Path of Exile Betrayal: Farming Syndicate Encounters for Loot

If you’re struggling with farming rewards from the Syndicate Safehouses, the POE community has a new technique that cen help you ensure you get the rewards you want as often as possible.

Let’s get going!

The Basics

This methods is actually pretty easy to setup, and you can easily farm hundreds of Chaos Orbs worth of loot an hour with this method once you’ve got the technique down.

The general idea is to “block” certain Syndicate Encounters from spawning so that you can target one of the other branches and farm their most valuable drops as quickly as possible. Path of Exile 3.5 allows the player to essentially pick and choose which Safehouse branch they would like to target, this is because of a quirk in the way the Encounters are determined. When a Safehouse branch reaches 100% Intelligence, the game will no longer spawn Encounters for that Branch while it’s still at 100%. So this means that by “Blocking” three Branches, you can target one particular branch for certain rewards.

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The really interesting part of the farming method becomes apparent once you start paying attention to who is actually in your targeted Branch.

Say you want to farm Gilded Scarabs, luckily for you there are specific Syndicate members who reliably drop these rewards. You want to pay attention to the flavor text for each member. In this example, target anyone with a mention of Scarabs, and place them in your target Branch. You should also be pushing the Syndicate members who have rewards you don’t want into your “Blocked” branches, preventing them from spoiling your rewards. Pay attention to the results of Bargains with these members and it becomes really easy to manipulate their position.

The POE community has put together an excellent primer on rewards by Syndicate member, bookmark this sheet for future use.

Once you have your branch and rewards chosen, it’s time to get down to business.

Once you’ve got your unwanted Branches blocked, the majority of your Encounters will be of your chosen Branch. then start getting your other members into position and ranking them up. Each member that gets to Rank 3 has their rewards doubled. And while this will make Safehouse runs more challenging, the increased rewards are often worth it. And if stacking tons of Rank 3 members into a Safehouse is too hard, just work within your ability and find a number of Rank 3 members that works for you and your build.

Once you have the members you want in place in your Branch, remember to use the guide linked above to find the rewards you want, you can start farming Encounters belonging to that Branch to gain Intel. Once you’ve maxed out Intel on Intervention, or your chosen Branch, run only those Safehouses and start farming some fat loot.

Tips and Tricks

Maintenance

The biggest issue with this method once it’s going is keeping it in a sustaining state. There’s a bit of RNG involved, but the best tip I can give you is to keep running the Encounters you’re not targeting when they pop up, but skipping the ones you most recently completed. Because of the way the math breaks down, as long as you have all three other Branches maxed out in Intelligence, you’ll only see them once out of every three encounters. And since the Intelligence on a branch decays to 90% every three turns, you have a built in clock for when you need to run a certain encounter.

For example, if you just ran a Transportation Encounter, and you know that the next Branch to decay is Fortification, you should prioritize the latter of the two when running maps.

Executions and Interrogations

Also, make sure to use Executions as much as possible, this is for two reasons. For one thing, moving Unranked members whose rewards you don’t want to Rank 1 will remove them from the spawn pool. By stacking your blocked Branches with these, you can easily control unwanted spawns. You can also Interrogate members to control them for three turns and lock them out of your chosen Branch, making your farming even easier.

Secondly, once you complete a run on your target Branch, it will reset. This means you’ll need to repopulate your target branch with your chosen members. Use Executions on the members with the most valuable rewards until they get Rank 3, this grants the best rewards and maximizes farming potential.

Build Relationships

Notice that green line that appears between two members when they Trust each other? That’s crucial for this method to work.

That’s because you’ll sometimes need to replace a current leader in your chosen Branch with your target leader, and that can only happen once they both fight together in an Encounter, which can only happen if they’re Trusted. Focus Trusted relationships on your desired members if you can to make this easier.

Don’t Block All Four Branches

There’s a chance that you could accidentally lock all four branches from spawning Encounters if all four Branches are  maxed out in terms of Intel at the same time. If this does happen, just run the Safehouse for your desired branch. If you aren’t prepared to do that, run a Safehouse belonging to one of the Branches you would normally block, then start setting up the farm for rewards again. It’s a pain if this happens, so try not to let it.

Video Guide

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