Detailed Atlas Mechanics

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1337fun wrote:

So, if i never ever complete any map and than buy t15s and complete only them and play them, will i only get t15 t16 and t1 drops?

No. You will only drop maps that you have unlocked on the atlas, and ones adjacent to the map your running.

"Ruined accounts"... I don't get it. This game is completely RNG, which is widely accepted (I never read "A rare dropped that I can't use!"), but when it comes to maps ppl wanna target and get specific drops.

Think of maps you don't wanna run like you think of badly rolled rares. "I take this shit to the vendor."

"A map I don't wanna run dropped for me! What do I do now? WHAT TO DO?!?!?!?!"
How about waiting for 2 more drops of the same map and vendoring it for a higher tier map until you reach one of your liking?

TL;DR: Get your map drop chance as high as possible and vendor maps you don't like.

"When a map drops, its tier is entirely unchanged by the choice of which maps you have unlocked so far"

I dont quite get this new rule of map dropping. Suppose that I start from a T15 map and I should get a T10 map drop by the old drop system. Since none of my T10 maps are unlocked, what will I get in this case? A T1 map instead? But that means the map's tier is changed by this new system.

Holy shit I'm not sure why this game needed more reasons to not do bad layout maps but it just got it. This system means you should only ever do 1 map you want from each tier, then you just get all maps of that tier to be the perfect one you want. Why even have other maps at that point. Even if the 1% bonus map drop is important you can just fill it out on the shit map tiers you would just vendor or leave on the ground anyway. I can't wait to only ever do one single tier 10 map and one single tier 11 etc for 3 months. I know ggg thinks abusing stuff like this is cute but this is just silly. It actually punishes you for just doing random maps. Just fuck up once and now half your gorges turn into excavations(or whatever it will be on the atlas) instead.

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Usually completion means just killing the boss of the map

This will backfire horribly.

I'd like to know how this is going to interact with the Uber lab and the carto chest therein. Specifically, if I manage to get my trials run before unlocking red maps in the Atlas, am I going to get nailed with drops of a radically lower level if I happen to unlock the carto chest? Come to think of it, how will the restrictions work with carto boxes in general?

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Chris wrote:

Cumulative Map Quantity Bonus

Performing the bonus objective in each type of map unlocks a (multiplicative) 1% map drop quantity bonus. For example, if you have done this in 22 different types of maps, then you have a 22% map drop bonus that stacks with other quantity bonuses multiplicatively. The total bonus is displayed on the Atlas screen. The objectives that unlock this bonus are:

-White Maps (Tiers 1-5) and Unique Maps: Kill the map boss or open the designated unique chest (for maps without a boss).
-Yellow Maps (Tiers 6-10): Kill the map boss in a rare version of the map.
-Red Maps (Tiers 11-16): Kill the map boss in a corrupted rare version of the map.

Will there be a way to keep track of the maps we've gotten a Map Quantity Bonus from ? After a while it will be difficult to remember which map we've completed as rare or corrupted...

I'm so confused.

Does anyone know which formatting tag has been used for the several headers in Chris' post?

It would be nice to use it for the build guide I'm working on.

Regarding bricked accounts, this is the crucial part:

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Chris wrote:

When a map drops, its tier is entirely unchanged by the choice of which maps you have unlocked so far. Unlocking more maps doesn't change how many of a specific tier you receive (but increases the number of different maps that you see at that tier).

If I recall correctly from something that was posted a while ago, the system will first roll to determine the tier of the map, then roll for the specific layout within that tier among the maps that you have unlocked.

The first sentence in that quote therefore implies that the probability of finding a given layout decreases as you unlock more layouts within that tier (this could have been offset by rolling for layout, which would make a given tier more probable by unlocking more layouts).

Since there are necessarily more than 2 layouts per tier (on average 100/15 to be exact), completing all maps will not offset that decrease: you only get a 100% bonus.


Now, I'm assuming that buying and running an unlocked map will work the same as for legacy maps: you automatically unlock the (or, some) path up to that map. This means you don't have any control over which maps get unlocked in that process.

The optimal play (in terms of getting favorable layouts), is therefore the following:

- Don't buy your favourite maps, do not run legacy maps in standard.
- Start from tier 1, work you way into the center of the atlas along the most favourable layout path (which will have to be determined post-release).
- Run and complete all other maps of tiers lower than you want to play, in order to unlock the %dropchance bonus.
- Stop exactly there, as there is no way to path to the other Guardians' maps without going over another completely different layout path.
- Never, ever play another layout map, as it will substantially ruin your chances of getting your favourite layout maps.


Of course, the "worst case" outcome is that you're in the same situation that we have currently: there is no bias in map layouts. However, since AoW will introduce the possibility of obtaining this bias (in a favourable way), any min-maxing player will now want to do this. Meaning, you can actually substantially brick your account.

Not. a. good. idea.

Possible fixes suggested in this thread:
- Make "unlocked" status toggle-able.
- Introduce a (heavy) bias to only drop maps that are connected to the map you're running (including that map itself).
- Make the probability layout-based, rather than tier-based.
- Make all map layouts exactly as desirable. In a game as complex as PoE, this is likely unfeasible.