Keepers of the Flame Mechanic Guide

Introduction

Keepers of the Flame is an updated version of the beloved Breach mechanic. You’ll be killing hordes of monsters as fast as you can, while taking on Unstable Breaches, Breach Hives, and Hive Fortresses. In addition to tons of loot dropped by swarms of monsters, you’ll be rewarded with the use of powerful Genesis Tree Crafts!

Changes in 2.38

• Keepers has gone core, replacing the original Breach mechanic
• Multiple Unstable Breaches can now spawn in a single area
• Breach Hives and their walls are smaller, and the walls are easier to destroy
• Grafts have been removed
• The Genesis Tree has fewer points available in each tree, is weaker, and starts fully grown
• Scarabs have been added

Encountering the Hive

You’ll first encounter Ailith in Mud Flats in Act 6. From that zone onwards, you’ll be able to encounter Unstable Breaches and Hives.

In zones that have a Breach, you’ll find one of four encounters: Hives, Breach Hands, a Hive Fortress, or a Hive Colony.

Each of these encounters will have you slaying hordes of Hive monsters – rewarding you with Hiveblood, Wombgifts, and loot!

The Monastery

After meeting Ailith, she will grant you access to the Monastery of the Keepers – a zone you can visit to cash in your Hiveblood and Wombgifts at the Genesis Tree.

Hives

Hives are the most common type of Breach you will encounter. They are structures consisting of a number of walls surrounding a central Breach. As you approach, any walls your character gets near are burned down and destroyed. Destroying more walls before starting the encounter will scale up the difficulty and the rewards.

Once you begin the encounter, you will have to kill several waves of monsters while protecting Ailith from dying. There are interactable abilities located in the environment that can help you kill the monsters faster, or keep Ailith safe. Use them liberally!

Ailith has health that displays above the wave number, displaying the number of hits she can take before being defeated. If she is defeated, you will fail the encounter.

Unstable Breaches

Unstable Breaches are rarer than Hives, and are similar to the old Breach Mechanic. When you touch an Unstable Breach an expanding zone will appear, revealing swarms of Hive monsters. You’ll need to kill the Hive monsters as fast as possible, or the Breach will close.

Your progress is tracked with a bar on the bottom of the screen – if the tracker catches up to you before you max out the bar, the Breach will immediately close.

f you manage to max out the bar, either several Rare monsters will spawn where the Breach Hand was. Defeating these enemies closes the Breach.

Once these enemies have spawned, you’re no longer on a timer – you can take as long as you need to fight the boss.

Vruun, Marshal of Xesht

When you complete the progress bar and clear an Unstable Breach, there’s a chance that instead of several Rare monsters spawning, a Boss will spawn instead – Vruun, Marshal of Xesht.

Vruun always drops a random Breach ring upon defeat.

Hive Fortresses

Once you reach maps, you can begin to find Hive Fortresses. These are portals to mini-zones filled with Swarms of Hive monsters, and a Hive encounter with 24 waves of monsters at the end.

Hive Fortresses count as being a part of the Map they are in, and inherit all map modifiers – allowing you to scale the difficulty and rewards.

Fortress Loot

Loot dropped by monsters in a Fortress will be collected by the game invisibly, and will drop back inside the Map in one giant loot explosion upon completion of the Fortress.

Grasping Coffers

Scattered across the Fortress are Grasping Coffers that can drop Wombgifts and Foulborn Uniques – make sure to loot as many of them as you can!

Escaping the Fortress

This zone ends with Ailith burning the zone down, and you have to race back to the exit. You will take continuous pulses of damage during this time, and monsters will continuously spawn.

All paths except one path will be blocked. Be sure to check the mini-map – hand icons will show which paths are blocked, allowing you to quickly figure out the path back to the entrance!

Hive Colony

In tier 13+ maps, you have a chance to encounter a Hive Colony instead of a Hive Fortress.

A Hive Colony is similar to a regular Fortress, but with a pinnacle boss fight encounter against both Esh and Tul in place of the wave defense.

You can also access a Hive Colony by placing a Hivebrain Gland in your map device. This map fragment can randomly drop from Hive Fortress encounters in high-tier maps.

Hiveblood

You collect Hiveblood from killed Hive enemies. Hiveblood is automatically collected, up to a maximum capacity of 100,000 – shared across all characters in a league.

You’ll need to visit the Genesis Tree in the Monastery to spend your Hiveblood – any excess blood beyond the cap that you earn is lost.

Genesis Tree

The Genesis Tree is your primary source of rewards from the Keepers mechanic.

Wombgifts that drop off of Hive monsters can be placed in the Genesis Tree, and then fed Hiveblood. Doing so will create showers of loot – the type of loot you get depending on the type of Wombgift used and your allocated passives on the Genesis Tree Passive Tree

Passive Tree

Each type of Wombgift has its own passive tree associated with it. These passives influence the type, quantity, and quality of rewards received from Wombgifts. These can be anything from weighting the modifiers on equipment, to additional currency items.

Points for this Passive Tree are unlocked as you complete Hive encounters and spend Hiveblood at the Genesis Tree

For more information on the Genesis Tree, check out the “Genesis Tree” section of this guide:

Genesis Tree

Foulborn Orbs

Foulborn Orbs are a type of currency that can be obtained via Currency Wombgifts. These orbs function the same as their counterparts, but with higher level modifiers being more likely.

Breach Rings

Breach rings are a rings on a special base type, available exclusivly from Breaches.

Breach rings have an implicit that increases your maximum resistance, as well as preventing damage modifiers of other damage types from rolling.

Foulborn Uniques

Foulborn Uniques can be acquired from the Genesis Tree or from Grasping Coffers. These Unique items have one of their modifiers replaced at random with a new Foulborn modifier. With a specific Genesis Tree passive, it’s possible for a Unique to gain multiple Foulborn modifiers.

The pool of uniques that can become Foulborn, the modifiers that can be removed, and the modifiers they can be replaced with have all been hand-picked by GGG. This means that not all Uniques can become Foulborn, not all modifiers can be removed, and only a handful of modifiers can be added per Unique.

These Foulborn variants of existing uniques can be very powerful – especially with a downside removed or a new build-enabling modifier added.

Conclusion

Be sure to check out the other pages of this guide, covering even more topics related to Keepers of the Flame! This guide will continue to be updated in the future – if you have any feedback, or find something cool you want to share, head on over to the PoE Vault Discord, and let me know!

Good luck, and have fun farming Keepers of the Flame!