The Ultimate Sulphite Rota Guide

Preface

[This is an updated version of a guide I previously published during 3.9]

Hey there, I’ve spent a lot of time interested in Delve and a big part of that has been doing sulphite rotations (rotas) in global 840 to cut down on costs. I’m in the channel all the time and I see the trouble people have with putting together a party that doesn’t run into some kind of issue because of inexperience. To make things less hostile and much easier on everyone, I put together this guide, so you have a better idea of what to do and not do, and why. My goal is less headaches for everyone who does use the channel, and to bring new people that are interested on board.

What is a rota?

A sulphite rota is when players gather a party of six people, and each player hosts 1-3 maps with Niko in them, whether that be from daily missions or sulphite scarabs.
The party travels to each person’s hideout in an order created by the party host and joins every map, running quickly through it and collecting the three sulphite piles together.

Why do them?

Doing a rota allows each player to get a lot more sulphite than they would alone with the same investment, at the cost of taking longer.

This works because sulphite scales off map tier, map quantity, and most importantly, party quantity.
These are all multiplicative bonuses, meaning stacking them together is highly effective.
Party quantity specifically multiplies sulphite gain by up to 3.5 times (+50% per player, so +250% with a full party).
The catch, however, is that each pile gets split evenly to each nearby player, in other words 6 ways with a full party.
Having to share with 5 people sounds bad, but the reason this works is because being in that group means you ran 6 times the maps - and you only paid for a fraction of them!

Doing 6 times the maps and splitting the sulphite 6 ways sounds like it does nothing, but the reason it all works is because of the extra multiplier from party quant.

Using scarabs changes this calculation, though. If you put in a scarab with your map, only you will gain the multiplier it provides - and likewise, you will not benefit from other peoples’ scarabs.

If you use rusted scarabs, for example, doing a single rota is like doing 5 master mission maps and 1 rusted scarab map, as opposed to every map you run solo being a rusted scarab map.
Following all the calculations, the sulphite multiplier for being in a party compared to alone ranges from 3.5 with missions, to about 3 with rusted scarabs, all the way down to about 2 with winged scarabs.

Remember that, while less resources are spent per map, it ends up taking a good bit longer.
This begs another question - is it always more efficient to play as a party?

The answer is actually no! If you’d like to check out my math, you can do so here, but the TL;DR is that if you make less than 5.5ex/hr, you should run rotas with rusted scarabs, otherwise go solo with rusted scarabs, using missions instead for both whenever possible.

Where do I join one?

Sulphite rotas are hosted in global channel 840.
This channel is exclusively for sulphite rotas, so anything that would better belong in 820 (pure breach, beachhead, etc) is considered spam. Don’t do that.
840 also works as a hub for general delve discussion, but its main focus is sulphite rotas.

Which one do I join?

There’s a couple different types of rotas, and it’s important to know which is right for you before you try to join. The categories are singles, doubles, and triples, which refer to the number of maps that each person runs.
At the very beginning of the league, people will be running singles and doubles with t5/10 maps, as nobody has progressed far in their mine or atlas yet. After a few days, this will turn into mostly doubles and triples of t15+, and you will likely see few singles and no low tiers for the rest of the league. (People may do them in 820, but the focus of this guide is 840 for more dedicated delvers).
The type you’re interested in depends on what your sulphite cap is, which can be increased by upgrading it with azurite in the mine encampment. The actual sulphite amount you get from a rota is more of a range than a number, because there are a lot of factors that can affect how much you get. My estimates are 35k for doubles and 55k for triples, although this is more on the high end.
You’ll want to avoid joining a rota unless you have enough space left in your tank to handle it. The 38.5k capacity upgrade is recommended for doubles, and the 55k upgrade for triples. If you run extremely juiced maps and use scarabs, you may need the highest upgrade, which is 65k.

The highest cap is also useful if you want to join a rota without having to completely empty your tank first.

It’s worth pointing out that these upgrades are expensive in terms of azurite, especially for someone just starting out delving, with cumulative costs of over 25,000 azurite for the 38.5k cap and 80,000 for the 55k cap. Because of this, I recommend going solo and focus farming azurite nodes until you’re able to reach that 38.5k sulphite cap for doubles, unless you happen to be doing this at the very beginning of the league and are able to utilize the lower requirement rotas.
The benefit of going from doubles to triples (besides being able to delve for longer at a time) is that the people running them tend to be more experienced and make fewer mistakes. My goal with this whole guide, though, is to teach you enough to avoid those mistakes no matter how experienced you are.

How do I join one?

To answer this question, let’s take a look at a typical advertisement found in the channel, and break down what everything means.
LFM Double T15+ Q90+ No ref, Skip boss, Only Good Layout, Link map 4/6

LFM stands for Looking For More/Members, meaning this person is hosting. Asking for someone else to host would be done by saying “LF (single/double/triple),” but we try to discourage this. If someone were hosting, they would already be putting their message in chat, so if there’s nobody hosting at the moment, the player looking for a group should simply host it themselves.
Double, as discussed earlier, means that each person in this group will run two maps.
T15+ indicates that the maps you need to bring have to be at least tier 15.
Q90+ means that your map needs to have at least 90% increased item quantity on it. Sometimes people will use 80 or 100, but 90 seems to be the generally agreed upon number.
No ref means you can’t bring any maps that have physical or elemental reflect on them. Even if you personally can handle those mods, you don’t know if the rest of your party can, and you don’t want to accidentally kill them. Other undesirable mods such as no regen or cannot leech may be mentioned here as well.
Skip boss is self-explanatory. During 3.8 when accumulating master missions through boss kills was introduced, boss killing became standardized to try and sustain as many Niko missions as possible. However in 3.9 and later, map bosses became significantly more difficult, and scarab prices fell, making use of master missions less necessary. Because of this, most groups are opting to skip the boss so that they can get their sulphite faster and be more liberal with which maps to run.

In leagues where scarabs are more expensive, interest in boss killing may be on the rise, but will still be relatively uncommon.

Only Good Layout is probably the most cryptic and definitely the most frequently broken rule. In the map rolling section later, I’ll talk about what qualifies as a good layout.
Link map for invite means that, to join a party, it’s not sufficient to message the host and say “inv”; you’ll need to link the maps that you’re going to run to the host so they can double check the layout, quant, and mods before inviting you. Linking items is done by pressing ctrl+alt+click on the item. I suggest having a bunch of pre-rolled maps on hand for this purpose. You risk not getting a spot in the party if you have to roll new maps every time you want to join a rota.
4/6 indicates that the party already has 4 people in it, and that there are two spots left.
Note that, people will omit details from this message, but that doesn’t necessarily imply that the rule no longer exists. You can still get in trouble for giving a bad map layout or a reflect map even if the host didn’t specifically mention so.

If you missed it earlier, the way to join is not to ask for an invitation, but to whisper an item link of the maps you’re going to run to the party host.
That covers the standard requirements to join a rota, but hosts often put optional restrictions for various reasons.

The most common of these is realm restrictions, for example “EU Only” or “No Singapore”, because ping over a certain amount can make the game unplayable for the whole party. Waiting at a sulphite node and watching someone rubberband backwards over and over again is not fun.
You might see a host only allow a few specific maps, which is a trend that I’m trying to get to catch on. Maps in this game are intentionally heavily randomized, so it can take a while to learn the possible layouts and quirks of where sulphite piles spawn in specific maps. By limiting the pool to a few of the best layouts, the community as a whole can learn more quickly how to run the maps as fast as possible.
Outside of those, additional restrictions aren’t all that common, but I would recommend respecting the host’s wishes should you join one of those parties.

How do I get a “good” map?

The first step is to get a map with a “good layout.”

This leaves a lot to the imagination, but the main criteria for a map being rota-viable is that it needs to be fast and easy to navigate. In other words, the layout must be very open with little to no backtracking. Smaller maps are a plus, too.
The tier 15+ requirement also cuts a lot of potential candidates out of the pool, because some otherwise good maps like Beach don’t exist at tiers higher than 14.
Even then, just because you think a map fits all these requirements doesn’t mean everyone else will agree. Thankfully, there are some maps that are universally considered good and some more that are not far behind.
The best, most “meta” maps as of 3.11 are Canyon (t15) and Promenade and Reef (t16).
Maps that are decent are Desert Spring, Dark Forest, Iceberg, Sepulchre, and Shore (t15) and Dig, Basilica, and Park (t16).
My personal tier list for maps is here.
Promenade and Reef are of particular importance, because they are “natural” t16 maps, meaning they don’t exist at any tier lower than 16. Since horizon orbs can only roll maps into natural maps (confirmed intended by GGG), and since there are only three natural t16s, two of which are good, it is incredibly easy to turn any t16 into a rota-friendly map. A single horizon orb has a 2/3 chance of getting a good outcome, and if the map turns into the third natural t16 which is Cage, that chance jumps to 100% for the second attempt since a Cage can’t be horizoned into itself.

The weightings seem to be bugged and not perfectly even, because Promenade appears disproportionately often compared to the other two, which works out great for us.

I don’t recommend trying to use any map not already mentioned. If it were up to me, I would force you to pick something new if you showed me bad maps, but other people are probably more forgiving.

Now that you’ve got a good base, we have to figure out the mods and quant.

As mentioned earlier, reflect is an absolute no-no and if you roll a map with reflect, you should reroll it, set it aside, or get the reflect sextant.
All other mods are okay for rotas, but just be aware that having too crazy of a map can kill your party and having no regen/no leech can leave people without movement skills, making the map take forever.
For quant, these maps should always be 20% quality because it’s going to be pretty hard to roll 90+ quant without this. In fact, it’s kind of hard to roll 90+ quantity even with 20% quality, and it’s annoying and wasteful to sit there and chaos spam maps.

You could chaos spam them using harvest, which is nice if you want to make sure you don’t lose any maps to bad vaals.

A strategy I like more is to start with a bigger pool of maps and vaal them all. You have a great chance of getting them to 8mod or unID, both of which give huge quant bonuses and therefore a lot more sulphite for everyone. You can always save maps that brick from this for running yourself or selling, so you’re not really losing money through the process.
If you’re doing this with t16s, the vaal orb outcome of upgrading the map into a higher tier is impossible, leaving you with an even better chance of getting a desirable outcome.
Fragments and Awakening Bonus Objectives are also great ways of boosting quant higher, which I always take advantage of. My map quants generally end up in the high 100s after all the bonuses are applied, which is great for extra sulphite gain.
Further methods of boosting quant like tempests are seldom used, but totally valid.

My favorite things to play around with are unID sextant, infused rampage, mortal fragments, hillock bench, and tempests, but these are all just because I find it funny to run maps with maximum quant and not because they are actually advisable strategies.

Sextants, on the other hand, can actually end up being a hindrance to your party, because the huge density increase they bring can turn your already-laggy party of 6 players into a slideshow, and can get people killed, whether from lag or sheer difficulty of navigating through massive swarms of mobs. The same applies to influence, although that’s not as easy to control.

Keeping all of that in mind, here’s my preferred step-by-step method of rolling rota maps. Note that some maps at any stage may just randomly become usable and can be excluded from the rest of the steps.

Start with a large base of tier 15-16 maps.
Remove any t15s that aren’t on the list of good layouts.
Remove any maps that are already corrupted.
ID and scour all maps so that they become normal rarity.
Horizon any t16s that aren’t on the list of good layouts into Promenade or Reef maps.
Quality all maps remaining to 20%.
Alch all maps.
You can optionally chaos spam the maps to 90+ quant at this point if you want better odds of that map still being usable after vaaling.

This is really easy with harvest!

Search the tab for “refl” and use chaos to reroll any maps with elemental or physical reflect, along with any other mods that you personally dislike.
Vaal the entire tab, keeping a close eye on the t15s to see which ones turn into t16s with unusable layouts.
Remove any t15s that upgraded into bad t16s.
Search for reflect again and remove any maps that vaal’d into reflect maps. Maps that became unidentified through the vaal orb keep the mods they had before (you just can’t see them) so there is no concern of them having reflect, since we rerolled those in an earlier step.

You can actually keep your reflect maps if you use the sextant mod “Players and their minions cannot take reflected damage.” Make sure to notify your party first to avoid confusion.

Remove any maps with below 90 quantity.
At this point, every map either has 90+ quant, or much higher if they became unidentified or got 8 mods, all on good layouts and without reflect.
Congrats, now you have a nice pool of maps to run in rotas.

I’ve joined a rota, now how exactly do I do it?

To start, just hang around until the party fills up with 6 members. You can do something else in the meantime, but don’t get too committed, since the group will want to start as soon as the last person joins. This is a good time to do something that’s easy to drop at any second like check reddit or organize your stash.
Once the party is full, the host will create the order, and type “up” in party chat when they’re done. They are writing the order in the party description, so to actually see what the order is, go to the social tab (default S) and click on the third tab, which should say Current Party. The bar right above the words “Current Party” is the description, and will contain something like Player1/Player2/Player3 and so on, indicating the order in which you’ll go to each of their hideouts to run their maps.
The person whose turn it currently is will open a map using their Niko daily mission or a scarab in the map device.

If you suspect your party member forgot to add Niko in their map, there are two ways to check for them. If they used a mission, the quest to collect the sulphite will appear on the right hand side of the screen. If they used a scarab, there will be a line in the list of map mods that says “Map owner gains x% more sulphite.”
You can actually use the “Area contains Niko” sextant mod too, which appears in the list of map mods appropriately, but not the “A Master Seeks Help” prophecy because that one is random whether it spawns him or not.

The whole party will enter the map. Note that, since this means all 6 portals are used right away, you cannot die or else you will lose out on sulphite.
Once you enter the map, STAY STILL until every party member is loaded into the map. In fact, do not send any server-side actions (skills, flasks, etc) that would cause you to exit grace period. This can prevent a node that spawned by the entrance portal from generating with less sulphite than normal, thanks to some weird mechanics.
Wait for everyone to fully load into the map. Once everyone is in, start running through the map. When a sulphite pile is found, wait by it until the whole party is standing close to it, then anyone can click the sulphite to collect it (does not need to be the map owner, even if using scarab), and move on to the next node. After the third pile, someone will drop a portal and everyone leaves for the next map.
On more open layouts, the group might split up a bit to search for piles faster, and if someone finds one and the rest of the group doesn’t realize the pile is there, then they will type “h” for “here” in party chat to signal that they found a pile.
During the map, do not play as if it were a normal map. The goal is not to full clear or kill mobs or pick up loot, it is to get the sulphite quickly and get out. Most people will kill some mobs on the way to the pile but will not focus on getting every last one, and it’s okay to quickly grab a chaos or something if it drops, but not if it causes you to be so slow that people have to wait around for you.
After each member finishes running their maps, check the order for the next person and go to their hideout, and repeat until everyone’s done. Don’t forget to thank your party after you’re done!

Etiquette, courtesy, and what to do in weird situations

There’s a lot of random stuff that can go wrong and etiquette that you should remember, so let’s go over some dos and don’ts.
Remove some of your minions if you have a lot to avoid lagging people to death.
If you are in a realm that a host isn’t allowing but want to join them, switch realms before joining. To force your hideout and maps to be in the new realm, swap hideouts by talking to Helena and then swap back. This is also useful if you want to clear your existing portals so as not to confuse your party with what map to enter.
If you crash, reopen your game as quickly as possible and mention in global 840 that you crashed from your rota and to reinvite you.
During the map, do NOT interact with random mechanics, especially ones that can get people killed, such as breaches, legions, strongboxes, and delirium mirrors.

If someone does trigger a delirium mirror by accident, the map owner can fast-forward it to cancel it.

Follow the instructions your host gives. This also applies to any implied/standard rules addressed earlier.
If you die during a map, it does not matter whether you respawn or stay dead. Explanation here.

If you really want master favour, you can still get it by staying dead, but that’s the only benefit to be gained here.

If you cap out on sulphite before the rota is over - for starters, you shouldn’t even have joined if you didn’t have enough space - but, if you do, you don’t need to join the remaining maps, your party members will actually get more sulphite with you not being there. This ONLY applies if you have already opened your maps; if you leave without spending them, you are scamming your party. In that rare situation, you should trade over your maps and scarabs to the host or open your maps for everyone without participating.

There is a common misconception that people who fill up on sulphite early should remain in the party and afk inside each map to “boost” the other party members. There is no way to boost the gains of other players without also collecting sulphite yourself in the process. Explanation here.

Don’t click on sulphite piles without the entire party present. This is one of the fastest ways to piss people off. Be patient and count that all 6 dots are there before clicking, or let someone else do the clicking if you don’t trust yourself to be careful.

The gathering range is roughly equal to when you can see the pile on the minimap, which is larger than most people think. It’s still better to play it safe and wait until everyone is near the node.
If someone is very far behind for some reason, I like to stand a little further away from the node and make it look like I’m almost out of range to make others less likely to click early by accident.

Don’t leave a rota early without a good reason, especially if it’s before you’ve ran all of your maps. If you leave when it reaches your turn, your party will out you to the whole global chat as a scammer and everyone will blacklist you. If you need to leave for some emergency, trade your maps and scarabs over to another party member so they don’t accuse you of being a scammer.
Don’t run an obnoxiously slow build, or one without a movement skill that jumps gaps. You don’t need 400% movement speed, but you do need to be at least able to keep up with the rest of the party during the map.
If you have to take a trade before the rota has started, let your party know that you’ll be right back and message them to reinvite you after your trade. If you have someone ask for a trade in the middle of a rota, let them know that you’re busy and to wait until you’re done. Third party trading tools are quite useful for this, to send a response with one click.
Don’t keep people waiting during downtime such as between maps or when switching to the next player’s hideout.
Don’t do anything to annoy the other people in your party. The goal of this guide is to minimize the chance of that happening.
Don’t spam the global channel with things like “LF Niko rota” or “LF triple!” I mentioned this already, but if there was one up, the host would already be advertising it. If you want to join a rota and there isn’t already one, make it yourself.
Warn your party if you’re about to put in a no-regen map.

If you are hosting

Make sure your party is set to permanent allocation (will be pretty awkward otherwise if an exalt drops!) and that level downscaling is off.
Be clear with your advertising, and don’t spam the chat too frequently with your advertisement. Once a minute should be enough.
While we’re talking about advertisements, post good ones. You don’t need to link your own maps but you do need to at least specify how many runs and what tier and minimum quant you want.
When creating the order, most hosts will put themselves last, and the first five spots are made by going down the list in the current party tab.
It’s the host’s party at the end of the day, so it’s up to them to enforce all the guidelines I’ve been talking about here.
Don’t be afraid to host! It’s silly to see 2-3 people asking in the channel “anyone hosting?” when any one of them could have just hosted themselves and solved the problem.
Write your order in the party description, not party chat. That way people can check the order at any time, and nobody has to copy and paste it repeatedly.
It may seem like a good idea to remove people’s names from the order once they finish their maps, but I’ve found it leads to more confusion than anything because people only say to themselves “okay, the 3rd one on the list is next,” leading to people getting skipped.
I said earlier to avoid picking loot during the map, but during your three maps, go ahead and grab your map drops/seeds if it doesn’t cause you to fall behind.

Is 840 only for deep delvers/some elite club?

No, it’s for anyone who’s interested in doing sulphite rotas for whatever reason. Most dedicated deep delvers either solo or gather sulphite with their friends, anyway, because being fast is more efficient for them than being efficient with their map investment.

What depth should I farm at?

Well, it depends what you want to do.
If you want to farm XP or common fossils, or just delve casually, exploring all darkness and breaking walls, area level 83 starts at depth 171 and monster damage/life scaling does not start until depth 237, so anywhere between those is both safe and profitable.
If you want to farm cities (historically good for map drops, now only useful for bosses), you’ll want to stay around 600, which is the point at which city biomes stop increasing in frequency.
If you want big money from rare fossils and buying resonators with azurite, go as deep as you can, preferably depth 1500+. This will require specialized builds past 1k.

How much sulphite does a double/triple give?

TL;DR 35k and 55k.
Long answer, like we said before, there is no definitive amount. Not only is the sulphite from any given pile heavily randomized, the quantity of the maps you’re running varies, you may or may not be using scarabs, you might die, people might crash or click early, and so on. The best estimate for a “base” amount I can say is 17k per round, but that figure rounds up to 35k/55k for 2x/3x because the more experienced people are more likely to be running with juiced maps and scarabs.

How long does a rota take?

For a triple, they seem to average around 20-25 minutes.