Path of Exile 2 (PoE2) continues the tradition of rewarding players who combine strategy, knowledge, and patience. One of the most lucrative methods in the current Abyssal League revolves around farming exceptional bases, which are highly sought after for crafting and selling. Over the course of my time in the league, I’ve managed to farm over half a mirror worth of divine orbs by meticulously refining a method that maximizes both efficiency and profit. Today, I’m breaking down the strategy in detail, POE 2 Currency from preparing your waystones and maps to exploiting the atlas passives, crafting modifiers, and maximizing your loot potential. Whether you’re a veteran of PoE or a newcomer looking to optimize your gameplay, this guide is designed to help you understand how to reliably farm exceptional bases.

Understanding the Goal: Why Exceptional Bases Matter

Before diving into the method, it’s important to understand why exceptional bases are so valuable. The rarity and quality of items in Path of Exile 2 are heavily influenced by their base level and item tier. Higher-tier items—such as level 82 desolate crossbows or wands—are significantly more valuable than lower-level counterparts because they can roll the highest-tier mods in the game.

For instance, a three-socket desolate crossbow at level 82 has far more potential for high-end crafting than a similar item at level 60. Low-level bases often cannot support top-tier mods, rendering them less useful to players and difficult to sell. By focusing on high-tier bases, you not only increase the quality of your crafting but also the potential financial return, whether you’re flipping bases on the market or creating your own powerful gear.

Step 1: Preparing High-Tier Waystones

The first step in this method involves securing high-tier waystones, specifically T16 waystones. The reason for this is straightforward: the higher the tier, the higher the potential level of the items dropped, which in turn increases your chances of acquiring exceptional bases.

Modifying Your Waystones

Orb of Alchemy: Apply an Orb of Alchemy to each waystone to upgrade it and ensure that it’s ready for modifiers. This step is essential for preparing the waystones for high-tier loot drops.

Omen of Great Exaltation: Use these to add exalted modifiers, giving your waystones six mods each. These mods significantly enhance the loot potential of the area, increasing your chances of dropping high-value bases.

Managing Item Rarity: Avoid mods that increase item rarity. White bases—essentially normal items—are the most lucrative for exceptional base farming. High item rarity increases magic and rare drops but reduces the chance of normal items dropping, which are the foundation for crafting high-end gear.

Fine-Tuning with Chaotic and Delirium Mods

Omen of Chaotic Quantity: Use this modifier to increase pack size, maximizing the number of mobs in the area. More mobs equal more drops, which translates into higher chances for exceptional bases.

Delirium Fog: Incorporating delirium modifiers not only increases pack size further but also introduces delirium monsters, which offer additional drops and crafting opportunities.

Preserving and Rolling

Once your waystones have the necessary mods, you can use Preserve Vertebrae to target specific prefixes. While this process is partly RNG-dependent, careful planning ensures that most of your waystones will have open prefixes for future modifications. Always aim for T16 level, as it ensures the item levels of drops are sufficient for high-tier crafting.

Step 2: Optimizing Your Maps

Having prepared your waystones, the next step is to ensure your maps are configured to maximize loot potential. The focus here is on tier 82 maps, which can be achieved by combining high-level waystones with modifiers such as cleanse zones or bosses.

Selecting the Right Maps

Powerful Map Bosses: Maps with a map boss and appropriate atlas passives increase monster levels, making it more likely for high-tier bases to drop.

Cleanse Zones: These zones provide a +1 bonus to monster levels, which, combined with high-tier waystones, ensures item levels are sufficient for exceptional base drops.

Map Modifiers

Pack Size: Always prioritize maps and precursor tablets that increase pack size. This increases the number of mobs and, therefore, potential drops.

Avoid Rarity Mods: Negative rarity, often achieved through vendor’s gamble or ingenuity, ensures the majority of drops are normal or magic items, which are the foundation for exceptional bases.

Delirium Effects: Adding delirium fog to maps increases fracturing mirrors and monster spawns, resulting in more loot and higher drop potential.

Step 3: Leveraging Atlas Passives

Atlas passives play a crucial role in boosting loot quality. Your passive tree should focus on:

Pack Size Nodes: These nodes increase the number of monsters, which directly correlates with more item drops.

Magic and Rare Monster Nodes: Increasing the frequency of magic and rare monsters ensures more opportunities for loot.

Explicit Modifier Boosts: These nodes enhance the effectiveness of your waystone mods, further improving drop rates and quality.

Be strategic when navigating the atlas tree: avoid rarity nodes that increase uncommon drops and instead focus on nodes that synergize with your goal of exceptional base farming.

Step 4: Vendor’s Gamble and Reduced Rarity

One of the most critical aspects of this method is the use of Vendor’s Gamble combined with reduced rarity modifiers.

Negative Rarity: This ensures that drops skew heavily toward normal and magic items, which are ideal for exceptional base farming.

Gambling Mods: Vendor’s Gamble can be tricky, as modifiers can be unpredictable, but with the right setup, it maximizes your chances of obtaining valuable bases.

Ingenuity Boosts: This modifier amplifies the effects of reduced rarity, further increasing the likelihood of obtaining sellable exceptional bases.

The key here is careful management of gear and modifiers to maintain negative rarity without sacrificing other essential stats, such as resistances.

Step 5: Farming the Maps

Once your waystones, maps, atlas passives, and modifiers are in place, the farming process itself is straightforward but requires persistence.

Rinse and Repeat: There’s an element of luck involved in obtaining the best exceptional bases. Some maps may yield multiple high-value items, while others may produce fewer. Consistency is key.

Crafting Potential: Any base that doesn’t roll perfectly can be reforged or recombined for another chance at high-tier modifiers. This adds a secondary layer of potential profit.

Currency Drops: High-tier maps also have better chances of dropping valuable currency items, strongboxes, and research packs, adding to overall profit.

Step 6: Capitalizing on Your Exceptional Bases

Not all exceptional bases are created equal. Here’s how to maximize their value:

Level 82 Bases: These are particularly valuable for crafting and selling due to their ability to roll high-tier mods.

Magic Wands with High Modifiers: For example, a magic wand with +5 to lightning spell skills can fetch up to 40 divine orbs, while less optimal rolls can still be worth several divines.

Reforging and Crafting: Bases with bad initial rolls can be reforged, giving another chance to create high-value items. Combining exceptional bases with rare crafting can yield extraordinary results, turning otherwise mediocre drops into marketable treasures.

Regularly checking market prices and demand ensures that you are maximizing profits from each exceptional base obtained.

Step 7: Time Investment vs. Profit

While this method can be highly profitable, it’s not without its time investment. Success depends on the frequency of exceptional base drops and the quality of those drops. A few key points to consider:

Consistency is Key: Rarely will a single map yield massive profits. Over time, however, the method pays off reliably.

High-Tier Farming: Using T16 waystones and tier 82 maps increases the frequency of valuable drops, but RNG still plays a role.

Additional Loot: Even on less profitable maps, you still gain currency, rare items, and crafting mats, making each run worthwhile.

In essence, this method balances risk and reward. Patience and persistence are the true drivers of success in exceptional base farming.

Conclusion

Farming exceptional bases in Path of Exile 2 is both an art and a science. By combining high-tier waystones, optimized maps, strategic atlas passives, and clever use of modifiers like Vendor’s Gamble and ingenuity, players can consistently acquire valuable bases for crafting or profit cheap Path of Exile 2 Currency. While RNG plays a role, the structured approach outlined above maximizes efficiency, reduces waste, and increases the likelihood of obtaining high-value drops.

Over time, this method not only pays off in terms of currency and marketable items but also enhances your understanding of PoE2’s complex systems, from item tiers to map modifiers. Whether you’re aiming to flip bases, craft your own high-end gear, or simply optimize your farming efficiency, mastering this approach to exceptional base farming is a valuable skill for any serious Path of Exile 2 player.

By dedicating time, carefully planning your waystones, maps, and passives, and leveraging all available modifiers, you can turn the elusive hunt for exceptional bases into a consistent and highly profitable endeavor.