Strategy
The Forbidden Rites atlas can be intimidating once the campaign ends, because the amount of map progression stacked in front of you all arrives at once. This guide is about ordering that progression so you earn divines while you complete it, instead of rushing the citadel, hitting the Arbiter of Divinity with a weak character, and then having to go back and farm anyway.
The central observation is that the citadel gives no atlas points until late, so the loot that funds your gear has to come from somewhere else while you grind through it. That somewhere else is a single league mechanic unlocked early and farmed continuously in the background of your citadel maps. The creator’s own run finished the full atlas tree this way, funding items like a 30-divine Taming ring and a 70-divine Ordained Grand Spear along the road.
It is aimed squarely at the average player rather than someone on a broken build who can kill the Arbiter on a one-divine character. The goal is arriving at the pinnacle fight already geared, not arriving there and grinding fifty divines to get past it.
Atlas Tree & Setup
The citadel now holds all 336 atlas points, and the way they are handed out changed. The introductory mission is fully directed — you go right, you go left, you clear down both sides, no guide required. Clearing the outer sections gets you the Referee of Ashes, which opens the inner core. Inside you clear the Patriarch’s and Matriarch’s rooms, take the cores back to the tower of origin, and summon the Arbiter of Divinity.
The part that confuses people: beating the Arbiter the first time awards no atlas points. That is intentional. Afterwards you must find a second Patriarch Core and a second Matriarch Core out in the world (they show as lights in the fog of war), clear them, collect another Cradle of Origin and a spark, and fight the Arbiter a second time. That second kill dumps roughly 250–300 points at once and effectively fills the tree.
If you have divines banked you can skip the hunt entirely and buy the cradle, the spark, or the assembled core outright — around five divines for the lot. That shortcut is another reason to be earning currency during the climb rather than after it.
Investment & Returns
- Investment: low. One league-mechanic tablet per map plus normal waystone rolling. No expensive setup is required.
- Returns: mid and steady. Abyss drops like Omen of Light (~2.4 divine), Omen of Echoes (~1/3 divine) and ancient body parts (~3–4 divine each) accumulate across every map you were going to run anyway.
- Scaling: the league mechanic’s own atlas points multiply drop quality directly. The creator took the more-monsters/greater-effectiveness options and had not even finished that section before it was generating divines consistently.
Step-by-step
- Enter the citadel and clear the opening path to the first tower — expect three or four maps to reach it, five to open the fortress, and roughly ten more beyond that.
- Before pushing deeper, unlock one in-map league mechanic you actually enjoy. Breach, ritual and abyss are all in-map and all profitable; the trial of chaos and the temple are separate off-map systems and are not what you want here.
- Run the mechanic’s unlock area. Abyss is the easiest recommendation — three bosses, doable on tier five or six maps, far softer than the citadel bosses.
- Spend the league-mechanic atlas points, prioritising monster quantity and monster effectiveness.
- Slot one precursor tablet for that mechanic before running maps so every map contains it. One tablet on a low-tier map is enough — you do not need to over-invest.
- Run your citadel progression maps at the highest level your character comfortably handles, with the mechanic tablet always active, so progression and income happen in the same maps.
- Kill the Arbiter once, gather (or buy) the second set of cores, and kill it again to collect the full atlas tree.
Risks
- Rushing straight to the citadel boss with an undergeared character is the failure mode this whole guide exists to prevent — you stall and have to farm from a standing start.
- Running maps fast without any mechanic loaded means hitting the tier-10 and tier-15 requirements with nothing to show for the maps you burned.
- The first Arbiter kill genuinely gives nothing. Expect it, or it reads as a bug.
- Adding a mechanic to every map slows each map down; the trade is throughput for income, and it is a deliberate one.
- Ritual was reworked this league and the creator had not tested its current profitability — breach and abyss are the safer picks for now.
Credits & Source
Method credited to Medieval Marty. See the source video: Path of Exile 2: Forbidden Rites - Endgame Progression Guide.