As everyone knows, Ultimatum returns to POE 3.23. But at the start of the league, many people said it was unrewarding and not worth doing. So I decided to run 50 Ultimatums in T16 Maps to check if this was true.
Gilded Ultimatum Scarab
Now, for Ultimatum, I think it’s very important to run them with Gilded Ultimatum Scarab. The current price of these Scarabs is approximately 25 Scarabs equal to 1 Divine Orb. They are great because they give you a chance to get better rewards. So I think they are mandatory.
Passive Tree
Then in Passive Tree, if you want to get Prove Yourself Worthy node here, it gives you a 25% chance to repeat your reward.
Now this is for all the different rewards. So if you play 10 rounds, you’ll get 10 different rewards, each with a 25% chance of dupe. So you don’t dupe all the rewards, but only some of them. This is, of course, RNG.
But the idea is that you definitely replicate rewards that are really valuable, like a Prismatic Catalyst, a Fertile Catalyst, or maybe a good Divination Card. So, I definitely think Prove Yourself Worthy is the best node in Passive Tree.
Encounter Types
Then here we also have 4 types of encounters in Ultimatum. Each round gives you a goal to complete. If you die before completing this objective, you suffer a failure and you lose all rewards and cannot proceed to subsequent rounds.
Defeat Waves Of Enemies
To achieve this goal, you simply need to kill a certain number of enemies to advance to the next round. Builds that kill enemies quickly will find the round goes by in a blink of an eye, allowing you to farm Ultimatum faster.
Protect The Altar
This objective also requires you to kill a certain number of enemies. However, it will also spawn in a friendly Altar, which enemies will attack during the turn. If you defeat this altar before you kill enough enemies, the encounter is a failure.
Survive
The mission of this objective is to allow you to stay within the area of Ultimatum encounter for a certain amount of time without dying. While this isn’t an immense challenge for any build capable of killing enemies quickly, it does represent a significant time drain as you wait for the timer to run out.
Stand In Stone Circles
This objective adds some small circles within the area where Ultimatum is encountered. You must stand within each Stone Circle for a certain amount of time to complete. Your progress for each circle is retained if you leave and re-enter the circle.
Enemies in Ultimatum have a lot of deadly attacks, which makes standing still especially deadly. Make sure to prioritize not dying, even if it means having to leave and re-enter Stone Circles repeatedly.
As such, this is probably the worst type of Ultimatum encounter. It’s more difficult, and it takes the longest. But here, our chances of getting a Divination Card and POE Currency are also higher.
It’s a challenge, but I think it’s worth the time to get them, at least for the pricey items in Affliction League.
Investment, Loot & Profit
My total investment for this Ultimatum run was 2 Divine Orbs, which is the price of 50 Gilded Ultimatum Scarabs.
I’ve divided the loot gained from these 50 runs of Ultimatums into two categories based on their value. I didn’t include this tab at the ultimate price, but maybe there are some Divine value items. But anyway, it’s worth mentioning that these rewards come from Ultimatum. There are no map drops or anything like that.
So I checked the price of everything and it was 42.6 Divine Orbs. So, for the investment required, the profit is pretty good.
It needs to be mentioned that Catalyst is very good as there are almost 20 Divine Orbs in Catalyst alone. And I could also kill a Trialmaster, of which I got 8 Tainted Catalyst and Ixchel’s Temptation Ring.
Then there are some more valuable items, including this Hexblast gem, which is worth approximately 1.5 Divine Orbs. Also, I also got 2 Divine Beauty Cards.
Extra Info & Tips For Running Ultimatum
But regardless, Ultimatum usually takes an average of 2 to 4 minutes to run, it really depends on the type of Ultimatum you receive.
For modifiers, it also depends on your build. But there are some modifiers that are easy to deal with, such as Ruin. My suggestion is to run Ultimatum on an open map. Because then you have room to run around in circles.
One thing to mention, be careful scrolling around the map increases the area of effect. Because this affects all the different AOEs in Ultimatum. So as AOE increases, Choking Miasma becomes very dangerous.
I guess one problem with Ultimatum is that it’s difficult to run on maps that aren’t open, like in Crimson Temple. It’s certainly a very popular choice for Apothecary Card. So, this is a drawback of Ultimatum. You also need to avoid selecting the smaller arena modifiers, as this will make your Ultimatum more difficult.
But anyway, that’s all for this Ultimatum guide. Hope you find it useful. If you decide to run Ultimatum, I wish you good luck and hope you find some good items there!
