PoE Heist Guide: Rogue Markers, Contracts & Blueprints Explained

🎯 The core idea

This guide is based on Sir Cuthbert's "Heist Guide for Path of Exile" (YouTube, ~8:30 runtime), published 2025-10-28 and labeled [3.28 - Unchanged] — the creator originally researched it for his 3.27 league start and confirmed nothing major changed going into 3.28. We're currently on 3.29, so treat this as "probably still accurate" rather than "verified current." Core Heist mechanics (Rogue Markers, contracts vs. blueprints, alert level, rogue jobs) have been stable for years and check out against the wiki. A few specific numbers (reveal discounts, gold room drop rates) are the creator's own testing and could not be independently confirmed — those are flagged below.

• free costs nothing
• cheap small cost
• setup needs preparation
• grind pays off slowly
• skip the thing to stop doing

Getting started in Rogue Harbour

Once you reach Act 6, Rogue Markers and Smuggler's Caches start dropping, and caches can contain markers, Contracts, and Blueprints. Right-clicking a Rogue Marker opens a portal to the Rogue Harbour, your Heist hub; after your first visit it's available on the waypoint list, or you can type /ist to travel there directly. On your first visit, talk to Kurai to unlock the Heist locker so contracts, markers, and blueprints route into their own stash tab automatically.

1. Set your Heist locker affinity freeTalk to Kurai on your first Rogue Harbour visit so markers/contracts/blueprints auto-sort into their own stash tab.
2. Use control-click and alt-click on Adiyah freeControl-click starts a Contract, alt-click starts a Blueprint — saves a menu click each run.

Contracts vs. Blueprints

Regular Heists (Contracts) send you and one hired Rogue to steal a single piece of contraband, which you sell to Faustus for Rogue's Markers. Along the way you'll find small chests and side rooms themed to specific reward types (currency, divination cards, harbinger items, and so on). This matches the wiki's description of Heist mechanics directly.

Blueprints are the bigger "Grand Heist" version: multiple wings, multiple hired Rogues, and a Curio Display reward at the end offering a choice between several items — this is confirmed by the wiki as the primary source of Heist's high-end value. Blueprints usually drop with only one wing revealed; you pay Rogue Markers and run regular Contracts to unlock additional wings and reward rooms. A contract more than 5 levels below your current one can't earn reveals, and the game warns you before you start one.

The wiki lists Gianna's perk as (10-30)% reduced Blueprint Revealing Cost, and Niles separately provides a 10-35% discount specifically on blueprint reveal costs. The video states Gianna gives "a 40% discount at max level" — that's higher than the wiki's listed range for Gianna alone, so it may reflect an older or combined value. Don't take that exact number as gospel; the direction (Gianna makes reveals cheaper, and is worth prioritizing) is correct, but verify the live number in-game before planning around it.

Rogues, unlock order, and gearing

The wiki confirms the same two unlock chains: Tibbs → Tullina → Nenet, and Karst → Huck → Niles → Vinderi → Gianna, with Isla as a dead-end starter Rogue who doesn't unlock anyone. Contracts must be level 50+ for a new Rogue to appear, which also matches the wiki. The claim that rogues no longer need individual job leveling (all jobs "maxed at level straight away") was a 3.27-era change the creator called out as new at the time of filming — we couldn't independently verify this specific patch note against the wiki's version history, so treat it as the creator's testing rather than wiki-confirmed, though it's consistent with how the system currently behaves.

Each Rogue carries four gear slots: brooch, cloak, gear, and tools. Increased job speed is the priority stat across the board. Heist tools at item level 82+ can roll +1 to all Heist jobs, which is especially valuable on Gianna.

1. Unlock Gianna first grindRun level-50+ contracts through the Karst chain (Karst → Huck → Niles → Vinderi → Gianna) since she's the key to cheap blueprint reveals.
2. Roll job speed on all four gear slots setupPrioritize job speed above all else; add +1 job level tools (ilvl 82+) once available, especially for Gianna.
3. Don't bother making contracts magic/rare skipRarity/quantity mods on contracts only affect monster drops, not chest rewards — they just make the heist harder for little payoff.

Three ways to run Heist

The video lays out three practical approaches, roughly in order of investment:

1. Regular deception contracts grind — run contracts (scour-rarity, not rare) with Gianna to earn cheap reveals, then apply them to blueprints you're accumulating.
2. Single-wing blueprints cheap — no reveals needed at all; bulk-buy blueprints and markers and run them back-to-back for what the creator calls the most efficient profit once you're a few days into a league.
3. Fully revealed 4-wing blueprints setup — most expensive to buy outright, so it's best paired with running your own deception contracts to earn the reveals yourself rather than buying pre-revealed copies.

3.27 also introduced Gold reward rooms in Heist, which the creator explicitly says was untested at time of recording ("we don't know how much gold this is going to drop yet... we're going to test it out early on"). We could not verify gold room drop rates against the wiki, since gold as a currency was a newer addition not detailed in the Heist wiki page's chest-type table. Treat any gold-room advice as unverified.

Pairing Heist with mapping

If you'd rather not buy contracts (SSF, or you just want variety), you can run maps with Heist-focused Atlas nodes and pair it with a second mechanic like Breach, essences, or boss rushing. Faster maps means faster contract/blueprint acquisition, so the creator recommends pairing with things that don't slow map clear speed. Blocking unwanted mechanics on your Atlas also blocks their scarabs, so it's worth checking scarab prices before blocking anything wholesale. Note the video references a 3.26 Atlas tree as a placeholder, promising a 3.27 update link in the video description — we did not verify that link is still current or points anywhere for 3.29.

What this guide doesn't answer

This video is a pre-league primer, not a full walkthrough. It doesn't cover: exact chest-type-to-reward mappings (the wiki has a full table we used for fact-checking but the video only mentions a few examples), specific rogue perk percentages beyond Gianna's discount, current Gold reward-room rates, unique Heist contract bosses and their drops, or how Heist interacts with the current Atlas passive tree on 3.29 (the video's tree screenshot is explicitly outdated even by the creator's own admission).

How this guide was fact-checked

We cross-referenced the transcript against the official PoE Wiki "Heist" page. Confirmed by wiki: Rogue Marker mechanics and portal access, the Contract-vs-Blueprint distinction (single reward vs. multi-wing Curio Display), the two Rogue unlock chains and their order, the level-50 contract requirement for unlocking new Rogues, the four Rogue gear slots, and that map rarity/quantity affects only monster drops on Heist chests. Contradicted/needs correction: the video's claim of a flat "40% discount at max level" from Gianna is higher than the wiki's listed (10-30)% range for her perk — we flagged this rather than repeating it uncritically. Unverified (creator's claim, not found on wiki): the exact framing that "rogues no longer need individual job leveling" as a 3.27 change, and any numbers around new Gold reward rooms, since gold-drop specifics weren't present in the wiki's Heist chest-reward table at the time of this fact-check. Three frames were pulled directly from the source video and visually verified (not just guessed from timestamps) to confirm they show the Alert Level HUD, the Rogue gear/job panel, and the creator's own "One Wing Blueprints" strategy summary slide.