u/ChaosSanctuary

Kudos to the map makers who built the layouts and Senpai or whoever that came up with the unique theme for each one.
I feel most of them are woefully underutilized right now mainly due to the numbers/stats being off. Given how low the rewards are (apart from Imperial Palace with the guaranteed outcome) the over all drop rate of unique maps could easily be 3-4 times higher than what it currently is without breaking the game/economy. On top of that I think most of them could use some individual adjustments;
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Fallen Garden jewel map: With how pricy 5/5 facets get nowadays and more jewels being spent upgrading maps to rare now that we only have white maps dropping this one could easily go from a 2% jewel drop bonus to 4%

Zhar charm map: Feels more obsolete than ever since the guaranted affix buff on rerolling. Suggest to make the charm drop bonus higher or at least a static 6% and increase it one tier to make all charms guaranteed ilvl 90 and perhaps have the Zhar drop two guaranteed skillers rather than just one.

Outer Void boss mats map: Knights seem to deal too much damage perhaps they have stats from Rathma area (?) but apart from that its decent. Maybe remove PDE from the droptable since PDE already is part of the native map boss table.

Imperial Palace pbox map: Solid and fun map with a guaranteed reward.

Na-Krul ethereal map: Solid and fun map for weapon crafters.

City of Ureh sockets map: Probably the most underwhelming map since white-only maps in S1. Could easily have 3x-4x the density, 200 mf roll and it still wouldnt be overpowered.

Warlord corrupt map: First section could use a density buff and/or removal of the suicide minions that drop zero loot. Perhaps create new TCs for the two sub-bosses for better loot and make the inherent MF roll very high.

Djinns Domain lootboss map: Very cool, could use a slight density buff. Since it doesnt have a very specific theme like the other unique maps it would be cool to see this one as the "Imperial Palace v1.0" group mapping FOTM for one season with high enough rarity/exp rolls to surpass regular T3s with some margin. This concept could also be used on Warlords/City of Ureh on different seasons just to have a fresh seasonal meta.
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What are your thoughts?

We have threads with SSF-related questions popping up here pretty regularly so I thought I would help provide some direction for those looking to play it for the long-haul since it can be a very slow grind early on.
Depending on how much you dislike the leveling/campaign playthrough portion of the game you need to prioritize how many chars you need initially. Its possible to do everything with just one char (disregarding higher tier bosses) but it will mean compromise in some area.
My recommendation is to make one char that can do UT and potentially Dclone pretty early with very little gear. Blood Golem necro would be the easiest choice if you want to cover both with one char but HB paladin is also quite doable. Could also use a summon druid/zon for UT and then respec into a different build for DC a bit later on.

Now you can make a sorceress to help you farm keys if you want to, personally I just farm the initial keyset with the UT char and then usually rely on the map events for future torches. The other advantage of having a sorc is farming act bosses to gather the initial foundation of set & unique items but its not really a necessary step in PD2 if you feel like you spent enough time doing that back in vanilla D2. Also if youre playing SP you can use static maps to minimize the distance from WP to your target enabling other builds to be closer to sorceress in terms of speed for act bosses/key droppers.
Now as for initial/main mapper to start off you are going to want a build that does not rely on +skills to scale damage since it will take you a good while to gather skill GCs. The most obvious choice this season is 2h WW barb but you could also try vengeance or perhaps phys sacrifice if you already made a paladin for UT/DC anyway.
Depending on your drops theres a few other I would consider:

• Maul druid if you found a decent 5s Tomb Reaver
• Strafezon if you found Atmas Scarab and a reasonable Demon Machine
• Split Throw if you happened to craft a decent eth weapon for it
• Multishot with a 6s Buriza or a 500ED Crossbow and a Fanat RW for merc

Usage of materials...
You will have to prioritize. You wont have enough jewel fragments to both upgrade maps to rare and craft every single thing you want, so you have to decide which 4 or so types of crafts that you want to emphasize for the long term. Second aspect of this is which type of pgems you need to keep besides pskulls and which are you going to spend on map rerolls and ilvl 91 Grand Charms to get skillers faster. Third aspect of this is you determine which crafting bases you need to pick up and which you can leave on the ground. You only get so many attempts in SSF so having collected bases from day 1 helps a lot for your chance of crafting something decent.
One way to get more pgems is to turn your Blood Moon maps magic and reroll them for 5-7% crafting additional crafting materials with Arcane Orbs. This will cost you nothing but gold but it requires a lot of it. Either you will need a dedicated Travincal goldfarmer or you need to make a build that can incorporate a decent amount of GF% for clearing said Blood Moons so you still get a chunk of it back. Chance Guards and Dwarf Star are easy options but ideally builds that can dedicate some sockets to Lem runes without losing a bunch of clearspeed are preferable for the task. Typically the density will be very low on these blue maps unless you get lucky with the corruption and/or spend Standard of Heroes on them but you can more than 40 pgems out of one Blood Moon on a great roll.
As for maps in general I would stick to T1s as much as possible in the early stage paritcularly as the benefit of higher tiers just simply isnt worth the extra time it takes to clear from having mobs that are way more tanky. Also important to consider that 1 pgem is spent on each reroll so the expectations for density% should be lower than what is typically recommended for ladder/trade players. Once you have the full set of skillers for the build(s) you want to play then the map rerolling can be liberal.
I think thats about it from me in terms of tips but im curious to hear yours if you have any to add!