Necropolis League Mechanic Guide (PoE Necropolis League 3.24)

Introduction

Necropolis is a league mechanic where you manipulate spirits haunting enemy monsters, collect their corpses, and use them to craft powerful items!

Since Haunted Spirits grant monsters modifiers, learning which spirits to give to what monsters will be the key to minimizing difficulty – while learning the intricacies of Exorcism crafting will unlock new crafting options!

…And you’re going to have to learn. Because during the Necropolis League, this mechanic is NOT optional. Every single zone will have haunted monsters – so you’ll either learn to make the most of it… or die trying.

Upcoming Changes

In a “What We’re Working On” post, GGG outlined a number of huge changes and buffs coming soon to Necropolis:

• Itemizing corpses will be free
• You can now itemize dropped corpses directly instead of collecting them with a new button
• Haunted Modifiers will display their increased Ember and Corpse drop %
• The amount of Ember drops and Corpse drop bonuses from higher tiers of Haunted Spirits will be significantly increased
• Ember droprate will be increased
• New – more rewarding – Embers will be added, and existing Embers will be buffed
• Devoted modifiers will be buffed to be made more rewarding
• The difficulty of many dangerous Haunted modifiers will be toned down
• You will be able to select the base type of the item during Grave-Crafting
• Rarer crafts with % chance outcomes will be buffed to higher %
• Many crafts will have their “tiers” removed – all crafts of that type will be what is currently the highest tier
• Modifier Rating will now affect ALL affixes, instead of affixes of a specific type. Existing corpses will not be affected.
• You’ll be able to itemize corpses from the list UI, instead of having to find the corpse in The Morgue
• Crafts will be sorted by type instead of level

These are huge, sweeping buffs that will make Necropolis crafting absolutely wild. Stay tuned for updates to this guide once these changes are live!

The Lantern of Arimor

During Necropolis league, you are granted the Lantern of Arimor – a new UI window which pops up every time you go to enter a new zone or map. This does NOT include league zones (like Contracts) or sub-zones (like Abyssal Depths).

This UI shows you every monster that can appear in that zone, along with a list of Haunted Spirits with monster modifiers. These spirits can be moved around, to whichever monsters you choose.

Using the Lantern and its monster modifiers is mandatory – for the duration of the Necropolis League you cannot opt-out of this mechanic. As a result, this league is – for the most part – strictly harder than Standard, and you’ll have to pay careful attention to which monsters you are giving what modifiers if you don’t want to create unkillable monstrosities.

During the campaign, the Haunted Spirits for any given zone will change every few minutes. For maps, the spirits are locked in once you go to open the map. Once you close the Lantern UI, the map will open.

Monster Information

The Lantern or Arimor includes tooltips for each monster, giving information about what sorts of abilities that monster uses, and how many of that monster you can expect to find in that zone.

You should use this information to aid you in choosing which modifiers to give to which monsters. For example – you could give additional projectiles to a monster that doesn’t actually fire projectiles, or give a dangerous modifier to a monster with low pack density.

Lantern Modifiers

Monsters on the Lantern can have modifiers that either affect all monster packs of that monster, or affect the Haunted modifier applied to that monster.

The possible modifiers are:

• % Increased Pack Size
• % Decreased Pack Size
• +1 Haunted Spirit Tier
• -1 Haunted Spirit Tier

These modifiers can drastically affect the best placement of Haunted Spirits and Embers.

Haunted Monsters

Upon entering a zone, some monsters of each kind that had a modifier assigned to them by the Lantern of Arimor will be haunted by a spirit – granting that monster the associated modifier.

This can make monsters significantly more difficult, depending on how you’ve assigned the modifiers – especially for Rare monsters!

The percentage of monsters that are haunted increases with area level and map tier – with higher levels and tiers leading to many more haunted monsters!

Modifier Tiers

Each modifier has multiple tiers, with higher tiers being more powerful, but granting better rewards: a higher chance of that monster having Unresolved Anguish and a higher droprate of Embers of the Allflame.

The tier of modifiers offered increases with area level and map tier.

Devoted Spirits

Sometimes, some of the modifiers on the Lantern of Arimor will not be Haunted Spirits that grant buffs to monsters, but Devoted Spirits that grant beneficial effects.

These effects include increased IIR/IIQ, packs of monsters spawning things on death (such as a Strongbox or NPC), or granting increased experience.

Slaying haunted monsters makes devoted spirits more likely to appear on the Lantern in future zones – with that chance increasing with higher tiers of modifiers. This can make it beneficial to put high-tier modifiers on monsters with large pack sizes – as more haunted monsters slain means more Devoted Spirits in the future.

Unresolved Anguish

Some monsters haunted by spirits will have “Unresolved Anguish”. These monsters leave behind a corpse that can be collected – simply select the “Collect” button, and Undertaker Arimor will show up to retrieve the Corpse, and bring it back to the Necropolis for later crafting.

The chance of monsters having Unresolved Anguish increases with the tier of their Haunted Spirit.

Embers of the Allflame

Haunted monsters also have an increased chance to drop Embers of the Allflame. These are a new type of consumable item that can be used to replace a monster that would appear in a zone with a different, special monster type.

These monsters have special properties associated with them – such as additional drops or items such as Tattoos. Others drop specific items, or simply have very large pack sizes, and can be combined with certain Devoted modifier for massive windfalls!

When replacing a pack of monsters with an Ember, the new monster will inherit the density of the replaced pack – so use them on packs with high density to maximize your rewards!

Embers are items, and can be used within the Lantern of Arimor UI either directly from your inventory or from a special Necropolis locker.

Embers of the Allflame have levels – the level of the monster that dropped it. You can only use an Ember on a zone with an area within 4 levels of the Ember’s level.

Grave-Crafting

Corpses you collect from monsters with Unresolved Anguish can be used in Grave-Crafting. This is a new form of crafting that involves burying Corpses and then exorcising them (consuming the corpse) to generate a new item.

When generating your crafted item, all corpses are consumed, and all of their modifiers are applied to the crafted item.

For more information on Grave-Crafting, check out the “Crafting Mechanics” section of this guide:

Crafting Mechanics

The Morgue

The Morgue is where all of the corpses you’ve collected from monsters with Unresolved Anguish are stored – similar to the Menagerie for beasts.

Just like with beasts, corpses can be itemized by purchasing an Empty Coffin from Undertaker Arimor for the price of 1 chaos orb per coffin. These itemized corpses can then be traded to other players – allowing you to profit off of farming valuable corpses without having to craft items yourself.

The Morgue has a cap of 64 corpses. If you are at or near the cap when collecting a corpse in a map, Arimor will appear as an NPC, allowing you to purchase coffins and cremate corpses to create space.

Corpses & Modifiers

Each corpse you collect will have a crafting modifier that affects the outcome of Exorcism Crafting. These modifiers can be used similarly to Fossils, to bias the item you’re creating towards specific modifiers you’re hoping for.

Some modifiers go well past simply increasing or decreasing affix chances, however. These “meta mods” care about and affect other crafting modifiers from other corpses. This can be caring about the monster type of the corpse (Demon, Undead, Eldritch, etc) or caring about the placement of specific corpses in the Graveyard (such as buffing adjacent corpses’ modifiers).

Corpses have levels based on the level of the haunted monster, which affect the item level of the created item.

Monster-Specific Modifiers

GGG has stated that certain modifiers can only be found from corpses of monsters added to maps via specific Embers of the Allflame items. The examples given were modifiers that guarantee an item has a Heist-exclusive item base, available via Embers that only drop in Heist areas.

The exact mechanics of this are currently unclear – check back for updates once we know more about how this works!

Cremating Corpses

Unwanted Corpses can be “cremated” (destroyed) by clicking a small flame icon next to the corpse, either in The Morgue or Arimor NPC UIs.

Rewards

While the primary reward of Necropolis is the power of Exorcism crafting, there are also additional item rewards up for grabs!

Embers of the Allflame add monsters to your map with special drops – such as the return of Tattoos from Trial of the Ancestors!

Conclusion

Be sure to check out the other pages of this guide, covering even more topics related to Necropolis! 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 Necropolis!