PoE Bestiary Farming Guide: Valuable Beasts, Scarabs and Beastcrafting

Your Menagerie can be packed with captured beasts and still contain almost nothing worth selling. That's the trap with PoE Bestiary farming: catching more monsters is easy, but knowing which ones pay for the Scarabs takes a little homework. In patch 3.29, the valuable targets include Craicic Croaker, Black Mórrigan, and specialist crafting beasts such as Wild Bristle Matron. Talismans also matter again, while the old two-way and three-way Beastcrafting splits have been removed. This guide covers a practical Atlas setup, the current Bestiary Scarabs, which beasts deserve inventory space, how to sell them, and when a Blood Altar recipe is worth more than the beast itself.

How Bestiary Farming Makes Currency in PoE 3.29

Bestiary is straightforward once you stop thinking of every capture as loot of equal value. Einhar appears in maps containing capturable beasts, helps defeat them, and captures them for your Menagerie. Those beasts become ingredients for Blood Altar recipes or tradeable items you can sell to other players.

There are three main ways to get paid:

• Sell valuable Red Beasts: crafters buy specific named beasts to perform recipes they need. This is usually the clearest way to turn a lucky capture into currency.
• Sell surplus Yellow Beasts: they are common ingredients consumed by many recipes. Individual Yellow Beasts are not exciting drops, but bulk demand gives them a use.
• Use or sell Bestiary-related rewards: Talismans, access to Spirit Beast bosses, and selected Beastcrafting outputs can be valuable when they match current crafting demand.

Yellow Beasts and Red Beasts serve different jobs. Yellow Beasts are mostly recipe fuel. Red Beasts are the named ingredients that unlock particular crafts. A Menagerie full of ordinary Red Beasts is not automatically worth more than a smaller collection containing a few sought-after species.

Patch 3.29 also changed the loot you should check after an encounter. Talismans can now drop from Red Beasts and Bestiary bosses. They use special enchantments instead of the old Talisman implicits and are no longer corrupted by default. That does not make every Talisman expensive: its enchantment, base, explicit modifiers, and actual buyer demand still decide the price.

Valuable Bestiary Beasts: What to Keep, Sell, or Check

Do not assign a fixed Chaos Orb value to a beast from a guide written weeks ago. Prices change with the league economy, popular crafting projects, and how many other players are farming Einhar. The useful distinction is whether the beast has a recipe that crafters actively need or merely creates a random item.

Craicic Croaker is the name to remember. Older trade discussions and crafting videos call it Craicic Chimeral. Grinding Gear Games renamed the beast in 3.29, so searching only the old name can leave you looking at outdated information. Its Magic-item imprint is still relevant because crafters can preserve a valuable early crafting state before attempting riskier changes.

Black Mórrigan is another beast you should never casually sacrifice. Found in tier 14+ maps, it has several distinct applications rather than one routine currency recipe. In particular, 3.29 introduced a Unique Talisman craft requiring this beast. If you find one, check the current demand for the beast itself before deciding whether to make a Talisman or use another recipe.

Fenumal Plagued Arachnid requires the biggest mental reset. Its old reputation came from item splitting. That is not the recipe you are selling in 3.29. The new Talisman fracture crafts have different target requirements and a different market. A rare Talisman with the right enchantment and affixes might justify the investment; a random one probably will not.

Bestiary Atlas Passives: Build Around Red Beasts

The Atlas tree should make your maps produce more chances at valuable Red Beasts. Spending points on every node with a Bestiary icon is less useful than choosing between encounter access, more captures, and better odds for the beast families you actually want.

Start With Big Game and Natural Selection

Big Game gives Yellow Beasts in your maps a chance to be replaced by Red Beasts. The current listed value is 15%. That is exactly the kind of conversion a trade-league farmer wants: more opportunities to capture named beasts instead of accumulating only recipe fuel.

Natural Selection makes beasts in your maps more likely to be less common varieties. It does not guarantee a valuable species, but it works toward the same goal as Big Game: improving the pool instead of only increasing ordinary encounters.

Take the small passives that add Red Beasts and the chance for Red Beasts to appear in pairs when their point cost fits your tree. If you are farming without guaranteed Einhar access, the encounter-chance passives and Eternal Hunt help with consistency. If a Scarab already guarantees Einhar, do not value natural encounter chance as though it creates another separate Einhar encounter.

Choose the Hunt Passives for Your Target Beast

The four Hunt passives bias Red Beasts toward different Bestiary families. They are useful when you have a specific crafting beast in mind, but they do not force that species to spawn.

• The Hunt for Craiceann: increases the chance of Red Beasts from The Deep. This is the family to examine when targeting Craicic Croaker.
• The Hunt for Farrul: increases the chance of Red Beasts from The Wilds, a relevant family for beasts such as Wild Bristle Matron.
• The Hunt for Fenumus: favours The Caverns, including the family associated with Fenumal Plagued Arachnid.
• The Hunt for Saqawal: favours The Sands. Take it when its beast pool supports the recipes you intend to farm.

All four current Hunt passives list a 100% increased chance for their respective family. This is a weighting change, not a promise that every Red Beast belongs to that family. Check the desired species first, then pick the passive that improves your odds.

Two-Hearted Hunt is a different kind of investment. It gives captured Red Beasts a modifier that can prevent them from being consumed when sacrificed at the Blood Altar. That is attractive when you plan to use recipes yourself. If your entire business is itemising and selling captured beasts, prioritise the nodes that improve your capture pool before spending points around altar reuse.

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Bestiary Scarabs in 3.29: Which Ones Are Worth Buying?

The current Bestiary setup is easier to plan than old Scarab lists suggest. Three Bestiary Scarabs are listed in the current game data: the base Scarab, Herd, and Duplicating. Their individual limits matter, especially when you are copying a loadout from an older video.

Low-Budget Setup

Start with one Bestiary Scarab and one Bestiary Scarab of the Herd. This guarantees an Einhar encounter and adds Red Beasts without spending heavily on every map. If your Atlas setup or another source already guarantees Einhar, you can skip the base Scarab and keep the slot for something useful.

This is the setup to test while you learn which beasts sell. Do not jump straight into expensive Duplicating Scarabs because you saw someone double a valuable beast in a highlight clip.

Higher-Investment Setup

Once you know your actual returns, the natural upgrade is:

• 1 Bestiary Scarab to guarantee Einhar, unless he is already guaranteed;
• 2 Bestiary Scarabs of the Herd for additional Red Beasts;
• 1 Bestiary Scarab of Duplicating to copy captured beasts.

Two Herd Scarabs contribute ten additional Red Beasts in a map containing Einhar. Duplicating then adds another copy of beasts captured in that area. The number of captures goes up, but your chance of seeing the premium species is still subject to the beast pool and randomness.

Duplicating is not automatically profitable. If the extra captures are mostly cheap Red Beasts, you have paid a premium Scarab to create more Menagerie cleanup. Test the setup over a proper batch and count saleable beasts, not merely total beasts captured.

The older Bestiary Scarab of the Shadowed Crow still appears in historical databases and guides. Do not build a current 3.29 farming plan around buying that older Scarab when the current live Scarab list contains the three options above.

A Fast Bestiary Farming Route That Does Not Waste Maps

Bestiary rewards a build that moves quickly between marked encounters and can comfortably kill dangerous rare monsters. You do not need to turn every map into a maximum-investment loot explosion. What matters is getting enough valuable capture attempts per hour without spending the session sorting ordinary beasts.

1. Choose a layout you can run quickly. Prefer maps with simple paths and little backtracking. A shorter route that consistently reaches the beasts beats a maze that looks better on paper.
2. Set your Atlas before buying Scarabs. Prioritise Big Game, Natural Selection, Red Beast passives, and the Hunt family that matches your target.
3. Buy a small test batch. Begin with a manageable number of maps and Scarabs rather than tying up your currency in supplies for an untested strategy.
4. Clear toward the beast markers. Kill what is in your path, defeat the capturable beasts, and let Einhar finish the captures. Do not keep circling the map after your planned encounters are complete.
5. Check Talisman drops. Since 3.29, Red Beasts can drop them. Inspect useful enchantments and bases instead of hiding every Talisman as worthless legacy loot.
6. Review the Menagerie between batches. Itemise valuable captures, list them, and remove low-value beasts before you hit the collection limit.
7. Count sales, not screenshots. Record how many valuable beasts you actually caught, what sold, your Scarab costs, and how long the session took.

Run a sample of around 20 maps to compare a cheap Herd setup with a more expensive Duplicating setup. That is enough to catch obvious cost problems, but not enough to promise a stable hourly return from very rare beasts. If your entire profit depends on finding one specific species, judge the strategy over several batches.

For the broader decision about whether Bestiary deserves your Atlas points over Essence, Harvest, or other mechanics, the existing PoE 1 Atlas Farming Strategies guide covers that separate comparison. Here, the goal is to make Einhar encounters profitable once you have chosen Bestiary.

Menagerie Management: Keep the Good Beasts and Move the Rest

The Menagerie has a global capture limit of 1,000 beasts. That sounds generous until you run a heavily specialised Bestiary tree with Herd and Duplicating. A large collection becomes a liability when new captures start competing for space with beasts you meant to keep.

How to Itemise and Sell a Captured Beast

One of the most useful changes for regular farmers arrived in patch 3.27: you no longer need to buy an empty Bestiary Orb from Einhar. The old advice to purchase an orb for every valuable capture is obsolete.

1. Travel to the Menagerie.
2. Open the Bestiary interface and find the captured-beast list.
3. Search for the exact species you want to sell.
4. Use the interface's itemise action on the chosen beast; the current documented shortcut is Ctrl + left-click.
5. Place the resulting itemised beast in the appropriate trade stash tab and list it at a realistic league price.
6. When a buyer purchases it, the beast can be added to their own Menagerie for crafting.

Make sure you itemise the correct beast. Similar names are easy to mix up, and a cheap beast listed under the price of a Craicic Croaker will not magically become one.

Which Beasts Are Just Taking Up Space?

Do not delete beasts solely because their portrait is red. A Red Beast's colour tells you it is a recipe species, not that it is valuable. Likewise, Yellow Beasts are not worthless: many Blood Altar recipes consume them.

• Keep or list premium crafting beasts promptly. Croaker, Black Mórrigan, and other creatures with current demand should not sit unnoticed while you keep mapping.
• Keep Yellow Beasts if you craft regularly. They are consumed as supporting ingredients. If you never use the altar, check whether bulk buyers want them.
• Remove ordinary Red Beasts with weak demand. If their itemised trade value does not justify the listing effort, freeing the slot may be more useful than hoarding them.
• Do not protect every random Unique-item recipe. A beast that produces an unpredictable low-value item is not automatically worth keeping for weeks.
• Check your collection before large capture sessions. Reaching the limit while valuable beasts are being added can cause unwanted losses.

Think of the Menagerie as an active trading inventory, not a museum. Keep enough beasts for your crafting plans, sell the ones with real demand, and clear the rest before they interfere with the next farming session.

Best Beastcrafting Recipes Worth Using in 3.29

Every interesting beast is not necessarily more profitable when sacrificed. Before opening the Blood Altar, compare the price of the captured beast with what the recipe can realistically produce. Crafting is worthwhile when you have a specific item or a clear market for the output. Randomly rolling results because the beasts are already captured is a good way to lose value.

Magic-Item Imprints: Craicic Croaker

A Magic-item imprint saves an earlier state of a Magic item so a crafter can attempt risky changes and restore that state if the result is bad. This makes Craicic Croaker useful for serious item projects where rolling the desired modifier combination again would be expensive.

The important limitation is the item rarity. An imprint craft for a Magic item is not a universal backup button for finished Rare gear. Check that the item is eligible and that the saved state is worth the cost before spending the beast.

For a normal trade-league farmer, selling the Croaker is often simpler than trying to manufacture your own high-end crafting project just to use it.

Crafted Meta-Modifiers: Wild Bristle Matron

Wild Bristle Matron adds a random crafted meta-modifier to a non-Unique item. That is useful when the resulting meta-mod helps protect an expensive group of affixes or prepares an item for the next step.

It is not a substitute for understanding the item. Check available modifier slots, existing crafted mods, and what the next craft requires. If the beast costs more than the relevant bench option, there is little reason to spend it merely because the recipe exists.

Talisman Fracturing: The Replacement for Splitting

Patch 3.29 replaced both Bestiary item-splitting crafts with fracture recipes for Rare Talismans:

• Single fracture: fractures one modifier on a Rare Talisman that has at least four modifiers.
• Double fracture: fractures two modifiers on a Rare Talisman that has at least six modifiers.

Fenumal Plagued Arachnid remains relevant to this crafting family, and the higher-end double-fracture recipe also involves Black Mórrigan. These crafts target Rare Talismans; they do not split an ordinary weapon, armour piece, or jewellery item into additional copies.

Before attempting either recipe, inspect the Talisman's enchantment and explicit modifiers. Fracturing mediocre affixes on a weak base does not create value just because the craft sounds powerful. You want an item that would still be desirable if the fracture hits a useful modifier.

Black Mórrigan: Unique Talismans and Advanced Crafts

Black Mórrigan now has an additional reason to matter: it is required for the 3.29 recipe that creates a Unique Talisman. It also participates in advanced recipes such as Magic-item Hinekora's Lock application and crafts affecting socket counts or links.

That range of uses makes the beast worth pricing before you sacrifice it. Do not assume a random Unique Talisman will sell for more than the Black Mórrigan used to create it. A valuable crafting ingredient can have a much steadier market than a random result.

Be especially careful with the Magic-item Hinekora's Lock craft: the restriction introduced in 3.28 prevents that Beastcraft from being used on corrupted items.

Spirit Beast Bosses and Their Loot

Bestiary also provides access to Farrul, Craiceann, Fenumus, and Saqawal through their corresponding portal recipes. Their encounters offer specific Unique items and Aspect-related crafting opportunities, but the value depends on the boss, the item, and the level of the opened area.

In 3.29, the boss area's level matches the level of the Red Beast used to open the portal. The bosses also received higher Life, and their specific Unique body armours only drop from areas of level 80 or higher. Do not spend a low-level portal beast expecting the same body-armour drop pool as a higher-level encounter.

For farming profit, compare the entry beast's value against the drops you are targeting. Selling the portal beast may be the better decision if you cannot comfortably kill the boss or do not need its rewards.

Removed Bestiary Recipes and Outdated Advice to Ignore

This is where older PoE farming guides cause the most damage. Several familiar Bestiary crafts either disappeared or changed purpose. Copying their old instructions can lead you to buy the wrong beast or build a crafting plan that cannot be completed.

Two additional details matter. First, the rename from Craicic Chimeral to Craicic Croaker is not a new beast with a different market history. Second, current Talismans cannot be anointed, and their enchantments cannot be removed with the relevant crafting-bench option. Do not plan a Talisman craft around adding an anointment afterward.

The official 3.29 patch notes cover the removed split recipes, Talisman changes, socket-crafting replacement, and Synthesis restriction. The earlier 3.27 patch notes confirm the removal of empty Bestiary Orb purchases.

Should You Sell a Beast or Use It at the Blood Altar?

A captured beast is already a tradeable asset once itemised. Sacrificing it is an investment decision, and you should treat it like spending currency rather than consuming a free resource.

Before using a valuable beast, answer three questions:

1. What does the beast sell for today? Check realistic listings for your league and the quantity buyers are actually taking.
2. What does the craft produce? A predictable, desirable result is easier to evaluate than a random Unique item or a risky fracture.
3. What else must you spend? Include additional beasts, the target item, bench crafts, and the possibility of a failed result.

If the recipe's realistic expected value is below the value of the beasts and other inputs, sell the ingredients. If you are crafting an item for your own build, the calculation changes: compare the cost of making it with buying an equivalent item directly.

There is also the fight itself. Blood Altar recipes release beasts that must be defeated to complete the craft. Make sure your build can handle the encounter before putting expensive ingredients at risk.

How to Measure Real Bestiary Profit

Counting captured beasts is a poor way to measure earnings. One premium species can beat an entire page of cheap ones, and a costly Duplicating setup can generate plenty of captures without generating enough saleable value to cover its inputs.

Track these numbers separately for each test batch:

• Map and Scarab costs, including Scarabs you found yourself but could have sold.
• Number of high-demand beasts captured and successfully sold.
• Value of other saleable beasts and bulk Yellow Beasts.
• Talisman drops that have genuine market value.
• Time spent mapping, checking the Menagerie, listing beasts, and completing trades.

Net profit per hour = (realistic sale value of outputs − total farming inputs) ÷ total session time in hours. Do not count an unsold beast at the highest current asking price. If it is sitting in your stash, that value is still an estimate.

Compare the cheap Herd setup with the Duplicating setup using the same Atlas plan and similar map layouts. If the expensive version generates more total beasts but less net currency per hour, go back to the cheaper one. There is no prize for spending more Scarabs.

Bestiary Farming Mistakes That Cost Currency

Most failed Bestiary strategies are not caused by terrible luck. They come from poor inventory management, copying an outdated setup, or treating every Red Beast as valuable.

• Running outdated Scarab combinations: check the current Scarab names, effects, and limits before purchasing supplies.
• Paying for Duplicating without measuring returns: extra cheap beasts do not automatically repay an expensive Scarab.
• Ignoring the Menagerie limit: itemise premium captures before the collection gets crowded.
• Deleting every Yellow Beast: keep enough recipe fuel for your own crafts or check bulk demand first.
• Using old split-item recipes: 3.29 replaced them with Rare Talisman fracture crafts.
• Overpricing every captured beast: realistic bulk sales are more useful than a stash tab full of listings nobody buys.
• Opening low-level Spirit Beast portals for high-level boss armour: the area-level restriction matters in 3.29.
• Crafting random results instead of selling ingredients: compare the beast's sale price with the likely value of the finished item.

PoE Bestiary Farming FAQ

These are the practical questions that tend to come up once your first few farming batches are finished.

Do I need expensive maps to farm valuable beasts? No. Start with a layout you clear quickly and an Atlas tree focused on Red Beasts. Higher-level content can matter for certain beasts and boss rewards, but higher map difficulty is not automatically better profit if it slows your captures.

Are Yellow Beasts worth selling? They can be useful to players who run large numbers of Blood Altar crafts. Check bulk demand before removing a large collection. If you regularly craft yourself, keep enough Yellow Beasts to avoid buying recipe fuel later.

Should I always use Bestiary Scarab of Duplicating? No. It copies captures, but its cost must be justified by the additional beasts you can actually sell. Start with Herd, measure your results, then test Duplicating against your cheaper setup.

Can I still split items with Beastcrafting in PoE 3.29? No. Both former Bestiary split recipes were replaced with Rare Talisman fracture crafts. They no longer generate two or three separate copies of ordinary items.

Final Thoughts

Good Bestiary farming is about recognising valuable species, capturing enough Red Beasts without overspending on Scarabs, and selling the results before the Menagerie fills up. Build your Atlas around the beast families you want, use Herd as your starting point, and add Duplicating only when your own numbers justify it. Most importantly, leave the pre-3.29 splitting guides behind: the profitable decisions now involve current crafting beasts, Talismans, and the prices players are actually paying.