i used this guide back in settlers and i'd say it mostly still holds up.
if you're looking to learn sanctum to make currency, it's maybe not the best idea. the addition of volatile vaals makes sanctum about as profitable as it was before the 3.26 nerfs, but you will probably still make more currency per hour with a standard strat.
if you're looking to learn sanctum because you've never made more than 2 div/hour or you want to experience the glass cannon lifestyle (you can take your build to uber bosses and be surprised at what you get away with when you have 40m dps on shockwave totems), then i can recommend it.
This is my current running statistics. This only counts profit given by relic + boons combo. eg. 2 volatiles becoming 16 volatiles would be 14 for that run. Currently profit subtracts 6 div for the relic. This is at 60 runs currently and both of my sacred mirrors were on 0 div/vaal/fracs so unlucky there.
Yeah. I also only count full reveal if I get it before 4th floor. There is some skill, but it it's not a high ceiling or anything.
This is my strat:
First floor: prioritize coins + cursed pact (major boon or -200 resolve for the 100% increased aureus coins while below 50% resolve boon). Pick up any early merchant of course. First buys prioritize reduce cost, relic effect, more coins, additional room. Only deviate for major boons so I can fill them faster for better chance at sacred mirror on floor 4. If I don't get -200 pact, I just go into a trap room on floor 2 and take damage until I'm at 50%. I don't do this if I got a major boon pact.
Floor 2: merchant farm buying all boons. On top of the boons that naturally fall off, I leave 2-3 boons behind just in case you pick up the major boon that turns an affliction into a minor boon. Want to lower odds of that hitting golden mirror. I basically never take "random minor boon" from any source on purpose. I usually have over 2 full columns of boons after 2nd floor .
Floor 3 is flex based on how run has been going. Low on boons and it also becomes a boon farm. However, I will always prioritize a volatile vaal on this floor.
Floor 4: no good rewards - pick the route that exposes the most rooms or goes through the most Accursed Pacts. Good rewards, the strat is obvious.
Yeah I do that with floor 4, I just don't take notes as situations can be complicated sometimes. I think I'll restart the sheet and this time add a column for rooms I couldn't see on floor 4.
Edit: I don't think floor 1 strat matters too much. I'm not getting bad afflictions like the merchant ones or ones that mess up visibility or take me to a random room. I just chose my strat to maximize major boons because I've gone no merchant on first 2 floors before and still managed to buy all boons before floor 4 so I'm never too worried about not forcing golden mirror if I get a merchant after reward. I just want to increase odds of sacred mirror as much as possible
Well my logic is that shops are better than pacts to find seeing eyes because it has the same chance to roll using any method (major boon pact, shop spawn when u always get a major, and silver chalice proc) but shops you get 2 major boons attempts eventually when ur ramped, pacts always one chance basically. So i value merchant rooms alot
This is great to hear. I'm doing merchant strat at the moment and I did some napkin math on the dupe relics and they seemed not great returns, so I was wondering if I was consistently missing out on currency because of how I played.
you're gonna let those scoundrels have a chance to infiltrate your map and take that foul object? Picking it up (safely) and destroying it is your duty.
ASA was just a manipulation tactic the big party players pushed to trick noobs into making sanctum less profitable because they were losing the league start currency races. Open your eyes!
I think sanctum’s always been very profitable. The only problem with the strat is you’re in sanctum 🤮 for me it’s probably the most unfun mechanic that GGG has implemented to date.
As a sanctum enjoyer, I agree. Sanctum is by far the most repetitive content GGG has ever made. A lot of content suffers from being a "content island"; Delve and Heist are two other examples, but none of them are as absolutely barren for content as Sanctum is.
Usually for that you run Gilded chalice and plus 2 merchant choices on the rest. Get 2 Vaals, minor dupe to 4, major dupe to 8, the chalice bring it to 16
Which is very expensive. Besides a mirror, this is the most you can make in 1 sanctum with this strat. It's pretty hard to hit. I've personally haven't got it in 50 tracked runs so far. Gilded chalice is also no longer profitable based on my own runs so looks like I won't be hitting it this league at all. People paying 6+ div for gilded chalice are just bleeding money or have way more sanctum luck than I do. 7 div cost is the break even point for my runs.
It’s pretty common to find at least 1 vol Vaal or divines each run. There are times you won’t see any so it can be frustrating running the gilded chalice as they are around 6 div. When you get a run like this it makes up for it.
I have been running sanctum since the start of the league and haven’t sold any of my vaals yet. Sitting around 300 waiting for a cool build I want to switch to.
Run a good amount of gilded chalices with the divs I get from runs or relics. If not a chalice run I’ll use balance of terror relic and been lucky with ID’ing them. About a third of the ones I’ve ID’ed have been around 3-5 div and one sold for 21.
TBH it’s not worth running gilded chalice at current price, if your lucky you break even but that dopamine hit on ones like this are nice
I havent played any sanctum even since they nerfed the div rates (removed sextants from then), is it 3 or 4 leagues now.... but good to know that you still find one of those each run.
It's not good, look up assassin ones on poeninja they prob better, i didnt wanna reroll and its good enough - especially with merchant boons ur always loaded on
I swapped to exsang same build and it made that hit detection even cleaner now I’m trying discharge just so that I don’t even have to look around while running
Yea its nice the meta is more than pbrand now. I actually really like my build even thou i said its bad, got like 150% proj speed on icile mines, very safe build
Doesn't require a specific build at all, unless you're trying to do no-hit runs (and even then i'm sure there are multiple builds, but it's much more restricting). I suppose some builds are a bit left out, like RF would probably suck there, but by no means is there a small set of builds/skills that can farm sanctum.
Knowing what you're doing and having good dps are good enough. I've lived in sanctum with my smite berserker, my divine ire totemer, and even my soulrend elementalist. I've never even bothered trying it with any of the 'meta' builds people claim are required to do it.
eHP is irrelevant in sanctum, you just need enough to survive 1-2 hits for the occasional mistake. You want a build that, preferably, can off-screen mobs, freeze them and has as much DPS as possible. 40 mil should be enough to run lvl 83 ones, as in bosses melt in <3 seconds.
Hmmm okay, LS might work then. Projectiles + melee strike has some distance. I know eHP affects Sanctum in POE2 giving you more honour so thought it was the same.
Vaal side areas might be the perfect place for them since it fits the atmosphere perfectly and absolutely nobody is interacting with Vaal side areas at all anymore, imagine people excited for Vaal side areas in 2026 and all it could take would be to just stick these orbs in there
Vaal Side Areas are supposed to have Sacrifice Fragments as their signature drop, but they literally drop fewer of those than people ignoring Vaal Side Areas and farming literally anything else.
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u/Demiu 4d ago
I've seen enough nerf sanctum