A Quick Note About Nets

Today we posted an FAQ about some Bestiary mechanics, which mentioned that there are ten tiers of nets available in the league. The Bestiary League as a whole is somewhat of a departure from league designs we've produced in the past and it's natural that the community would have many questions about how this league works. We noted that after this FAQ post, one particular topic came up very frequently and we want to take a moment to further explain how it works and why we designed nets in this way.

Many players have speculated that ten tiers of nets may be difficult to manage or that the nets might take up a lot of space. Nets have a tier progression because items in Path of Exile get better as you progress through the game. This is true for weapons, armour pieces, flasks, maps and many other types of items. Upgrading your items in Path of Exile is a great feeling, and indicate your progression through the story. That's why you can find better nets as you play through the acts. It's just like finding a better flask.

At the start of the game, there's only one tier of net available. You play through Act One and have no problems capturing monsters as long as you either damage them first or do enough damage soon after throwing the net. It's quite straightforward and the items you craft with these beasts are pretty punchy as far as early-game rewards go.

Towards the end of Act One, you start to find better nets. These make capturing bosses much easier, but you generally have few enough that you need to carefully choose when you use them. Compared to the first tier, they don't drop as frequently. They're not mandatory in Act One though, just nice to have.

As you enter Act Two, the first nets no longer drop. They can be vendored or stashed or basically put away. Now, the second-tier ones drop frequently, and you eventually start to find third-tier nets as special ones that are very effective against bosses. As you enter Act Three, these become the norm.

As you progress through the game, there are really only two tiers of nets available at any time. They're relatively easy to get, and their drop rates are set to signal an appropriate rate to capture Beasts (so that players don't feel they have to net everything that moves). Finding a new type of net is similar to how finding a more powerful flask is an upgrade to your character. You don't need to worry about the old ones afterwards. They go wherever your bad old flasks go.

For people playing high yellow/red maps in the end-game, there are also essentially two tiers of nets - tiers nine and ten. Tier nine nets are the bread and butter of most of your Beast captures, and tier ten nets are saved for special occasions. These highest-tier nets are realistically the only ones with significant economic value.

The multiple net tiers are a system like flasks that you experience while you play the storyline. Once you settle into mapping, you're only using end-game ones and certainly don't need to think about the lower ones any more.

You don't need to click on a net item in your inventory each time you want to capture a Beast. You use the globally-available net skill, which has its own bindable hotkey so that it doesn't take up a skill slot. You only need to click a net item when you want to change what type of net you're capturing Beasts with.

When creating Bestiary, we set out to do something different. So many leagues in the last few years have been "while playing, you encounter a thing and then kill some monsters". Bestiary has some elements of that, but so much more. The Beastcrafting encounters have been balanced to offer very high risk and return, so you'll want to do them constantly throughout the game. The item rewards we have planned for Beastcrafting are very strong. As I mentioned in the FAQ, we'll be posting more information about them after the weekend!

While you wait, Bex has arranged to reveal four uniques over the weekend, including three Bestiary Uniques that you can receive from the end-game Spirit Beasts.