In Path of Exile, there’s a little bit of everything for everyone. Depending on how you like to play and your build, you can always find the best strategy for your needs. We'll check out the Breach mechanic and gauge how easy it is to get into, how cheap it is to get it started, and how much currency you can start making with a small investment.
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How Does 'Breach' Work in Path of Exile?
Breaches will randomly spawn in an area in an inactive state. They can be identified by the hand-like construct within a purple circle and purple swirls can be seen nearby. Walking into the hand will activate the Breach. Breaches can also be spawned using Vaal Breach, but enemies in these Breaches do not give experience or drop items.
Once you activate a Breach in Path of Exile, it starts expanding its circle outwards and spawns a mix of Breach monsters within the circle. The faster you kill the monsters, the faster the circle expands. After a while, the expansion of the Breach will slow down until it eventually retracts quickly and closes.
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Occasionally, a Breachlord can spawn from a Breach in Path of Exile. They will drop several Splinters when the Breach collapses based on how much damage was dealt to them or the maximum of ten when defeated. There are five types of breaches, each associated with a damage type: Xoph (fire), Tul (cold), Esh (lightning), Uul-Netol (physical), and Chayula (chaos), each named after their respective Breachlord.
Breaches also contain Clasped Hands, a Breach-specific type of chest. They come in two varieties, Clasped Hand or Breachlord's Clasped Hand. These chests can drop additional Splinters and can only be opened when the Breach expands.
Path of Exile: How to Farm Breach
The best way to farm Breach in Path of Exile is to do large open maps like Dunes or Jungle Valley. You’ll need a build that is good at clearing large packs of monsters and has decent survivability, as it can be easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of monsters spawning.
An ideal way to run Breach as cheaply as possible in Path of Exile is to use 2 regular Breach Scarabs, which increase the number of Breaches that spawn on the map by 2. A Breach Scarab of Lordship guarantees that a Breachlord will spawn in each Breach you open. Last but not least, a Breach Scarab of Splintering allows us to receive 50% more Splinters from monsters and Clasped Hands.
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It’s a good idea to add an additional Breach from the map device. Considering the prices of maps and scarabs, this strategy costs around 21 Chaos Orbs per map to run. Here are some tips for farming Breach:
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Make sure to clear the area around the Breach first. Fighting a Breach and a map boss at the same time, for example, can be quite dangerous and lead to character death.
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It’s a good idea to create a portal near the Breach for emergency escape and/or quick return in the case of death.
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Watch out for the type of Breach you are facing, as some breaches might be more dangerous for your character than others.
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Try to stay near the corner of the Breach instead of the middle to avoid having all monsters instantly attack you.
- Stay alert when leaving the Breach area; while the monsters disappear outside of the circle, it is still possible for them to hit you for a short period of time.
How to Set Up Your Atlas for Breach in Path of Exile
When building your Atlas for Breach in Path of Exile, you can take most nodes that are available. You can prioritize grabbing Freed from the Flesh and Tortured Dreams as those nodes will increase the chance of spawning a Uul-Netol or Chayula Breach. You’ll prefer these two types as they can drop the most expensive Splinters. With the points left, you can opt for some Scarab, Map Effectiveness, and/or Shrine nodes to help you out with the clear.
A good starting point is trying out this Atlas by Empyriangaming since he’s been testing out different Atlas strategies. In the following video, you can see some gameplay of the Breach mechanic and how much currency you can expect when running this strategy:
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