Citadel farming in Path of Exile 2 is a powerful endgame strategy focused on efficiently locating and clearing Citadel maps to obtain valuable Crisis Fragments, including the Weathered Crisis Fragment. These fragments are essential for unlocking the Burning Monolith and challenging the Arbiter of Ash, one of the game’s pinnacle bosses. Mastering Citadel farming involves optimizing map completion speed, Atlas pathing, and maximizing fragment drops through Waystone manipulation.
To begin, Citadels require players to be capable of defeating Tier 15 Waystone bosses, as these high-tier maps are necessary to access Citadel encounters. If you haven’t reached Tier 15 yet, you can still discover Citadels on your Atlas and save them until you’re ready to run them for substantial profit. The key to efficient farming is revealing as much new area as possible with each map to uncover multiple Citadels per hour. Sticking to a consistent path and exploring new tilesets helps increase your chances of finding these special maps.
A critical factor in maximizing fragment drops is the Waystone Drop Chance, which directly influences how many Crisis Fragments you receive from each Citadel boss. Only suffix modifiers on Waystones affect this drop chance. By corrupting a Waystone with a Vaal Orb, you can sometimes convert all its modifiers into suffixes, creating a six-suffix Waystone that dramatically boosts fragment yields. However, these highly corrupted Waystones significantly increase map difficulty, so only attempt them if your build can handle the challenge.
Waystone Drop Chance breakpoints are important to understand: at around 300% increased chance, you start receiving two fragments per boss instead of one, and pushing this chance to between 750% and 900% can yield three or more fragments. Achieving these breakpoints often requires a specialized Atlas passive tree setup focused on increasing Waystone Modifier Effect and Waystone Quantity. After completing your Citadel runs, it’s advisable to respec your Atlas tree back to your primary farming setup to maintain overall efficiency.
Citadels themselves come in three varieties—Stone, Iron, and Copper—each with unique bosses and biome themes. For example, the Stone Citadel is found in forest and grass biomes and features Count Geonor as its boss. Efficiently defeating these bosses is essential, as they drop the Crisis Fragments you need. Group play can help speed up boss kills, especially on the more difficult six-suffix corrupted Waystones.
Additional farming enhancements include using Precursor Tablets that increase the quantity of Waystones found in your maps, as well as crafting maps with modifiers that boost item quantity and rarity around Citadel locations. However, be cautious with certain map modifiers that scale dangerously with increased effect, such as those that reduce life and energy shield recovery rates, which can become unmanageable at high values.
Maximizing Weathered Crisis Fragment drops through Citadel farming requires a blend of map exploration, Waystone optimization, and build readiness. Focus on unlocking and running Tier 15+ Waystones, corrupting Waystones to maximize suffix modifiers, and investing in Atlas passives that enhance Waystone effects. By combining these strategies with efficient pathing and boss clearing, you can significantly increase your fragment yield, accelerating your journey to the Burning Monolith and the Arbiter of Ash encounter. Players who want to accelerate their build power even further can also consider investing in cheap CFB 26 Coins to enhance crafting capabilities. And as always, staying up to date with community insights can be just as valuable as knowing when to buy NCAA 26 Coins for endgame upgrades.