POE2 Hideout Layout: The Setup That Makes You Map Twice as Fast

A lot of people optimize their gear and their passive tree, but never the one place they spend the most time in every single day: their hideout. Think about it, if you run a few hundred maps a day, you walk back and forth between the map device and your stash every single map, and if those two are ten steps apart, all that walking adds up to a whole extra map's worth of time. Hideout layout is one of the few upgrades that costs nothing and needs no grinding, and getting it right is pure time in your pocket. Here's the setup I use.

The core rule: pile your stash right next to the map device.

The mapping loop is open map, return, dump loot, open the next map, so the map device, stash, and waypoint have to sit together, the shorter the path the better.

• Put the map device in the center with your stash one step away, so you can open a map and turn around to store things.
• Put the waypoint right beside them, so you spend less time running for trades and town trips.
• Move Doryani for respecs and Ange for the currency exchange next to the map device, so you're not hunting across the hideout to sell items or swap currency.

Get these three into one tight triangle first; everything else is a bonus, and this one move saves the most time.

Don't miss the benches; keep the work zone tight.

Besides the stash and NPCs, a few benches you use constantly also need to live inside the work zone, or you'll still be taking long detours after you dump your loot.

• Put the salvage bench and reforging bench beside the stash, so junk gear gets scrapped or reforged on the spot instead of piling up in your bag.
• Put things like the well on your mapping path, so you top off your flasks on the way back and walk into the next map full.
• Keep the work zone open, don't clutter it with decorations that block movement, so you move fast and visitors coming to trade don't get stuck.

The standard for a work zone is that you could walk it with your eyes closed. The straighter the path, the better, so go ugly before you go winding.

For a big hideout, don't skip the teleporters.

Once a hideout gets big, the decoration area and the work zone end up far apart, and that's where teleporters shine, drop a few points and the whole map is instant.

• Split it into two zones, one tight work zone for mapping and one separate decoration area to tinker with, so neither gets in the other's way.
• Link the work zones with teleporters for a one-step trip and skip the long walks, it's far more useful than more decorations.
• If you don't want to build it yourself, just import a ready-made layout, search "PoE 2 hideout import" and you'll find plenty, just pick one that matches your hideout type.

A hideout is a long-term investment, set it up once and every day of mapping after that earns that time back for free.

Hideout layout is one of those optimizations you don't feel when it's done right, and keep losing when it's not. Save a few seconds every map, and over hundreds of maps it's a whole map's worth. Map device, stash, and waypoint together, your common benches and NPCs in a ring around them, and teleporters once the hideout grows, get that down and mapping feels noticeably smoother. Don't write it off as a small thing, the gap between efficient players is very often built on that little patch of hideout.