Alva Temple Profit Making Strategy guide

INTRODUCTION

With the Siege Of The Atlas expansion, many of the previous Atlas region passives were incorporated into a singular Atlas Passive tree. Most of the initial passives were given to us in a nerfed state, with only a few core mechanics actually keeping the majority of their power.

Alva’s temples are one such mechanic, the generation of temples & alva missions has become much more consistent, and with the addition of Surveyor's Compass we are even able to purchase pre rolled sextants with “Areas have Alva”, so we aren’t reliant on Alva missions from Kirac & completing maps.

If you prefer a video format, you can always find the guide right here or on my YouTube Channel

THE MECHANIC ITSELF

When we encounter Alva in the game, we are given the access to 3 Temporal Incursion per zone, taking us back in time to a random room of a Vaal temple in the making.

Each Incursion contains 2 Architects that are in charge of building up the room, when we kill an architect, the other one survives, shaping the temple by upgrading the room to a higher tier, or changing the room completely to a different one. If you choose to, or fail to kill an architect, the room will remain unchanged.

In the making of a temple, we can complete 12 of these incursions, after which the temple is complete and we can enter or itemise the temple we have shaped.

The temple itself will have 13 different room “slots”, 12 of which are decided by the player through the completion of Incursions, and one of them being the “Apex Of Atzoatl”, containing the Vaal Omnitect boss.

When Alva leads us to an incursion, we’re given access to shape one of these 12 slots through killing architects, and connecting adjacent rooms through Stones Of Passage. These Stones only exist within the incursion itself and can only drop from monsters killed in the incursion. Connecting every room is possible with some careful planning for when we get access to the temple itself, but it may require some decision making to make sure each room has a connection, as Stones Of Passage aren’t 100% guaranteed in each incursion.

Each room has 3 tiers, significantly increasing the rewards of the temple as the room is upgraded.

THE ROOMS

For a short tl;dr we can see the tier list of value for each room here, these are considering the Tier 3 Rewards from the room itself:

The extensive list of all the effects that each type of room has, and their respective rewards can be found on the Wiki

The rooms we will focus on specifically can be found in the S & A tiers:

• Locus Of Corruption – Allows us to Double corrupt an item, with a 25% chance to destroy the item, 25% chance to turn all sockets white, 25% chance to turn the item into a rare double influenced item, and 25% chance to add 2 corrupted implicits to the item.

When used on a Sacrificial Garb , it can also convert it to a s Shadowstitch , though this is a very niche item.

• Doryani’s Institute – Allows us to Double corrupt a gem, with a chance to add quality & a gem level to the item, this can be used to make lvl 21 gems with 23% quality, or lvl 6 with 23% quality for Awakened Gems. It can also be used to make lvl 21/20 vaal gems that take advantage of having a vaal version.

• Apex Of Ascension – This room allows us to sacrifice a unique, at tier 3 we can sacrifice Incursion uniques with their corresponding vial, I.E Vial of Awakening to upgrade them into a new item. The tier 3 version of this can also grant League Specific uniques when sacrificing non-Incursion uniques.

• Wealth Of The Vaal – At the highest tier, this can drop a significant amount of currency and is a great cherry on top with the other rooms

• Temple Nexus – At tier 3 it upgrades the tier of all adjacent rooms by 1, making it much easier to achieve tier 3 rooms for the rewards we actually want

• Boss Room – The boss Room is huge for loot, with some vials being extremely expensive not to mention the further incursion rares you can get

ATLAS PASSIVES

We will be looking to collect all of the atlas passives relating to Alva & her incursions, a short rundown of them is :

• Artefacts of the Vaal – Get incursion modifier bases from completing incursions, sustain Alva missions easier

• Vaal Oligarchs – Optional node giving us a Vaal Flesh Merchant in each incursion, they drop a small stack of currency like the Betrayal “drop some currency items” modifier.

• Resource Reallocation – This makes upgrading rooms easier, giving a 40% chance to upgrade a room to tier 3 from tier 1.

• Contested Development – Changing the room type by killing the “Resident” Architect now transfers the tier of the original room to the new type, allowing us to convert tier 2 rooms of unwanted types to desirable rooms of the same tier.

An Atlas Tree like this would work perfectly well

THE STRATEGIES

When running the incursions & temples, there are a variety of rare & magic “incursion modifier” items that can drop, from “Chilled/ Shocked enemies take # increased damage” on Gloves to “Minions deal # increased damage, minions have a #% chance to deal double damage” on Wands & caster weapons, keeping an eye out for them is important as they can be valuable. They drop identified already so its very easy to take a look at each of the items that drops.

Running the temples yourself

We will run maps with Alva, looking to upgrade the rooms according to the tier list, with a specific emphasis on the tier 3 Corruption Chamber & Doryani’s institute, which allow us to Double Corrupt items and gems. We can then use these on high value gems & uniques in hopes of turning a profit or getting specific pieces for ourselves. This is a gamble so be sure to only do this if you can afford to take an L of collosal proportion when corrupting 6 Link uniques.

Our goal here is to upgrade into any of the high value rooms, connecting as many rooms as possible, and then running the temple for uniques, incursion items, currency, and the odd gamble if you wish. As always, we want to connect as many rooms as possible to make sure we have access to the room itself.

Selling temples

The main temples that sell are ones that contain either Doryani’s Institute, Locus Of Corruption, or Apex Of Ascension, so whenever we have the possibility of upgrading into these rooms we should. If we fail to achieve any of these rooms, we can run the temples ourselves, that is why we should always upgrade other valuable rooms. As always, we want to connect as many rooms as possible to make sure we have access to the room itself.

TL;DR

Do Alva missions in hopes of upgrading the rooms to the ones that sell / give great rewards

Sell or run the temples yourself, you can filter for specific rooms with pathofexile.com/trade but only the S tier rooms will ever really sell for good currency, so make sure to check the prices on those.

FINAL NOTES

As much as I love making guides, it is very crucial in a game like Path of Exile that you play the game the way you enjoy playing it. This guide merely describes the most effective approach to craft the best items.
I hope you found the guide useful, and I wish you all many Exalted Orb drops!