you only live once. Exile, make your choice. I have decided that I do an ultimatum guide. This is more like a really simple guide of how I've been approaching ultimatum and farming it now. Profitability-wise, it can be hit and miss, and definitely, there's a few different things that you can get from it that will make some bank. Otherwise, raw double currency drops and/or currency drops are pretty much the go with this mechanic, and I would suggest coupling it with, for example, ritual. Seems to work really well as a sort of jewel sort of mechanic to run, and I have a PO for that, or an atlas tree as well, which I'll go into a bit of detail of what I was running for the league. And also, on top of that, I've already put a build guide together for this particular mechanic, so that will be linked in the description. We'll talk about that build and maybe some other builds or the archetypes that would be able to tackle this content. But anyway, I'm not going to make this a very

complicated video because it's not a totally complicated concept to run. It's relatively straightforward, but anyway, let's get into the video and let's talk about a simple guide to understanding ultimatum in Poe 3.25. Okay, so what exactly is ultimatum? Well, simplistically, it's a mechanic where you do 10 waves of various difficulty. You collect mods as you go through those waves, which are negative debuffs your character, so they hurt your character, and it gets progressively harder. And you essentially compete against the TR Master, which is the main antagonist or whatnot of this mechanic that basically berates you and makes fun of you as you do it. And with it, there's also a possibility that you will get to fight The Trial Master at the very end of the ultimatum and pick up some really cool loot. Now, talking about loot, basically what you get from this are either catalysts, inscribed ultimatums, which can drop some really cool stuff like, you know, for

example, uh, double your divines and things like that, uh, or you get really good, um, multi-corrupted or double corrupted, uh, implicit items or uniques. Now, it depends, as far as from a currency standpoint, what you feel is valuable. Catalysts are worth a reasonable sum, and definitely scaring them could be profitable, but the scarabs do cost a lot, cost a lot. Inscribed ultimatums can be profitable, but they can be far and few in between before you actually get one that's worth something. Otherwise, you can just farm the mechanic for what it is, and it'll drop natively plenty of currency as you go anyway. I found, at least from every single ultimatum, or almost most ultimatums per map, you would make somewhere between 8 to 20 C per the ultimatum, not to mention any Catalyst that you could sell and whatnot on the market. So, it's not a, uh, non-profitable mechanic. You can actually make a decent amount of bank from it at the end of the

day okay so the next thing you guys are probably going to ask me what runes do I play. Well, I tri and errored a lot of stuff, and basically where I got to is you do not want to touch anything with ruin. Okay, so Restless ground 3 is actually okay, but basically everything else is on the cards except ruin. So what is ruin for those who don't know? I had to get my head around it as well. So ruin is basically a mechanic that with seven upon reaching seven stacks of Ruin is my understanding. You fail the ultimatum, right? It's a fail. It's a 100% guaranteed fail mechanic if you reach enough stacks of it. So for anyone who's struggling with the mechanic failing all the time, this is something that I learned the hard way. Stalking ruin and ruin anything to do with ruin. If you can't avoid that, like I mean, if you don't have a build that can handle that, don't play it at all. So avoid ruin at all cost. Some other

ones that I picked out over time, so this is actually really good. Uh, and I'll put a link in the description to this. This gives a bit of a fail rate, but I actually don't agree with the fail rates because I think it depends on the build that you're running. So pardon me. Razor dance is problematic, but okay. Choking miasma is okay. Uh, in fact, if you've got a chaos cap character, you're fine. Raging dead is nothing. Uh, blistering cold, nothing. Uh, storm caller can rip you pretty hard. Uh, but if you've got Max capped or overcapped lightning um, resistance, you should be okay and you're crit immune. Um, Restless ground is okay. Limited area you actually want, and I'll explain what I get into the tree and talk about the mechanic a bit more. Lightning damage from Mana cost is only going to hurt you if you've got a Mana-based character, but like in my case, I run a blood magic character, so it's not an issue. Um, reduced recovery, do not

recommend playing reduced recovery. You will rip in harder content, but if you can't avoid it in inscribed ultimatums, definitely do it. Trachurus, that's okay as long you know, as long as you're tanky enough, you can take it. Buffs expire faster, again, okay, that's not a big problem. Um, we go to Totem of Costly Might. This one can be problematic because you can't touch them and they buff up the enemies, so avoid this one if you can. Escalating speed, avoid this one if you can. Um, bonus chaos damage is okay if your chaos cap. Random projectile is a nothing burger, it means nothing. Hindering FL, this one's okay, but the one that will come soon is not. Lesson reach, again, not a big issue. Um, Totem of Costly Potency, again, not a big issue. Less cooldown recovery is problematic when you're playing cast one stun, so I do not recommend this if you have a trigger character that you're playing with. Occasional impedance is nothing. Uh, ailment and curse reflection, again, not a

big issue. Um, siphon charges can be annoying, but again, not a big issue. Limited flas do not play limited FL. Limited FL bricks a lot of builds in ultimatum, and you're going to have a bad time escalating damage as well. If you can avoid playing escalating damage, I'd avoid it. The biggest issue with this is if you don't have the Fizz damage reduction. The Fizz damage enemies that will spawn in ultimatum will one-hit you by the end, and unlucky crits if you're not crit immune. Um, or sorry, this is if you're a crit-based character. Don't play this mechanic because it's going to take away your ability to crit. But basically, that's my standpoint. So, like, most of these are okay, and if you want to tackle the other ones, sure, go crazy. But the ones to stay away from are ruin because ruin will ruin your experience in ultimatum, and that's what I found. And what's really interesting is it's built into the PO or the atlas tree, and we'll

talk about the atlas tree next because that's one I had to play with to get right, and it's not as straightforward as you would think because you'd think you'd just be able to click everything on. I don't know why they put ruin in the tree. Maybe it's to try and force people to play characters that could outperform ruin. But anyway, let's talk about that in the next part of the video. Ask me what is my atlas tree, and I'll put a Poe planner link in the description below for this. But basically, I run a combination of ritual and ultimatum in my tree. But let's talk about what I have in the tree and what I have since removed and whatnot. In fact, I need to make one more. Actually, I don't need to make one more change. It's fine. So, all right. So basically, we come up on the left side of the tree. I know it's not Delo, but you can just run 150% SC gabs, which are dirt.

cheap anyway to get your delve sulfide up, and it runs like 44k to like four Maps tops, so it's pretty straightforward. So basically, we come up in the tree, we get rid of sealed, we do sealed domain, loved by the Sun, and dimensional barrier because we don't want any of these mechanics popping up in your runs because you just want it to be straightforward, right? Um, and then we come down, we get FAL face the ultimatum, so this gives us a huge amount of probability. So we basically get 12, 12, uh, 12 + 30%, and we can also take the sacred lens nodes here with ritual, so we get ritual. I get shaping the skies just because, and I buff up my map mods with mounting modifiers. Then we go up and stand your ground and prove your worthy, um, your s worthy, sorry. And basically what this does is you get a lot of XP from ultimatum, by the way. Ultimatum just has tons of XP, um, but basically you get

uh 3% uh reduced radius. You don't want heavy radius in the. You want it to go like go in because when you're doing like attack um attack Maps or whatnot where you got to kill enemies with ultimatum. You don't want them running too far away from you um and then basically prove you're worthy uh means your map starts uh a higher or a tier higher if possible um pardon me and your rewards have a chance to be 25% duplicated right which can be really good for divines and I've had this happen on multiple occasions where I've had like one or two divines hit up and then I get four divines right. I think I had that in the um one of the uh build update videos on my AFK build. So then we come across we get significant troves. We come down now this is really important this note here. Do not take ruinous wager. The reason why is it bloody well has ruin built into it. Now unless you're

build, and I don't yet have a way to get around ruin with at least my AFK build. Just cannot do ruin, so avoid this. You don't really need it. Basically, what this does is it gives you, you know, um, enemies in the ultimatum deal 50% less damage. But let's be real, you don't need to worry about that if you've got a chunky build anyway. So, you don't need to worry about this. Not, it's irrelevant. So, the other ones are really important too. So, you don't want to tick absolutely everything on. So, Alters in your map have 25% increased life. But we don't want to do alter protection because it's too high risk, and the enemies come at you too much for an AFK build. It's not very good, and I don't like it, so I don't really play it. And then the same with Conquering the stones. I hate Stones because I play an AFK build in ultimatum, so I don't want to move because I'm lazy.

and I want to just click no buttons, so basically I don't run this either. This would be though, okay, if you're running like a really mobile build, like maybe lightning strike or something like that, but I wouldn't recommend if you're playing an AFK build. There are two mods for AFK builds that I would recommend to be able to play this, and that is survive the assault. Reason being is it's survival. You've seen a lot of the maps that I'll run will always have where you're just standing there, you have to survive for as long as you can. The reason why I like that is it means that all of your mods that you would have in a stationary position are up, and for AFK builds, this is mint. This is what you want. The second one is Slaughter the mo, and the reason for this is attack modifier. Ultimatums are very similar to survival ultimatums, I found. The exception is with timed attack, which is problematic, and sometimes you'll have to

break the ultimatum because you just simply, for whatever reason, can't kill the enemy quickly enough, or the mechanic goes a bit janky, and it doesn't like it. Either way, these two mechanics are what I would prefer to play in here, and you don't need ruinous wager because we don't need the 50% damage reduction. This is only going to be for characters that are a lot squishier than my heavy tank character that I'll make comment about here as well. So then we come up, we grab all the ritual nodes up here. We don't want the um, the sacrific uh Jew because I don't really run um blood-filled vessels. But if you wanted, you can um, and then I come back up, pardon me, and I grab all these nodes up here. Now you don't need this uh players cannot choose which automator modify grueling Gauntlet. Now you do get 13 waves, you can't get the boss to drop, and the other problem with it is you cannot choose the modifier now.

this might be okay for some ridiculous builds, but for AFK builds that a lot of people are running on ultimatum this league, this is a bad no to have, and I would not recommend playing this. 13 Rounds sounds great, yes, but it's not great if you get a mod that you can't fight, where your flas can't recharge, or you get ruined, and you brick your instance every time. And these two nodes between grueling Gauntlet and Ruess wage are probably why your alternatum are not working, and they're breaking. So if you remove them, you'll probably find you're going to have a good day, and you're able to farm ultimatum finally. Besides that, worthy of the future, worthy of the present, and worthy of the past are all things that I would recommend clicking on. But if you wanted to focus one or the other, you could take one off, and that's going to anchor more towards the other two, depending on what you want to farm. But it's up to you. I got them all ticked on.

you don't need to do that. Someone will probably be saying exactly that. Why you've got them all ticked on um because I can. That's the answer why um. So then I come down and I grab profitable players, arbitrary tenants um, and I grab the flexible dogma. And this is for my ritual that I run. And then basically I U up more ritual up here so just for tribute. And then I come up and get chiseled Perfection. You want the Brave the tower so ultimatum uh drops a full stack of random Catalyst. Ultimatum encounters your map have a 30% increased chance for the final round to include a boss. You do want to try and farm the bosses and the scarabs for this right now are like 63c. And the reason being is he has potential to drop some really cool stuff like um what was it um grave uh grave packed or whatever it is. There's a oneand that you can get that has a really cool um skill attached to it and things like that but

anyway um it is worth farming the boss. You do get extra loot drops off killing the boss, so I would recommend trying to farm the boss. Outside of that, then you have a cult devotion. I don't run immutable dogma, and I then just have more in uh invasive adversaries to juice up my map modif modifiers further. But you could come down and get scarabs or whatever you want to do is up to you. It's you know your gameplay how you want, but I'll put a copy of the tree in the description below so you can use it or you can adjust it for the way that you want. But that's talking about some of the nodes. I took a bit of trial and error to figure out that these two things were bricking every single one of my ultimatum instances, but once you get rid of them, you should find that you'll be able to play ultimatum pretty easily and uh yeah, it's relatively straightforward. But anyway, let's talk about the Scarab setups that you need uh

for when you do run your automats next. Should I run Jan with my maps? And I would say so. You could run jeweling, um, but these are very expensive, right? So these are like 62c. I run a combination of, so number one, you want to actually split the deck, and you want to run two of the scarabs, AB bribing. And this is going to give you 150% increased experience, but also grants rewards as though you completed two additional rounds. If you run two, that's four additional um rounds. So basically, it's like doing uh T14, was 14 tiers, uh, but stacked down into 10 TI here. So that's why you don't need to run the um, the node in the atlas passive tree as well, which uh, which gives you 13 Rounds, because you can sort of cheese that with uh, with the scarabs that you run. And then basically, I do like to run the ultimatum scar of inscription, which gives me um, you know, ultimatum encounters, rewards, an area offering.

Catalyst will offer inscribed ultimatums. Now it depends on what you want to farm, right? So you can make bank out of farming catalysts. Absolutely. I don't like farming catalysts because I think like there's only two that are actually worth anything, um, and that's uh, fertile and I think Prismatic at the moment. Everything else that will drop is potentially worthless. Now getting 20 of those is going to make you a lot of currency. Yes, so it probably is worth it. But that being said, also getting really good inscribed ultimatums could give you things like Rices or Mage blood and stuff like that potentially. I think Mage blood might be in there, but um, you know, it's a hit miss and a shot in the dark. But if you're farming enough of these, there's a good probability you'll hit something really good and you could make a lot more bank doing that than trying to farm catalysts. Also, I find running the exchange and farming and selling Catalyst really tedious because in a lot

of cases, you need a lot of catalyst to sell for one c, um, vice versa. Like, fertiles is like 13 C each or 8 C each, something like that. So, you get 20 fertiles, you're going to make a lot of Bank off that. So, it depends on what you want to farm out of ultimatum, right? Um, the other thing I do is I run a sacrifice uh fragment. I might run, for example, you know, my um, any other basically any other um, Scarab in here. But yeah, if you can afford to run Scarab of jeweling, right? And again, they're not cheap um, you could do this. Now, there is another Scarab that you can currently get as well um, if we just have a look, we just go scarabs. I really like this by the way, this is made uh Poe significantly better. So, so you could get Scarab of of catalyst, right? Pardon me, of catalyzing. Now, the reason I don't run these and I wouldn't recommend running these is because

they're worth 190c each just for one. So, if you get these Dro, just sell them honestly. You'll make tons of scarabs either way. Now, some people are probably running a really high-end strategy to get 100% scarabs, and I haven't tried this yet. I don't know what it would be worth. Potentially, it could be really profitable, but if you want to try it and, you know, blast out 190 C per map at a minimum, it'd be like closer to 200, 230c, 220c per map, whatever. You can give that a whack. I just don't think it's going to be that profitable, but it could be. You could make a return. You might make a positive return of 50 cm map if you get a ton of fertile Catalyst or something like that. But, um, yeah, that's just not what I've been doing. And to be honest with you, start to make it an over-complicated strategy and then do Market flipping and stuff like that. It takes it away from just an Al Ando.

strategy that's just fun to play, and you make an amicable amount of bank at the end of the day. And I'm here for the everyday average player. I'm not here for the ultra, like, hyper ridiculous, like super-tuned players in the world. But anyway, that's basically my Scarab setup when I go into Maps. So just to recap, basically just split the stack and run two scarabs of bribing, run a sacrifice to the dust, if you can, Alatum Scarab of inscription, if you want to find inscribed catalysts, inscribed ultimatums. Otherwise, you can run anything else. Obviously, you need one where you have the map in there, right? And then yeah, you can do whatever you want from that point. You can farm whatever secondary mechanic. I'd recommend having like, you know, ritual where you can reroll two ritual rerolls for free, basically, if you're running a hybrid ritual strategy like I am. But um, yeah, anyway, that's it for the

Scarab setups going into Maps. It's nothing complicated; it's pretty straightforward, right? So, there's a couple of really good builds. First of all, I'm going to recommend my build because I run it, and I run it really well, which is the AFK-like Hellfire castman stun build. There's also a build that Exile cat stun, which is detonate dead of Scavenging. He did a Zero to Hero Series, so I'll put a link in the description to his video as well. Other builds that you could run would be like ephemeral Ed Tri emerals Edge tricksters. They're really powerful this league. They're going to be plenty tanky enough to be able to... It is like on average. They're like somewhere between 200 to 500k ehp, so they're really good. Righteous Fire, just like stock stand and righteous Fire, can probably do it pretty easily as well. Things like black Zenith, if there's anyone ticking around with like black Zenith totems and

things like that need to be really tanky, though. Um, that can do it. Obviously, Molten Striker, the Zenith can do it as well. Uh, so yeah, if you want to follow Connor's build or something very similar, it's probably going to be able to do it. Anyone run armor stackers, but armor stackers are really expensive, so I probably wouldn't recommend that one. Um, I would not recommend things like um, max block Gladiators slam builds, all that sort of stuff. They're not tanky enough. They're just not tanky enough. While Max block seems like it's tanky, it's not really as tanky as people pitch it. A lot of those PS are misleading because they say infinite, but that's how Max block calculates um, so you know, there's a lot of sealin builds out there that just are a bit funky. Uh, they're cool, but they're just not cut, not going to cut the uh, the grade to be able to take down a lot of the mechanics. But yeah, those would be a

few of the builds that I'd recommend. Bone shatter probably could do it, um, wouldn't necessarily recommend it, I guess, uh. If you wanted to know about shield crush, there I think is a VAR out there that went to petrified blood. If you can switch it on to petrified blood, it could probably do it, um. Outside of that, those would be the ones that I'd initially recommend. I'm not sure about things like necromancers and minions just yet. I haven't really looked into that a hell of a lot, and I am working on another Minion build that probably could take on ultimatums as well, but I haven't really finalized that yet, just working through to figure it out if it even works. But yeah, those would be a few of the recommendations, and I'll, uh, I'll put that down in the description below as well for anyone who is unsure or didn't follow anything that I just said. But yeah, that'd be some of my build recommendations to play ultimatum.

idea of how to play ultimatum, how to get it set up, how to configure it, and if your ultimatum has been breaking or not working, maybe this will point you in the right direction to be able to fix your tree up and get it working so you can enjoy the mechanic. I thought I'd do something different. I've done a lot of delve stuff, and I'm still playing a ton of delve, but I've really been enjoying ultimatum, and I might try out some Harvest stuff too. So, I'm just trying to play things that are easy to make currency in and then help new players sort of just go, Oh, okay, I can make some easy, consistent currency from this mechanic. Definitely with the new currency exchange, it's definitely made making currency a hell of a lot easier. Anyway, if you like this type of video, don't forget to like and sub to the channel. Don't forget to follow the Twitch, and I would be back tomorrow in my normal office, which you'll see on stream and on camera.

and I and we'll be looking at um at some poe2 stuff from Gamescom since all the information's hopefully all wrapped up now and unpacking some of the stuff from some of the gameplay that we got too. Anyway, I'll see you guys later and uh have a good one.

UNDERSTANDING ULTIMATUM | An Easy to Follow Guide | PoE 3.25 Settlers of Kalguur

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