What Is Settlers of Kalguur?

Settlers of Kalguur was one of Path of Exile's most distinctive league mechanics, introducing a town-building and passive economy system that ran alongside your regular mapping progression. Rather than a combat-focused encounter, Settlers asked you to recruit NPCs, build infrastructure, and manage a resource flow that generated currency and items over time — even while you were offline.

The mechanic drew on the lore of the Kalguuran people and tied directly into Expedition characters like Dannig and Tujen, adding context to characters players had known for multiple leagues.

Core Mechanic: Building Your Town

At the heart of Settlers is the town hub, where you place buildings that perform different economic functions:

  • Gold Mines — Generate gold passively, the primary resource for town development.
  • Shipyard Buildings — Allow you to send resource ships on trading voyages.
  • Smelting Facilities — Convert ore into refined metals for higher-tier ship goods.
  • Market Stalls — Exchange goods for PoE currency types.

Upgrading buildings costs gold, which you accumulate by playing the game normally — monsters drop gold, and completing Expedition encounters yields large gold bonuses.

The Shipping System

The most unique element of Settlers was the ship trading system. You could load ships with resources gathered from your town and send them on voyages to distant ports. Each voyage had:

  • A travel time (ranging from minutes to hours)
  • A cargo capacity limiting how much you could send
  • A destination port with specific demand — higher demand = better return
  • Optional upgrades like better ships (faster travel, higher cargo)

Returning ships brought back PoE currency, unique items, or rare crafting materials. Optimizing your routes and timing became a satisfying mini-game layered over regular league play.

Key Rewards from Settlers

  • Bulk currency (Chaos Orbs, Orbs of Alteration, Exalted Orbs) from ship returns
  • Kalguuran runes — a new item modifier system that could add powerful implicit-style mods to equipment
  • Unique items specific to the league, some of which carried forward into the core game
  • Expedition currency from Expedition encounters, fuelling the vendor economy

How Settlers Changed Mapping Strategy

Because gold was the primary town resource and monsters/Expedition encounters were the primary gold source, Settlers incentivised a particular mapping style:

  • Running maps with high monster density to maximize gold per hour
  • Never skipping Expedition encounters — they provided the best gold per encounter
  • Balancing time in-game (earning gold) with time away (ships returning)

For players who enjoyed passive resource management, this created a very engaging loop. You'd log in, collect ship returns, reload voyages, and dive into maps knowing your offline time was working for you.

Kalguuran Runes: The Crafting Addition

One of the most impactful additions of Settlers was Kalguuran Runes, which allowed players to add implicit-style modifiers to weapons and armour. These runes filled a meaningful gap in crafting, giving players a new lever to push item power in targeted ways. Several rune effects proved exceptionally strong for specific builds, and the community quickly identified which were worth farming for.

Legacy and Impact

Settlers of Kalguur is fondly remembered for offering a distinctly different style of engagement compared to combat-heavy leagues. The passive economic layer gave casual players a way to generate meaningful income without requiring constant high-intensity gameplay, while the depth of the shipping optimization kept veteran players engaged. Elements of the league — particularly Kalguuran Runes — were retained in the core game after the league ended, making it one of the more influential leagues in recent memory.