Making currency early in a league can be challenging, especially when scarab prices are volatile and traditional farms feel weak. This guide breaks down the exact strategy I used to farm over 100 divines in the first two days of the league. The core strategy revolves around hunting mercenaries on Mesa maps with the Trove Scarab of Infamy, combined with POE currency a Templar Astrolabe scarab farming setup. This approach works well for mapping builds and requires minimal investment.

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Why Mercenary Hunting Works

Mercenaries are one of the strongest league-start strategies in Path of Exile 3.29. They are effective at all levels of investment and all tiers of mapping. The key is speed—rush in, kill the mercenary, grab the loot, and get out.

The strategy works because mercenaries drop full rucksacks of currency items. With the right Atlas passive points, every mercenary drops a full rucksack. This provides a consistent stream of raw chaos, scarabs, and occasional divine orbs.

Early League Setup: White and Yellow Maps

The Mesa Rush Strategy

In the first day of the league, I focused on burning through white and yellow Mesa maps. The goal is simple:

Enter the map
Kill the mercenary
Collect the rucksack
Exit the map

This generated my first four divines, which I used to upgrade my gear and move on to tier 16 maps.

Why Mesa

Mesa is an ideal map for this strategy because of its small, linear layout. You can find the mercenary quickly, kill them, and get out without wasting time on clearing the entire map. The bottom-left quadrant also contains anomalies, which can provide additional rewards.

Tier 16 Setup: Adding the Trove Scarab of Infamy

How the Scarab Works

The Trove Scarab of Infamy spawns two wild mercenaries next to your main mercenary. These wild mercenaries have some important properties:

They drop two pieces of gear each
You cannot select their loot—it is random
They can drop full rucksacks, unique rings, or other valuable items
They do not have icons, making them difficult to target

The Main Problem

If you kill the main mercenary first, the wild mercenaries become untargetable NPCs, and you lose their loot. You must focus on killing the wild mercenaries before the main one.

Workaround for Damage Over Time Builds

If you are running a damage over time build, you can apply a dot to the wild mercenaries before killing the main one. If the dot would have killed them, they will still drop their loot even after becoming untargetable.

Why the Scarab Is Still Worth It

Even if you can only kill the wild mercenaries 20% of the time, the scarab is still valuable because it turns the main mercenary infamous. Infamous mercenaries drop more expensive loot. The scarab costs only 1 to 4 chaos, making it dirt cheap for the value it provides.

Combining with the Templar Astrolabe Strategy

The Scarab Drop Modifier

The Templar Astrolabe can spawn the modifier "map boss drops two to three additional scarabs." While uncommon, this modifier can be extremely profitable when combined with the domination scarab setup.

The Domination Scarab of Terror Setup

When you get the scarab drop modifier, use the Domination Scarab of Terror with four domination scarabs and domination nodes on your Atlas tree. This spawns 15 bosses per map, each dropping three scarabs.

You can sometimes stack this modifier. In one map, I stacked it to eight and made over 100 scarabs in a single map.

Combining Both Strategies

The mercenary hunting strategy pairs perfectly with the Templar Astrolabe strategy. I combined them, and the results were way too good to ignore. The mercenary farm provides consistent currency while the scarab mod provides occasional massive payouts.

Anomalies: An Additional Bonus

Anomalies are quadrant-specific. Running Mesa means you will only uncover anomalies in the bottom-left area. While there are not many great anomalies in this quadrant, there are some decent ones:

**Heist Anomaly**: A fully revealed wing of a blueprint
**Manor Fire Anomaly**: Offers a unique item with the option to skip up to eight times

I found three uniques worth two divines each, though the gold cost was too high to buy them at the time. The anomaly remains available as long as you do not skip it, so you can return later when you have enough gold.

The Atlas Tree

Mercenary Nodes

The most important nodes are in the mercenary cluster:

100% chance for mercenary spawn
Mercenaries drop two items each
Mercenaries drop a full rucksack
Increased chance for items to be unique

Additional Nodes

Eternal world altars for scarab juice chance
Emphasize stability to keep the Templar Astrolabe on Mesa
Increased chance to drop elder and conqueror maps
Shrine nodes for more shrines or more power

The tree works for both the mercenary hunting part and the domination scarab farming part, so you do not need to switch between two separate trees.

Loot Data from 100 Mercenaries

I recorded the loot from 100 mercenary kills to show what you can expect. The session took about an hour and a half with a map cost of 400 chaos. The loot returned was 2,100 chaos, resulting in a profit of 1,700 chaos, which was around 17 divines at current prices.

On average, I got about five chaos per mercenary without a large drop. Every now and then, a large drop brought the average up massively. In these 100 maps, I got a max-rolled Death Rush, three risk scarabs, three divines (one in a stack of two), and two catalyzing scarabs. None of these seemed too lucky to me—I actually think I got a higher rate of divines when I was running maps normally.

Alternative Mercenary Strategies

Unique Farming

Some players are farming uniques by combining the Trove Scarab of Infamy with the Scarab of Renown, which makes all items dropped by mercenaries unique. The wild mercenaries inherit this effect, creating a potential unique farm.

This strategy is similar to the rucksack rush, but focuses on unique items instead of currency. It may be worth exploring if you are looking for high-value unique drops.

The State of Early Endgame

Scarab Market Issues

Scarab prices are fluctuating massively hour by hour. There is no good scarab farm right now, and the lack of supply is inflating prices. This makes investment costs higher and makes farms feel worse for average players.

Low Floor on Mechanics

The floor for many league mechanics is way too low. Mechanics need specific scarabs to feel good, but if that mechanic is not the best use of those scarabs, it becomes dead content.

Aspirational Farms

There are few aspirational farms right now. When scarab farms are nerfed, the issues become more apparent. The operatives voyage might solve some problems, but if it is too good, it becomes the only aspirational farm, which is also an issue.

Best Farms for Building Currency

Based on my experience, the best farms for building your first bit of currency are:

Mercenaries: Consistent and low investment
Red Altars: Good for steady income
Legion: Insane right now and scaling well

Final Thoughts

Mercenary hunting with the Trove Scarab of Infamy is one of the strongest league-start strategies in PoE 3.29. It requires minimal investment, works well with mapping builds, and provides consistent currency returns.

Combining this strategy with buy POE orbs the Templar Astrolabe scarab farming setup can create even greater profits. While the early endgame has some issues, mercenary hunting remains a reliable way to build your first stash of divines.