Path of Exile Development Manifesto – Legion as a Core Game Mechanic

Those of you enjoying the Legion expansion for Grinding Gear Games’ hack ‘n’ slash action-RPG Path of Exile might be wondering whether or not Legion’s unique features are going to be integrated into the game as its core mechanics once the next expansion goes live. If you do, you should check out this development manifesto that covers exactly that. Have a look:

Legion was a very well-received league. In addition to receiving an abundance of positive feedback from players, and engagement with the league’s content continues to be high.

As Legion’s primary goals are focused on the encounters and the end-game area, it is reasonably straightforward to integrate into the core game.

We are adding Legion encounters as map content with a 10% chance to occur (similar to Breach or Abyss). Only one Timeless Monolith can occur from this chance, however there may be additional ones in an area from other sources.

We’ve decided to leave it out of the campaign content (pre-map levelling) as the campaign is already very busy and this content would be a lot to stack on top.

Handily, the Legion mechanic was one that could be comfortably integrated into existing game elements almost immediately, rather than requiring a lot of extra work. Thus, Legion can also be accessed through the following sources:

• Sextant Affixes
• Legion Scarabs
• Delve
• As a room in the Temple of Atzoatl

In Betrayal Safehouses, Vagan will give rewards based on Legion, including Legion Scarabs and Timeless Splinters. You’ll also find Legion rewards in chests hidden behind walls in the Azurite Mine.

We also plan to add a Zana mod for Legion encounters at the Map Device in future releases (but not for 3.8.0).

In Legion we experimented with end game content that could be played endlessly. Players responded very positively to being able to play the Domain of Timeless Conflict content indefinitely if their build was capable of doing so. This will remain when Legion is added to the core game.

We will, however, be adding a diminishing return for rewards from monsters from the encounter. The intent here is to normalise rewards somewhat, so that every player experiencing this content gets good rewards, and character power doesn’t have as significant an impact on how valuable Domain of Timeless Conflict encounters are.

To that end, we have increased the rewards for the first cycle of monsters, reducing them each revive cycle. Rewards from Legion Generals will not diminish, but the rewards from other monsters will diminish. We will not be adding a diminishing return for experience gained from the ongoing encounters.

The basic Legion chest and encounter rewards will largely be the same. Breach rewards will give fewer Breachstones, in part because they were a little too common, but also to keep these two sets of special map encounters separate. We want most of your Breach splinters to come from Breach! Additional Incubators have been added, increasing the variety of rewards they can offer. We enjoyed making Legion. Thank you all for playing and making the Path of Exile community so vibrant. We look forward to showing you the upcoming league in a couple of days.