Path of Exile's massive new update,"The Fall of Oriath", is due to be released on the 4th of this month. When I say massive, I mean massive; today their head community manager Bex posted the patch notes over on their own forums and it's a good job too, as it will probably take most people two days to get through them all.
The patch notes combine to form one gigantic list, with the total word count soaring well over 14,000 words; I think that is longer than my dissertation was at university!! Not only does this new patch come with lots of changes, bug fixes, and notes attached to it, but it also brings with it a horde of new content to get stuck into, including doubling the number of "Acts" from five to ten. I'm not going to format and paste in all 14k words of the patch notes, but here are the bug highlights:
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Major New Content and Features:
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- Added Acts Five through Ten.
- Removed the Cruel and Merciless difficulty levels. Path of Exile is now a single ten-act playthrough.
- Added a new Character Selection Screen.
- Added a new feature - the Pantheon system: Best the ancient gods of Wraeclast in battle and you can claim a portion of their power. There are four Major god powers and seven Minor god powers to be claimed in The Fall of Oriath. You can have one Major and one Minor power active at a time, and can return to any town or hideout to change which powers are active at no cost. Later, each power can be upgraded by placing a Divine Vessel in your map device before you defeat certain map bosses.
- Added a new feature - the Help panel: As you play Path of Exile, you can unlock Help panel pages. These can be viewed by clicking on a new Help button next to the Shop button. Each panel is designed to introduce you to an aspect of Path of Exile's gameplay, and give you the tools you need to explore the features yourself.
- Significantly updated the tutorial. It is integrated with the new Help system.
The game HUD has been updated to the Eclipse theme used throughout The Fall of Oriath. - Added 8 Vaal Side Areas with new bosses, found through areas in Oriath.
- Added a Passive Skill Tree planning system.
- Introduced new technology for rendering water throughout the game.
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About the game:
Set in a dark fantasy world of Wraeclast, Path of Exile (PoE) is an online action role-playing video game developed and published by Grinding Gear Games. You play the game using an isometric view (overhead from a slight angle) and using a single character, the player explores large outdoor areas and underground caves or dungeons, battling monsters and fulling quests from NPCs to gain experience points and equipment. Gameplay is very much in a similar vein as the Diablo series and in particular Diablo 2. It is designed around a strong online item economy, deep character customisation, competitive PvP and ladder races. The game is completely free and will never be "pay to win". Interested? Learn more and sign up here
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What makes PoE Unique:
For me, the best part of PoE is the fact it is fully free to play. Not like these free to play games where everything starts of equal but you soon realise that in order to keep progressing at a reasonable rate you have to pump money into it. No PoE is fully free and you could happily play the whole game without spending a cent. It is supported by microtransactions for cosmetics and QOL(quality of life) improvements, such as extra room in your stash, or more character slots. If you're a fan of any aRPG, for example the Diablo series, the Titan Quest games, either of the two Torchlight games, or you're simply looking for a great game to get stuck into, I urge you to take the time to try this game out.
The next thing that stands out for me is the skill system. Rather than the typical format of choosing a class, then leveling up as you gain experience and gaining points to put into certain active spells or abilities, in PoE when you level up you get points to spend on a passive skill tree. It is a vast web of 1325 skills that provide passive bonuses to your character. Each time you level up or complete certain quests, you can allocate a skill and explore deeper into the tree. All character classes share the same tree, but start at different locations that are aligned with their primary specialities. You can take a look at this passive skill tree on their site here.
For your active spells and abilities they use gems, just like your weapons and armour you find skill gems on your travels, as rewards, in chests or from killing enemies. Once you socket these gems into an appropriate socket in one of your items you gain access to that skill to use, only while aforementioned item is equipped. A wide range of support gems allow the behaviour of skills to be modified. You can augment your Fireball to chain from enemy to enemy, or split into multiple flaming projectiles. The more you use them the better these skills get, as they gain a sort of experience themselves.
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You can view the launch trailer for "The Fall of Oriath" here.