PoE Atlas Watchstone Guide

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This PoE Atlas Watchstone Guide aimed at making Atlas progression as visually simple as possible, while the actual progression is designed to be as efficient as you can get.

General Atlas mechanics that players need to know but often don't understand: --Putting a watchstone into the atlas does not magically upgrade all maps you currently have. It only makes future maps drop at that tier.

Conqueror progression is linear. The first kill is in a corner with no watchstones. The second kill is in a region with 1 watchstone. The third kill is in a region with 2 watchstones, and so on, until you always need 4 watchstones in a region.

A specific conqueror will only drop a watchstone if you have not yet obtained a watchstone from that conqueror in that region. For the purposes of this guide, this will never be relevant, but if you go it on your own do realize that killing Baran in Valdo's Rest means that you need to avoid ever spawning Baran in Valdo's Rest again because he will never drop a watchstone there a second time.

My general strategy (and one others use) is the "Leapfrog" Strategy. If your goal is to efficiently obtain all 32 watchstones, your aim is to ensure every single map you run is explicitly towards that goal. You want every map drop that isn't of an obsolete tier to be one of two things: either part of the region you're running, or part of a region you're about to run.

Step 1

The Watchstone-Free Atlas: You need to go to any corner and run maps in that corner to spawn your first conqueror (Baran), then keep running maps to fill the progression track on the atlas screen so you can fight him. After killing him, he will drop a watchstone. Note that while your atlas will be mostly blank initially, this is effectively what you want to get as close to it being by the time you move on to Step 4 later.

ABOUT CITADELS: The first time you ever finish a T3+ map, Zana pops out of a portal, calls you an idiot, and tells you to go through her portal. This unlocks the citadel for that region. To unlock the citadels for all of the other regions on the atlas, you effectively do the same thing: Kill the boss of a T3+ map and a portal will also appear (but Zana will not personally come out of it). Entering it will trigger the appearance of that region's citadel on your atlas. If you ignore the portal, at some point in the future you're going to have to run that exact map again, finish it, and actually enter the portal.

Throughout steps 1 through 3, you want to unlock all eight citadels, because the rest of the atlas progression will eventually become sort of impossible if you can't actually socket watchstones in specific regions.

Focus on Atlas Completion. The Atlas Bonus is crucial to map sustain, and while blitzing conquerors is temporarily effective, you will find yourself walled by map tier progression. The Atlas Bonus is a major aid to your map sustain, you should be trying to complete as many maps as possible, and later on any maps below the tiers you're hunting conquerors in. Do not ignore this bonus.

3.13 CHANGE: The citadels for the 4 corner regions are automatically unlocked after defeating each conqueror for the first time. The 4 inner region citadels still use the old portal system after clearing a T3 map.

Step 2

First Watchstone Atlas Put this watchstone into any inner region on the atlas (those are Valdo's Rest, Lex Proxima, Tirn's End, and Glennarch Cairns). Best place to put it is in the region with the most adjacencies to the corner you killed Baran in.

Why are we doing this? Because to kill each conqueror for the second time--which is something you will be doing within an hour of Step 2--you need to run maps in a region with one watchstone. By doing this now, we start getting maps to drop in this region as you kill the remaining conquerors for the first time, thus when the time comes to hunt down and kill each conqueror for the second time you already have a map pool entirely in a single region to make the process simple and efficient. DO NOT run any map that drops in the region you put the watchstone in, you want to save them all for Step 4.

Step 3

2nd-4th Watchstones Obtained: Travel to the other three corners of the atlas and kill each of the other conquerors. However, you do not want to socket their watchstones into a citadel. Place them into the boxes on the left where they won't do anything, we will be using them shortly.

Step 4

2nd Rotation Leapfrog: Place two of your banked watchstones into a different inside region. Leave the region with one watchstone alone. Now, we want to spawn and kill each conqueror a second time. To do this, you have to run maps in a region with one watchstone socketed.

Hence why we established this in Step 2. You should have a decent map pool belonging to that one watchstone region. At this point you should start to glean why we explicitly put two watchstones into another region--the whole point is to "leapfrog" our usable map pool. When we want to kill the conquerors for the third time it will require running a region with two watchstones, thus we want to start having those maps drop in advance.

Step 5

5th-8th Watchstones Obtained: Using your map pool of the region with one watchstone, run maps over and over until you kill your 5th conqueror. Then keep repeating, again with that same map pool, until you kill your 6th, 7th, and 8th conqueror. Do not socket any of their watchstones, just bank them on the left for now.

Again, during this process you should be seeing maps in the region with two watchstones drop. Do not run those maps yet, they will be run in the future. Only run maps in the region with one watchstone.

Step 6

3rd Rotation Leapfrog: You may remove the one watchstone from the region you just ran for simplicity if you have an abundance of T8+ maps, otherwise keep that watchstone alone. Otherwise, you're finished acquiring watchstones from conquerors in that region and won't be running it again unless you run out of higher tier maps. Keep the two watchstone region as it is. Now, place three watchstones in either of the two remaining inside regions. Everything else should be banked like the image.

Once again, we're leapfrogging our map pool. We want to start having maps drop in that three watchstone region as you work on the next step.

Step 7

9th-12th Watchstones Obtained: From everything you've done, you should have a decent map pool already belonging to the region with two watchstones. Just like you did before, you're going to exclusively run only those maps until you spawn and kill all four conquerors again. Bank all their watchstones, do not socket them anywhere. Again, any maps you drop belonging to the three watchstone region just keep aside safely in your stash as they will be run later.

Step 8

4th Rotation Leapfrog: Keep that three watchstone region where it is. You may unsocket the two watchstone region if you want (though keeping it there is acceptable), but now you want to put four watchstones into the final inside region. At this point the pattern of what we're aiming for should be pretty clear.

Worthwhile mention: At this point map sustain tends to get progressively harder while breaking into red maps if your overall Atlas completion bonus is poor (which, by blitzing watchstones like this, is very likely). It's worth trying to get the completion bonus on every map up to this point that you can if you feel you need it. If you're worried about breaking your ability to follow this guide, as long as you don't complete any map higher than T9 in the process you can't screw anything up.

Step 9

13th-16th Watchstones Obtained: Run your built up map pool in the three watchstone region until you kill all four conquerors in it. Bank all of their watchstones. Note that you may not get many drops for the four watchstone region at this point, which isn't abnormal. However it will mean that continued progression will be slowed down if you don't either explicitly farm those maps, or just buy a starting pool for yourself for Step 12.

Step 10

5th Rotation Leapfrog & Awakening Level Maximization: Leave the inside four watchstone region alone, and now put four watchstones into any of the outer regions. It doesn't matter what you pick.

As we enter T14+ maps, we now want to maximize our Awakening level by keeping as many watchstones socketed as possible without ever interfering with the specific maps we want to see drop. You can place them however you like (my image as one example), but the rule is simple: The only T14+ maps you ever want visible on your atlas are either the region you're currently running, or the next region you're going to soon leapfrog to. For the most part you'll be limited to 3 watchstones in inner regions and 2 for outer regions, though you should use the search bar to ensure in future league atlas shuffles that T14's don't crop up where undesired.

We do this because the awakening bonus provides additional loot (which is good), but we don't want T14 maps from undesired and completed regions to dilute the drop pool. Again, we only ever want maps we need now or will need soon.

Step 11

17th-20th Watchstones Obtained: Run your pool of maps belonging to the inside four watchstone region and kill all four conquerors. As I mentioned earlier, you may not have yet developed a great map pool for this, so either farm those maps or just outright buy them. Your T14+ map sustain will eventually kick in and you'll never worry about it again. Ideally you'll also be building up a map pool for the corner region that has four watchstones. As you can see by my image, the watchstones acquired in this process are already put into the atlas to keep beefing up the Awakening level while still abiding by the rule set in Step 10.

Step 12

Probably die to Sirus: You can now fight Sirus for the first time! You will always be able to fight him after a cycle of killing all four conquerors from here on out. His difficulty is based on your Awakening level at the time you open portals to his fight, so if you're brand new to this I'd advise unsocketing everything so you're A0. Sirus hits like a wet pool noodle and has as much life as a T2 boss, he's a total joke. Use this is a fairly safe method to personally learn the fight yourself, so in the future when you fight him when he's harder (and has a better loot pool) you will be better prepared. And are less likely to come here and complain.

Note that it is impossible to continue fighting the regular conquerors until you open portals to Sirus fight. You DO NOT need to actually fight him, just open the portals and then throw another map into the map device to get back on the watchstone grind if that's what you want.

Awakener Orbs are generally 3ex+ in trade league, you're kinda crazy for not attempting it, at least.

Step 13

6th Rotation Corner Leapfrog: Things are going to get awkward as we no longer can sit in a single region and kill all four conquerors. You've already obtained a watchstone in each corner, which means you have to either kill three conquerors in one corner and the last in a different corner, or kill two conquerors in a corner and two in a different corner.

But the general idea isn't too different. Keep the four watchstones in the corner region you built a map pool in and put four watchstones in any other corner region. Now instead of trying to build a map pool for a future set of conqueror fights, we're trying build a map pool for a region we have to jump to in order to finish the conqueror cycle.

By the images I've posted here and in Step 11, my goal is that I have a map pool already established in Lira Arthain. I want to get several maps in New Vastir during this rotation, because I can only kill three conquerors in Lira Arthain and must get the 4th elsewhere.

Step 14

21st-24th Watchstones Obtained and Mid-Rotation Leapfrog: Run maps in the first four watchstone outer region you have a built up map pool in until you have killed three conquerors. The game is designed such that it will always prioritize spawning a conqueror you have not obtained a watchstone from before spawning a conqueror you already have obtained the watchstone from. That is to say, if you're in a corner region where you killed Baran all the way back in Step 1, the first three conquerors you encounter in this region will always be Veritania, Drox, and Hezmin. You won't encounter Baran unless you keep (foolishly) running maps here after earning the final watchstone of the region.

Once you've killed three conquerors, that corner region is complete, so unsocket at least two watchstones to prevent any further T14 map drops from that region. Place four watchstones in either of the two remaining outer region, then run maps in the other four watchstone outer region you, hopefully, acquired several drops for.

Step 15

25th-28th Watchstones Obtained: You don't need to make any immediate watchstone changes between Steps 14 and 15 due to how dealing with the corners works; you need to kill two conquerors to finish out the region you've most recently run, and then two in the region you've been trying to build a map pool in.

Step 15a

Mid-cycle Shuffle: After killing the remaining two conquerors in the unfinished region you left off at from Step 14, remove two watchstones and place them into the final corner region. Run maps in either of these regions and obtain the remaining watchstones for this current cycle.

Step 16

29th-32nd Watchstones Obtained: Again, there are no more shuffles needed after Step 15a, all you have to do is exhaust all the remaining watchstone locations (which will likely be one conqueror in the four watchstone region you have the biggest map pool for currently, and three conquerors in the final corner four watchstone region). Once you've done this you will have fully completed the watchstone acquisition process.

Step 17

Now You Can Enjoy the Game: Now you have all 32 watchstones! You can freely run any map now, spawn conquerors in any region you want, and never fret over watchstone shuffling again until the next league.

At this stage you should prioritize completing the Awakening map bonuses, as if you cap that at 150 maps you are generally adding 20-30% IIQ to every single map you run.

Hopefully with images this guide is comprehensive enough to be clear to anyone still confused on atlas progression, without needing to sift through 30 minute videos on this.

Buy Your Own Progression

Thanks to Echoes of the Atlas, we have new permanent watchstones as rewards from the multi-boss Maven arenas, on a per region basis. As a result, you are entirely capable of buying enough watchstones to have a fully awakened atlas if you have the chaos to shell out. Early league these will be in short supply (in no small part due to many people wanting to do exactly this), but shortly after league launch the lowest watchstone tier (Chromium) will generally be pretty cheap for each region. If you want to skip conqueror progression and buy your way to Awakening 8, you're entirely capable of doing it.

As mentioned above, buy poe currency to speed up your game process is a good choice. PoeCurrencyBuy provides cheap poe chaos with safe and fast delivery. You can come to PoeCurrencyBuy.com to buy PoE Orbs you need at any time.

The best time to do this is after getting access to Sirus for the first time, as there's effectively no point shortcutting progression if you can't handle T14+ maps.