Grimro can sustain 14+ tier maps with alch and go, why can't I?

Grimo did a little experiment to evaluate if you could sustain red maps with alch and go only.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flWWjznazsM

He ran 10 14+ maps with alch and go and got 21 14+ maps back. No watchstone shenanigans, nothing.

I did something similar. And I didn't only alch, I also chiseled and used
Territories Unknown Watchstone to juice the map further. Thus I got 100+ quantity on the maps.
And I got 4 14+ maps back. He oversustained by 110%, I undersustained by 60%.

There are some differences between our stats, though.

He plays Ultimatum League, I play Standard.
He got 158 Completion Bonus, I 161.
He got 140 Awakening Bonus, I 120.
He used Awakening Level 9, I only 5 to avoid drops outside my preferred region.
I didn't kill half the bosses because my build is not such a great boss killer.

I am completely stumped where this difference comes from. Am I doing something wrong? Does the Awakening Level make such a huge difference? Or the Awakening Bonus? Are bosses the main source of red maps, which would suprise me since the bosses I did kill didn't drop a single red map? Was I simply very unlucky? This would also surprise me because this is my normal experience, I never manage to sustain red maps without significant investment. Or did he simply get extremely lucky?

What is your experience? More like Grimro's or more like mine? What do you think should I change to be able to sustain 14+ maps without too much of an investment?

Generally speaking:
I always oversustain in the long run after hitting 100 atlas completion.

Having said that:
10 maps is a rather pathetic sample size.
Sometimes I get no returns a few maps in a row and then I get 6+ maps in a single map. It happens and its called RNG.


Just keep playing, dont overthink it.
Alch & go is sufficient to sustain T14 maps. Early on, when your map pool is not that great, sprinkle in some Zana missions to get free extra maps and you should be good - in the long run.
Means something like 50+ maps or more. 10 maps is way too low of a sample size and a single dry spell or a freak map will massively influence the outcome.

As long as you don't neglect your atlas bonus and don't skip too many random encounters in your maps, you should be able to sustain 4watchstone maps easily with alch&go. Also, it's easier to sustain if T14-16 maps are the only maps that can drop, which means having all regions fully watchstoned. It's way harder to sustain just the specific maps you want to run, though, even with the favorite map slots. They don't seem to add enough weight.


I think your main problem in this particular instance was skipping bosses. A lot of the sustain is actually from bosses having a very good chance to drop maps. With such a small sample size it could also just be bad luck, though. You'd need to run 100s of maps to get more reliable data.

My advice if you're struggling with sustain would be to add some Alva missions and incursion temples to your alch&go routine

Thank you for the replies. Yes, I am aware that 10 maps are an unrepresentative sample. But I have been struggling with this basically since I played PoE. It never worked for me. It routinely looked exactly like in the sample. Running red maps basically cuts my map pool in half. I have no problems sustaining white and yellow maps, though.

Well, I will probably have to buy more red maps and see if I can get it running somehow.

The way I understand it is that lower tier maps dropping *at all* will eat into your supply of tier 14+ ones.

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The way I understand it is that lower tier maps dropping *at all* will eat into your supply of tier 14+ ones.

I haven't done the experiment in a couple of leagues, but when I did, with an atlas that could only drop t14-16 and t1-3, the mix was approximately 90% t14-16. If the "lower" tier maps are higher than that, you'll get more of them.

Bottom line, if you can drop many/most tiers of maps, it will absolutely kill your sustain. If you are running 4 stones in some regions and none in the rest, it shouldn't hurt too bad.

AFAIK having lower map drops available doesn't change drop rate, if you don't have anything available for 13-4 lets say all that happens is when a 13 would drop you get a 3 instead.

Sustain with alch and go has been pretty comfortable for a few leagues now though what changes is how many maps you have to have in reserve before you can actually claim to sustain.

Basically you have to run enough maps that your yield from the base drop rate is high enough to make up for the worst luck streak you will receive, the problem is this is its way beyond 10 maps like a couple of hundred i'd expect.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

AFAIK having lower map drops available doesn't change drop rate, if you don't have anything available for 13-4 lets say all that happens is when a 13 would drop you get a 3 instead.

This was true prior to 3.9. The Atlas works differently post that.

Basically, if the game tries to drop a map (lets say a tier 6) and a tier 6 does not exist anywhere on your atlas, instead of downgrading it to the lowest available tier, it adds a certain amount of 'map equity' towards higher tier map drops (sources at bottom of post). Meaning if you only ever have tier 14-16 on atlas (so AL8+), every single time the game tries to drop tier 1-13 you gain a bonus towards a T14 drop.

Now if you have, for example, one region not watchstone'd fully so it has tier 6-9 maps on it. Here is what happens:
1) If the game tries to drop a tier 1-5, it gives equity towards one of the tier 6 maps dropping.
2) If the game tries to drop a tier 10-13, it gives equity towards a tier 14.

So, yea having lower tier maps on atlas, will hurt t14+ sustain.

~Myth

Sources:
Conversation between Karv (a streamer who did a ton of analysis on map drop rates back in 3.9, 3.10) and Neon: https://imgur.com/xuymGZ8

Karv's follow-up detailed breakdown: https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/eqjtuo/issues_concerning_the_new_atlas/
(Point 3 specifically talks about what I mentioned here and has a second image with more followup from Neon)

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Mythkiller wrote:

[...]
Now if you have, for example, one region not watchstone'd fully so it has tier 6-9 maps on it. Here is what happens:
1) If the game tries to drop a tier 1-5, it gives equity towards one of the tier 6 maps dropping.
2) If the game tries to drop a tier 10-13, it gives equity towards a tier 14.
[...]

That's my experience as well, when a watchstone is missing, I get slightly less T14-T16 maps, but still able to over-sustain. 4 watchstones missing with AL7 and 120+ bonus objectives are usually enough to sustain T14+ maps.

By default stricter loot filters are hiding T11-T13 maps when in T14+ maps, might be a good idea to check this (eg. drop a T11 map on the ground, when in a T16 map).