PoE Incursion Farming Guide (3.29): How to Build & Sell Alva Temples for Currency

Updated for Path of Exile 3.29 "Curse of the Allflame" (league launched 2026-07-24; last verified 2026-08-28). Prices float weekly — always confirm current rates on poe.ninja.

Every league someone in global chat asks the same thing: "what's the cheapest farm that still makes currency?" In 3.29, the honest answer is Incursion — Alva Valai's Temple of Atzoatl loop. It runs on a single Atlas wheel, it works in tier-1 maps or tier-16 maps, it doesn't need a mirror-tier build, and the payout comes from something most farms don't have: selling a finished Temple to another player for raw currency. This guide breaks down exactly how the mechanic works in 3.29, which rooms are worth building, how to set up the blue-collar version, and how to turn each Temple into Divine Orbs.

Quick answer: how does Incursion farming work in 3.29?

• Find Alva in your maps (she appears occasionally after you kill a map boss, more often with Atlas passives), then run her Temporal Incursions.
• Each Incursion sends you into the past to shape one room of the Temple of Atzoatl. You kill one of two Architects to upgrade that room a tier or swap it for a different room.
• You shape the Temple across 12 Incursions (it has 13 rooms total — the 12 you influence, plus the fixed Apex of Atzoatl boss room). Each room has three tiers.
• Tier-3 crafting rooms (Locus of Corruption, Doryani's Institute, Apex of Ascension) are the money. You either open the Temple yourself or sell the itemised Temple to a player who wants those rooms.
• Commercial fit: this is a currency-farming strategy. If you'd rather buy the orbs than grind for them, timesaver.gg PoE currency delivers Divine and Chaos instantly.

Maxroll rates the strategy Difficulty: Low, Investment: Low, Profitability: Average — which is exactly why it's the go-to "blue-collar" lane when your character is still cheap. (Maxroll Incursion Farming Guide)

Who is Alva and how do you start an Incursion?

Alva Valai is the Timeless Emporium explorer who hunts the lost Vaal Temple of Atzoatl. In the endgame she shows up inside your maps: killing a map boss has a chance to make her appear, and you can raise that chance — and sustain her missions — by allocating her Atlas passive wheel. If you don't want to rely on boss RNG, a `Map contains Alva` / `Areas have Alva` modifier rolled on a socketed Voidstone forces her into every map, and Incursion Scarab of Invasion adds Incursion monster packs to a map without Alva being present at all. (Maxroll)

When you talk to Alva, she opens a Temporal Incursion: a short trip back in time to a single room of the Temple while it was still being built. That's where you do your work.

How does the Temple of Atzoatl actually work?

Think of the Temple as a 3×4-plus grid of 13 room slots. Twelve of them are shaped by you; the thirteenth is always the Apex of Atzoatl, home of the Vaal Omnitect boss. You get to influence one slot per Incursion, and you complete a Temple over 12 Incursions before it's finished and ready to enter or itemise. As GGG's own Incursion patch notes put it, "After 11 Temporal Incursions, Alva will have narrowed down the present-day location of the Temple of Atzoatl."

Two things happen inside each Incursion:

1. Architects decide the room. Every Incursion contains two Architects, each responsible for a different room type. When you kill one, the survivor shapes the slot — either upgrading the current room one tier or changing it to a different room entirely. Per PoE Vault's mechanics breakdown: "when we kill an architect, the other one survives, shaping the temple by upgrading the room to a higher tier, or changing the room completely to a different one. If you choose to, or fail to kill an architect, the room will remain unchanged."

2. Stones of Passage connect the rooms. Incursion monsters drop Stones of Passage, which you socket into doors to open connections between adjacent rooms. They only exist inside the Incursion, and they aren't guaranteed every time — so plan your paths, because you can only reach (and profit from) rooms you can actually walk to when you open the finished Temple.

One rule shapes every decision: each room type is only ever offered once per Temple. If the Corruption Chamber comes up and you don't switch to it, you will not be offered it again in that Temple. Because of that, the default play is to upgrade whatever you already have every Incursion (raising your Temple's overall value), and only swap when a genuinely high-value room appears.

Which Incursion rooms are worth building?

The whole strategy lives and dies on hitting tier-3 crafting rooms. These are the ones players pay for:

Tier-3 room	What it does	Why it sells
Locus of Corruption (T3 Corruption Chamber)	Double-corrupts an item — applies two corruption outcomes at once	Highest-stakes gamble in the game; the premium room
Doryani's Institute (T3 Gemcutter's Workshop)	Double-corrupts a gem — chance to add levels and quality	Makes 21/23% gems, level-6 Awakened gems, Vaal-gem conversions
Apex of Ascension (T3 Sacrificial Chamber)	Sacrifice a unique to upgrade it; upgrades Incursion uniques with their Vial	Turns cheap uniques into chase items
Wealth of the Vaal (T3 Vault)	Drops a large pile of currency on open	Pure cherry-on-top value
Temple Nexus (T3)	Upgrades all adjacent rooms by one tier	Force-multiplies your other rooms

The two you build around are Locus of Corruption and Doryani's Institute — a Temple with either at tier 3 has a floor price, and a Temple with both is worth substantially more. Maxroll is blunt about where the income comes from: "Most of the money you make from Incursion will be from selling Itemized temples with specific tier 3 rooms to other players." You don't even need to run the Temple — you sell the door.

⚠️ 3.29 caveat on corruption: Incursion itself took no core rework in 3.29, but the league's white-socket overhaul changed how corruption outcomes work, so the exact odds and results of a Locus of Corruption double-corrupt are different from previous leagues — the old "turn all sockets white" outcome no longer applies now that sockets are white by default. If you're corrupting expensive gear, read the current mechanics first. We cover the socket change in detail in our PoE 3.29 socket colours & Chromatic Orb guide. For the Vaal Orbs to actually run those corruptions, grab PoE Vaal Orbs here.

Why is Incursion the cheapest farm to set up?

Three reasons make this the low-budget king in 3.29:

It needs one Atlas wheel. You allocate the Incursion cluster and nothing else is mandatory. Maxroll's own tree shows "only the essential points required," and the strategy is explicitly designed to be stapled onto another farm — Delirium, Beyond, Eldritch Altars, or a simple Alch-and-Go — rather than run solo. The key nodes worth knowing:

• Artefacts of the Vaal — Incursions drop Incursion-modifier item bases and help sustain Alva missions.
• Resource Reallocation — gives a 40% chance to upgrade a room straight to tier 3 from tier 1, doing your tier-grinding for you.
• Contested Development — when you change a room type, it keeps the original room's tier, so you can convert an unwanted tier-2 room into a wanted tier-2 room instead of starting over.

It works in any map, at any tier. Because your profit is the Temple you build, not the map you're in, you can run Incursion in cheap low-tier maps on a fresh character. Small, linear layouts are best so you can build Temples fast — City Square, Mesa, Toxic Sewer, Ashen Wood, and Canyon are the community picks for speed.

It doesn't demand a tanky build. Base Incursion is low-difficulty; you only need real defenses when you juice it with Beyond or Delirium on top.

For map prep, the standard roll is scour → alchemy on early maps, and on tier-11-plus maps: scour → Cartographer's Chisel to 20% quality → alchemy → Vaal Orb. Chiseling and vaaling your maps is a small, cheap edge that compounds over a farming session.

Step-by-step: running Incursion in 3.29

• Clear the map until Alva and her Temporal Incursion appear.
• Talk to Alva and check both room options. If a high-value room (Locus of Corruption, Doryani's Institute, Apex of Ascension) is on offer, swap to it by killing the other Architect.
• If there's no high-value room, upgrade your current room a tier by slaying the top Architect — never waste an Incursion.
• Kill the Incursion monsters, grab Stones of Passage, and socket them into doors to connect rooms.
• Exit once the room is shaped; repeat across maps until the Temple is complete.
• Open the Temple yourself to run its rooms and fight the Omnitect — or itemise and sell it if it has premium tier-3 rooms.

To itemise a Temple for trade, run Incursion Scarab of Timelines: when the final Architect dies, it drops an Itemised Temple of Atzoatl based on your current layout (with re-randomised room tiers), which you can trade or bank. Incursion Scarab of Champions loads your Incursions with magic monster packs and is the backbone of the gold-focused variant below.

Sell the Temple, or run it? The money model

This is the decision that separates casual Alva from Alva-as-a-farm:

• Sell it when you've built a Temple with a tier-3 Locus of Corruption and/or Doryani's Institute. Price it around the most expensive connected room using a trade tool, and let a crafter pay you for the privilege of opening it. Itemised Temples with premium rooms trade for meaningful currency every league — check the live rate on poe.ninja before you list.
• Run it when you have items you want to double-corrupt yourself, or when the Temple is loaded with reward rooms (Wealth of the Vaal, boss room) rather than niche crafting rooms.

Either way, the output converts cleanly into trade currency. A steady Incursion session funds itself in Chaos and, on good Temples, Divine Orbs — and if you'd rather skip straight to a stocked stash, timesaver.gg sells PoE Divine Orbs with instant delivery.

The Magic Alva gold variant (3.29.1)

If you want gold rather than crafting Temples — useful for funding your Kingsmarch settlement — Maxroll's Magic Alva Gold Farming Strategy (updated for 3.29.1) juices Incursions with magic-monster density. The setup: 8-mod tier-16 Jungle Valley, Eater of Worlds influence (Wrath of the Cosmos keystone), a Gold Flask rolled with increased item rarity, and a scarab loadout of Kalguuran Scarab + Kalguuran Scarab of Guarded Riches + two Incursion Scarab of Champions + Horned Scarab of Glittering. Clear the map for rarity/quantity altars, pop Bismuth Ore to add elemental mods to magic monsters, and use the Crimson Ore pod-bloom trick for maximum pack size. Maxroll reports roughly 1,000,000 gold per hour at two-to-three minutes per map. It's a step up in investment and build strength from vanilla Incursion, so treat it as the graduation, not the starting point. (Maxroll Magic Alva Gold Farming Strategy)

Where Incursion fits in the 3.29 farming meta

Incursion is one lane in a deep 3.29 economy. It's the low-budget, low-management pick — pair it with the league's own money loop or a bigger farm as you scale:

• Best currency farming strategies in PoE 3.29 — the full ranked hub of what prints this league.
• Charts & Voyages currency farming — the Curse of the Allflame league mechanic, the highest-ceiling farm.
• Expedition farming with Tujen — the other reliable low-skill-floor currency lane.
• Abyss farming (3.29) — the reworked endgame gamble that now prints.

FAQ

Is Incursion still worth farming in 3.29? Yes. Incursion took no core changes in 3.29, so the same reliable Temple loop is intact, and it remains the community's favourite low-budget, "super consistent" farm. The Curse of the Allflame economy has plenty of players buying itemised Temples for crafting, so demand for tier-3 Corruption and Gemcutter rooms is healthy. Just factor in the 3.29 socket overhaul before you double-corrupt anything expensive.

How many Incursions does it take to complete a Temple? Twelve. Each Alva encounter shapes one room, and after roughly 11 of them Alva pinpoints the Temple's present-day location; the Temple itself has 13 rooms (the 12 you shape plus the fixed Apex of Atzoatl boss room). Remember that each room type is only offered once per Temple, so plan around the rooms you actually want.

What are the best Incursion rooms to build? For selling Temples, prioritise Locus of Corruption (tier-3 Corruption Chamber, double-corrupts items) and Doryani's Institute (tier-3 Gemcutter's Workshop, double-corrupts gems). Apex of Ascension (unique upgrades) and Wealth of the Vaal (currency dump) round out the value tiers, and Temple Nexus at tier 3 upgrades every adjacent room by a tier.

Do I need Alva in every map to farm Incursion? No. You can rely on map-boss spawns (boosted by her Atlas passives), roll an `Areas have Alva` modifier on a Voidstone sextant for guaranteed spawns, or use Incursion Scarab of Invasion to add Incursion packs to maps without Alva at all. Most farmers combine the Atlas wheel with sextants for consistency.

How do I make currency from Incursion without a strong build? Build Temples in cheap, fast, low-tier maps and sell the itemised Temples with premium tier-3 rooms instead of running the boss yourself. That sidesteps the difficulty entirely — you're selling the door, not clearing the dungeon. Use Incursion Scarab of Timelines to drop itemised Temples for trade.

Can I double-corrupt gems and items in the same Temple? Yes, if you build both rooms — Doryani's Institute handles gems and Locus of Corruption handles items. Because each room type only appears once per Temple, you'll need to grab each when it's offered rather than expecting a second chance.

Start farming — or skip the grind

Incursion is the perfect 3.29 farm to learn the economy on: cheap to set up, forgiving on your build, and it pays in the same currency everyone trades. If you'd rather spend your league playing the content you enjoy and buy the currency instead, we've got you:

Fund your build the fast way:

- PoE Currency — instant delivery — Divine · Chaos · best rate

- PoE Divine Orbs — top up your crafting stash in minutes

- PoE Vaal Orbs — for corrupting Temple loot and gear

- PoE Boosting & Carries — leveling · bosses · labs

Facts verified against Maxroll's Incursion and Magic Alva Gold guides, PoE Vault's Alva Temple strategy, and the official Path of Exile Incursion patch notes as of 2026-08-28. Currency values change weekly — always verify live on poe.ninja.