PoE2 Delirium Farming Guide: Best Strategy for Liquid Emotions, Simulacrum & Currency (0.5)

If you want the single most profitable endgame mechanic in Path of Exile 2 right now, it's Delirium. In the Runes of Aldur league (patch 0.5 "Return of the Ancients"), walking into a wall of grey fog and out-running it to the boss is how the top currency farmers print Divine Orbs — through Liquid Emotions, Simulacrum Splinters, and a steady stream of high-tier drops that scale the deeper and faster you push.

The catch is that Delirium punishes hesitation harder than any other mechanic in the game. The fog expands on a timer, your rewards scale with how deliriously deep you go, and if you stall the whole encounter evaporates. Get the loop right and it's the best gold-per-hour in 0.5; get it wrong and you walk away with nothing. This guide is the full loop, end to end: how the fog and the Delirium Mirror actually work, how to turn Liquid Emotions into instilled amulet power, how to run the Simulacrum pinnacle, the best Atlas tree priorities, and what it's all worth in raw currency. Every mechanic here is checked against the official Path of Exile 2 wiki and current 0.5.1 patch info — not a stale tracker.

PoE2 Delirium in 30 seconds (the quick answer)

• What it is: an Atlas map mechanic. Maps with a Delirium Mirror let you walk through the mirror to unleash a rolling fog ring across the zone.
• The core rule: you must stay inside the expanding fog to keep the encounter alive — step out (or kill too slowly) and the fog dissipates and ends.
• The reward scaling: the deeper you push, the higher the Deliriousness % — more monsters, more damage and Toughness on them, and dramatically better drops.
• The exclusive loot: Liquid Emotions, a Delirium-only currency used to instil (anoint) amulets with a Notable passive — plus Simulacrum Splinters.
• The pinnacle: collect 300 Simulacrum Splinters, combine them, and run the Simulacrum — a 15-wave survival gauntlet for chase uniques and Delirium passive points.
• The payoff: Liquid Emotions and Splinters sell for Divine and Exalted Orbs — the most lucrative loop in 0.5 for a build that can clear fast.
• The #1 mistake: treating it like a normal map. If your clear speed can't keep pace with the fog, you lose the encounter — Delirium rewards speed, not caution.

What is Delirium in PoE2?

Delirium is an endgame Atlas map mechanic you weight onto your passive tree so it shows up more often in your maps. When a map rolls Delirium, a Delirium Mirror spawns near the start of the zone. Walk through it and the entire area is swallowed by a grey fog that spreads outward in a ring, summoning illusory monsters and empowering the ones already there.

Per the official PoE2 wiki, "Maps containing a Delirium Mirror can have the mirror walked through to unleash the rolling Delirium fog ring across the current area. You must stay within this fog as it expands to maintain the Delirium or it will disappear." That one sentence is the whole skill check: Delirium is a race. The fog keeps moving, your job is to keep killing inside it, and the rewards stack the longer you survive at depth.

This is why Delirium is the premier currency farm rather than just another mechanic. Magic monsters in the fog gain Delirium-specific modifiers, Rare and Unique monsters can manifest Delirium Demons, and every empowered kill has a chance to drop Liquid Emotions — a currency that exists nowhere else in the game. If you're already comfortable farming currency efficiently, Delirium is the next tier up: higher ceiling, higher risk, far higher reward.

How does the Delirium fog work in maps?

When you walk through the mirror, the fog expands as a ring and a Deliriousness value climbs the deeper into the fog you go. Higher Deliriousness does four things: spawns more monsters, increases their damage, adds Toughness so they're tankier, and improves their item drops. The trade is pure risk-reward — the rewards you want live at the depth that's trying hardest to kill you.

Inside the fog you'll find two structures worth knowing:

• Fracturing Mirrors — shatter when you approach, spawning a pack of Delirium monsters. Free extra kills (and extra loot) if your clear can handle the spike.
• Fracturing Mirror Shards — appear at set depths with more varied rewards. They come in flavors: Escalation Shards (buff rare monsters into harder, more rewarding versions, or pause the fog), Deceptive Shards (summon Delirium bosses or open an extra Delirious area), and Capricious Shards (once unlocked, mirror your Map Boss or make it manifest a Grand Mirror).

Here's the part most players miss: defeating the Map Boss while the fog is active has a chance to summon a Grand Mirror on a nearby map, and the fog spreads to adjacent maps on your Atlas. At least one of those maps gets transformed into a Simulacrum — which is how the pinnacle encounter seeds itself organically from regular mapping. Delirium isn't just a single-map mechanic; juiced correctly it cascades across your Atlas.

Bug note (fixed): if you played early 0.5 and had a map "bricked" by Delirium fog you couldn't clear, that was a real bug. GGG's Natalia_GGG confirmed on the forums, "this issue is getting fixed in the 0.5.1 patch today... it's quite a big patch." As of 0.5.1, Delirium fog can no longer spread to maps that grant Atlas Passive Skills, and the stuck-fog issue was resolved. If you're on the current patch, you're fine.

What are Liquid Emotions and how do you instil (anoint) an amulet?

Liquid Emotions are the headline reward. They're a currency item that drops only from Delirium, and they let you instil an amulet — PoE2's version of anointing — with a Notable passive skill from the tree, granting that notable's effect while the amulet is equipped. (You'll also see them labeled Distilled Emotions in-game tooltips — same currency family; the instilling currency dropped in maps is what you anoint with.)

The mechanic, verified against the wiki:

• Instilling happens at a crafting bench at The Withered Hollow. You place an amulet (or any "Raven-Touched" item) plus a combination of three Liquid Emotions, and it gets an enchantment that allocates one Notable from the passive tree.
• The specific combination of three emotions determines which Notable you get. To see what a Notable needs, hover it on the passive tree and hold ALT, use the "view notables" button in the instilling menu, or search `CanInstill` in the tree's search bar to highlight every instillable Notable.
• One instillment per amulet by default. Instilling again replaces the existing enchant (random one, if there are several), and there is no way to remove an instillment outright. You cannot instil corrupted, mirrored, or sanctified items — so finish instilling before you Vaal anything.
• A big upgrade in 0.5: the new Twisted Amulet and Distorted Amulet bases drop with two random instilled Notables already on them, and the unique Strugglescream can hold three. Land two strong notables on a good base and it's a best-in-slot amulet.
• One catch: instilling a Notable you've already allocated normally on your tree does not grant the effect twice. Pick notables you can't easily path to.

Liquid Emotions double as a jewel-crafting currency too — used on a Rare jewel they remove a random modifier and add a guaranteed crafted one (Ancient Liquid Emotions do the same for Time-Lost jewels). But the amulet instilling is where the big money and the build power live.

Why this matters for currency: premium Liquid Emotions are worth real money. As of this league, rare emotions like Isolation trade around 10 Divine Orbs and Suffering around 3 Divine Orbs on the open market — so a single deep Delirium map can pay for itself many times over. (Values shift weekly; treat poe.ninja as the source of truth before any big trade.)

What is the Simulacrum and how do you run it?

The Simulacrum is Delirium's pinnacle encounter, and the cleanest Splinter-to-Divine conversion in the game. Here's exactly how it works:

• Access: collect 300 Simulacrum Splinters, which combine into a single Simulacrum item, then spend it at the Realmgate. That opens Clearfell Lumbermill, an arena built from Clearfell and Ogham Farmlands tilesets.
• Structure: 15 waves of enemies. You interact with the Strangely Familiar Entity to summon each next wave, and a stash in the arena lets you bank loot between waves (a new wave destroys anything left on the ground, so pick up first).
• Scaling: each wave adds +5% Deliriousness, capping at 75% on wave 15 at Difficulty 0. Each difficulty tier adds +10% to the floor and ceiling, capping at 115% at Difficulty 4. Waves start with 2 random modifiers and gain another at waves 5, 8, and 11 — so the back third is where builds get tested.

• The bosses: Omniphobia, Fear Manifest can start spawning from wave 3, and Kosis, The Revelation from wave 5. They can appear together from wave 5, multiple times per run, and they fill the reward gauge far faster than trash — killing them is a big chunk of your payout.
• Rewards: each completed reward tile drops a Distilled Emotion at wave's end, and clearing the 15th wave drops a Simulacrum-exclusive unique from a pool that includes Assailum, Perfidy, and Collapsing Horizon.

A full Simulacrum (300 Splinters) trades for roughly 6 Divine Orbs as raw Splinters before you even run it — which is why many farmers simply sell the Splinters rather than running the gauntlet on a build that can't safely hit Difficulty 3–4. Run it if your build is tanky and fast; sell the stack if it isn't. Both are correct.

What's the best Delirium Atlas tree setup for farming?

Delirium has its own cluster on the Atlas passive tree, and a few nodes change it from "fun mechanic" to "currency engine." Prioritize in this order:

• Splinter access first. The node "Is This About Me or You?" is required for Simulacrum Splinters to drop in level 75+ areas at all — without it, your highest-tier maps won't seed the pinnacle. This is the single most important Delirium point.
• Premium emotion drops. "You Can't Scare Me Anymore" enables the strongest Potent Liquid Emotions (Melancholy, Ferocity, Contempt) to drop from unique monsters — the 3-to-10-Divine tier. Without it those simply won't appear.
• More fog uptime / slower dissipation. Anything that slows fog dissipation buys you time at depth, which directly raises Deliriousness and drops. This is your "make the race winnable" stat.
• General map juice. Stack increased Pack Size and monster modifiers so every fog kill is worth more.

Weight Delirium heavily on your tree, run Tier 15–16 maps with good clear, and pair it with your other favorite mechanic (Breach and Expedition layer on top of Delirium beautifully) so a single map pays out from three systems at once.

Is Delirium worth farming in PoE2 0.5?

Yes — it's the highest-ceiling currency farm in Runes of Aldur, full stop. Nothing else in 0.5 drops a 10-Divine item from a single map kill the way a juiced Delirium can. The Liquid Emotion economy, the Simulacrum Splinter sink, and the deliriousness-scaled drops compound into the best gold-per-hour in the game if your build can keep pace with the fog.

The honest caveat: Delirium is build-gated. It rewards fast clear and tankiness and brutally punishes slow, squishy characters — stall and the fog dies, push too deep undergeared and you die. If your build isn't there yet, the play is to farm currency elsewhere, gear up, then come back. There's no shame in selling Simulacrum Splinters instead of running the gauntlet — it's often the higher-EV choice.

If you'd rather skip the gearing curve entirely, timesaver.gg sells PoE2 currency and orbs and boss carries & leveling directly — get the Divines to buy the build that can farm Delirium, and spend your time playing instead of grinding toward the entry point.

Get there faster with timesaver.gg

• PoE2 Currency (all orbs) — divine · chaos · exalted · more, instant delivery, best rate.
• PoE2 Divine Orbs — trusted, fast, the high-end trade currency for Liquid Emotions and Splinters.
• PoE2 Exalted Orbs — fast & secure crafting staple.
• PoE2 Leveling & Boss Carries — skip the grind, get a Delirium-ready build and pinnacle kills by pro players.

Frequently asked questions

How do I unlock instilling / anointing in PoE2? Complete the short Delirium quest line you pick up in the endgame, which gives you access to the instilling bench at The Withered Hollow. There you place an amulet plus three Liquid Emotions to allocate a Notable passive. You don't need the quest to drop Liquid Emotions from maps — only to spend them.

Why am I getting no drops in Delirium? Almost always clear speed. Rewards only land if you stay deep in the fog and keep killing; if your build clears too slowly, the fog dissipates before you reach the rewarding depth and the encounter ends near-empty. Delirium is balanced around fast builds — fix clear speed before blaming drop rates.

How many Simulacrum Splinters do I need? 300. They combine into one Simulacrum item, which you spend at the Realmgate to open the 15-wave encounter. A full 300-stack also sells for roughly 6 Divine Orbs if you'd rather not run it.

Which Liquid Emotions are worth the most? The premium ones — Isolation (~10 Divine) and Suffering (~3 Divine) are top-tier this league, and Potent emotions from unique monsters are the chase. Always check poe.ninja for live prices before trading; the emotion economy moves weekly.

Can I re-instil or remove an amulet enchantment? You can replace an instillment by instilling again (it overwrites a random existing one), but you cannot remove it entirely, and you cannot instil corrupted, mirrored, or sanctified items. Finish all instilling before you Vaal an amulet.

Did Delirium "bricking" my maps get fixed? Yes. The early-0.5 bug where Delirium fog made some maps inaccessible was patched in 0.5.1, and fog no longer spreads to maps that grant Atlas Passive Skills. Update to the current patch and it's resolved.

Is buying PoE2 currency safe? Buying from a trusted marketplace like timesaver.gg with instant delivery is the fast route to a Delirium-capable build — just keep your in-game trading legit and treat live exchange rates (poe.ninja) as the source of truth before any big conversion.

Mechanics current as of patch 0.5.1 "Return of the Ancients" (Runes of Aldur league). Liquid Emotion and Simulacrum Splinter values shift every league — verify live on poe.ninja and the official PoE2 Trade site before committing a large stash.