¶ Overview
Angler's Plait is one of the rarest and most sought-after secret items in Path of Exile. It is a unique Unset Ring, always dropping as identified and corrupted with the implicit modifier "You can catch corrupted fish" removing the "Has 1 Socket" implicit.
It always has the following explicit mods
- (10-15)% Increased Cast Speed
- 100% Increased Fishing Line Strength
- 20% Increased Quantity of Fish Caught
- 40% Increased Rarity of Fish Caught
- (20-40)% Increased Fish Bite Sensitivity
Finding an Angler's Plait is no easy feat. Please read this full wiki page in its entirety before you dedicate your time to farming. Missing one step could easily waste you hours of farming.
¶ The Basics
If you want to find an Angler's Plait follow these easy steps
- Kill a baijillion rare mobs...
- ... which are affected with the Fleeing condition (e.g. from Chance to Flee Support)
- ... while wearing Corrupted Slitherpinch
If you care about other rare drops while on your search, considering adding additional item quantity and item rarity to your gear if you can support it. It is currently unknown if IIQ/IIR affects Angler's Plait drops.
¶ The Extreme Rarity of Angler's Plait
Even if you comply with all of the drop requirements, Angler's Plait is one of the rarest items in the game.
- One heroic researcher ran 20,000 instances of Harbour Bridge on a Plait-farming character. They found 0 Angler's Plaits.
- Players who run Nemesis typically see multiple natural Headhunter drops before finding a single Angler's Plait.
- Many dedicated Plait-farmers never find one. (That said, there are also examples of extraordinarily lucky players who found one right away!)
The scarcity of Angler's Plait is not fully understood.
Recently we discovered that normal fishing rod drops can occur even with -100% Player IIQ.
During Heist we also discovered that fishing rod drops ignore Area IIQ (see the Angler's Mate #4 article on Fishing Rods for more information).
Unlike most fishing rods, however, Angler's Plait is a Unique item. Typically Unique items benefit from various sources of IIR and IIQ.
It's uncertain how Angler's Plait operates: does it behave more like a Unique item, more like special deterministic drops such as fishing rods, or a mix of both?
¶ IIQ and IIR
During 3.25 league, a researcher named Kieron Rahl managed to obtain Angler's Plait with -100% IIQ (video).
This is a definitive proof that Angler's Plait is a determinisitc drop and that Player, Area and Mob IIQ.
- The an optimal strategy is to be purely focusing on clearspeed and juicing huge numbers of Rare mobs (Beyond, packsize, +flat rare mobs, etc.) while satisfying the other drop requirements.
During 3.12, a researcher named Teeeeea and poorFishwife ran a comparative experiment in Standard and Heist SC, respectively.
Very roughly, Teeeeea's condition prioritized packsize; poorFishwife's condition prioritized Area IIQ/IIR and more player MF. Teeeeea observed two Angler's Plait drops and a few Headhunters. poorFishwife observed zero Angler's Plait drops but many more Headhunters, probably ~3x more if they had run the same number of trials. (Teeeee's ratio of non-Angler unique unset rings to Headhunters was roughly 76. poorFishwife's ratio of non-Angler unique unset rings to Headhunters was roughly 22.)
This is some minor evidence that high effective IIR helps with top-tier drops like Headhunter, but not with Angler's Plait.
(See here for Teeeeea's excellent writeup on the Standard condition.)
¶ Strategy
After much ressearch, the recommendations have not changed much: comply with the drop requirements, and heavily juice your maps for rare mobs.
- The Beyond modifier is by far the most important mod (for both fishing rods and Angler's Plait) simply because of how many more rare and unique monsters it adds.
- Juicing in any other way to add more mobs is also critically important; each appropriate mob is one more "pull of the slot machine".
- Other juicing strategies like strongboxes/ambush may be helpful due to the amount of rare mobs they add, while also typically triggering additional beyond spawns due to the close proximity of monsters spawned from them.
- If you care about other valuable drops, you should still add as much Player MF as you can without slowing yourself down -- it takes ages to grind an Angler's Plait regardless of strategy, so you might as well ensure you get tons of other top-tier items along the way as well.
¶ Juicing Your Maps
The below is an ideal, perfect-world setup for atlas and maps for farming Angler's Plait. This is merely an opinion but combines what we best know about how to drop one. In short: get as many rares as you can in your maps.
As it currently stands, Harbinger is the best source for large amounts of rares needed for the hunt. Consider maps in Valdo's Rest with the atlas passive Diplomatic Escort.
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Maps should always be 20% delirious due to the rare mobs added. Additional delirium orbs does not appear to increase the numbers of rare monsters spawned by the delirium.
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6-mod or 8-mod corrupted map that includes at least beyond, but ideally Beyond, Nemesis, and Sea Witches.
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Maximize pack size, IIR, and IIQ by using bestiary craft "Add a mod to a rare map" if your map doesn't already have the maximum number of mods.
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Map Device Master: Alva adds tons of rares in the incursions
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Map Device Modifier (In priority): Beyond, Harbinger, Ambush, Nemesis (if not on your map) or any of the infused variants of these
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Ideal Scarabs and other fragments, in order of priority:
- Harbinger (Harbingers add a ton of rare mobs close together, combined with Beyond is huge)
- Reliquary (Increase unique drops)
- Ambush (Strongboxes spawn many rares close together, fantastic for Beyond, combines well with strongbox sextants)
- One blood-filled Ritual vessel is often better than the weakest Scarab, but it depends on sextant setup
- Elder
- Breach
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Sextants:
- Beyond
- Legion
- Strongbox enraged, Strongboxes are rare and corrupted
- Hunted Traitors
- Breach
- Abyss
- Ritual Altars
- Cannot take reflected damage may be required by your build to run Irresistable Temptation watchstone and is often worth the slot
¶ Unlikely Factors
Things that have been ruled out or which seem extremely unlikely to be required for finding an Angler's Plait.
¶ Slitherpinch Alone
Slitherpinch alone is insufficient.
- I am highly confident that just Slitherpinch is inadequate. At least some other factors are required.
- In short: Dozens of players have run tens of thousands of maps with Slitherpinch (some used corrupted Slitherpinch). But none of those people have dropped an Angler's Plait, despite their monumental effort. The classic example is Slippery Jim running 1000 Olmec Sanctums due to an incorrect tip about Angler's Plait. To protect your time, make sure you include the other Likely Factors listed in this post.
¶ Slitherpinch Rolls/Mods
The stats/mod rolls on Slitherpinch do not seem to matter, as long as it's corrupted and remains a Slitherpinch.
- The exact corruption implicit on Slitherpinch does not seem to be important (see above for examples; any outcome seems OK).
- Bricked Slitherpinches (rerolled into Corrupted Rare items with the same art) probably will not work. Don't use bricked Slitherpinches.
- The affix values on Slitherpinch itself seem to be irrelevant. (See the Discussion section for some commentary on this.)
- The Quality value on Slitherpinch seems to be irrelevant.
¶ Socketed Gems in Slitherpinch
The skill which kills the mob does not need to be socketed into your corrupted Slitherpinch.
- Some Plaits have dropped via skills that were socketed into other, non-Slitherpinch gear items.
- (Reason for mentioning this: Imagine if Slitherpinch had a hidden modifier along the lines of "N% Increased Fishing Items Dropped by Enemies Slain by Socketed Skills". Then you'd need to keep your main setup in Slitherpinch itself. But this does not appear to be necessary.)
¶ Tormented Spirits
The killed mob does not need to be possessed by a Tormented Spirit.
- So far, all Confirmed and Trustworthy Plaits have dropped from mobs that were not possessed by any tormented spirits.
- (Reason for mentioning this: An old hypothesis on reddit was that Angler's Plait might be restricted to dropping from only mobs possessed by the Tormented Illegal Fisherman ghost. That is not required. Who knows if it might influence droprates, though.)
¶ Other Fishing Items
Wearing other Fishing items (other than corrupted Slitherpinch) is not required.
- Some Plaits have been found by characters both (1) wearing Fairgraves' Tricorne; and (2) wearing zero Fishing items other than a corrupted Slitherpinch.
- In particular, this means wearing Fairgraves' Tricorne does not prevent Angler's Plait from dropping. (Aside: Therefore this does not seem like a lead for studying the Alluring/Repulsive concept.)
¶ Other Uniques
It seems that wearing other uniques besides corrupted Slitherpinch is not required.
- The Confirmed and Trustworthy Plait drops have come from characters with diverse gearsets. There is no single specific unique shared among them besides (1) uniques with Chance to Flee; (2) corrupted Slitherpinch. It does not seem like any additional specific unique gear item is required, but there may be as-yet-unknown influencing factors.
¶ Zones
Angler's Plait does not seem to be restricted to specific zones (except perhaps for its level requirement).
- Many Plaits have been found both in Story zones and in Map zones.
- The lowest level Angler's Plait I have ever documented was ilvl 34. To be safe, if you choose to farm in Story, make sure to choose an area with at least that area level.
- Plaits have been found in areas both with and without the area_with_water tag.
- Here is an incomplete list of claimed or confirmed zones: {Dried Lake, Temple of Decay 2, Sceptre of God, Blood Aqueducts, Spider Forest (in an Incursion), Poorjoy's Asylum, Mao Kun, Shore, Delve Frozen Hollow, Lighthouse, Waste Pool, Harbour Bridge, Burial Chambers}. Of course there are many more drop locations than just these, but those other drop locations were claimed from less reliable sources and therefore I am omitting them here.
¶ Drop Limits
Angler's Plait is not restricted to "limit of one drop per character" like Oni-Goroshi was.
- poorFishwife has personally found multiple Plaits on the same character.
¶ Character Level
Specific Character Level is probably not required, even in Story zones
- One of my most recent personal finds was with a Level 90 character in an Area Level 60 zone.
- The last we heard from GGG, the droprate penalty for overleveled characters only applies to currency items and divination cards. Since it is a unique gear item, it is unlikely that Angler's Plait is affected by the overleveled character droprate penalty.
¶ Character Quest State
Character quest state does not appear to matter.
- An old hypothesis on reddit/forums was that perhaps "Sparing Fairgraves" or skipping certain optional quests was required. This does not appear to be true. All options seem to work okay, including "halfway" options (for example, on one character I used, I killed Fairgraves in A1 Ship Graveyard but did not do any of his A3 Docks quests, and still was able to drop an Angler's Plait). This rumor seems to have originated from blind speculation, and I think it's very unlikely that it matters.
¶ Reefbane Glow
Reefbane does not need to Glow in zones in which Angler's Plait is found.
- poorFishwife checked Reefbane for each of their personal Angler's Plait finds. None of the zones in which a Plait was found exhibited Reefbane's Glow. This is expected; the base rate probability of Reefbane glowing when a Plait drops is low -- you'd need to (1) find a Plait in a "Reefbane Can Glow Here" eligible area; and (2) have the actual Reefbane Glow instance proc occur.
I've included this comment in particular because of a recent event. A few weeks ago, a new player found an Angler's Plait. A scammer lied to the newbie about its value and bought it for 1ex, then flipped it for a Headhunter. This alone is already pretty scummy. But then the scammer also proceeded to lie to people and claim that the ring was found by farming zones in which Reefbane glows, a pure fabrication. Spreading that type of misinformation is super low-brow because it can potentially cost innocent people hundreds of hours of their precious lives chasing a red herring. Fortunately I was able to contact some people and correct the misinformation. I hope this post helps undo the damage for any other misinformed people whom I missed. (And if the propagandist is reading this: You know who you are. Shame on you.)
¶ Map Mods, Sextants, Fragments
Specific map mods, sextants, or map fragments do not seem to be required.
- Many Plaits have been found in low-level Story zones. This precludes many specific map modifiers.
- There seems to be no correlation between map mods of maps in which an Angler's Plait has been found (other than Strongboxes/Invasion).
- One Confirmed Plait occurred in a map with no active sextants, no fragments, and no scarabs. One Trustworthy Plait occurred in a map run by a person who claimed to always run full sextants. These factors do not seem to matter.
- Zana map device choices are not required, though using Ambush/Invasion options might help.
¶ Corrupted Zone
Whether or not the zone is corrupted seems to be irrelevant.
- Most Story zones cannot be corrupted. Angler's Plait has been found in many such zones. Therefore, this does not appear to be a requirement.
- It might be possible that Angler's Plait can drop inside Vaal Side Areas, but it's certainly not required to search there.
- Likewise, it's also safe to farm corrupted maps. One of my own finds was in a corrupted Lighthouse map (see full case study below).
¶ Mob Type
The drop is probably not restricted by mob type or circumstance.
- There are no clear correlations of shared mob types between the areas in which Angler's Plait drops have been documented. It's always possible that there is a correlation we've not discovered since maps can roll "Increased Monster Variety", but this seems unlikely.
- Although the presence of Strongboxes/Invasion is currently an important correlation, the ring itself can drop from regular native mobs from the zone. In other words, it does not need to be a mob spawned by a strongbox or an Invasion mob; the presence of those features alone in the area seems to be sufficient. (By "native mob" I mean a type of monster which is among the available monsters selected by running many instances of an unmodified zone (e.g. white maps) and documenting which types of monsters can appear there naturally.)
- One of the Trustworthy drops was claimed to have been dropped inside an Incursion.
¶ Prophecies
No Prophecies need to be active to find an Angler's Plait, though prophecies for Strongboxes/Invasion might help.
- Some Plaits have been found in zones with no prophecy triggers. Some Plaits have been found in zones with prophecy triggers (notably The Invader). This does not appear to be a requirement either way.
¶ Area Tags
The Area's tags do not seem to be important.
- There is no shared tag which appears in all areas in which Angler's Plait was found.
- In particular, Angler's Plait has been found in areas both with and without the area_with_water tag.
¶ Likely Factors
Likely factors, likely required, you should definitely include all of these in your hunt.
¶ Rare Mobs
You should focus on killing lots and lots of rare mobs.
- 100% of all Confirmed and Trustworthy Plait drops came from a rare mob.
- Currently all the evidence supports the statement that "Plaits can drop from rare mobs": Unanimously all Plaits have been +2 ilvl above the zone in which they were found, which indicates they came from rare or unique mobs (or, technically, certain strongboxes).
- It is possible this is not a real requirement. Perhaps the Plait drops have been observed merely because of rare mobs' innate higher Mob IIQ/IIR values. Perhaps it's possible that the drop can also occur from mobs of other rarities, such as normal or magic. In practice this is irrelevant, however: if this were true it would still be easier to get a Plait by focusing on killing lots of higher-rarity mobs.
- (Speculation) Every angler worth their salt knows wearing Fairgraves' Tricorne enables base fishing rod drops from unique mobs (and only unique mobs). Perhaps Angler's Plait's restriction is similar but requires rare mobs -- but we cannot state this definitively yet.
¶ Corrupted Slitherpinch
You should wear a corrupted Slitherpinch.
- 100% of all Confirmed and Trustworthy Plait drops involved a character wearing a corrupted Slitherpinch.
- The corruption implicit on Slitherpinch does not seem to matter. Example corruption implicits have included: No Implicit; +2 Duration Gems; +2 Aura Gems; +1 Max Frenzy; Temp Chains CoH; and double-corrupted Eleweak/Despair CoH. (I have not observed a White Socket corrupted Slitherpinch being involved in a Plait drop, but my best guess is that it would work too.)
- Many other Plait drops involved a Slitherpinch, but with insufficient information to determine whether or not the Slitherpinch was corrupted. (For example, the Plait drop was demonstrated with a screenshot showing Slitherpinch, but without hovering over the Slitherpinch to see its status.)
- Slitherpinch is a confirmed fishing item.
- (Speculation) Perhaps the reason that Slitherpinch must be corrupted is because Angler's Plait itself always drops identified and corrupted, regardless of its drop source.
¶ Fleeing Condition
You should cause the mobs you kill to Flee.
- 100% of all Confirmed and Trustworthy Plait drops came from a character with a nontrivial source of Chance to Flee.
- Sources have included: Voidheart, Blackheart, Wake of Destruction, Lion's Roar, Ignite, and Chance to Flee support. I recommend running Chance to Flee support. Note that in most cases this requires your build to Hit.
- I anticipate this will be the most-asked-about factor, so I've written extensively about it in the FAQ/Discussion section below.
- (Speculation) Perhaps the reason Fleeing may be important is because of Fleeing's connection to fishing in general, with the noteworthy example of the Albino Rhoa. See the FAQ/Discussion section for more info.
¶ Strongboxes or Invasion Bosses
You should prioritize zones with Strongboxes or Invasion Bosses (no longer a requirement)
- Most of all Confirmed and Trustworthy Plait drops occurred in zones which had Strongboxes, Invasion Bosses, or both.
- The Ambush/Invasion League flags do not need to be active (in other words the Map Device selection is not required like it used to be for Nemesis=>HH). It seems like it is sufficient for the Ambush/Invasion content to exist in the zone by any method, including random occurrence.
- Simple ways to cause Strongboxes: Ambush scarabs; Map Device Ambush option; Various sextant mods; Prophecies; and others.
- Simple ways to cause Invasion: (Best option) Sextant mod for +1 Invasion Boss; Prophecy "The Invader"; Map affix "Zana's" on legacy maps; and others.
- (Small aside: Previously there were two "Zana's" signature affixes which coexisted on maps purchased from her: (1) quantity applies to rarity; (2) Area is Inhabited by an addtional Invasion Boss. For some reason the Invasion "Zana's" affix is no longer available as of 3.10 Delirium. It still exists on some legacy maps purchased from Zana in prior versions.)
- (Speculation) Perhaps the reason that Ambush/Invasion may be important is because Angler's Plait is a special unset ring. Unset rings were first introduced as league-specific items in Version 1.1.0, restricted to the Ambush and Invasion challenge leagues which ran simultaneously at that time. If one puts oneself in the shoes of GGG contemplating a secret unset ring item, thinking of Ambush/Invasion seems reasonable given that those challenge leagues were the origin of unset rings.
¶ Maybe Factors
These are possible factors that may help in your search but are not required. Include if you can.
¶ High IIR and IIQ
It's possible high IIR and IIQ may help (via any method: Player stats, Mob stats, Area stats, etc.).
- Angler's Plait is a unique unset ring which always drops identified and corrupted. Given that it is a unique item found by mobs, it is reasonable to assume IIR/IIQ may improve its droprate.
- It is possible, however, that IIR and IIQ may have no impact on its droprate; it may be a "special condition" item instead.
- Most Plaits have been found by characters with low or zero player IIR/IIQ. Many Plaits have been found in Story zones which do not have area modifiers to quantity or rarity. But these observations are quite possibly because so few people "target farm" Plaits today. (This post might change that!) There are tons of players (often newbies!) who are incidentally using corrupted Slitherpinch while leveling. There are very few players (maybe at most ~5 including myself!) who target-farm Angler's Plait with MF stats. Therefore, it is not surprising at all that the majority of Plaits discovered so far have come from persons with no special MF stats.
- Fortunately, it seems very high IIR and IIQ do not prevent Plait drops. I have personally found multiple Plaits using high-MF characters.
¶ FAQ and Discussion
¶ References
- Reddit - Angler's Mate #3 - The Secret of Angler's Plait
- Reddit - Angler's Mate #3 - Factors Affecting Angler's Plait
- Reddit - Angler's Mate #3 - FAQ and Discussion
- Reddit - Angler's Mate #3 - Case Study
- Reddit - Angler's Mate #4 - Additional Discussion on Angler's Plait