What exactly is the point of shaper's orbs?

I doubt they'll stick to their 'X wont drop' plan. There's no reason that has to be and it's a downside with no upside. We'll see when it goes live if that's still the plan.

Sorry for the mistake. I still see more misinformation about these orbs out there than correct.

Edit: Thanks for the post Vipermagi. Mis-information does cause us to be upset that GGG is gating a good feature yet again and starving us from being able to use it.

Does anyone know if the red maps will still be exp nerfed such that their (exp gained)/(time to run) value is crap the way they are right now?

Think it's best we all crawl under rocks until Friday.

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morbo wrote:

The purpose of shaper orb is to upgrade a tileset/layout you like, to a higher tier. So when you are playing in T12/T13, get bored of them and would like to play some Dry Peninsula, you shape it, so it will drop as tier appropriate for your char level.

Also, another thing to consider if you are into min-maxing - Say you like a certain T5 map layout the best - you shape it and then it becomes a T10, then if you only want that T10 map to drop you can't complete any other T10 map and lose a few % of map drop rate because of that - that is, unless you shape those unwanted T10 maps into T15.

Edit:

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Shagsbeard wrote:

I doubt they'll stick to their 'X wont drop' plan. There's no reason that has to be and it's a downside with no upside. We'll see when it goes live if that's still the plan.

I can see one downside...

What is the point of 99% of the content in PoE? Choice obviously. You get a sandbox, so decide if you wanna throw sand up in the air or build a sandcastle or whatever floats your boat.

Peace,

-Boem-

After re-reading the Shaper's Orb info again I see:

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Generally you earn a tier X Shaper's Orb from completing a tier X+5 map. For example, if you complete a tier 15 map that has a Shaper's Orb as the reward, then you'll receive a tier 10 Shaper's Orb, allowing you to upgrade a tier 10 map of your choice to tier 15.

Shaper's Orbs are essentially quest items, in that they are non-tradeable. You can respec the decision to upgrade a map by trading 20 Cartographer's Chisels and 5 Orbs of Regret to a vendor. This is intentionally an expensive operation.

When a map on the Atlas has been Shaped, it doesn't change any of the existing maps you own. However, Shaped versions of that map will now start dropping. Unshaped versions will not drop for you any more. These Shaped maps are five tiers higher than their regular Unshaped counterparts. They can be traded to other players. Like the rest of the Atlas, map Shaping is shared between all your characters in the league.

All items (including the new base types) dropped in these Shaped maps are five item levels higher than they would otherwise be.

So it looks like once I use a Shaper's Orb on a specific map that map will stay upgraded by 5 levels permanently so every time I run that map it will forever be a +5 tier higher map and all drops in it will be of the higher tier value. Yay, no more level 1 maps on my level 80+ builds.

Ok, so now this sounds like I'll need to farm T6 maps until I have acquired enough SOs to shape all T1 maps, before using a T11 SO on the T6 map. I'll need to repeat this for T7 maps for shaping T2 maps, etc. so that if enough SOs can be gotten eventually all maps on the Atlas will be T6+. Am I understanding this correctly? Is there going to be a maximum limit of SO orb drops for a specific map tier or will I be able to keep farming T6 maps until I have all the T1 maps shaped (upgraded)?

You will only get one two or three shapers per tier... not "all". They are not "drops". You get them for completing a given map.

ya...i wish they were drops honestly. and i wish you could upgrade a map more than once. take a tier 1 map and make it tier 11.

mountain ledge, strand, tropical island are my favourite maps. i'll definitely be upgrading those