Affliction League Mechanic Guide (PoE Affliction League 3.23)
Introduction
Affliction is a league mechanic about exploring the Viridian Wildwoods, collecting Wisps to empower monsters, while searching for powerful new types of items for the all-new Wildwood Ascendancies!
While Affliction can multiply your loot to dazzling heights, it can also very easily create unkillable monsters that brick your maps. Knowing how to make the most of your time in the Wildwood – and how to strike a balance between rewards and difficulty – are key to cashing in big with Affliction!
The Wildwood
During the Affliction league, you will find an entry to the Viridian Wildwood close to the entrance of each zone.
Entering the Wildwood will allow you to explore a sub-zone shrouded in darkness. The area you explore is considered part of the map, and all modifiers will apply to monsters within The Wildwood.
Your goal is to collect as many Wisps as possible while exploring the Wildwood, searching for lucrative encounters and Azmeri Wanderers that can potentially sell jackpot items worth many divines.
The Darkness
The Viridian Wildwood is shrouded in Darkness. As you explore, the power of your Sacred Wisp will be expended to reveal the area around you.
Monsters that are revealed will attack you, and Empowered monsters you kill will drop Wisps for you to pick up.
When you find an Encounter while exploring, the entire area of the encounter will be revealed without consuming any of your Sacred Wisp’s remaining power – allowing you to get far more out of each exploration!
Once all of the Sacred Wisp’s power is consumed – or if you die – you will be kicked out of the Wildwood. Any unspent Wisps will be released into your map, empowering monsters.
Wisps
As you explore the Wildwood, you will find large quantities of Wisps – both from slain Empowered monsters, and floating about the Wildwood in the form of trails.
These trails lead to Encounters – making it a good idea to pursue them!
Wisps are auto-collected as you travel through them. These collected Wisps do NOT persist across zones, and can either be spent at Wanderers within the Wildwoods, or released into your map to empower monsters.
There are three varieties of Wisps – Primal, Wild, and Vivid. Each is associated with a different Wanderer, and has different effects on monsters in your map upon collection.
For more information on what you can find in the Wildwood – and how best to find it – check out the “Exploring The Wildwood” section of this guide:
Exploring The WildwoodEmpowered Monsters
Upon being kicked out of the Wildwood, any unspent Wisps you’ve collected in that zone will be “released” into your map, empowering monsters.
Each monster in your map – or that spawns in your map after completing the Wildwood – will have a chance to be empowered by a wisp of each type you collected. Empowered monsters are more powerful, and have improved drops.
Types of Wisps
The effect of Empowerment on a monster depends on the type(s) of wisp empowering that monster, and scale with the amount of that Wisp collected.
Monsters can be empowered with more than one type of Wisp – if you’re lucky enough – leading to a much tougher challenge, and significantly more loot!
Primal Wisp
Reward: Chance to Drop Additional Currency Items
Empowered Modifier: Damage Reduction, More Critical Strike Chance, Additional Critical Strike Multiplier
Wild Wisp
Reward: More Item Rarity
Empowered Modifier: Damage Reduction, Additional Projectiles, More Area of Effect
Vivid Wisp
Reward: More Item Quantity
Empowered Modifier: Damage Reduction, More Speed
Scaling Interactions
The rewards from Affliction grant monster Increased Item Quantity (IIQ), Increased Item Rarity (IIR), and “chance to drop currency”.
In order to make the most out of Affliction, it’s important to understand how these rewards scale with each other, and with other rewards in PoE.
Increases to monster IIQ and IIR stack multiplicatively with player and map IIQ and IIR, but stack additively with other sources of monster IIQ and IIR (Such as Delirium and Torment possession)
Chance to Drop Additional Currency Items
The currency dropped scales with only one other stat – IIQ. Since more powerful monsters have inherent bonuses to IIQ, this is significantly more rewarding on Rare and Unique monsters, as well as possessed and Delirious monsters.
This means that these rewards scale multiplicatively with IIQ – increasing your IIQ through Vivid Wisps or other sources can lead to explosions of stacks of currency!
Currency does NOT have rarity, and IIR will not affect the types of currency you receive.
Increased Item Quantity (IIQ)
This affects the drop chance of items by monsters – higher IIQ means more loot. This includes currency and divination cards, but does NOT apply to map drops.
Note that IIQ does NOT scale “Reward Types” (symbols over monsters head that drop specific types of loot) or loot from chests.
Increased Item Rarity (IIR)
This affects the chance that an item drops at a higher rarity, and will cause you to get more Rare and Unique items than you would otherwise.
This is the only effect of IIR. However, it is possible for IIR to scale loot in another way – Rare monsters with the hidden “currency conversion” modifier. Since these Rare monsters convert higher rarity items into less common types of currency, scaling your IIR can lead to explosions of valuable currency… if you’re lucky enough for the stars to align.
Wildwood Ascendancies
Wildwood Ascendancies are the primary reward from Affliction. They are a choice of one of three new Ascendancies that you can take on any character class in addition to your normal class Ascendancy.
These Ascendancies greatly increase your character’s power, increase the quantity found of a specific Wisp type, and can grant access to new types of equipment.
For more information on these Ascendancies, check out the “Wildwood Ascendancies” section of this guide:
Spending Wisps
The Azmeri Wanderers are also vendors for your to spend your Wisps at – in exchange for new types of Rewards!
Tinctures
The Warden of Eaves will trade you Tinctures in exchange for Vivid Wisps. Tinctures are a new type of Flask that can be used by characters with the Warden of the Maji Ascendancy.
A character can have only one Tincture active at a time (although you can have multiple equipped), and they give a passive bonus while active that applies to your equipped weapons.
Itemized Corpses
The Breaker of Oaths will trade you itemized corpses in exchange for Wild Wisps. These corpses can be consumed to drop a corpse of a monster that is otherwise not available as a corpse.
These corpses can be used with a Warlock of the Mists’ “Ravenous” skill to gain damage bonuses against unusual boss types like “Eldritch”, or can be raised as Spectres – granting access to powerful new Spectres!
These special corpses will NOT show up in the pool of corpses for Desecrate even if you have them as a Spectre – so if they die, you’ll have to buy another itemized Corpse!
Charms
The Primal Huntress will trade you Charms in exchange for Primal Wisps. These Charms can be slotted into the Wildwood Primalist Ascendancy.
Each Charm has two different mini versions of Notables from class Ascendancies. Some of these affixes will be incredibly sought after – be sure to know which Charm affixes are in high demand, if you don’t want to miss out on a Charm worth a fortune!
Conclusion
Be sure to check out the other pages of this guide, covering even more topics related to Affliction! This guide will continue to be updated in the future – if you have any feedback, or find something cool you want to share, head on over to the PoE Vault Discord, and let me know!
Good luck, and have fun farming Affliction!
