It’s highly recommended that those reading this guide check out both the New Players Guide to POE, and the 3.0 Mapping Guide, in order to understand the basics that this new guide will build on. You should also check out the War for the Atlas Guide.
We’ll be updating this guide throughout the day as we get our hands on more of the new features. So keep an eye peeled if you’re looking for more tips for POE’s Bestiary League.
Check out the of the Bestiary League wiki page for new Unique items, Challenge completion rewards and other new stuff.
The Basics
The 3.2 update includes the gotta-catch-’em-all critter capturing content, new endgame bosses, new gear sets, a new Act 10 quest and the complete ascendancy class revamp. Here’s a full list of the major changes:
- Added 2 new Active Skill Gems and 1 new Support Gem:
- Added a new Dexterity/Strength Skill Gem – Spectral Shield Throw: Throws a spectral copy of your shield as a projectile which cannot pierce, and deals off-hand damage augmented by the defences of the shield. When it collides with something it will shatter, launching a number of smaller shards as projectiles in all directions. Modifiers that cause additional projectiles to be fired will add more shards, not more copies of the shield.
- Added a new Strength Skill Gem – Tectonic Slam: Slam the ground with your weapon, unleashing a fiery fissure in front of you, dealing area damage and releasing a random number of smaller fissures branching off from it. If you have Endurance Charges, one will be consumed, maximising the number of fissures. Requires a Mace, Sword, Axe, Staff, or Unarmed.
- Added a new Support Gem – Summon Phantasm on Kill: Causes supported skills or minions created by supported skills to summon a Phantasm minion on landing a killing blow.
- Added Abyss to the core game. For information on changes made to the Abysses and related features, see the Abyss section below.
- Introduced the final Elder encounter. This endgame encounter is the single most difficult challenge Path of Exile currently has to offer. Good luck!
- Added the Elder Orb, obtainable after collecting all of the Shaper’s Memory Fragments. The Elder Orb can upgrade any map on your Atlas to Tier 16.
- Added 27 new unique items, 16 of which are exclusive to the Bestiary Challenge League.
- Added 27 new Fated Unique prophecies.
- Added a new quest – Vilenta’s Vengeance: Vilenta has sided with Kitava and must be dealt with. Seek her out in Act Ten, and defeat her for a skill point. Existing characters who have completed the prerequisite quest (Map to Tsoatha) will already have the skill point and can instead collect the new reward for the Tear of Tsoatha quest.
- Added a new Act Ten area: The Control Blocks. Could this be where Vilenta has been hiding out this whole time?
- Added 10 new Divination Cards designed by our supporters.
- Enabled that Rogue Exile we said we added last time, but this time we really mean it. Or do we…?
- Added two-ish new vendor recipes.
- Added 6 new Grandmasters and updated or replaced 5 others.
The Abyss League features have now been rolled into the main game as well. Abyssal Depths can no longer appear in areas below level 70.
There’s a whole host of minor adjustments to aspects of POE that you should be aware of.
Check out the full patch notes here.
Some Great Starter Builds
Ice Shot Raider – with the 3.2 buffs to Raider builds this might be one of the most powerful setups as a Ranger Ascendancy focusing in Ice Shot
Crit Tectonic Slam Marauder – Slayer build that is purely DPS-oriented and focuses on two-handed weapons. It allows to maximize and fully utilize the potential of the new area attack skill gem – Tectonic Slam
Righteous Fire Totem MoM Hierophant – Hierophants will most certainly rule the Bestiary League. This is the class that has received the most significant buffs in patch 3.2, and also the new fated Atziri’s Reflection shield completely nullifies the downside of using Soulmantle unique Body Armour
Spectral Shield Throw Gladiator – based on the most anticipated 3.2’s skill – the Spectral Shield Throw. It is a purely physical damage quasi-melee build that uses Blood Magic for sustained damage and smooth gameplay
Check POEBuilds.cc for a complete listing of all the community builds for 3.2 Bestiary League.
Getting Started
When you first create your newest character for the Bestiary League and head out of Lioneye’s Watch, you’ll run into the newest Garndmaster in POE, Einhar Frey. He’ll give you a set of five Simple Rope Nets. You’ll use these nets to capture your first beasts. These Nets will also drop from mobs that you kill, so always use a good loot filter so you can spot them. Neversinks for example colors the Nets bright green.
Don’t worry if you run out of Nets, just visit Einhar to buy more. Although higher level nets will cost more currency. The first couple of Nets are 1-2 Scrolls of Wisdom per stack of three, and those will carry you until you start encountering beasts around level 20. You also get some Nets for free from Einhar every time you visit a new area for the first time.
There is also a vendor recipe that allows a 3:1 ratio of lower tier Nets to higher ones, so you can trade three Nets for one next tier Net to any vendor.
Nets
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As usual, you should ALWAYS update your loot filter. The amazing folks behind NeverSink have deployed their updated version. You can use their website to completely customize the filter to your liking as well.
Once you make your first catch, Einhar teleports to you and you’ll get your first glimpse of the Bestiary.
From there, you’ll want to just focus on leveling for a bit. Once you’ve hit level 5 or so head to Mud Flats. Find the unique Rhoa Oozeback Bloom weaken him and then drop a net on him to capture him. You’ll unlock your first recipe, as well as access to the Menagerie. From here you’ll progress through the Bestiary, capturing beasts as you go to unlock recipes and increasingly powerful crafted items.
Also, take a few minutes and explore the Menagerie. Familiarize yourself with its layout, but also pay attention to the different thematic elements and design choices GGG made. A lot of work went into creating this new area and it really shows.
You should always be on the lookout for Rare beasts, these are crucial to crafting in this League. Unique Mobs are also capturable and will allow you to craft various extremely powerful leveling items. Be aware though that these Unique Beasts will have some backup in the form of an unassailable Spirit Animal. You’ll often get quests from Einhad to capture specific Uniques as well. You’ll want to time your Nets when the Beast is fairly and then damage it while the electric effect of it being captured is still active. That’s the best way I’ve found to ensure captures.
Rare crafting Recipes in the Bestiary have been made easier in 3.2.0b because of a reduction in cost by one fewer Rare Beast.
Even in zones where there aren’t normally Beasts, you should keep an eye on the minimap. There may be yellow or red skull icons that denote new Beasts that you can capture. Capturing these red or yellow Beasts can then unlock recipes that can craft Uniques items. Sometimes you can even get an extremely valuable Unique.
Totem and Minion builds may have some major issues with captures as you can’t easily call them off before they kill a mob. So you may want to pick a more direct league starter build until GGG patches in the ability to capture corpses. If you don’t want to do that, just time your abilities within the capture animation time frame to ensure you drop the Beast’s health to 0.
The Necromancy Net is a special Net introduced in patch 3.2.0b that works on all levels of Beast corpse, allowing you to resurrect dead creatures to capture them and improve your clear speed. Be aware though that shattered or exploded corpses cannot be resurrected.
With the introduction of 3.2.1, players can now trade Beasts with each other. Just buy a Bestiary Orb from Einhar and then use it on a specific Beast in your Menagerie. The resultant item can then be listed on trade sites and traded to other players via the secure trade screen. To let the monster out of the item, just right-click it. Adding a beast to your Menagerie this way does not grant progress towards the “Complete the Bestiary” challenge.
NOTES:
- GGG have announced that they’re adjusting the capture window to make it easier to positively influence a capture chance.
- Capturing a beast that spawns as part of a Prophecy will break that Prophecy and prevent you from completing it.
- Do not put items with Gems socketed into them into the Blood Altar, the Gems can accidentally be deleted.
Here’s a quick video from GGG explaining the basics as they currently are at launch.
End-Game Content
Beastcrafting
Beastcrafting is the big focus this time around for Path of Exile players. The mechanic revolves around the Blood Altar located in the Menagerie area, which can be accessed via any Waypoint. And you don’t need the Hideout unlocked to access the Menagerie either.
Once you’ve captured three Rare beast variants, you use the Blood Altar to initiate a special arena-style fight with those three beasts at once. You want to focus on fighting Rare or Unique monsters in order to power up your gear or to craft powerful items. You’ll find different recipes that will require specific monsters as well. Although it can definitely be worth it as these unique items can be very powerful.
Crafting various items, including the very useful leveling items category, is dependent on the Item Level of the monsters used in crafting inside the Blood Altar. Higher level monsters results in higher level bases. You can see a notification at the bottom of the crafting window to see what Item Level you’re working with.
You can also switch out different Beasts in a crafting recipe if you need to by clicking the Beast you want to save at the bottom of the window and switching to the one you want to sacrifice. This can be a good thing to remember as you don’t want to accidentally use up Beasts that could be saved for using on great recipes.
If you’re annoyed by a deluge of Recipe notifications, press Spacebar to suppress the notifications. You can also click through them so they don’t block movement. If you wish, you can turn the notifications off entirely in the Options.
You can view a full list of the Captures and Recipes in Bestiary League that have been datamined from the game over at POEDB. This a lot more useful than the default game if you’re hunting for a specific Beast or Recipe.
POECraft
A great resource for planning which beasts to capture is to use this chart to figure out which beasts are needed for what items.
Spirit World
The Spirit World is the new unique area added in the Bestiary League. You’ll find Spirit World portals scattered around high-level areas, enter them to fight extremely powerful Legendary Beasts. Capturing these Legendary Beasts is essential to crafting the best items with the Blood Altar. Legendary Beasts have two Bestiary mods to distinguish them from other Beasts.