The Ritual league in Path of Exile is live, offering a new mechanic and some new challenges to complete. Ritual League is pretty basic. You do like you normally do in POE and kill monsters. When you spot a new altar in the map zone you’re in, run over to it. You will find up to four in any given map, and each one will have a very obvious circle around it. Run into the circle and activate the shrine to begin. Kill all the monsters inside the circle to progress. And don’t worry, you don’t need to stand right next to the altar to finish the ritual, just take out the monsters and return to the ritual. That’s where the real fun begins.
Other Path of Exile 3.13 Guides:
- Path of Exile 3.13 Ascendancy Changes
- Path of Exile 3.13 Starter Builds
- Atlas Passive Trees Explained
- Ritual League All Reworked Skills
- Update your Loot Filter for Ritual League
- Making Currency in Ritual League
- How to complete all Challenges in Ritual League
You will then notice a new UI open up with something called Tribute listed. Let’s talk about that. You will notice items like currency, uncrafted base types, and even Labyrinth offerings in the rewards pool. And yes, rewards scale to the level of the map zone you’re in. So don’t expect to get too OP right off the bat.
The basics of Rituals
The process for finding a Ritual in a map is pretty simple. Look for the giant red pyres that spawn in each map. There will be at least 2 Rituals in each map, with larger areas having upwards of four or more. These rituals will spawn of a few different types. Check out the list below for each modifier.
Types of Rituals
- Bitter Ritual Altar: Monsters deal extra Cold Damage and can Freeze. Icy Beams rotate.
- Charged Ritual Altar: Monsters gain Endurance, Frenzy, or Power Charges on hit. Altar charges up and discharges monsters.
- Dreaded Ritual Altar: Monsters deal extra Chaos Damage and can Wither. Anomalies fire Chaos Projectiles.
- Emboldening Ritual Altar: Monsters are Massive. Altar causes monsters to grow even larger.
- Ensconced Ritual Altar: Monsters gain extra Energy Shield based on life. Altar restores monster Energy Shield.
- Fortressed Ritual Altar: Monsters take Reduced Damage. Fortress totems further reduce the damage monsters take.
- Foul Ritual Altar: Monsters deal extra Chaos Damage and can Poison. Toxic vines grab you while stationary.
- Fluctuant Ritual Altar: Monsters deal extra Lighting Damage and can Shock. Skull spires fire Lighting Orbs at each other.
- Infernal Ritual Altar: Monsters deal extra Fire Damage and can Ignite. Meteors fall from the sky.
- Invigorating Ritual Altar: Monsters are fast. Gales further accelerate you and monsters.
- Suppressive RItual Altar: Monsters regenerate life. Smothering Mist lowers your life regeneration.
- Vaal Ritual Altar: Items dropped by slain monsters are Corrupted. Atziri’s apparition protects the altar.
- Violent Ritual Altar: Monsters deal extra Physical Damage and can inflict Bleeding. Pain totems pulse Damaging Waves.
When you’ve found a ritual, go around and kill the mobs that spawn directly around it. When it becomes possible to click the Ritual to begin the mini-game. Another wave of NPCs will spawn that you need to kill. The AI is pretty dumb for these rituals, as mobs commonly hang around the edge of the Ritual. To complete a Ritual, you need to take out all of the monsters around it in the spawn wave. When you finish the ritual, a rewards window will trigger and you will be awarded Tribute Points.
The Basics of Tribute Points
Tribute Points are the core currency of the new league, aside from all the other currency, of course. Tribute points are rewarded when you complete a ritual in a map instance. And you will find a certain number of Altars in each zone. The basic premise is like this; you complete the first ritual in a zone, then you unlock the rewards in the pool for that zone, and can spend Tribute to claim them. Ritual League is setup to offer cheaper rewards the more rituals you complete, so don’t just rush the first instance of the mechanic in any map.
How to earn Tribute in Path of Exile’s Ritual League
Each time you overcome the wave of monsters from a ritual altar, which basically means survive and kill them all, you’re awarded a cache of Tribute Points. Each altar awards a range of Points, with the first ritual awarding a few hundred. These early challenges might include a wave of basic mobs and a couple of environmental hazards like flame traps. Later variants will increase the mob density and number of hazards. Later rituals in maps and the endgame will hand out thousands of Tribute Points, making them very much worthwhile.. Although expect the challenge to increase exponentially, as will the rewards.
What rewards to expect?
The biggest rewards, aside from your typical Unique Items and currency, are base type alterations. One of the new rewards for participating in the mechanic is Ritual-specific base items, which often carry unique modifiers that are not normally found on that item type.
You aren’t quite stuck with the rewards you see after a ritual though. Ritual League will let you pay a small fee of Tribute to reroll the items in the reward pool for that instance. You can only do this once per map instance, so use it wisely. Anyway, back to the rewards. You will see one example of a unique affix below that’s attached to a Ritual reward.
You do not have to defer an item when you enter a region immediately. You have the option to complete every altar in an instance, pick what items from the available favors you want to defer, and then move on to the next instance. This means you can receive the maximum amount of tribute points in an area before moving on, giving you the greatest amount of selection from the items. If you have enough tribute points, you can always reroll the items.
And no, Tribute Points do not carry over between zones or maps. Use them or lose them. So don’t try to spam your way through a map, completing all the rituals, and then expect to be able to take those Points to the next map. So be sure to make use of that reroll every time, if you haven’t found something you like yet especially.
What the heck are Ritual Vessels?
These are the endgame item of the League. You can slot these into a map device to get a massive boost to your map mob density. These items can also guarantee certain mob types will spawn within your next map. Be warned, these are no idle small mob packs. if you start stacking Ritual Vessels, with up to four being usable with a single map, you’re going to see a huge increase in mob density and variety. Great if you’re clearing out low-tier maps for easy XP early on, much more dangerous in Red Maps.