Maven’s Invitations Explained

Maven's Invitations are a huge part of Path of Exile Endgame content. They are craftable items you access via speaking with Kirac to open portals to The Maven's Crucible. Within the Crucible you fight specific bosses grouped together depending on the invitation. These invitations can be used only after The Maven witnessed you defeating the bosses required for the invitation (by activating the Maven's Beacon on your Map Device before opening the portals).

Maven's Invitation Rewards

Maven's Invitations are the only way to farm Crescent Splinters. 10 Crescent Splinters can be merged into The Maven's Writ, a fragment you can use in your Map Device to open portals towards "Absence of Mercy and Empathy," where you can fight The Maven herself. It is worth noting the invitations can be rolled with normal maps to get more quantity and thus more loot, which includes the number of Crescent Splinters dropped.

Additionally, invitations can drop all boss specific loot from the bosses present in the fight. This is why the optimal boss farming strategy is to rotate between the Bosses (witnessed by The Maven) and the Invitations to double the amount of loot you get.

Questline and Maven's Invitation: The Atlas

This invitation is the most commonly used. This is the final step for unlocking The Maven fight. Once you reach Yellow Tier Maps (Tier 6+ Maps), you encounter The Envoy randomly in your maps and at some point, The Maven appears during a Map Boss Encounter. Defeating this Map Boss rewards you with the quest item The Maven's Beacon, which unlocks the ability for you to invite The Maven to witness Map Bosses fights through a toggle option on your Map Device. Choosing to "Maven-witness" a Boss means you can't activate the other Eldritch Bosses' Beacons, which add a massive amount of density and loot to your maps.

She will ask you through a questline to kill 3, 4, 5 and 6 different Map Bosses in succession, then kill them in The Maven's Crucible. After this you gain access to the 10 Map Bosses craftable invitations, which drop Crescent Splinters to access The Maven. Every Maven's Crucible step rewards you with 1 Atlas Passive Point and 2 Atlas Refund Passive Points, for a total of 5 Atlas Passive Points when you successfully win your first 10 Map Bosses invitation challenge.

The Maven wants to witness you kill 10 different Map Bosses before you can open a craftable invitation. This invitation consists of defeating all of the 10 Map Bosses The Maven witnessed altogether. They can be released by pairs in succession or all at once randomly. You can track your progress towards this invitation by opening your Atlas (Hotkey "G" by default) and hovering on the Maven's Beacon at the bottom of your Atlas.

Endgame Maven's Invitations

These invitations are part of the pinnacle content in Path of Exile by facing you off against multiple endgame Bosses at once. Each invitation completed for the first time rewards you 1 Atlas Passive Point and 2 Atlas Refund Passive Points. You can open an invitation once you witnessed all the Bosses required for it. Completing the fight or using the 6 portals will reset all the witnesses for the invitation. You can follow your Maven witness progression by hovering your cursor on the Maven's Beacon on the Atlas (Hotkey "G" by default). Invitations you already completed once during the league are brighter than the ones you never completed.

Farming specific invitations is a great way to generate currencies if you have a character built for bosskilling or an "all-rounder" build. Rolling them for maximum quantity is very important since it affects the amount of loot you get, including Crescent Splinters. However, take care about the modifiers you roll and make sure you can handle the fight! Similarly, using the Atlas Passives related to The Maven's Crucible is very important to maximize your gains.

A normal quality (white) invitation rewards you with 2-3 Crescent Splinters on average while a 60%+ quantity rare one with Keystones allocated can give you as much as 8-9 Crescent Splinters. As it is considered a harder fight, The Feared drops slightly more Crescent Splinters to the point you can get a full The Maven's Writ and a few Crescent Splinters on top if you roll it well and can handle the fight!

The Hidden is quite hard compared to regular Breachlords since they have a way higher monster level. Generally speaking, invitations can be very tough depending of the modifiers you craft on the invitation, the random release order of the Bosses, and also due to the arena being a small circle in combination with some nasty attacks from the Bosses. The usual strategy is to burst down a dangerous boss that initially spawn and leave less dangerous ones alive so you can focus on more dangerous bosses one after another without stacking them together.

The Feared invitation is often considered one of the hardest fight in the game since you have to fight simultaneously some of the hardest Bosses in Path of Exile: Uber Atziri, The Elder, The Shaper, Chayula and Cortex! It is very important to check out the position of every Boss before launching the fight since the order of release can change and some combos can be really tough to deal with. Note that defeating Uber Elder counts as witnessing both The Elder & The Shaper at once.

Atlas Passives

You can find a few passives and notables related to Maven's Invitations located at the middle top of the Atlas Passive Tree. Most importantly a Keystone to optimize your Boss farming:

• Destructive Play
  • The Maven casts Up the Stakes, summoning 1 to 3 additional Bosses when Witnessing Map Bosses.
  • Modifiers to the Final Map Boss in each Map also apply to these Summoned Bosses.

Summary

Maven's Invitations are a huge part of Path of Exile Endgame content and farming them has proven to be a viable Currency Farming Strategy without a doubt! Invitations also made Bossfarming a more than ever good activity to do and put Bosskiller characters on the front scene.

Credits

Written by Chewingnom.
Reviewed by Facefoot.