How to get rich farming Guardians [Guide] (no MF items)

Hi. My name is Jessica. I'm an avid PoE player even though I'm pretty new to PoE, having only been playing it since harbinger. In Abyss I focused on playing exclusively my version of a Barrage Raider (https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2007539) and vast amount of my playtime was farming T16's. Altogether I probably did around 400-500 Guardian maps throughout Abyss. Some of my other achievements include killing Shaper & Guardians day 4 of the league and farming them the following days. 3 weeks into the league I also did a video killing all the main bosses in the game (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp-3rSdLSQ8)

A lot of people (especially on reddit) like to cicrclejerk themselves to death about sextants and running Shaped Vault, Spider Forest, Burial Chambers or any other single map over and over like there is literally no other way to get currency in the game. I'd like to introduce you to another way: farming Guardians.



Why farming Guardians is profitable?


1) Fragment

First and the most obvious reason is the Shaper Fragment. In general any guardian map will pay 75% of its cost just by getting you the fragment. This leaves the cost of a map ~ around 3-6 chaos (+alch/chisels and bloodlines mod). That is super cheap. You'll earn even more if you sell your fragments as Shaper Sets.

2) Map Drops

Obviously a T16 map has the highest lvl of map drops. In addition to getting other guardian maps back (on average 2 Guardian map drops per 3 runs with 157% Atlas bonus, 80% quant on a map and bloodlines) you're getting a TON of other red maps. Any T15 usually sells for 10-15 chaos, T14 for 6-10 chaos, T13 for 3-6 chaos. And you're getting a ton of those. And no quantity from items doesn't affect map drops. Only things that affect map drops are Atlas bonus, map quantity and map level.

3) Shaped bases

Abyss has buffed Guardian and Shaper farming by letting them drop a shaped 85ilvl (or 86 in the case of shaper) base. I would estimate this chance to be around 1:6 or around 16% chance. Some of the bases are super valuable and cost literally several exalts like the sceptre bases that are used for stat sticks, any rings or amulets, certain armour and weapon bases. There is also a chance for you to win a lottery, like getting a shaped Opal ring base from Chimera.

4) Guardian exclusive unique items

This is relevant early league with items like The Scourge or The Brass Dome costing even up to several exalts. Even after first two weeks of the league these items maintain their cost, Poe Ninja says that even 2 weeks in The Scourge was selling for 80 chaos. This extremely profitable and should be put in the 1st spot if you can farm a lot during first two weeks of the league.

5) Abyss Jewels & Stygian Vise bases

This is not a case now but next league when Abyss is going to get nerfed and exists only in 10% of maps and Abyss Depth in even less maps the market for high ilvl Stygian Vises and Abyss Jewels will become a thing. Abyss jewels & Stygian Vises aren't getting nerfed and everyone will still need 5-10 Abyss jewels and a Stygian Vise base to craft. Abyssal depths from guardian map is the only place to get ilvl86 jewels and Stygian Vises in the game.

6) Everything else

The things above are items exclusive to Guardian maps. You will still get all the other currency drops including chaos, exalts, Sextants (yes you're selling those for really nice $$ to all the people running Vaults), divination cards and unique items.


Why farming Guardians is fun?


1) Because you can literally do all content in the game

This style of farming lets you do anything you want. Your atlas isn't clustered with sextant blocks/uncompleted maps. You're not limited to running a single map 500 times, you can do any map on the atlas and in fact you should because the more Atlas bonus = more Guardian maps & red maps. You can farm elder and farming elder is going to be the only way to unlock any Elder Orb and Uber Elder fight in Bestiary.

2) No complicated preparation

Buying maps, sextants, blocking atlas, running XXX number of maps trying to get perm elder influence. All the time & currency wasted somehow never gets included in the "I RAN 500 VAULTS HERE'S THE RESULTS" reddit posts. Forget about that. All you need is any Guardian map, alchs & chisels and you're ready to go.

3) No Zana 8 grind

Running sextanted map without breach is basically a waste of time. Breach requires literally dozens of hours of buying Zana dalies including wasting time going through 820, wasting currency on A Gracious Master prophecy. Forget about that. Best Zana mod for running t16 is Zana3 Bloodlines that costs 3 chaos. Gives global 25% more monsters and 20% more quantity which includes map drops. Takes 0 time to acquire.

4) No buying expensive MF gear

With nerfed droprate Bisco got up to 16 exalts this league. The Pariah / good ventors cost several exalts. Windripper, high IIQ Goldwyrm...the list goes on. How enjoyable is to spend dozens of exalts on a MF gear before you can even get any returns? Somehow this also never goes into the reddit posts. Just skip all of this and buy the best items for your build right away.

5) Play any build you want

You know how 90% magic find builds tend to be Rangers? It's simply because literally the only weapon with quantity in the game is windripper. So you're basically limited to 1 build if you want to run traditional MF unless you want to intentionally handicap yourself. As we don't' stack quantity running T16's you can play any build you want as long as it is capable of killing Guardians. I'd recommend here my build I used a whole Abyss: Ashrend/Lioneye Raider (https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2007539) but there is a huge variety of different builds that can do it.


How to successfully farm Guardians?


1) Killing a Guardian

If you want to farm T16's you will obviously need to kill a Guardian and the Guardian is going to have a lot of mods because we're always alching the map. If you want to "min-max" I would recommend a Barrage / Tornado Shot build here just because it has great clear and great single target and is just basically a "all in one" build. You don't want to hassle too much with it so I'd say any build that kills a Guardian in less than a minute is a good build. So plenty of choice here.

2) Atlas Bonus & preparation

You also want to have the highest Atlas Bonus possible to get the most Guardian & other red maps returns so it's best to complete all of it before you start farming. Just don't complete Lair of the Hydra because the Hydra fragment costs significantly less. I had it completed in Abyss because I honestly don't mind a little less income and some variety but in general it's good to avoid it unless the price changes next league.

In terms of preparation I just alch & chisel and run Bloodlines Zana mod on every T16 map. And that's it. That's the whole trick. Thank you for your attention.

3) Lvl up before farming Guardians

Guardians are going to kill you sometimes and therefore you need to get to your desired level before you do that. That's the one thing that's seriously not very good about it so just be aware of this. But you'll have a lot of time to lvl up as you're completing your atlas.


My wealth in Abyss and Ending notes


You can check all my Abyss items in my profile. Some of them include 360pdps 6l Lioneye's Glare, +1 arrow Signal Fire, Full Abyss 2 socket set, crit watchers with onslaught, all 21 lvl gems, plenty of GG abyss jewels. I also have 74 exalts now in my stash and plenty of other currency and valuable items that would take too long to list.

I also would like to say that I wasn't just farming guardians. I did farm Shaper (mostly early league) and did other maps too (when I leveled up to 95). I also crafted and sold plenty of abyss jewels. So take that for what it is.

Hopefully this post helps some people to realize that farming Sextanted Shaped Vault isn't the only profitable thing to farm in this game. Thank you for reading! Any questions just ask.

Thanks for the read, might follow what you're doing next league. Started Abyss too late to do anything useful on my account.

Thanks for the guide, enjoyable read - and really nice gear collection from Abyss!

I agree with your viewpoint on farming currency - we only hear the stories of people who were successful in farming shaped/sextant/breach maps. But there are so many people who go completely broke because they're missing one important thing and end up quitting out of frustration.

I like the idea of going for a completed Atlas and not having any stress over spending currency sealing maps.

Did you ever Vaal your maps as well? You said you only chis + alch, is it not worthwhile to also corrupt it?

How is your sustain on T16s with a completed Atlas? Did you ever find yourself buying lots of maps?

Very interesting read, well done OP!

Good idea, do you sextant block it or just go at it bare?

"

Good idea, do you sextant block it or just go at it bare?

I didn't do any blocks. T16's are especially expensive to do it and you would need to re-roll a lot because you won't block most of the bad sextants. Also you can only get 4 sextants on a T16 map. I don't like the system in its current form.

"

Did you ever Vaal your maps as well? You said you only chis + alch, is it not worthwhile to also corrupt it?

How is your sustain on T16s with a completed Atlas? Did you ever find yourself buying lots of maps?

I always try to buy T16 in bulk like 10-20 at once and then when you're farming them Guardian maps tent to drop pretty often so it makes for even more maps. All T15-T13 I sell and lesser tiers I don't usually bother to sell at this point in the league but I do keep them for Elder farming (along with yellow maps).

I didn't vaal anything mostly because I didn't want to hassle with ele reflect maps.

nice read here...tq for sharing.