Path of Exile: Necropolis 3.24 - Atlas Strategies: Blight

It can be hard to decide how you want to play once you reach the endgame in Path of Exile. Depending on your build, and what type of gameplay you like, you will have a great amount of choices to make. We’ll be looking at the Blight mechanic in this article, gauging how easy it is to get into, how cheap it is to get started, and how much currency you can start making with a small investment.

How Does 'Blight' Work in Path of Exile?

Blights are tower defense-like encounters that can spawn from Fungal Growths. Once players interact with the Fungal Growth, Cassia will place a purification pump on the growth, causing it to spawn roots in random directions. At the end of each root is a portal that spawns enemies that slowly move toward the core, only stopping to attack units in their way.

The Blight can spawn up to 8 roots, increasing with zone level. You will be given a short preparation time before the Blight starts spawning monsters. You can skip this by pressing a button that appears on the bottom right during this preparation period. Some roots will spawn after a delay, and sometimes a root will have multiplied monster density (indicated by a multiplier).

An icon corresponding to a Tower can appear over each root, indicating which Tower it is resistant to. Along the paths of the roots, players can construct a tower in specified areas. Towers cost resources to build or upgrade, which are given at the start and also acquired from killing Blighted enemies.

Path of Exile: How to Farm Blight

The best way to farm Blight right now is to do Toxic Sewer or Waste Pool maps. You’ll want a closed layout to minimize the number of lanes you get, since the more lanes you get, the more random loot you get. The best drops you can get are from Blight-specific chests. You have one Blight-specific chest guaranteed in every Blight encounter in Path of Exile.

This PoE Blight strategy requires a moderate investment. You’ll want to run a Blighted Scarab of Blooming since it allows us to get Blight-Ravaged maps, which can sell for quite a lot. Next, you should use 2 Blight Scarabs of Bounty, which gives us a 40% chance for Blight Chests to be openable again.

Finally, we use a Blight Scarab of Oils, as it makes it so Oils found in the area are 1 tier higher. Of course, adding Blight through your map device is a good idea. This strategy will cost you around 50 Chaos Orbs per map.

Path of Exile: Tips for Blight:

1. Using slow effects and/or knockback can help give you time before the enemies reach the pump. This can be very useful for characters who have low damage.

2. In most situations, Empowering Towers are the best Towers per cost. They upgrade the power of multiple useful Towers nearby. Some Towers have multiple effects that are affected by Empowering Towers. Each Tower can only be upgraded by 1 Empowering Tower max.

3. Choosing between damaging and/or slowing Towers will depend on your build. A build with pretty good damage but no slowing effects on enemies will probably do best with Towers that slow enemies, and vice versa.

4. Enemies can resist some Towers greatly and therefore varying damage types and/or slow types will increase the chances of enemies being affected significantly by your Towers.

How to Set Up Your Atlas for Blight in Path of Exile

The best way to set up your Atlas for Blight is to grab most Blight nodes but also mix in a bit of Beyond for more rewards. There are no nodes you should avoid, but depending on your build, you might want to grab Cassia’s Pride. If you take Cassia’s Pride, it makes it so your character will deal almost no damage, but Towers will deal 300% increased damage, turning the Blight mechanic into a full-on tower defense game.

This makes Blight a lot more accessible, as pretty much any character should be able to run it. If you want an example Atlas tree to follow, you should check out this Atlas by Empyriangaming. He’s been testing out different mechanics, so if you want to see some gameplay and the result of running 50 maps with this strategy, check out his video: