool. You can see build information, including configuration settings at a glance. You can find this on Maxroll’s PoB page.
PoExchange
C3ntrax has updated the PoExchange tool. The most prominent feature is direct integration to the Maxroll website. This means getting notifications for sales even when you’re browsing build guides or using the planner and seamless switching between PoExchange and the rest of Maxroll.
Written by IGN Staff with the help of the Maxroll Path of Exile Team.