PoE 3.29 — 36/40 Challenge Guide

🎯 The core idea

Every challenge cosmetic — the back attachment, the totem, the portal, the eel pet, the oceanic weapon effect — unlocks at 36 of 40. Not 40. So four challenges are free, and choosing which four to drop is the actual strategy, not a consolation prize.

Most of the remaining 36 are not skill checks. They are shopping — buy the scarab, buy the logbook, buy the contract, run it once. Two of them are gated on your Atlas tree, and if you don't set that up first you'll run those maps twice.

Drelvak dropped Intrigued Interlopers, Brinerot's Bloody Bounty, Horrific Halls and Apex Assailants. His own note: if he had to un-skip one, it would be Brinerot's.

Do this first

1. Build the item-quantity Atlas tree before you touch two specific challenges. Trustworthy Teachers needs T16 at ≥80% quantity and Excruciating Echoes needs 150%. Take every map modifier effect node, the full quantity wheel, and the inner quantity wheel as well. Doing this after the fact means running those maps again for nothing.
2. Treat the trade site as part of the guide. A large share of these challenges are one purchase and one map. You do not need to know Heist to kill the Heist boss, or Incursion to kill the Omnitect — you buy the entry item and walk to the boss.
3. Keep five scarab slots filled from the very first map. Stacked Scarabs counts passively, and most of the "any three of the following league mechanics" challenges are just scarabs you were going to run anyway.

All 40 challenges

• free comes naturally
• cheap buy it, run it once
• setup needs the Atlas quant tree
• grind real time investment
• skip he skipped it

In video order. Tick them off as you go — every row links to the exact second in the video.

1. Beginners Basics freePlay through the campaign. Nothing to plan for. 0:54 ↗
2. Deep Dive freeThe basics of the league mechanic. You reach it through the Sovereign on the waypoint. 0:58 ↗
3. Peddler's Produce I cheapFour vendor recipes, all the same shape: vendor a normal item at 20% quality. Armourer's Scrap → any normal armour. Blacksmith's Whetstone → normal weapon. Glassblower's Bauble → flask. Gemcutter's Prism → gem. On the trade site filter normal + quality 20% and buy the cheapest of each. 1:06 ↗
4. Act Adversaries I freeCampaign. 1:45 ↗
5. Possessive Pantheons freeCampaign. 1:49 ↗
6. Underwater Undertaking freeLeague basics again: run a chart, run a voyage, and use Deadman Sulphur to craft an item at the Allflame bench at the bottom of the ship. 1:51 ↗
7. Act Adversaries II freeFinish the campaign. 2:05 ↗
8. Atlas Accomplishment freeAll non-unique maps plus the bonus objective on each — 100/100. Comes naturally, just slowly. 2:06 ↗
9. Ingrained Increases cheapAny three league mechanics, N times each. Take Strongbox, Shrine, Essence — all three are scarab-farmable and the whole challenge is under 30 minutes. 2:21 ↗
10. Legendary Leagues cheapAny five. Fastest set: Delirium (scarab → enter the mirror, leave, repeat), Abyss (scarabs, quicker than it looks), Harvest (doubling scarab, take the yellow juice — this one pays for itself), Legion (scarab, blast), Breach (scarab). 2:44 ↗
11. Trustworthy Teachers setupAny two master missions on T16 at ≥80% item quantity. Needs the Atlas setup above. Niko → Sulphite scarab, click the sulphite, leave. Einhar → Bestiary scarab. Run them on Strand. Under 30 minutes once the tree is right. 3:33 ↗
12. Nautical Navigation freeTen voyages — you don't have to read them. Queue charts and run them back to back. Also covers defeating rare monsters in voyages and the Deadman Sulphur craft. 4:13 ↗
13. Savage Sellswords cheapAny three Mercenaries of Trarthus encounters. Run a Mercenary scarab every map and hire every time; add an Adversary scarab if you need rare monsters. For infamous modifiers: use a Mercenary Scarab of Infamy, then hold Alt over the mercenary's gear and look for a mod reading of Infamy. 4:27 ↗
14. Chromatic Crafting cheapThree parts. Chromatic orbs — self-explanatory. 15 coloured sockets — buy cheap unlinked six-socket gear with mixed colours and just equip it until it pops; links don't matter. A gem at 60% quality — a cheap unique ring that grants +30% gem quality, plus a 20% quality gem of the matching colour (50%), plus the +10% from the colour match. 5:24 ↗
15. Vanquished Villains freeSocket four Voidstones. Progression. 6:17 ↗
16. Taxing Tasks cheapAny five encounters at area level 81 — just use T16. Abyssal Depths (scarab). Logbooks with 10+ remnants — buy logbooks, ignore the mechanic entirely, tag ten remnant markers and watch the counter bottom-right, ×5. Tier 4 Harvest — Scarab of Cornucopia always gives a tier 4. Blighted maps — buy alvl 81 blighted, run them white, drop fire turrets. Breach Marshal ×5 — Breach scarab plus the Marshal node, ~5 minutes. 6:29 ↗
17. Comprehensive Charting cheapAny nine chart types. Check your chart storage, buy whatever you're missing — almost none of them are expensive. 7:50 ↗
18. Achieve Ascension cheapAscend, then use the ascendancy device in the Eternal Labyrinth (buy the cheapest offering, ~3c). Then gain a Bloodline class — the quick ones are King in the Mists (Audience with the King) and Feral, First of the Plains. It That Was, with the Hideborn Gland, is also cheap and fast. 8:17 ↗
19. Devious Divination cheapAny three: open stacked decks (buy some), hand in divination card sets, and scry a map — a Scrying Orb is about 1c. 9:14 ↗
20. Peddler's Produce II cheapA unique recipe (buy the two cheap uniques the recipe calls for and add a Fusing), a 3:1 scarab trade, and a 3:1 on three T16 maps at the vendor. 9:34 ↗
21. Challenging Curators cheapSix bosses at level 80+ — these are not the Uber versions. Uber Atziri via mortal fragments. Izaro from the Eternal Lab. Abyssal Lich falls out of Abyssal Depths. Omnitect — you don't need to understand Incursion, buy the temple on trade, check it's area level 80, run straight to the boss room. Vox Twins — buy Contract: The Twins, no Heist levelling needed, five minutes. Beyond bosses — take the Beyond boss nodes (not Endless Tide) plus a Beyond scarab, under five maps. Skip the Expedition bosses, they're expensive. 10:08 ↗
22. Ethereal Enhancements cheapFive cursed ducats, all under ~2c. Buy them, take them to the Allflame crafting bench and use them on junk gear. Costs sulphur. Gamble the junk gear if you don't have any. 12:08 ↗
23. Remarkable Realms cheapFifteen unique maps, bought off trade. Do not take Hall of Grandmasters — it respawns real player characters with real gear and at least one of them is effectively unkillable. 12:30 ↗
24. Stacked Scarabs freeKeep all five scarab slots filled on every map. Use the cheapest scarabs you have. 13:01 ↗
25. Corrupted Crystals cheapAny three. Gems to level 20 comes naturally. 20 corrupted gems socketed — buy junk gems, Vaal them, socket them all. A gem at 21 or 23 — buy ten cheap level 20 gems and Vaal them. 13:12 ↗
26. Cross Contamination cheapAny four scarab pairings. Mercenary while delirious (Mercenary + Delirium). Possessed rogue exile with an allied mercenary (Mercenary + the Atlas node that possesses rogue exiles + Rogue Exile scarab). Abyssal Consort while affected by a shrine (Consort + Shrine, ~2 minutes). Breach Marshal empowered by a wisp (Marshal + Wisp). The Originator-influenced map with an astrolabe is the expensive one — leave it last. 13:52 ↗
27. Superior Sovereign grindFully upgrade the ship. The game does not show you what you still need, which is the whole difficulty. The first few come naturally. Upgrade 4: run an Infested Ba'osphere, two minutes. Upgrade 5: run a Cascara's Rest chart in a voyage — and while you're out there, actually look around for the big sunken ship; that's the boss arena, and you have to sail to it and kill the boss. 14:55 ↗
28. Bountiful Bloodlines grindSeven bosses, and the choice matters a lot. Good ones: Trialmaster (Ultimatum Scarab of Dueling always gives the fight), King in the Mists (Audience with the King), Feral, First of the Plains, Oshabi (Sacred Blossom). Avoid Lycia (Sanctum), Catarina (Betrayal — expensive and a lot of setup), Aul (Delve) and the fragment-gated ones. Simulacrum is the trap: you must finish the whole thing and the last waves break most builds. 15:43 ↗
29. Astounding Astrolabes grindMostly a currency sink, but every astrolabe ends in a Memory Vault and the quadrant you place it in decides the reward pool. North-west → stacked decks and divination cards, and this was the most consistent. North-east → gems. South-west → generic currency, and the currency was genuinely bad. Buy the cheapest astrolabes and hope the vaults pay you back. 17:14 ↗
30. Modified Maps grindCompleting maps, weighted by how many affixes the map has — every mod counts, so six- and eight-mod maps are worth far more. If you need to rush it, run Mesa: short layout, boss right there. Mostly this finishes itself while you do everything else, especially nightmare maps. 18:15 ↗
31. Excruciating Echoes grindAny two, at 150% item quantity — the second challenge that needs the Atlas quant setup. Use Memory of Trauma → Chamber of Impunity: the boss has a guaranteed valuable drop, so the grind pays for itself. Around 75–80% quantity on the map itself gets you to the 150% total. Buy the memory, run it, kill the boss, repeat. 19:00 ↗
32. Fathomless Fears freeVoyages touching nine different border modifiers. In Plan Voyage, route so the path actually touches the borders; if none of the ones you need are on offer, reroll. Usually completes on its own. 19:55 ↗
33. Intrigued Interlopers skipSkipped. Looks much easier than it is. Two of the three options need four boss altars in one map — uncommon on its own, and back-to-back is worse. Boss altar loot is bad, so you'd be sacrificing hundreds of maps of real loot to chase it. 20:25 ↗
34. Potent Possibilities cheapUse any ten currency items. Gamble junk items and craft garbage onto them. This one should not cost you much at all. 21:15 ↗
35. Succinct Summons grindThirty imitations with at least five explicit modifiers. Pairs naturally with Excruciating Echoes. Hold Alt and physically count to five before you run each one — that's where people lose progress. 21:36 ↗
36. Atlas Assertions cheapAny six Atlas encounters — the small blue-bordered novelty maps that drop when you kill a map boss (Gambling District, Planned Heist, River's End and so on). They're around 1c each on trade if you'd rather buy them. 21:54 ↗
37. Brinerot's Bloody Bounty skipSkipped — but this is the one he'd un-skip. It's the Cascara's Rest voyage boss again, under specific conditions. The pain is the retry loop: fail the conditions and you have to build an entirely new voyage before you can try again. 22:34 ↗
38. Horrific Halls skipSkipped, and the wording is why. "Nightmare maps with 150% quantity, five scarabs and deliriums" does not mean one delirium — it means five delirium orbs, i.e. 100% delirious. A 100%-delirious nightmare boss at 150% quantity, with no scarab slots free to make it easier, is out of reach for most builds. 23:00 ↗
39. Apex Assailants skipSkipped. Straight Uber bossing. If your build is a bosser this is free; on Righteous Fire it isn't. Judge by your character, not by the challenge. 23:32 ↗
40. Gallant Grinding Goals grindFour parts. Level 100 — Beyond red altars tree plus Monstrous Lineage ×2, Beyond Invasion, Elder (spawns a lot of monsters and is an influence type, so influence scarabs buff it) and Delirium scarabs. T16 rare corrupted eight-mod maps. 40 nightmare maps — the trick is the trade filter: use not stat groups to exclude every mod your build hates (max res, penetration, extra monster life, ES monsters), buy only maps you can actually run, take Fortress for the easiest boss, throw 2–3 Domination scarabs on for shrines, ignore the map and speedrun the boss. If you're still struggling, the prefix- and suffix-negating scarabs turn it into a white map — you'll get fewer boss fragments but you'll finish. Also defeat rare monsters in voyages. 23:45 ↗

The four to drop, and why

If your build is a bosser, swap Apex Assailants back in and drop Bountiful Bloodlines' expensive tail instead — it's the same trade in the other direction.

Scarab shopping list

Not in the video — collected from it. Buy these in bulk once and most of the "any N of the following" challenges collapse into normal mapping.

Extra tips

Sources

• "PoE 3.29 Curse of the Allflame 36/40 Challenge Guide" — Drelvak, YouTube, 3 August 2026.
• Chapter timings are the creator's own; the per-challenge detail is transcribed from the video's auto-generated captions, so a few item and boss names may be slightly misspelled — the method is right even where the spelling isn't.
• The "from the comments" box collects tips from viewers thornburg9170, Nisze and roflmattable that are not in the video itself.
• The scarab shopping list is not from the video — it's assembled by cross-referencing which scarab feeds which challenge.