Path of Exile: Harvest(also known as patch 3.11) went live on June 19th, and almost immediately players were figuring out the best ways to utilize space in the Sacred Grove.
First, the basics.In Harvest league, players get access to its features pretty much as soon as they make it to The Coast, or really any given zone. Somewhere on the map, there will be a Seed Cache, which when activated drops a number of wild seeds and spawns the portal to The Sacred Grove and Oshabi, Avatar of the Grove.
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A word of caution toPoEplayers: the Sacred Grove can be accessed from a Seed Cache or the waypoint system, but one should enter the Sacred Grove ONLY from the route they used the first time that play session, or else a new instance of the Sacred Grove is created, and growth progress may be lost. This bug may have slipped through becauseGrinding Gear Games had to make adjustments to cope with Covid-19.
There has been a lot oftweaking and rebalancinginPath of Exileas of late, and the Sacred Grove will make a difference because lifeforce can be used to reforge items with specific socket colors, upgrade a normal or magic item to a rare item, or change up the modifiers.
This is a lot more powerful than the base game orbs which until now were the main method to customize and upgrade armor and weapons.ARPG fans knowjust how the right set of armor can make or break a game, so maximizing those chances to get the good loot is the name of the game.
Players who do not want to search for one of the many example layouts floating around the internet can either break out the graph paper now or visitharvest.iw.gyfor an interactivePoE: Harvestplanner.
Types of Seeds
There are three types of seeds in Harvest: purple Wild seeds, yellow Vivid seeds, and blue Primal seeds. They come with different traits depending on their variety and tier: 2nd tier consists of grains, 3rd tier has bulbs, and 4th tier is fruit, but they’ll all be called seeds here for clarity. Excess seeds can be stored in the Sacred Grove’s own stash.
Seeds grow every time a player activates a Seed Cache, so the best way to get crops to go fast is to visit many different zones, collect the seed caches, then wait about 15 minutes for the areas to reset. If there are plants ready to be harvested, Oshabi will mention it. It is also a very good idea to condense lifeforce frequently, as it will disperse eventually otherwise.
Structures
There are three types of structures that can be builtin Harvest leagueright away. Buildings can be repositioned if necessary by Ctrl+clicking.
Lifeforce Collectors
Cost: 25 lifeforce
What they do: enable harvesting fully grown plants nearby. Activating one via the button on top when there are at least 8 full-grown plants will release monsters, whose life force will be sucked in when they are killed. There is a convenient button to automatically plant seeds of the corresponding color from one’s inventory to the surrounding area. It can hold 50 lifeforce.
Building considerations: Their radius is a 5x5 grid. There are fewer planting spaces in the corners of the map, making them unsuitable places for seeds Tier 2 and up.
Dispersers
Cost: 30 lifeforce
What they do: redirect lifeforce energy to the plants surrounding them, fertilizing them in a 5x5 grid around itself.
Building considerations: These are necessary for any seeds Tier 2 and above. Check seeds to see what kind of lifeforce a particular variety needs, as it can vary, and surround the disperser with collectors for those seeds. If a collector is built two spaces away from a disperser on the same grid line, the overlap would be 10 spaces. If they are built side by side, the overlap is 18 spaces.
Storage Tanks
Cost: 75 lifeforce
What it does: holds up to 300 lifeforce per tank. This building works well as a buffer when stationed between a collector and a disperser.
Building considerations: The corners are suboptimal planting areas, so they are good places to put storage. The player may need additional pylons, but that is simply trading space for efficiency.
Pylons
Cost: 10 lifeforce
What they do: carry lifeforce energy from one building to another up to four squares away from it. They are the backbone of the garden setup, acting as power lines to carry lifeforce from collector to storage to disperser.
Building considerations: Pylons only have a reach of 4 squares and can connect to 4 buildings. Click the button up top to link a pylon to another pylon, collector, disperser, or storage. Proper positioning of pylons will control the flow of lifeforce of a particular variety (Wild, Vivid, or Primal) from one area to another.
In later tiers, players gain access to:
Horticrafting Stations
Cost: 1800 lifeforce (must harvest multiple high tier crops at once to get this much)
What they do: allows the player to save crafting options for later.
As a side note,PathofExile: Deliriumis still in effect, and can be encountered in Act 5 onwards. Players can also look forward to the eventual release ofPath of Exile 2.
Path of Exileis available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
