The heist league is a challenge league. We can use a contract or blueprint to achieve a heist, Let's look at the difference between a contract and a blueprint.
The difference between contract and blueprint
Contracts are needed to run heists and blueprints are needed to run grand heists.
To run a contract, you'll need to take it to adiyah, the wayfinder in the rogue harbour. You'll pay her a sum of markers to arrange the Heist, allow you to select which specialised rogue you'd like to take with you and handle transportation. Contracts can be crafted, if desired, to increase their difficulty and reward, much like maps.
To run a Grand Heist, you'll need to pay whakano, the barber in markers for the intel he's received from your earlier Heists. This intel can reveal escape routes, reward rooms and more. Reveal as much as you desire (or as much as you can afford) and then take the blueprint to the planning room in the rogue harbour, where kurai, the administrator will help you arrange which npc's you'd like to take with you and confirm the blueprint. At this point, you can either trade the blueprint to another player if you'd like, or take it to adiyah to arrange transportation and begin the grand heist.
There are some gameplay differences between contracts and blueprints but the main difference is that contracts lay the groundwork for grand heists and yield markers and other regular Path of Exile items as rewards, while grand heists yield exclusive rewards. These can include trinkets, alternate quality gems, rare body armour and weapons with enchantments, experimented base types and replica unique items.
Contracts (read: Heists) are map-like items that require a certain amount of Specialist (read: Rogue Companions) stats to fully explore. They will be the major piece of content that players will interact with in this league. Similarly to maps, they will come with different attributes as shown above. They have varying layouts, iLvLs, skill requirements, targets and, of course, contract-specific mods.
Many of the mods that are applied to a contract, via the typical map crafting using the standard Path of Exile currency, such as chaos orbs, will be very familiar to every player that has accessed the end-game mapping system before. However, some new, exclusive, modifiers have also been added to the contract-specific pool that can be rolled on each contract.
Blueprints are the big, end-game reward system for this league. They represent the Grand-Heists, which will require a larger crew of Specialists, more highly skilled ones, as well as a lot more preparation and time investment in general.
Reveal as much as you desire (or as much as you can afford) and then take the blueprint to the planning room in the rogue harbour, where kurai, the administrator will help you arrange which npcs you’d like to take with you and confirm the blueprint. At this point, you can either trade the blueprint to another player if you’d like, or take it to adiyah, the wayfinder to arrange transportation and begin the grand heist.
Be aware that Grand-Heists, due to them granting exclusive rewards, do not offer artifacts at the end of their individual wings. This results in them being a major heist marker sink, as you will regain essentially no markers whatsoever, except for the stacks of 30 or so that drop on some unique mobs that get killed during the heist.
Note that you may also skip the “revealing” process entirely for Blueprints and jump right to locking in which npcs you’ll take, but you’ll miss out on a lot of the value of the blueprint in doing so. You can unlock as much as you want or can afford. The more you unlock, the more you’ll reap from your grand heist. It is thus, highly advised to always fully reveal your blueprints for the maximum reward per blueprint.
When we perform a heist, we can buy poe currency first, which helps us to complete a heist more easily.