PoE Money Making Guide: Shaper Guardian Farming
This post originally appeared on MmoGah.
Welcome to the Path of Exile money-making guide. In this guide, TheVictor003 shows you a well-known strategy – farming PoE Shaper Guardians, with which you can earn over 500 Chaos orbs per hour to fund those expensive builds at the beginning of a league.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7bvz9EHGVs
Farming Shaper Guardians
Rushing Guardians (Skip other encounters):
• Minimize time spent farming
• Maximize Guardians encountered
*This approach can be further optimized to yield greater profits.
I do this strategy by rushing the Shaper Guardians to minimize the time on each map and maximize the amount of guardian encounters I can complete within a given time. But far greater profits can still be gained by completing the various encounters I skipped, such as the Ultimatums or the Temples.
I farmed all of my Shaper Guardian maps with the Remnants of the Past and the Guardian's Aid Atlas passives so that each map I ran would contain two Shaper Guardians, instead of one, with a decent chance that both of them would drop their respective fragments. These fragments would end up making the bulk of my profits.
Loot Table
It is worth mentioning that this farming strategy is not very hardcore viable unless you have a very strong Juggernaut or Champion build. A high-end Bladefall Blade Blast Raider could probably handle the strategy and hardcore, too. However, since I was playing a basic spectre build without much survivability, I did die quite a few times throughout the farming.
Loot Data
16 Shaper Guardian Maps
Total Profit: 528.5 Chaos orbs
• Guardian Fragments
• Maven's Invitations
• Liquid Currencies (i.e., Exalted orbs and orbs of Alterations)
*Non-liquid items are not included in the profit calculations
Time Spent Farming: 1 Hour
• Currency Gain: 530 Chaos orbs per hour (or 4.6 Exalted orbs per hour)
• Currency Gain without Exalt Drop: 415 Chaos orbs per hour
Throughout the 16 Shaper Guardian maps that I ran, I made around 530 Chaos worth of profits in liquid drops such as the Guardian fragments, Maven's Invitations, and currencies like Exalted orbs and orbs of Alterations.
I decided to exclude the value of items like essences and regular non-influenced maps from my profits since I don't sell these items. However, this farming strategy still yielded quite a lot of profits since it took me less than an hour to run all these Guardian maps.
This farming strategy can generate roughly 530 Chaos orbs, or 4.6 Exalts orbs per hour. Even if I excluded the Exalted orb drop from the calculations, these runs would still yield over 400 Chaos orbs worth of profits per hour. Therefore, if you're looking for a strategy that generates around 3-4 Exalted orbs worth of liquid loots per hour, farming Shaper Guardians is a good way to do it, assuming your build is strong enough to defeat two Guardians at a time.
My Build to Farm Shaper Guardian Maps: Pure Cold Spectre Necromancer
Syndicate Operatives:
• Low CD Shotgun Spell (Police Daggers)
• Great Clearspeed and Single-Target DPS
Build Playstyle:
• Passively clears monsters
• Allows for focus on mobility, dodging, and survival
The build that I ran to farm Shaper Guardian maps was a pure Cold Spectre Necromancer. My specter of choice was the Syndicate Operatives from the safehouses spawned by running Betrayal encounters with Jun. Since Syndicate Operatives have such a fast cooldown on their spell, which can shotgun with Greater Volley support links, this gives them great clearing capabilities and single target damage. Convert their physical damage to cold with Triad Grips, and they become a very viable boss killer when combined with the Hatred aura, Elemental Equilibrium, and Frostbite curse.
The passive playstyle of this build allows me to focus purely on rushing straight to the end of the map without stopping, which in turn reduces my run time, thereby improving my rates of PoE currency gain. However, by no means, it's my current setup anywhere near min-max, but if you want to look at it in more detail, here is the pob link (PoB Fork).
Greatest Sources of Income
Guardian's Aid Really Improves Profits
Shaper Guardian fragments will yield the greatest amount of profits from a Shaper Guardian farm. However, the fragment drops from the second Guardian spawn in each map boost the profits from this strategy.
Throughout my 16 Shaper Guardian maps, I was able to drop a total of 24 Guardian Fragments. Therefore, a second fragment will drop in each map 50% of the time. At the time of this recording, Shaper Guardian fragments sold for around 10 Chaos orbs each, which is how much they go for towards mid-league in the past. However, in greater quantities, you could usually sell them in bulk for about 10-20% more than the market price.
Invitations Dropped:
• 2 Forgotten Invitations (10 Chaos each)
• 1 Twisted Invitation (25 Chaos each)
• 2 Formed Invitations (30 Chaos each)
On top of the consistent source of Guardian fragments, Maven's Invitations would also drop occasionally. Depending on the type of Invitation drops, you could make 10 to 30 Chaos orbs per Invitation. In my runs, I was able to drop two Forgotten Invitations, one Twisted Invitation, and two Formed Invitations. That means, on top of the Guardian fragments that I'm piling up, the Maven's Invitations will add up quite a bit of profit, too.
Notable Drops:
• Augmented Distant Memory (45 Chaos orbs)
• Exalted orb (115 Chaos orbs)
• Singular Delirium orb (28 Chaos orbs)
Beyond Guardian fragments and Maven's Invitations, many other notable items dropped during the farming session. Among the most notable drops was an Augmented Distant Memory map, an Exalted orb, and a Singular Delirium orb. None of these higher-ticket drops is ever guaranteed, but throughout many farming sessions, you will undoubtedly encounter other high-ticket items that are worth the same.
Should You Farm Shaper Guardian Maps?
In short – Yes! This strategy may not be for you if you have a build that cannot handle higher-tier content or just enjoy playing builds that don't really push the limits of that type of content. However, there are many good reasons why Shaper Guardians have become such a staple amongst the PoE community:
During league start, many veteran players aim to reach Shaper Guardians to begin collecting fragments. By farming out many of these early on, they can build up a budget for their mid-league builds at a rate nearly twice or even three times as fast as the rates I had.
Not only that, but even when the prices of these fragments start to drop towards mid-league, the strategy still yields quite a good amount of profits for those who join the league later on.
Beyond the profitability of this strategy, farming Shaper Guardians is also straightforward and versatile in its implementation. If you want a simple farming method that yields great profits, simply run straight to the end of a map, ignoring all encounters and mobs throughout the map, and slay the occupying Guardians.
If you want to adapt this farming method to other strategies like running Betrayal encounters, you can easily combine these strategies to yield even greater profits from each map. I personally haven't tested Guardian farming in conjunction with any other farming methods yet, but you can generally infer that the more strategies you have running simultaneously, the more profits you stand to gain in the long run.
That is the Sharper Guardian farming method you can use to fund those expensive builds in Path of Exile. If you found this video helpful, don't forget to subscribe to TheVictor003's channel for more future content. You can also bookmark our PoE new page on MmoGah for more helpful information about PoE.
Path of Exile's next expansion, Scourge, will launch on October 22 on PC and October 27 on console. We will keep offering cheap PoE currency for you to skip the grind and enjoy the game. At MmoGah, all orders are backed by professional suppliers and representatives, and that is why we are players' go-to place to purchase PoE currency.
