Building on the Interludes, I present 'Realms' as a replacement for the endless Atlas

Building on the idea of the Interludes, I propose replacing the endless Atlas with Realms - themed mini-acts with unique flavour, mechanics, and rewards, with space for end-game lore, narrative, and gameplay variety. They can be empowered like Tablets, which apply to the entire Realm - no more tower stacking!


Once entered, Realms function as a limited Atlas, with a number of nodes rolled based on the size. There is a themed distribution of biomes and encounters, but they are still ultimately random.

The first two tan lines describe the areas of interest and the special enemies you will encounter. The blue lines are Realm specific mechanics that you can interact with directly. The unique-coloured line describes what the Finale will be.

In every Realm, there is a Finale - the final boss encounter, and usually one or two Points of Interest relating to the Realm mechanic. Precursor towers remain, but function differently. They are now exit points for the Realm, connecting to other fragments of time and space. To complete the Realm, you need to finish the Finale encounter and complete a Tower map.

For quality of life you can reroll your options at an escalating cost to gold (providing an end game gold sink), lock an option, and earn free rerolls if you complete 100% of a Realm. As a system this provides significantly more variance than the endless Atlas, and can be easily expanded with future updates adding more Realms.


It’s a lot of fun coming up with Realm ideas. A quick description of some my realm ideas:


Karui Achipelago: Every Karui stronghold will roll a tribe chieftain, and a type of loot or currency they drop. Each one you kill upgrades the surviving chieftans. The last chieftain left will be the strongest, with the best rewards. You’ll be able to mouse over the stronghold to see the item type they drop as a tooltip/modifier.
Forgotten Phaaryl: Somewhere in the Realm will be a Lightless Well zone, which is like the Act 2 Abyss zone, with Lightless Depths and a Well side area at the end. Clicking this Well doesn’t Desecrate an item, but destroys the Untainted Paradise and replaces it with an Abyssal Depths area. So you have a choice between two finales that are good for different reasons.
Cuachic Contingency: The Cuachic Vault’s side vaults have *much* better loot, but are also locked. You get keys from clearing out Vaal Outpost areas.
The Last to Die: A Softcore Only option, it generates a huge Realm, which is rapidly destroyed by The Scourge as you clear it. There are no Towers in this one, and the Finale is just one endless Scourge that invades your map, and rapidly grows in power and reward. Because people will of course devise OP builds, at some point it’ll just instakill you, to kick you out of the Realm and stop infinite farming cheese.
Yaomac’s Nightmare: Not too much mechanically going on here, Chaotic just means the biomes and layouts will be super highly randomised, as fitting for a Trialmaster themed Realm.
Vastiri Archives: ‘Secrets’ is a Realm only currently (That gets destroyed when you finish) used for interactions that you can do any time on the screen. In this case, it opens a shop menu where you can spend it on either currency or jewellery. Some other ideas could include direct crafting on items, or modifying the map.

I also made a Reddit post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExile2/comments/1nabgo3/building_on_the_interludes_i_present_realms_as_a/ncsucnp/?context=3

Nice idea, op! Just hit endgame on an alt and remembered how boring mapping is to me.
But between your idea, https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3827061, and maybe some influence from (idk, i just quickly half-skimmed it tbh) https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3863785, it looks like GGG has gotten some really interesting suggestions for mapping. They don't seem outrageous or completely crappy either!!!

Actually, when I hit Interludes and saw how it was put together (not even mentioning Act IV) I really hoped they saw that one dude's Charter Mapping idea and hoped they'd implement something like that for Endgame.

I really hope ggg can put together a satisfying mapping system. I'm not really expecting 0.4.0 to deliver on it. (But I'm also incredibly pessimistic.)