How do you sustain Red Maps? What am I doing wrong?

Delve and Temple greatly help with map sustain, however, it requires you to progress far enough to get good returns--you must run Alva in high mosnter level maps to the temple be high level as well (at which point you get red maps as a drops or from map room), delves start dropping red maps past depth 170 or so (ideally, you want 200+ depth for best rewards).

I was able to get to 154 out of 159 map bonus while doing progression on Atlas in SSF (I do not buy maps for progression).

My strategy is:
Tier 5 - 10: alch and go
Tier 10 (later): alch and vaal in hope to get red tier map
Tier 11 - 12: 2 chisels, alch & scoure if you can not run it or quantity and pack size is low.
Tier 13: 3 chisels, alch & scoure and vaal if enough maps available for good quantity & pack size
Tier 14: 4 chisels, alch & scoure, vaal + 2 fragments
Tier 15 - 16: all out

You will have times when you get lots of maps even with low investment and you will get runs where you run 140+ quantity maps back to back with no return. Just persevere.

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I've been chiseling / Alching everything (that isn't unID'd to start) to 20%, and then getting it over 80% Quant or as close as I can without ending up with a dead map, or too much currency invested in it.

Don't chisel or chaos spam these low maps. Alch and go for anything under T14 due to how insanely cheap map drops are.

A single map will always return than what it cost to run in the long run nassuming you are not chiseling or chaosing maps that are worth only 1-3 chaos orbs.

Alternatively spending an hour on syndicate spam or low delve can generally net 100-200c which is enough to buy more maps than you can ever run.

100/159 Atlas.
as I said, I'm T10 Complete with Bonus, except for the Uniques that got reset in 3.5, that I haven't reacquired.


I run all side content, begrudgingly. At least until I get Alva to max, and have my Hideout decorations back.

Since you're in standard, we can ignore currency generation via syndicate ...

I have no idea how bad the map trading situation is in standard, but if you want to trade for maps, send whispers until someone answers, then ask them if they can sell you a pack of different red maps so you can get your atlas completion higher.

If you want to self find it, pushing into red maps often requires some kind of brute force approach.
- Just alch and go, filtering out the map mods you can't run.
- Don't worry about how the map rolls until you're approaching the higher red tiers.
- Run maps as fast as you can, try to clear them to <50 remaining at the same time.
- Run every map you haven't unlocked yet immediately to increase your atlas bonus.
- Pick the highest tier where you have a comfortable pool (I guess T10 or T9), run all of those maps (or just a lot until you're bored).
- Repeat this until your map pool slowly moves into the reds.

This general approach has worked for me in SSF for several leagues now.

I could probably run higher tier maps than what I'm at.

The only maps that I'm actively avoiding are Ele Reflect, two unique bosses (if the boss sucks) and Temp Chains. I could do Temp Chains, it's just such a slog fest.

My Character in Question is the 91 MS Jugg. I'm at 7250 ish HP, and when I'm standing still I have a quite a bit of armor, obviously Res Max, +1 Max on Fire.

The only outright fatal Map Mod that I've run across is Ele Reflect. Even without the MS Head enchant (I know, I need a new helm), I attack so fast, and generate so much ele damage, that I can't out heal it.

If you don't want to go through my profile to figure out what I'm wearing, or tree:

Btw you can counter TC on map by using

I'm an alc and go sort and do not have problems with map sustain. Having said that, I also do corrupt maps with a fair amount of frequency and add the sac frags when I remember.

The only other factor that comes into play is the amount of maps you have unlocked on your atlas. I have noticed over and over that the maps do not start raining until you reach 90 or 100.

Map sustain is always a bit tougher in standard, but it's still not that bad especially now that the temple and delves are part of the core game. Make sure you always do your Niko daily and continue delving until you reach the monster level 83 areas (Around depth 235 I think). At this depth, you can go deeper or start going sideways, but whenever you find a city or map node you can get up to T16 maps, often several of them.

Obviously upgrading the map room in the temple whenever possible is also very good for map sustain.

The start of red maps is always frustrating. My suggestion is to just bite the bullet and buy the ones you need. Focus on getting completion bonus for 2-3 new maps a day, even if you have to buy them. You can always get unlucky in small sample sizes, but over time your returns will easily become self sustaining. Also, low end unique maps are usually very cheap. Buy the ones you need and up your atlas bonus.

One comment on your build - your gear is plenty good enough even for T15+ maps. MS is pretty broken. I'm a bit surprised you didn't go for Avatar of Fire since your tree is practically there already. You have 2 dead points below Golem's blood and can afford to give up a 5% life node to respec into AoF. This will give you a damage boost now and a bigger damage boost in the future if you continue to min max or get loreweave. Unless you're planning to get Xoph's blood that is.

Remember that when you brick a high tier map by vaaling into reflect or another mod you can't run, you can always sell it someone else. People will often pay a slight premium for vaaled maps that are 35+% packsize and 110+ quantity since it saves the chisel, alc and vaal cost.

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kolyaboo wrote:

I'm an alc and go sort and do not have problems with map sustain. Having said that, I also do corrupt maps with a fair amount of frequency and add the sac frags when I remember.

The only other factor that comes into play is the amount of maps you have unlocked on your atlas. I have noticed over and over that the maps do not start raining until you reach 90 or 100.

I am now at 102. (I found 2 uniques in the stash that I could rerun to get the bonus)

I guess I'm going to go and find more unique maps tonight / tomorrow to figure out what other maps I can get completed easily.

I have tried the Remove Curse Flask, and I should probably just Craft up a set of flasks that have that.

I know that there are better flasks that I could run based off of some of the guides that I've seen floating around for MS as well. I just haven't started looking for them yet, while I'm still trying to get the rest of the gear sorted.

I'll start working on some anti curse flasks, and see if I can't deal with Temp Chains maps without wanting to scream.

Just out of curiosity, what would other people feel comfortable with running map level wise with the gear I linked?

You don't "start working" on flasks at 90 lol. Flasks are very important and you should have them when you just start mapping. And don't use 2 life flasks. At no point in the progression second life flask is better than another utility. Maaaybe if you are very bad with lab traps then 2 life flasks might help, but that's pretty much it