Last week, we announced the Bestiary Challenge League with a trailer and information page. While these initial teasers were intentionally light on specific details, we understand that our community have many questions about how the Bestiary league works! Today's news post answers many of these.

This post only focuses on the Bestiary League itself. We're not trying to cover other questions about Content Update 3.2.0 in this post. Also, almost everything here is liable to change as we continue to iterate and tweak the league in the last week of playtesting.

Exactly how does the core gameplay loop of this league work?

Einhar Frey teaches you to capture the Beasts of Wraeclast, and gives you some nets. You can capture any Beast you encounter, by throwing a net at it. Once captured, Einhar transports it to your Menagerie (which is like a zoo) for storage. You can visit your Menagerie to see your Beasts in their cages, and to fight them to craft items at the Blood Altar. The Beastcrafting ret traderecipes require certain combinations of Beasts, and can create some very interesting results.

Your progress in the league is tracked in your Bestiary, which is a book that can be accessed by pressing H on PC (the same screen with the challenges on it) or pressing the Menu button on Xbox One. It shows which beasts you've captured, how many of them are in your Menagerie, and which Beastcrafting recipes you have available with these Beasts.

How difficult are the Beastcrafting fights?

They can be really challenging once you start to craft the higher outcomes. Fighting multiple rare Beast at once, especially ones with Bestiary mods, can be quite scary.

What types of things can be Beastcrafted?

There are many different categories of crafting results that you will find useful, including both twinking items as you play through the story, and powerful end-game crafting options. You can see some already-posted examples here and here. We're going to make a full news post about Beastcrafting results next week!

How is capture success calculated? What affects it?

There's a random chance of capturing a Beast with a net, and it's heavily influenced by how much life the monster is on and how strong the monster is. Expect rare or unique bosses to be harder to capture. Better nets help!

What happens if a capture fails?

The net you used is lost, and the monster enrages. You can attempt to capture a single Beast as many times as you want, though it's certainly dangerous to enrage the monsters.

How do nets work? Are they items?

Nets are stackable items that can be used for one monster capture each. Early on, you're given some by Einhar, and you can either buy more from him or to find them in the world as drops. There are ten tiers of nets, which are introduced in a staggered way between the start of the game and the highest-tier maps.

In any particular place, you find only two types of nets: the current appropriate ones, and occasionally, the next tier. These higher ones are good to use for difficult encounters.

What stops me having to carry around ten different types of nets?

It is unlikely that you'll need to carry around more than two types of nets at a time. The ones lower than the current appropriate tier won't drop, so you'll either run out of them or discard them. You'll generally carry the current appropriate nets and ones from one tier up that drop occasionally. They also stack to 100 in the inventory, and to 5000 in the Currency Stash.

What kinds of Beasts can I encounter?

In addition to the hundreds of regular Beasts in Path of Exile that can be captured, there are several tiers of new Beasts you'll encounter as you play in the Bestiary League:

• Rare beasts with a Bestiary mod. These occur relatively often (every area or so) and are harder than normal rare monsters. You'll want to capture these if you see them, because these Beasts are often needed in crafting recipes.
• Legendary Beasts, which are exotic variants of other Beasts you may recognise. These occur periodically and are substantially rarer and harder fights. They're worth attempting to capture because most of the powerful Beastcrafting recipes require one or more of them.
• Spirit Beasts. There are four of these, and they're available in the end-game by Beastcrafting a portal to access them. They drop guaranteed unique items and can be captured to craft properties that synergise with those uniques.

How do I capture a Beast when I do so much damage that I just kill them instantly?

While a creature is in a net, it can not die, so if you're worried about killing it too quickly, throw a net first and attack second. Legendary Beasts are signalled on the minimap before you encounter them, and they're quite tough, noticeable fights. They have substantially more life than a regular rare monster, so they're hard to kill by accident.

Can Beasts be traded?

Yes. Once captured, they can be transferred into an item that can be traded with other players using existing safe trading methods.

Will there be a minimap icon for Legendary Beasts?

Yes. They're easy to spot from a distance away, like Breaches and Abysses.

Can I visit other people's Menageries?

Yes. You can party up, enter someone's Menagerie and engage in Beastcrafting or end-game Spirit Beast encounters together.

Is there a /menagerie command?

Yes.

Are your Beasts league-wide or specific for each character?

They're league-wide. Like the Atlas and your Masters, you share them between all your characters in the league.

How do I remember what Beasts I have and what Recipes are available? Do I have to keep going back to the Menagerie?

The Bestiary Book that you carry with you has pages that record all of this. You can press H to check it out anywhere or press the Menu button if you're on Xbox One.

How many Beasts can the Menagerie hold? What happens if a cage gets full?

The Menagerie is quite big - it's spread over several game zones. There's a different cage per type of Beast and they can hold a limited number. If a cage is full and you capture another Beast of that type, then your worst current one is overwritten with the most recent. We're still balancing the number of each type of Beast you can store.

What happens if I die in or leave the Blood Altar fight?

If you die or leave the fight, the Beasts you were fighting are lost (they escape). If you want to have another shot at that Beastcrafting recipe, you'll need to find replacement Beasts. Any item you put in the Altar for crafting will still be there, unmodified.

In Hardcore modes, if you die in the crafting fight, your character moves back to the parent Standard league, as expected.

Will I have to farm many white monsters for high-level recipes?

Our intention is that the hardest recipes require hard beasts to find and capture, rather than busy-work of finding easy monsters that will die quickly.

What will happen to my Beasts when the league ends?

They are merged back into the appropriate Standard league, available for the future if we continue to have Bestiary content in the game in some form. The decision of whether we roll it into core game content after this league will be made later in the league.

Will there be a challenge to catch all of the Beasts?

Yes, one of the 40 challenges is to complete your Bestiary.