Path of Exile 1 is not going anywhere and anytime soon, fellow Exiles. In fact, it’s going to be the premier Path of Exile game for the foreseeable future with plenty of brand new expansions incoming, including the next one which hits on August 18th.
The Next Expansion Of POE 1 – Trial Of The Ancestors
Trial of the Ancestors is Path of Exiles 3.22 expansion and it’s a drastically different feel from the current Crucible League. I’m super excited about this league to arrive. Even as someone who hasn’t played many of the Auto Battler games, he will pull ideas from hitting every single main point arriving with POE 3.22.
The primary league mechanic of 3.22 is going to be the Trial of the Ancestors, which takes on the Auto Battler genre. This is quite appropriate given this is the first Path of Exile league after Diablo 4’s launch.
Path of Exile’s developers have never shied away from trying something wildly different for the ARPG sphere. This league appears to be no different. Remember the building, simulation of Synthesis, the crop management of Harvest, and the still present Betrayal board? How about the monster-catching Bestiary League? Now, we’re going to construct small armies with units, set a battlefield, and combat a rivaled tribe with our own in the Trial of the Ancestors.
The Trial of the Ancestors is a tournament between various tribes and the Karui afterlife overseen by the goddess of the underworld and death, Inakora.
To access this tournament, we use Silver Coins we find throughout the world. Work with the returning Navali to enter the afterlife and then enter the tournament with a tribe of our own. Essentially, we’re building a team to fight another team to the fake death. So, we can earn gifts from Hinekora.
The goal is to defeat all the other Warriors and their respective totems before they do the same to our own side. I’m hoping the combat is meaningful and difficult, not carried completely by our units and the obstacles we place. We’ll get to experience this soon enough in just three weeks on August 18th.
Rewards In Trial Of The Ancestors
But what rewards shall we reap from the Karui afterlife?
Although the Trial of the Ancestors tournament will hand out regular POE Items, it has a few distinct and powerful new rewards associated with it, split into three categories: Tattoos, Omens and Hinekora’s Lock.
The most fascinating of the new rewards are definitely tattoos, items you can use on the attribute nodes of your Passive Skill Tree. You earn tattoos exclusively in the Trial of the Ancestors tournaments, and they vary greatly in power and rarity.
One tattoo will allow you to change a strength attribute node to add 8% fire resistance. Another will swap over any attribute node to grant 1% increased Mana Reservation Efficiency of skills. An extremely rare tattoo will reinvent a 30-point intelligence node, granting you plus one to the level of all Intelligence skill gems instead with a limit of one per attribute.
I wonder if this means you could buy POE Currency to get other tattoos that increase the level of Intelligence skill gems at the cost of other attributes, like Dexterity and Strength and stack them all up to plus three to the level of Intelligence skill gems.
Hopefully, these are accessible as they are fairly build enhancing, adding a new layer to BuildCraft as most good POE leagues do.
Sometimes in the past, the coolest items could be near unattainable. I’d like to deck my characters out in tattoos this week now on to Omens. Omens are a curious POE edition. These can only be rewarded by winning an Ancestor tournament. They are consumable items that rest in your inventory with an effect that occurs upon a specific trigger.
For example, an Omen of Return creates a portal to town on death and is consumed. An Omen of Fortune immediately turns the next item you use a chance orbon into a unique item and is then consumed. This has the potential to be quite meaningful.
Let’s see how difficult tournaments are to win. Hinekora’s Lock is going to be the Pinnacle reward for Ancestors content. The item allows you to foresee the result of an item crafting outcome before you commit to the craft.
You could see what a Chaos Orb will reroll an item to, what an Exalted Orb will slam on a rare item, or what a Regal Orb might grant a magic item being upgraded to rare. It’ll be an item sought after by high-end crafters and a collectible for treasure hunters.
Sanctum Is Back!
On top of the new league mechanic, POE 3.22 reintroduces the Forbidden Sanctum.
For all new players, this is a Roguelike in Path of Exile, allowing characters to tackle a unique dungeon composed of four floors and four unique difficult boss encounters.
Roguelike is a fan favorite. It’s essentially the major endgame edition in this particular Path of Exile expansion. Layering another solid system upon the firm foundation of the Atlas and mapping, we meet Divinia, the Templar who introduces us to the Sanctum in Act 10 and can find entire itemized floors anytime afterward.
Relics are back. Sanctified Relics are out for now. Resolve is rebalanced to factor in actual core defenses. And many of the Boons and afflictions have brand new effects.
We’re still not sure which unique items will return or if the aspirational no-hit Sanctum run and its ultimate reward, the Original Sin, is coming back. With Sanctum in the game now, we have four big unique late game systems to push: mapping in the Atlas of Worlds, delving in the Azurite Mine, looting wild items in Heists and pilfering relics and valuable items in the Forbidden Sanctum. That’s a solid quartet.
New Atlas Keystones
It wouldn’t be a Path of Exile expansion without an Atlas endgame update. And while this isn’t as large as I thought it’d be, this edition looks absolutely wild.
POE 3.22 brings 16 new Keystone nodes to the Atlas Passive Skill Tree. Most of the ones we’ve seen are wicked. Keystones include the ability for the Maven to add between one and three more bosses to any boss encounter she witnesses and maps; a huge change to Expedition Encounters, replacing all the small bombs with a single huge bomb charge; and the guarantee that Kirak will offer any map mod regardless of his current pool. There’s even a node that allows Tormented Spirits to inhabit us and give us their stats and abilities.
16 New Support Gems
16 brand new support gems are making their way into Path of Exile 1.
Each gem is aimed at broadening or opening up a new or specific playstyle. One makes Warcries deal substantial damage. Another force is all projectiles to return to you, sort of like Vengeant Cascade, a specific totem focus support causes totems to fire mortars at enemies attacking said totem.
Ascendancy Reworks
Like Crucible League before it, Ancestors League drops in two ascendancy class reworks.
The first is for the Guardian, a Templar ascendancy. It focuses on summons, links, and Herald now. The second ascendancy rework is the Chieftain, a Marauder ascendancy class. It specializes in slams, fire-based damage and mitigation, and buffing totems.