- Systems
- Gameplay
Maximizing Rewards
Trial of the Ancestors has many possible rewards – a small number of which are incredibly valuable.
However, the rewards you get aren’t completely random. Most rewards are tied to individual Tribes, and with clever manipulation of Tournament brackets and opponents, you can massively increase your chances to score a huge payday!
This guide will cover all the different tricks and tactics you can use to cash in farming Tournaments!
Ranking and Rounds
Reward quality and quantity scale with your Ranking. The higher your ranking, the more often you’ll see rare rewards – and in higher stack sizes.
Reaching a high rank is key to getting good rewards out of Trials.
Within any given Trial, better rewards will be offered in later rounds – with some of the rarest rewards being extremely unlikely to show up anytime sooner than Round 6.
This means it’s very important that you actually win all of your Tournaments. Not just to Rank up and get better rewards, but also to ensure you get as many late-round wins as possible.
Manipulating Tournament Brackets
Certain tribe uniques – and some of the rare “Makanga” tattoos – that can be obtained by beating specific Tribes in matches are worth significant amounts of currency.
By intentionally battling and knocking out the Tribes with less valuable rewards, you can ensure that these tribes make it to later rounds, where you’re more likely to see these lucrative payouts.
I’ve gone through and rated each Tribe based on how valuable their rewards are:
- Green Tribes are the tribes with the most lucrative Rewards. You want to keep these tribes alive to the very end, only battling them when they have one of these lucrative rewards, or offer a comparable amount of raw currency.
- Yellow Tribes have some decent rewards, but nothing incredibly lucrative. You don’t want to go out of your way to knock out these Tribes, but you’ll be just fine battling them if they have a decent currency reward or offer a lot of Favour.
- Red Tribes have none (or very few) valuable rewards to speak of. You want to prioritize knocking them out of tournaments as fast as possible, in order to ensure that other tribes persist to the final rounds.
When selecting which tribe to fight, they are always listed in the same order, top to bottom. I’ve listed the Tribes in the same order, so it’s convenient for you to quickly refer to when selecting opponents.
| Leader | Tribe | Valuable Rewards | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Kaom |  | Ngamahu | Tattoo of the Ngamahu Makanga |
 | Rakiata |  | Tasalio | Tattoo of the Tasalio Makanga, Rakiata’s Dance |
 | Ikiaho |  | Arohongui | Tattoo of the Arohongui Makanga |
 | Kiloava |  | Valako | |
 | Tawhanuku |  | Hinekora | Tattoo of the Hinekora Makanga |
 | Maata |  | Tawhoa | |
 | Utula |  | Kitava | |
 | Ahuana |  | Ramako | Tattoo of the Ramako Makanga |
 | Akoya |  | Tukohama | |
 | Kahuturoa |  | Rongokurai |
Forfeiting Matches
Because the Tournaments are double-elimination, you’re allowed one single loss.
Once you’ve reached the point where you’re consistently winning every battle, instead of using this as a safety net, you can tactically use your one loss to your advantage by intentionally forfeiting a match.
The quickest way to intentionally forfeit is to logout after starting a match.
Re-Rolling Rewards
The most common use for a forfeit is in the final round, to re-roll a bad reward. Since the final reward has the best chance to be something valuable, allowing you to use your one loss as a one-time reward re-roll, once per tournament. This can effectively double the amount of valuable loot you get from Tournaments!
In this instance, I re-rolled from a worthless unique, into a divine:
Saving Tribes
Despite your best efforts to eliminate sub-par tribes, you can end up in a situation where there are 3-4 Tribes left in the Tournament – only one of which is a Tribe with a good reward. And that Tribe already has one loss.
What do you do?
Well, another good use for a tactical forfeit is to give a free win to a Tribe you want to stay in the Tournament. Depending on how many rounds are left, doing this may guarantee that Tribe is the last Tribe standing.
This can be incredibly powerful if used to save the Ramako Tribe towards the end of the Tournament, dramatically increasing your chances of getting their valuable Makanga Tattoo.
Dragging out Tournaments
You might think that every Tournament will end up having the same number of rounds – but this isn’t actually true! Depending on the number of remaining Tribes, one may end up getting a “bye” each round – if the AI ends up eliminating Tribes quickly, instead of stacking up single losses on Tribes, you can end up in a situation where the Tournament drags out for a few extra rounds.
This can be incredibly lucrative, as with each passing round, the rewards get better and better.
While this is mostly pure chance, you can sometimes intentionally forfeit to help drag the tournament out for a few extra rounds.
The situation you are trying to create is a late round with two tribes remaining – neither of which have a loss. This situation means four additional rounds, the first three of which you’ll get a selection of two rewards – which is incredibly powerful when late-round rewards can be so lucrative!
The way to engineer this situation is to forfeit to an opponent that has no losses late in the tournament, when doing so will set you up for extra rounds.
For instance, if three tribes remain, and two have no losses, and one has a loss. You simply surrender to one of the Tribes with no losses, and if you win the 50/50, you drag out the Tournament for four late-round rewards!
Conclusion
Be sure to check out the other pages of this guide, covering even more topics related to Trials of the Ancestors! 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 Trials of the Ancestors!
