The Forbidden Sanctum League Mechanic (Trial of the Ancestors)

Challenge Runs Overview

Upon successfully defeating the Herald of the Scourge, it will drop a Unique Relic, which can be placed in your Relic Altar to attempt a more difficult version of the Sanctum – but with additional rewards.

In this section of the guide, I go over each Challenge Run, and provide tips and strategies to successfully clear them!

Changes in 3.22

With the removal of Sanctified Relics and Invocations, Unique Relics have been reworked and rebalanced – now offering completely different rewards.

Currently, these new Unique Relics are not known, and this guide will be updated once 3.22 is live.

The Sanctum League has gone Core with 3.22, and this guide has been updated to reflect all known changes to the mechanic. However, parts of this guide may be inaccurate until 3.22 is actually out.

No Inspiration & No Resolve Gain

Condition: Cannot have Inspiration & cannot gain Resolve
Reward: Random Invocation

At first glance, this Challenge Run may seem extremely difficult to complete. An Inspiration-based Relic Loadout does not work here – you simply cannot have any Inspiration, ever. You might think this means that you only get your initial 300 Resolve, and must make it last for the entire run…

However, while you cannot gain Resolve… you can gain Maximum Resolve. And when you gain Maximum Resolve, your current Resolve will increase by the amount your Maximum Resolve increases by.

Therefore, the best strategy for this Challenge Run is to stack repeatable Maximum Resolve Gain effects. Your two options are:

• “Gain (31-35) Max Resolve when you use a Fountain”
• “Gain (50–59) Maximum Resolve when you kill a Boss”.

Of the two, the Fountain Relic is far stronger – as you can expect to find 2-3 Fountains per Floor. Note that the Boss Relic does count the mid-floor Minibosses, meaning that you can trigger it twice per floor, if you’re lucky.

You should prioritize either Fountains or Bosses, depending on which of these Relic Loadouts you go for. I would still recommend avoiding Afflicted Fountains, however, unless you’re truly desperate.

Any remaining Relic slots should be filled with Small Relics that grant flat added Max Resolve, or Large Relics which grant % increased Max Resolve.

If you manage to stack so much additional Maximum Resolve that you hit the cap of 1,000 in a single run, know that you can always use a Pact Room to sacrifice maximum Resolve.

Hidden Rooms

Condition: Room information is completely hidden
Reward: 2 additional Sanctified Relics

This Challenge Run is like starting a run with every single “Smoke” Affliction at the same time. You have no information whatsoever about each room: Reward Types, Room Types, and even Afflictions are all hidden from you.

With absolutely no way to make strategic decisions, you are simply at the mercy of RNG with this Challenge Run. The most you can do to prepare is to stack as many “Gain Inspiration on Affliction” Relics as you can. You’ll be getting a lot of Afflictions, some of them will be incredibly deadly, and you won’t be getting a lot of chances for good Boons

In fact, you should even consider skipping this Challenge Run outright. While successfully completing this challenge run does reward you with two additional Sanctified Relics, the completely random nature of this Challenge Run creates a very real chance of failing. Since regular runs already award 1 Sanctified Relic, you’re weighing 1 guaranteed Sanctified Relic and a good chance at some additional Divine Orbs, versus some unknown chance of getting 3 Sanctified Relics, and effectively no Divine Orbs.

No Boons

Condition: Cannot have Boons
Reward: 2 additional Sanctified Relics

This Challenge Run requires you to be able to clear the Sanctum without the aid of Boons.

An Inspiration-based Relic Loadout will have no difficulty whatsoever accomplishing this. Once you’re at the point where you can fill every slot in your Relic Altar with a Relic that grants Inspiration “On start of floor” or “Upon gaining an Affliction”, this Challenge Run becomes trivially easy.

You’ll have more than enough Inspiration even if you’re playing sloppy, and this Challenge Run amounts to two bonus Sanctified Relics.

Coin Conversion

Condition: None
Reward: Bonus Relics/XP/Unique Items based on # of Aureus Coins at end of Run

This Challenge Run one converts any excess Aureus coins you have at the end of a challenge run into bonus rewards. There are three different variants – one that converts coins into Experience, one that converts them into Unique Items, and another that converts them into Relics.

Currently, the Experience and Unique versions of this one aren’t worth doing. Both simply give too small of a reward to be worth the opportunity cost of using another Relic.

The Relic one, on the other hand, can give a large number of relics – which is extremely helpful for building Relic Loadouts for other Challenge Runs!

• You can stack “Merchant has additional items” Relics, to fish for the Major Boons that multiply your Aureus coin gains.
• You can stack as many Aureus Coin-generating Relics as you can
• You can use a standard, defensive Inspiration-based loadout, and just not spend any Aureus Coins

Personally, I recommend the last option – just treat don’t spend any coins (unless you have the option for a Boon that multiplies Aureus Coins gained, of course).

A few additional notes on this Challenge Run:

• The coin conversion actually has a cap – I believe it’s somewhere around 20,000 Aureus coins.
• There is a combination of Major Boons that allows you to generate infinite Aureus Coins: “Bronze Coin” and “Silver Coin”.

Uber Herald

Condition: Herald deals double damage & takes 70% less damage
Reward: 3-Mod Balance of Terror

This Challenge Run doesn’t affect the vast majority of your run. Instead, it turns the final boss – the Herald of the Scourge – into an Uber version of the fight. The boss will do double damage, and take 70% less damage.

There are a couple ways of dealing with this. The first is to simply have an incredible powerful build, capable of either deleting the final boss despite its 70% damage reduction, or tanking all of the bosses double-damage hits.

Another way to handle it is to stack 50% damage reduction from enemies and/or bosses on your Relic Loadout. This would reduce the final boss’s damage to regular levels – so all you would have to deal with is a slightly longer fight.

However, it’s worth considering that most Balance of Terrors that drop – even with 3 modifiers – will not be very valuable. As a result, my recommendation is to only do this Challenge Run if you have a character powerful enough to beat the Uber Herald without the support of Relics.

No-Hit Run

Condition: 1 Max Resolve & Cannot Have Inspiration
Reward: Original Sin Unique Ring

This Challenge Run is the big one – the No-Hit Challenge Run. You to complete the seemingly impossible – beating the entire Sanctum without taking a single hit. You have 1 Max Resolve, can’t gain Max Resolve, and can’t have Inspiration.

The reward for such a difficult challenge is well worth it – the Herald of the Scourge will drop Original Sin – a ridiculously powerful (and obscenely valuable) – Unique Ring, that turns all your elemental damage into chaos damage.

But this challenge isn’t really feasible for just any old character to accomplish. You should only attempt this challenge if your build is well-suited for the Sanctum – Melee characters need not apply.

Beyond merely “getting good”, there are a few ways to cheese this Challenge Run, to allow yourself to take a few hits, and keep going.

The first is “Silver Descry”. This Major Boon allows you to ignore the first hit you take in each room – turning this challenge from a “No-Hit” run, into a “32-Hit” run… provided you spread those hits out to once per room.

The second is “Holy Descry”. This Major Boon allows you to revive when you lose all of your Resolve, consuming a random Boon to do so. While Silver Descry allows you to make occasional mistakes, Holy Descry allows you to have a room in which you make multiple mistakes… provided you have enough Boons, and that “Holy Descry” is not the Boon that is randomly removed.

Getting either of these Boons – or for the obscenely lucky, both – makes this challenge run significantly easier. To the point that it can become achievable for a decent player without an obscenely overpowered build to actually accomplish.

The best way of fishing for these Major Boons would be to use a Relic Loadout that stacks as much of the “Merchant has 2 additional items” affix as you can. Most other Relic affixes are going to be completely worthless in this challenge run, after all.