A Path of Exile strategy is not a permanent data row
Grinding Gear Games' 3.28.0 content update extensively changed the Atlas and map interaction. It changed maps, Map Device behavior, quality effects, reward modifiers, Atlas passives, and scarabs. The 3.27.0c patch provides another example of scarab effects or limits changing inside a release line. A guide written around older compasses, map layouts, or scarab tiers can therefore become structurally wrong, not merely slightly mispriced.
GGG: Content Update 3.28.0
GGG: 3.27.0c patch notes
Separate rules, market observations, and player observations
Patch notes describe rules and changes. Trade listings are timestamped market observations. Your completed map log describes a particular build, execution, loot filter, and session boundary. None can substitute for the others. A patch note that improves one scarab does not publish its market price or your net return; a listed price does not prove an item will sell; one lucky batch does not establish a universal drop rate.
What the retained tool calculates
The calculator performs batch accounting. It adds direct costs, subtracts them from gross return, divides the totals by maps, and normalizes them by complete elapsed time. It shows positive, break-even, and loss states without censoring a negative number. A second person can reproduce the calculation from a share URL and inspect every numeric input.
For a side-by-side boundary comparison, see Diablo 4 vs Path of Exile: Evidence Boundaries.
What the retained tool refuses to infer
It does not multiply Pack Size, Atlas passives, and scarabs into one universal currency probability. It does not assign a fixed Chaos value to a Divine Orb, predict a Stacked Deck outcome, rank map layouts, price unsold items, or fetch an hourly market feed. Those tasks require exact versioned mechanics, a stated market snapshot, and often a complete outcome distribution that the site does not possess.
The minimum evidence packet
- league, patch, platform, verification date, and exact scenario label;
- map count, failures or abandoned maps, Atlas state, scarabs/fragments, and relevant rules;
- gross-return inclusion rules and a timestamped value source;
- map/preparation, fragment/scarab, and other direct costs for the same batch;
- a complete time boundary including preparation, loading, deaths, stash work, valuation, and trading where applicable;
- the raw batch log, share URL, and correction note when an update changes the comparison.
Why four older articles were consolidated
The former currency, route, Atlas/scarab, and Stacked Deck articles repeated fixed prices, removed systems, old map claims, unsupported drop rates, invented route tables, and prescriptive profit rankings. Cross-linking those pages amplified the same weak assumptions. They now resolve to one source-linked workflow that remains valid when the user supplies a new batch rather than when an editor guesses the next economy.