The Cursed Realm is a weekly guild-grounds boss fight where you send six teams at once, five against the boss's Shadow Guards and one against the boss, and your score is the total damage across all six. Each week brings one boss with its own curse on your heroes. Your best run sets a division that pays Twisted Essence, Elemental Shards and Cores, Stargazer Scrolls and more. On top of that, Realm Mastery hands out one-off chests as your best damage on each boss climbs.
Getting in
The Cursed Realm sits in the guild grounds, so you need a guild. The trial version opens after Stage 12-40. It uses the real fight but doesn't count for the leaderboard, and you unlock its teams with Ascended heroes:
| Ascended heroes | Trial teams available |
|---|---|
| Under 10 | Boss team only |
| 10 | Boss team and 1 Shadow Guard team |
| 15 | Boss team and 2 Shadow Guard teams |
| 20 | Boss team and 3 Shadow Guard teams |
| 25 | Boss team and 4 Shadow Guard teams |
| 30 | All six teams, and leaderboard entry |
The ranked Cursed Realm, with leaderboard placement and division rewards, opens once you either reach Resonating Crystal level 350 or own 30 Ascended heroes.
How a session runs
- A new boss arrives every 7 days. Results then take 24 hours to calculate, and you can't fight during that time.
- All heroes fight at level 360. Gear and Ascension tier stay as they are, and artifacts do nothing.
- Only Resonating Crystal heroes, Dimensional heroes and mercenaries can take part. You can use one mercenary per challenge, as often as you like.
- One challenge runs all six battles, and the score is the damage dealt to the five Shadow Guard teams plus the boss. The boss and its guards gain strength each time they lose a set chunk of health.
- Only your highest score of the session counts. You can view the formation and replay behind any player's best score.
You get 10 free challenges per session and up to 199 in total. Extra challenges come in purchases of 5:
| Purchase number | Diamonds per purchase |
|---|---|
| 1 to 3 | 100 |
| 4 to 6 | 200 |
| 7 to 9 | 300 |
| 10 to 12 | 400 |
| 13 to 15 | 500 |
| 16 to 18 | 600 |
| 19 to 21 | 700 |
| 22 to 24 | 800 |
| 25 to 27 | 900 |
| 28 and up | 1,000 |
Auto battle buys more challenges when you run out and only charges for the ones it actually uses.
Boss rotation and curses
Bosses rotate weekly in this order, then loop: Kane, Ice Shemira, Grotesque Mage, Dune Destroyer, Burning Brute, Demonic Nemora. They mostly fight the same way as in the Twisted Realm (see the Twisted Realm guide for each boss's skills). The exception is the Grotesque Mage, which never escapes here and instead hits harder the longer the battle runs. In the Cursed Realm each boss also lays a curse on your side for every battle, and the curse decides which heroes are worth bringing that week:
| Boss | Curse | What it does to your team |
|---|---|---|
| Kane | Blade of Regicide | After 10 seconds, your top damage dealer permanently loses 75% Attack Rating, and loses more every 20 seconds after that. |
| Ice Shemira | Shadow's Howl | Enemies have much higher Dodge. |
| Grotesque Mage | Caged Bird | Your heroes can't use ultimates. Each time a hero reaches 1,000 Energy it's drained to zero, and their Normal Attack damage rises by 100%, stacking up to 800%. |
| Dune Destroyer | Crystallized | Your heroes can't regain health, but their shields are 70% stronger. Damage drops sharply for any hero without a shield. |
| Burning Brute | Shattering Incursion | Once the battle starts, your heroes' attributes can't be increased. |
| Demonic Nemora | Shadow Fangs | All your damage except ultimates is reduced. |
Some practical consequences: Grotesque Mage week favors heroes whose damage comes from normal attacks, since ultimates are switched off. Dune Destroyer week needs a shield source in every team. Burning Brute week shuts off attribute buffs, so heroes who rely on buffing allies lose most of their value. Kane week punishes a single hyper-carry, because whichever hero leads on damage after 10 seconds gets crippled.
Divisions and rewards
Rewards are mailed after the 24-hour calculation. The top division is Legend. Below it, the board splits into ten equal bands, Diamond 1 to 5 and then Gold 1 to 5. The damage needed for Legend, Diamond and Gold comes from results on the same boss in its previous session. Region leaderboards are grouped the same way as the Legends' Championship, and you can view your rank for your region or across all servers.
| Placement | Twisted Essence | Elemental Shards | Elemental Cores | Stargazer Scrolls | Time Emblems | Bait |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Legend, top 50 | 1,000 | 600 | 400 | 15 | 10 | 250 |
| Legend, top 200 | 1,000 | 600 | 400 | 15 | 10 | 250 |
| Legend, top 1% | 1,000 | 600 | 400 | 15 | 10 | 200 |
| Legend, top 5% | 770 | 560 | 320 | 13 | 8 | 180 |
| Legend, top 10% | 700 | 530 | 260 | 11 | 5 | 170 |
| Legend, top 20% | 600 | 480 | 160 | 8 | - | 140 |
| Legend, top 35% | 500 | 430 | 80 | 3 | - | 100 |
| Legend, top 50% | 400 | 400 | 30 | - | - | 50 |
| Legend, top 75% | 300 | 300 | 20 | - | - | - |
| Legend, rest | 200 | 200 | 20 | - | - | - |
| Diamond 1 to 5 | 180, 160, 140, 120, 100 | Same as Essence | 10 | - | - | - |
| Gold 1 to 5 | 90, 80, 70, 60, 50 | Same as Essence | 10 | - | - | - |
The Legend bands in between step down gradually (top 2% pays 900 Essence, top 3% pays 850, and so on). Legend players also earn Cursed Realm nameplates: separate plates for the top 50, the top 200, the top 10% and the top 50%. You can display either the Region or the All-Servers version.
The bottom of Legend pays only a little more than Diamond 1 (200 Essence against 180), so the big gains come from climbing inside Legend. The top 10% earns 3.5 times the Essence of the bottom Legend band, along with 13 times the Elemental Cores and the Stargazer Scrolls and Time Emblems that lower bands never see. Every few percent you gain inside Legend is worth more than the step into it.
Realm Mastery
Each boss has 30 Realm Mastery levels, set by your best damage on that boss across all sessions. Every new level pays a one-off Reward Choice Chest:
| Mastery levels | Chest choices (pick one) |
|---|---|
| 1 to 10 | 2 Common Hero Scrolls, 1 Faction Hero Scroll or 1 Stargazer Scroll |
| 11 to 30 | 3 Fortuitous Emblem Choice Chests, 600 Poe Coins, 60 Elemental Shards, 30 Elemental Cores or 15 Bait |
The damage needed differs by boss, with Grotesque Mage asking for the most at every level:
| Boss | Level 1 | Level 10 | Level 20 | Level 30 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kane | 94M | 7.61B | 23.08B | 50.19B |
| Ice Shemira | 92M | 9.65B | 24.07B | 50.08B |
| Grotesque Mage | 252M | 14.88B | 35.31B | 71.20B |
| Dune Destroyer | 112M | 9.83B | 26.87B | 56.57B |
| Burning Brute | 121M | 7.20B | 18.56B | 55.16B |
| Demonic Nemora | 127M | 9.76B | 24.20B | 48.94B |
Mastery only counts new highs, so the chests come from improving your roster over time, and buying extra challenges in a session adds nothing unless it beats your previous best on that boss.
Battle Wager
During the first 3 days of each boss, you can bet on the last digit of the top 10 players' combined damage. Each guess costs 600 Poe Coins, you can pick up to 5 digits, a correct guess pays 6,000 Poe Coins, and taking part pays 300 Poe Coins either way. Betting on one digit returns 900 Poe Coins on average for 600 spent (a 1-in-10 shot at 6,000, plus the 300). Every extra digit costs 600 and adds 600 to the average return, so it lowers the risk without changing the average gain. Place at least one bet every week, and add more digits only if you'd rather have a steadier result.
Cursed Glory
The Cursed Glory leaderboard ranks the top 100 players across all servers by the avatar frames they've earned on the Dream Ladder, with earlier unlocks ranking higher. When two players have the same number of frames, Combat Rating breaks the tie.