How to Farm Ancient Crisis Fragments in Citadels — Best Practices

Farming Ancient Crisis Fragments in Path of Exile 2’s Citadels requires a strategic approach focused on maximizing fragment drops and efficiently clearing high-tier content.

What Are Citadels?

Citadels are special late-game zones introduced on the Atlas at Tier 15+, each containing powerful bosses like Count Geonor (Iron Citadel), Doryani (Stone Citadel), and Jamanra (Copper Citadel). Defeating these bosses rewards Crisis Fragments, including the Ancient Crisis Fragment needed to access the Arbiter of Ash fight.

Best Practices for Farming

Atlas Progression and New Areas: Constantly reveal new map tiles on the Atlas. Generating fresh map regions increases the number of Citadels you find. Aim to pick routes that maximize exploration without backtracking, such as following coastlines or linear map branches.
High-Tier Maps: Farm Tier 15+ maps to ensure Citadel occurrences. Citadels appear as fog of war beams—blue for Iron, red for Stone, and orange for Copper—making them visually identifiable when revealing new map parts.
Waystone Drop Chance: Boost your Waystone Drop Chance via atlas passive skills, modifiers on your Waystone maps, and crafting. Using Waystones with suffix-only mods or corrupted Waystones with six suffixes significantly increases your chances of multiple fragment drops per boss kill.
Map Modifiers and Scarabs: Apply modifiers that increase monster density and pack size. Use Scarabs and Sextants to enhance map difficulty and quantity, increasing both monster numbers and fragment drop rates.
Teamplay or Carry Options: Some Citadel bosses can be challenging. Coordinating with guildmates or friends helps clear Citadels faster and safer. If high difficulty is an issue, consider paying for carries or organizing team runs.
Survivability and Build Optimization: Make sure your build is optimized for high-damage and survivability to avoid deaths that cause you to fail the Citadel run and lose your invested Waystone.

Fragment Farming Efficiency

With optimized Waystone Drop Chance (around 300–900%), players can increase fragment drops from one to two or even three per Citadel run. This makes farming much more profitable and speeds up progression toward gathering all Crisis Fragments.

Farming Ancient Crisis Fragments efficiently means advancing on the Atlas to reveal new maps, targeting high-tier areas with Citadels, stacking Waystone Drop Chance, and using map modifiers to maximize fragment yield. Successful farming unlocks pivotal endgame content and can be a lucrative source of currency when fragments are sold or traded.

By following these best practices, players ensure a steady flow of Ancient Crisis Fragments, fueling their journey to the Arbiter of Ash and the pinnacle of Path of Exile 2 gameplay.The Ancient Crisis Fragment is a key reward obtained by defeating the boss in Citadels—special endgame zones located on the Atlas at Tier 15 or higher. Efficient farming of these fragments involves several best practices:

Progress your Atlas to reveal as many new map areas as possible, which increases Citadel spawn locations. Following coastlines or new directions helps maximize map tiles revealed.
Farm Tier 15+ maps with high monster density to ensure Citadels and their bosses appear. Look for colored beams in the fog marking Citadel bosses (blue for Iron, red for Stone, orange for Copper).
Boost your Waystone drop chance, as Waystones influence the number of fragments dropped per boss kill. This can be increased through atlas passive skills, modifiers on Waystones, and crafting—especially using Vaal Orb corruption on Waystones to get multiple suffixes.
Use map mods, scarabs, and sextants to increase monster pack size and density, improving fragment drop chances.
Coordinate multiplayer runs for safer and faster clears, or consider paying for carries if Citadels prove too difficult solo.
Optimize your build for survivability and damage to minimize deaths, as dying in Citadels wastes your Waystone and progress.

With roughly 300-900% increased Waystone drop chance, players can expect two or three fragments per boss kill, increasing farming efficiency significantly.

Farming Ancient Crisis Fragments requires high-tier map progression, maximizing Waystone drop chance, and effective farming strategies to harvest multiple fragments from each Citadel run. This unlocks access to the Arbiter of Ash fight and is a vital part of endgame progression in Path of Exile 2.