Path of Exile Legacy Challenge League Launched

The Legacy Challenge League for Path of Exile should be up and running by the time this is posted. If you want to revisit the game as it currently is before the broad changes the 3.0.0, The Fall of Oriath, update brings this summer, now’s your chance. The full changelog of things to expect in the Legacy League is too lengthy to include, so here are its major points:

The Legacy Challenge League:

• Challenge leagues are a great opportunity for a fresh start in a new economy. All of your old characters and items are still present in the Standard and Hardcore leagues, but you’re encouraged to join the new leagues, complete challenges and demonstrate your mastery of Path of Exile!
• With 2.6.0, there are Standard and Hardcore variations of the Legacy challenge league available. They have the same core mechanics and items.
• Path of Exile: Legacy pays homage to the leagues and items of the past. Do you want to experience the heart-stopping surprise encounters of Invasion, risk valuable items for even more valuable rewards in Talisman, or acquire powerful crafting items in Essence? In the Legacy league, you can choose your own challenges, and even mix and match them.
• You can find and equip up to three Leaguestones at once, which turn the next area you enter into a supercharged version of all of those leagues. Leaguestones can also drop with modifiers, which makes those areas both more challenging and more rewarding. If you’ve ever wanted to fight a triple-Essence Avian Retch holding a Talisman while a Corrupting Tempest is active, now’s your chance.
• Many of Path of Exile’s most desirable unique items were only available during past leagues. In the Legacy league, when a leaguestone is active, you have a chance to find unique items from that league. We have reviewed league-specific uniques dating back to the first challenge leagues and have improved many that we felt were not relevant to the current state of Path of Exile. So while Shavronne’s Revelation, Headhunter, Scold’s Bridle and more are within your grasp, they may not be the only ones you want.
• Players in the Legacy league may find a special item that, when placed in the map device, allows travel to a Reliquary. These treasure chambers contain a chest that can drop a Relic – a special alternate-frame version of an iconic unique item from Path of Exile’s history, restored to its original balance values. There are over 40 different Relics to find, and the powerful ones are very rare. We’re mindful of the impact these could have on existing legacy items, so these will be clearly identifiable and commensurately rare.
• The new challenge leagues include a set of 40 new challenges. When you complete 12 challenges, you will receive the Legacy Footprints Effect. At 24, you will receive the Legacy Weapon Effect. When you complete your 36th challenge, you will receive the Legacy Portal Effect. These microtransactions are only obtainable in this league.
• From the 19th challenge onwards and for every third challenge after that, you will receive pieces of the Legacy Totem Pole decoration to display in your hideout. The Totem Pole permanently showcases how many of the Legacy challenges you completed during the league.

Solo Self-Found Mode

• Solo Self-Found (SSF) is common self-enforced playstyle where trading and partying are not allowed. This means that your character’s progress is entirely based on your own efforts and cannot be influenced by other players.
• In Content Update 2.6.0, there are SSF versions of the existing leagues, where you can create characters by ticking a checkbox on the character creation screen.
• This mode is available once you have rescued the Scion on your account (which can be done in a previous league, so almost all existing players will already have fulfilled this).
• While playing an SSF character, you can’t trade or party up with other players.
• You’re able to convert your SSF characters into regular characters, moving them back to the equivalent non-SSF league. This is a one-way process and can be done by clicking the buttons to the left of the character on the character selection screen. One button moves just a single character, and the other one moves all your SSF characters in that league including your stashes, hideout, masters and Atlas progress.
• Ladders on the website record what level you reached in SSF before moving back to the regular leagues. Characters that have moved back to the regular leagues are marked as “retired”.
• SSF leagues share their global chat channels with their non-SSF equivalent. They have no access to trade chat channels.

Major Features and Content

• Lioneye’s Watch now has stairs.
• Added 12 new Unique Threshold Jewels.
• Added 12 new Unique Items, 6 of which are designed by our supporters.
• Added a new unique Strongbox: Weylam’s War Chest.
• Added five new Rogue Exiles.
• Added four new Divination Cards.
• Added 25 new Grandmasters. Updated and replaced several others.
• Siosa now sells all quest gems once you’ve completed his quest and the quests required to unlock the appropriate tiers of gem rewards
• The “Purchase Items” vendor screen now allows you to highlight items by keyword.
• The Passive Skill Tree can now be searched by keyword.
• The friends and guild screens now sort online contacts alphabetically and offline contacts by last online time.
• You can now filter the friends and guild screens by name to find specific contacts.
• Improved game performance, load times and memory usage.

Minor Features and Content

• Items are now destroyed when they hit the ground in areas where items can’t be dropped on the ground (such as towns).
• Tempests capable of harming a player now only spawn in the broad vicinity of alive monsters.
• Wilorin Demontamer now wears the Lightning Armour Pack.
• Some types of Shrines now affect all nearby allied players when activated.
• Changed the explosion effect of Molten Shell and Vaal Molten Shell. The new one has better performance.
• Improved the performance of the Mark of Cannibalism Bloodline.

General Balance Changes

• Unset Rings can now roll a new mod that increases the level of the socketed gem by up to three levels.
• The Nihilist’s item prefix that gave +1 to socketed Chaos Gems now appears on level 4 items and above, down from level 40. Added a new mod, Anarchist’s, that grants +2 to socketed Chaos Gems.
• Diviner’s Strongboxes can now only spawn in maps.
• The Brinerot mod (found from Brinerot Warbands) now grants Damage +% during Flask Effect, instead of Rarity during Flask Effect. This is because the rarity mod was overshadowed by the fact you could already get rarity on Gloves and unique items. This new stat is more valuable, useable and competes with the Redblade/Mutewind mods better.
• Spectral Wolves summoned by unique items such as Rigwald’s Crest and The Scourge now have 80% more life. They are now the same size as the player for the purpose of pathing or collision checks which allows them to swarm enemies better, or follow the player through tight areas. They also now have impact audio when attacking.
• The “Other Allies Cannot Die” mod can no longer appear on immobile monsters such as Eye Hatchery or Rakangos.
• The Faun now does more damage in Cruel and Merciless.
• Reduced monster Spectral Throw damage because it can hit twice when turning.
• Substantially reducing the size of Perandus Packs, for both balance and performance reasons.
• The Docks unique monster The Revenant has been renamed The Shipyard Terror.
• The Riverways unique monster Kall Foxfly has been renamed Targa, Beast Poacher.
• The Northern Forest unique monster Tailsinger has been renamed Seleslatha.
• The Sewers unique monster Spinesnap has been renamed Gloomgut.
• The Climb’s unique monster Guardian of the Mound has been renamed Ungulath.

Skill Balance Changes

• Ice Crash has had its damage increased by 13% at level 1, and has slightly improved damage progression as the gem levels. The second stage now deals 10% less damage, down from 15%. The third stage now deals 20% less damage, down from 30%
• Sunder has had its primary damage increased by 40% at level 1 and has slightly improved damage progression as the gem levels. The secondary shockwave effects now deal 40% of base damage, down from 70%.
• Blade Flurry has had its damage reduced by 18% at level 1 of the gem, scaling to a 15% reduction at level 20 of the gem.
• Magma Orb’s explosion radius has been increased by 28%.
• The Animate Weapon skill now has a maximum of 50 animated weapon minions that can be active at once.
• Wild Strike now converts 100% of the attack’s physical damage to a random element, up from 60%.
• Flame Surge now has approximately 40% less Mana Cost at all Levels. Flame Surge previously had one of the highest mana costs per second of any offensive spell, and will now be more in line with similar skills.
• Orb of Storms now has a base skill duration of 6 seconds, down from 10.
• Raised Zombies now have a melee attack range of 9 on their basic attack, up from 4. Their slam ability base radius has been increased to 18 units (from 10), deals 20% more damage, and will be used more readily. ( Note: we previously incorrectly stated they had a 25% larger slam radius, and did not mention any damage increase.)
• Vaal Haste now gives 25% attack speed, 24% cast speed and 10% movement speed at level 1 of the gem, down from 30% attack speed, 29% cast speed and 14% movement speed. At level 20, Vaal Haste now gives 31% attack speed, 31% cast speed and 13% movement speed down from 36% attack speed, 36% cast speed and 20% movement speed. The duration of Vaal Haste has been reduced to 4s from 6s at all levels.
• Vaal Discipline has been changed to no longer provide any bonus energy shield.
• You can now only have one instance of Blade Vortex active at once.
• Shock Nova damage has been increased by 33% at level 1, scaling up to 49% increased damage by level 20. The additional damage dealt by the Shock Nova ring has been reduced from 50% of base damage down to 20% of base damage.
• Ice Nova damage has been increased by 3% at level 1, scaling up to 24% increased damage by level 20.
• Ice Shot now has 60% Physical to Cold conversion (previously 40%)
• Frost Blades now has 60% Physical to Cold conversion (previously 40%)