Featuring new story quests, a number of tough new bosses, an update to the Atlas system, and the usual sprinkling of fresh content, the Siege of the Atlas expansion for Grinding Gear Games’ free to play action-RPG Path of Exile is now live on PC, and should be coming to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on February 9, 2022.
You can find the complete patch notes over here, some info on the new and updated skill gems here, and watch the official expansion trailer below:
And here’s a list of the major new features:
Siege of the Atlas
After defeating Kitava, you will meet Commander Kirac in the Karui Shores and join his militia to safeguard the Atlas of Worlds. The Envoy will inform you that two Eldritch Horrors, The Searing Exarch and The Eater of Worlds, are approaching and will consume everything.
By completing maps affected by their influence, you can hunt down their sub-bosses, The Black Star and The Infinite Hunger, before finally facing The Searing Exarch and The Eater of Worlds themselves. Defeating these formidable foes yields valuable rewards including exclusive new unique items.
The Atlas of Worlds has been revised, and regions have been removed. The regional Atlas Passive Trees have been replaced with one gigantic Atlas-wide Passive Tree that affects all maps you run. You can earn points by completing bonus objectives of maps and finishing certain Atlas quests.
The Watchstone system has also been removed, and replaced with Voidstones which are obtained by defeating The Uber Elder, The Maven, The Searing Exarch and The Eater of Worlds. These Voidstones raise the tiers of maps on your Atlas and can be augmented by Sextants.
The Archnemesis 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!
Archnemesis is a challenge league that reinvigorates fights with rare monsters. It introduces around 60 new monster mods and allows you to customise your rare boss fights to control your level of risk and reward. These mods can be combined in over 35 recipes to create new, more powerful and rewarding mods. As you play through the league, you’ll discover more recipes and learn how to best utilise them to get the most valuable rewards.
When you slay regular Rare and Magic monsters in the Archnemesis League, they sometimes drop an itemised version of a new Archnemesis monster modifier. You store these in a dedicated inventory panel so that they don’t clutter your regular inventory.
Over the course of each area you play, you’ll encounter four monsters that are frozen in place, petrified and bound to the Archnemesis statue. When you find such a monster, you can free it by empowering it with an Archnemesis mod. If you’re able to successfully defeat the empowered monster, then you will receive the fixed reward that corresponds to that modifier.
The mods you apply will accumulate as you play through the area. When you empower your second monster, it also has the mod you applied to the first monster. This results in a fight that has twice as many dangerous mods, and twice as many rewards. By the time you have empowered and slain four petrified monsters in an area, you will have received the first reward four times.
More than half of the available mods are created by combining other mods together on the same monster. These recipe mods yield substantially more dangerous encounters and have more valuable rewards.
To prevent you having to backtrack, there are more than four possible locations where you may encounter petrified monsters in each area, but only the first four you encounter can be empowered and fought.
Archnemesis mods cannot be traded with other players. Your progress is your own.
With 3.17.0, there are Standard, Hardcore and Solo Self-Found variations of the Archnemesis challenge league available. They have the same core mechanics and items. You can create private league versions of these leagues, with mods that make the game harder.
The new challenge league includes a set of 40 new challenges. There are microtransaction rewards when you complete 12, 24, and 36 challenges. The challenge rewards are only obtainable in this league, and will be revealed in an upcoming news post.
From the 19th challenge onwards and for every third challenge after that, you will receive pieces of the Archnemesis Totem Pole decoration to display in your hideout. The Totem Pole permanently showcases how many of the Archnemesis challenges you completed during the league.
Major New Content and Features
Added 13 new Divination Cards, designed by our supporters.
Added 14 new Unique Items.
Introduced Lesser, Greater, Grand, and Exceptional Eldritch Ichor, currency items that add an Eater of Worlds implicit modifier to a Body Armour, Boots, Gloves, or Helmet. This replaces any existing implicit modifiers other than Searing Exarch implicit modifiers.
Introduced Lesser, Greater, Grand, and Exceptional Eldritch Ember, currency items that add a Searing Exarch implicit modifier to a Body Armour, Boots, Gloves, or Helmet. This replaces any existing implicit modifiers other than Eater of Worlds implicit modifiers.
Introduced the Orb of Conflict, a currency item that unpredictably raises the strength of one Searing Exarch or Eater of Worlds modifier on an item and lowers the strength of another. Lesser modifiers that have their strength lowered will be removed.
Introduced the Eldritch Chaos Orb, a currency item that rerolls prefix modifiers on an item if The Searing Exarch is dominant, or rerolls suffix modifiers if The Eater of Worlds is dominant. Dominance is determined by which Eldritch Horror has a higher Eldritch Implicit on the item.
Introduced the Eldritch Exalted Orb, a currency item that adds a prefix modifier to an item if The Searing Exarch is dominant, or adds a suffix modifier is The Eater of Worlds is dominant. Dominance is determined by which Eldritch Horror has a higher Eldritch Implicit on the item.
Introduced the Eldritch Orb of Annulment, a currency item that removes a prefix modifier from an item if The Searing Exarch is dominant, or removes a suffix modifier if The Eater of Worlds is dominant. Dominance is determined by which Eldritch Horror has a higher Eldritch Implicit on the item.
Introduced the Oil Extractor, a currency item that destroys an Anointed Ring, Amulet or Map to gain one of the oils used to create its Anointment, chosen at random. This item can be obtained with a specialisation on the Atlas Passive Tree.
Introduced a new type of currency, Scouting Reports, which can be used to reroll the missions offered by Kirac, guaranteeing at least one mission of a certain type.
Introduced the Surveyor’s Compass, a currency item that allows you to store a Sextant Modifier.
Added a new Dexterity Support gem – Mark on Hit: Trigger Supported Skill when you Hit a Rare or Unique Enemy with an Attack. Supports mark curse skills.
Added a new Strength/Intelligence Support gem – Divine Blessing: Converts supported Aura Skills into temporary Blessings with increased effect, changing their Reservation to a one-time cost. You will only be able to benefit from one Blessing at a time. This gem cannot convert Banner Skills.
Added a new Strength Support gem – Eternal Blessing: Supported Aura Skills lose their reservations and become Blessings. You will only be able to benefit from one Blessing at a time and while under the effect of a Supported
Skill, all Non-Blessing Skills which reserve mana are disabled.
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Val Hull
Resident role-playing RPG game expert. Knows where trolls and paladins come from. You must fight for your right to gather your party before venturing forth.
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