Change history (2 entries)
- 0.5.0 2026-05-29 Full Atlas overhaul tied to the endgame rework, introducing the Precursor Fortress as the main progression hub and expanding the Atlas Passive Tree to roughly 300 points
- 0.2.0 2025-04-04 Tower and Tablet overhaul, Towers became less frequent but more powerful, with Tablets providing more mechanics that scale further with higher Waystone tiers
Atlas, Waystones, Towers & Tablets Guide
Waystones
Waystones are the items you use to open Atlas maps, determining a map’s tier, difficulty, and reward scaling, with up to six possible modifiers. Waystones now always drop at your current map tier or higher, and Map Bosses guarantee a Waystone one tier higher than the map you’re in. The highest tier, T16, can’t drop naturally at all, it only comes from corrupting a T15 Waystone with a Vaal Orb.
Precursor Towers
Towers are special map nodes scattered across the Atlas. Entering one requires a Waystone, and clearing it means killing all Rare monsters to unlock the Precursor Altar at its center. How many modifiers your Waystone carries into a Tower determines how many Tablet slots you unlock for it: zero modifiers gives one slot, three or more modifiers gives a second, and six modifiers (a fully-rolled Waystone) unlocks all three.
Completing a Tower reveals a large region of the Atlas around it, which is why chasing Towers early is one of the highest-value habits in endgame mapping, it’s how you find your route, not just a bonus objective.
Precursor Tablets
Tablets are the tool for applying a specific mechanic (Ritual, Breach, Expedition, Delirium, and more) to every map within a completed Tower’s radius, rather than hoping it rolls naturally. Each Tablet carries 10 charges, consuming one per map run within range, and a Tower holds up to three Tablets at once. Effects stack, running two or three Tablets for the same mechanic across overlapping Towers compounds your farming density substantially. Mechanic-specific Tablets drop from doing that mechanic, Breach Tablets drop from Breach monsters, Expedition Tablets from Expedition, and Overseer Tablets (which add Strongboxes, Shrines, and Essences) from Map Bosses.
The Precursor Fortress
The first Tower you complete reveals the Precursor Fortress nearby, the main hub for earning Atlas Passive Tree points and the primary path toward the game’s two central pinnacle encounters, Arbiter of Ash and Arbiter of Divinity. Inside, activating Precursor Relays grants Atlas passive points, and progressing deeper requires locating keys tied to the Fortress’s storyline.
Atlas Passive Tree
Roughly 300 points that modify how your maps behave rather than your character directly, affecting Strongboxes, Shrines, Azmerian Spirits, Essences, Rogue Exiles, Summoning Circles, and the various league mechanic clusters (Ritual, Breach, Delirium, and so on). Points come almost entirely from Precursor Fortress progression.
Practical tips
- Don’t run every map inside the Fortress individually, path to your quest objectives via the shortest route, since defeating the Fortress’s pinnacle boss lets you auto-complete entire unexplored sections at once.
- Prioritize Waystone-sustain Atlas passives before specializing into a specific mechanic, running out of Waystones before reaching red-tier maps stalls your whole run.
- Pick one “money mechanic” to build your Atlas tree and Tablet stock around rather than spreading investment thin across everything, specialization consistently out-earns generalist setups.
- See the Masters of the Atlas guide for how Jado, Doryani, and Hilda layer on top of this system, they modify individual maps rather than whole Tower regions.