Blight

Blight is a tower defense mechanic where waves of monsters spawn and attempt to reach and destroy a central pump. Your job is to kill them, slow them down with towers, or both, depending on your strategy. There are two types of blight encounters: the in-map mechanic that spawns randomly in your maps, and Blighted Maps which are dedicated blight encounters.

Blight Rewards

Before diving into setup it's worth knowing what you're playing for:

• General loot: from reward chests at the end of each lane
• Oils: used for ring and amulet anoints
• Blighted Maps: dedicated blight encounters, more blight rewards (oils)
• Blight-Ravaged Maps: the top tier, drop from Blighted Maps or via scarab, can contain Stranglegrasp and other blight uniques

Towers Overview

Towers are built on designated nodes along the blight lanes using currency dropped during the encounter. You don't need to master every tower type but understanding the key ones makes a big difference.

• Empowering Tower: Buffs either other towers, players or enemies. The most important tower for juicing if using the invigoration scarab. Buffs nearby monsters to increase their difficulty and reward. Stack these on overlapping lanes for maximum effect.
• Frost Tower: Slows/freezes monsters, very effective for keeping enemies off the pump. Can be upgraded to glacial cage which is insane for projectile builds and shotgunning.
• Seismic Tower: Stuns monsters, good for buying time on difficult lanes.
• Fireball Tower: Solid damage, good general use if upgraded to meteor with burning ground annoint.
• Summoner Tower: Summons minions to fight, useful filler when you have spare currency.
• Lightning Tower: General damage, not as useful as others. Slowing enemies and killing them is generally faster than relying on towers to kill.

For most strategies you are either stacking Empowering Towers (juicing) or a mix of Frost, Seismic and damage towers (oil/map farming). You generally want to keep Empower, Frost and Seismic towers at level 3.

Ring Anoints

Ring anoints are not required but are a meaningful quality of life upgrade. Order does not matter for ring anoints.

For juicing (currency explosion strategy)

• Verdant + Black: boosts Empowering Tower range

For farming oils and blighted maps

• Silver + Opalescent: boosts Frost Tower
• Indigo + Violet: gives meteor towers burning ground

Atlas Tree

The blight section of the atlas tree serves two different purposes depending on your strategy. Below is a breakdown of each notable and when you want it.

Core nodes worth taking regardless of strategy

• Fungal Bloom: +40% chance for maps to contain a blight encounter and 40% increased chance for scarabs dropped to be blight scarabs. Almost always worth taking.
• Sturdy Construction: 100% increased pump durability and 12% increased damage to blight monsters. Makes encounters significantly more manageable.
• Immune Response: 50% more non-unique monsters and 100% faster spawn rate. More monsters means more loot explosion at the end.
• Templar Ingenuity: Towers can be salvaged after the encounter for additional rewards. Good if you are running a lot of blight maps.
• Blight Spawn: One lane guarded only by blight bosses with 10% chance for an additional reward chest.

For oil and blighted map farming (often skipped for juicing)

• Fungal Horizons: 60% more chance for chests to contain blighted maps, and completing a blight encounter grants Blightreach (maps that drop can convert to blight maps). Core for this strategy.
• Epidemiology: Lucky item varieties in 3 chests and 20% chance for chests to be openable again. Strong for oil volume.

Scarabs

• Blight Scarab: Baseline, simply adds a blight encounter to your map. Generally not used since you can get 100% from the tree.
• Blight Scarab of Blooming: Adds up to 3 unique bosses to blight encounters, and critically all Tier 14+ blighted maps found drop as Blight-Ravaged. Core scarab for anyone farming ravaged maps.
• Blight Scarab of Invigoration: Each Empowering Tower buffs nearby monsters for increased difficulty and reward. Pairs with the juicing strategy, synergises well with Bloodlines scarab.
• Blight Scarab of Blightheart: Encounters have one large blighted chest that grows more rewarding the more enemies are slain, with significantly more wave spawns. Good for juicing but ruins oil/map farming.

Synergies worth knowing

• Cartography Scarab of Risk synergises with overall juicing
• Cartography Scarabs of Multitude and Escalation synergise with Blooming for map drops
• Bloodlines scarab pairs with Invigoration to buff more monster packs
• Titanic scarabs synergise with Blight Spawn but can make encounters very difficult to complete

Strategy 1: Juicing with Blight (Currency Farming)

• Goal: Trigger a massive loot explosion by buffing monsters as much as possible then killing everything at once.
• Best map layouts: Open layouts like Dunes, you want maximum overlap of Empowering Tower range across lanes.
• Atlas tree: Immune Response, Blight Spawn. Skip the oil/map nodes since you only get one large random chest at the end anyway.
• Scarab setup: Blooming + Blightheart + Bloodlines + Invigoration + Risk

1. Full clear the map and complete all altars first
2. Start the blight encounter
3. Build Empowering Towers at lane intersections to overlap coverage as much as possible, upgrade to level 3
4. Kill all monsters as they spawn, keeping the pump alive
5. Complete the encounter and collect the large loot chest at the end

The payoff comes from the combination of buffed monsters and the loot explosion at completion. This strategy works best with strong AoE clear.

Strategy 2: Farming Oils and Blighted Maps

• Goal: Maximise the number of reward chests and blighted map drops from each encounter.
• Best map layouts: Narrow layouts like Toxic Sewers or Core, fewer lanes means easier to defend and more focused chest rewards. Exception: if you are specifically farming Blight-Ravaged maps you can use open layouts like Dunes.
• Atlas tree: Take all blight nodes: Fungal Bloom, Fungal Horizons, Epidemiology, Sturdy Construction are all core here.
• Scarab setup: Blooming (if targeting ravaged maps) + Escalation + Multitude. Do not use Blightheart for this strategy.

How to run it for oils

1. Clear the map fully first
2. Run the blight normally, defend the pump with Frost and damage towers
3. Loot all chests at completion

How to run it specifically for blighted maps

1. Rush to start the blight encounter as early as possible
2. Kill as few monsters as possible during the encounter. You want the Blightreach buff from Fungal Horizons active when monsters die after the encounter
3. Complete the blight but do not loot yet, as it wastes time on the buff
4. Run around the map killing remaining monsters, prioritising Multitude packs
5. With Blightreach active, map drops can convert to blighted maps and all T14+ blighted maps drop as Blight-Ravaged due to the Blooming scarab

Blighted Maps and Blight-Ravaged Maps

Blighted and Blight-Ravaged maps are dedicated blight encounters with a 5 minute defend timer (can be shortened via anoints).

Anointing blight maps

• Silver: increased quantity
• Opalescent: lucky chests
• Teal: monsters spawn faster, shortens the timer
• Clear / Sepia / Amber: makes the encounter easier to complete

Normal blighted maps can be anointed once. Blight-Ravaged maps can be anointed three times.

You cannot use scarabs on blighted maps. The only additional juice you can add is Sacrifice Fragments (Atziri encounter fragments) which add a quantity bonus.

To be able to drop tainted oils you need to corrupt the map first. Be aware corruption can add dangerous mods so make sure your build can handle it before committing.