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Path of Exile 3.29 Curse of the Allflame: The Complete League Start Guide
5 min read
Last updated July 21, 2026
Path of Exile's next league, Curse of the Allflame, goes live on July 24 at 1 PM PDT, which means the ladder wipes, the economy resets to zero and a few hundred thousand people all roll a fresh character on the same afternoon. If you have played a league start before you know the drill. If you have not, the short version is that this is the one moment in the whole cycle where everybody is equal and everything is worth something, and how you spend the first few days shapes the next three months.
Below is the info on what the league actually is, what changed under the hood, and a plan for the opening that does not assume you can no-life the first weekend. Some of the finer numbers will shift in the day-one patch, that always happens, so treat the tuning as provisional and the mechanics as solid.
What the league is: diving, light and the dark that hates it
The headline mechanic is a diving league, and it is a more nervous one than it first sounds. You find Charts scattered across Wraeclast, take them to a corsair captain named Valerie, and sail her ship, The Sovereign, out to a dive site. Then you go down.
Underwater, you are wrapped in a bubble of Allflame light. The light is the whole game. It holds back the crushing pressure of the deep and it keeps the Abyssal things off you, the creatures down there hate the light and will not close while it burns. So you descend, you crack open sunken wrecks and lost chests, you grab what you can, and the entire time the light is fading. When it goes, the dark comes in, the pressure returns and whatever has been circling your bubble stops circling. Your out is the Bathysphere, and getting back to it before the light dies is the tension the whole league is built on.
It is a greed mechanic, in other words. Every extra chest is a few more seconds spent away from safety. Stay too long chasing one more wreck and you do not lose the loot, you lose the character, which is a very Path of Exile way to design a treasure hunt.
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The permanent stuff: what actually matters long term
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Leagues come and go, but every expansion folds a few things into the core game forever, and this is where 3.29 is properly meaty. The diving is the seasonal toy. These are the changes you will still feel in leagues from now on.
The Abyss rework. Abyss is getting reworked into a proper endgame pillar rather than a cracked line in the ground you occasionally follow. Expect deeper Abyssal Depths side-areas and a bigger payoff structure at the end of a chain. If you have ignored Abyss for years because the reward never justified the detour, this is the patch that changes that calculation.
The Legion rework. Legion is being reworked too, with changes to the Timeless Emblems and the generals you fight. Legion has always been one of the best raw-currency and experience mechanics when it lines up, so a rework here matters for anyone who farms it, and the early league economy tends to reward whoever figures out the new numbers first.
Mercenaries of Trarthus return. The mercenary system comes back, letting you recruit allies to fight alongside you. How central this is to the endgame depends on tuning, but hireable help changes how solo players approach the harder content, and it is worth testing early rather than dismissing.
A new Scion Ascendancy. The Scion gets a new Ascendancy themed around the corsair and the sea. New Ascendancies are always worth a hard look at league start because they are fresh, un-optimised and occasionally accidentally overpowered before the first round of nerfs. If you like being ahead of the meta rather than copying it, this is where you experiment.
A new endgame system. There is a new endgame layer tied to The Sovereign and its map device, alongside the usual pile of transfigured skills, reworked unique items and balance changes. The full shape of it will be clearer once people are actually in maps, so this is one to watch rather than plan around.
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Your league start plan
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Here is the thing nobody tells new league starters: the first week is not about the league mechanic at all. Valerie and her diving are lovely, but on day one your job is to get through the campaign, hit maps and establish an income. The Charts will keep. A rushed, half-leveled character drowning in the first dive site helps nobody.
Pick a build that can start itself. League start is the worst possible time to play a build that needs a specific unique to function, because that unique costs a fortune in the first 48 hours when everyone wants it and nobody has currency. The specs that win league start are the ones that come online from the tree and common gear, then transition into the expensive version once you can afford it. If you are eyeing the new Scion Ascendancy, check whether it stands up on its own before you commit, or keep a proven starter in your back pocket.
Rush the campaign, do not sightsee. The players deep into maps on day one are not better than you, they are just not stopping to read. Know your act order, skip the optional zones, grab your Ascendancy points and your key passives and get to maps. The league economy rewards being early more than being thorough.
Get your Ascendancy done fast. The Labyrinth is a wall for a lot of players and a huge power spike, so clearing your Ascendancy trials and Lab early is one of the biggest single jumps you can make in the opening days. If the Lab is where you always stall, that is exactly the kind of thing worth handing off so you are not stuck at half power while the rest of the league pulls ahead.
Establish currency before you touch the league mechanic. You want a baseline income, a few chaos in the bank and a rough plan, before you start sinking time into dives. The diving is a currency multiplier, not a currency starter, and doing it broke and underleveled is how you feed your loot to the dark.
Where the grind gets optional
Every league start has the same two walls, and they are the same two every single time: the slog of leveling a fresh character through a campaign you have run a dozen times, and the currency grind that stands between a functional build and a good one.
Neither wall is hard, exactly. They are just long, and they land in the one week where being ahead matters most. That is the whole reason a service economy exists around this game. If you would rather skip straight to maps on a leveled character and start the league where the fun actually begins, or you want a currency and item head start so your build comes online in days instead of weeks, that is what our PoE teams handle every league launch. The people racing the ladder are not all grinding it out the hard way, and the ones enjoying their build on day three are usually the ones who did not spend day one and two in the campaign.
None of that is required to have a good league. Plenty of people love the slow build-up and that is a completely valid way to play. But if your free time is the bottleneck rather than your skill, buying past the boring part is what keeps a league fun instead of a chore.
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The dates that matter
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- July 16: the reveal stream, where the full mechanics and patch notes landed
- July 20, 3 PM PDT: Mirage league (3.28) ends, so wrap anything you still want
- July 24, 1 PM PDT: Curse of the Allflame goes live, fresh economy, fresh ladder
- Around early November: the league is expected to run its usual four-month cycle before the next one
That gives you a short gap between Mirage ending and Allflame starting, which is the ideal window to lock in a build, watch a leveling guide and be ready to roll the moment servers open rather than spending launch day reading.
Skip the slow part
A fresh league is the best time to play Path of Exile and the worst time to have a day job. If the campaign grind or the currency wall is what stops you enjoying a league start, our PoE teams cover leveling, currency, item farming, boss carries and the Lab from day one, so you land in maps with a working build while everyone else is still in Act 3.
FAQ
WHEN DOES POE 3.29 CURSE OF THE ALLFLAME RELEASE?
July 24, 2026 at 1 PM PDT. The reveal stream was July 16, and the previous league, Mirage, ends July 20 at 3 PM PDT. The new league is expected to run its usual four-month cycle into early November
WHAT IS THE CURSE OF THE ALLFLAME LEAGUE MECHANIC?
A diving mechanic. You find Charts, sail Valerie's ship The Sovereign to dive sites, and descend inside a bubble of Allflame light that holds back the deep and the Abyssal creatures. You loot sunken wrecks while the light fades, then race back to the Bathysphere before the dark closes in. It is a risk-reward greed mechanic where staying too long can kill you
WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST PERMANENT CHANGES IN 3.29?
The Abyss and Legion reworks, the return of the Mercenaries of Trarthus, a new Scion Ascendancy themed around the corsair, a new endgame system tied to The Sovereign, plus transfigured skills and reworked uniques. These stay in the core game after the league ends
WHAT IS THE BEST LEAGUE START BUILD FOR CURSE OF THE ALLFLAME?
Full build tuning depends on the day-one patch, but the rule holds every league: pick a build that comes online from the passive tree and common gear rather than one that needs an expensive unique to function. The new Scion Ascendancy is worth testing, but keep a proven self-sufficient starter as a fallback
IS THE NEW SCION ASCENDANCY GOOD?
It is too early to say, since new Ascendancies are only fully judged once people are deep into maps. New Ascendancies are frequently strong at launch before the first balance pass, so it is worth experimenting with early if you like being ahead of the meta
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