Path of Exile 1's Curse of the Allflame is an ocean-loot league built around Charts, Bathysphere dives, Allflame Lanterns, and Dead Man's Sulphur, the league currency used to craft Ghost Copies at Vesper aboard the Sovereign. The short version: open cursed treasure on land, turn Chart drops into dives, convert coral into sulphur, then spend that sulphur on better gear and challenge cosmetics.
That loop is simple enough to explain in one sentence, but Path of Exile's economy makes it matter immediately. Dead Man's Sulphur is not just another collectible; it changes how players approach crafting because it can turn a normal currency craft into a choice between multiple rolled outcomes.
How the Ocean Loop Works
Curse of the Allflame sends players back to the Sovereign, Valerie's ship, where the lower deck houses Vesper, the league's crafting anchor. Instead of mining nodes or farming a single zone, the league asks you to convert random map-world discoveries into deeper dives.
The basic loop starts with cursed treasure chests and similar interactable objects. They spawn enemies, and once you clear them you can interact with the guarded object to receive a Chart.
Charts are the thing that actually unlocks the ocean. Give one to Valerie, enter the Bathysphere, and you're sent to the seabed, where the real work happens. Chart runs are quick, but the difficulty scales as you push farther, so the league still rewards builds that can keep up with heavier enemy density and tougher modifiers.
Inside a dive, your job is to place Allflame Lanterns. Each lantern expands the explorable area and pulls nearby coral into its effect, converting that coral into Dead Man's Sulphur. Monsters, chests, and other loot still show up, but the lanterns are the countdown: when you run out, you need to get back to the Bathysphere before the ocean pressure becomes a problem.
Charts Are the League's Real Resource
Dead Man's Sulphur is the obvious prize, but Charts are the real bottleneck. They decide whether you can do more dives, whether a Voyage is worth starting, and how much room you have to optimize your map before committing to a long run.
A normal Chart run is the short version of the league. You place lanterns, collect sulphur, grab loot, and extract once the lanterns are gone. It is a clean farming loop, and it is also where most players will spend their first few hours learning how much area one lantern actually gives you.
Voyages are the bigger, more strategic version. Once you have cleared enough Charts, Valerie asks if you are ready, and the league opens a grid where your Charts can be placed together. The first Voyage needs only 4 Charts, but all later Voyages require 9.
The default Voyage can use up to about 60 Allflame Lanterns, compared with the standard 6 in a normal Chart run. That makes the map layout more important than it first appears, because every Chart you bring along has to be reachable once the dive starts.
How Voyage Maps Work
The Voyage map is where the league stops feeling like simple diving and starts feeling like Path of Exile has put you in the editor chair. Each Chart has connection lines, and those lines must connect to the edge of the grid or to another Chart. Diagonal connections do not count as adjacent.
Charts can have Adjacent modifiers or Voyage modifiers. Some modifiers affect neighboring Charts, while others apply across the entire Voyage, so placement matters. A border modifier looks tempting at first, but if your Chart lines do not actually connect to the playable area, that modifier is mostly decoration.
There is one important layout rule that can surprise new players: if you start a Voyage with disconnected Charts, you will only be able to explore the Charts connected to the bottom-left of the grid. That means the first Voyage is less about maximizing bonuses and more about making sure every Chart you bring along is reachable.
The best strategy is usually to connect as many Charts as possible before starting. Once the map is coherent, the rest of the dive follows the same
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