This week was a big one for Path of Exile with the launch of the highly anticipated "The Fall of Oriath" expansion. Up to now, GGG has been pretty quiet while in "crunch mode" leading up to launch but devs have returned to the forums with new information about the Harbinger challenges and rewards, a new manifesto, the Oriath patch notes, a new mystery box and more. The community's in there as well with some great video guides that you definitely don't want to miss.
READY, STEADY, GO!
This was a huge week for Grinding Gear, one that the devs are still recovering from. With the launch of The Fall of Oriath expansion late last week, the team has earned itself some well-deserved rest, though I doubt that they're taking off too much time. After all, there's work to be done!
To kick launch off, the Oriath patch notes were published, a long and impressive list of changes, updates, new content and much more.
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Here's just a taste of what's in store once you enter the game for the first time post-launch:
Major New Content and Features:
- 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.
For those who love the Harbinger League Challenges, there's lots of new things for you to do. The latest League launched the same day as Oriath with over forty different challenges to test your mettle. At three different steps, you'll earn some pretty sweet loot as well. At 12, 24 and 36, players completing challenges will score the Harbinger Glowing Eyes, Crown and Effect. See them in the video below.
In addition, players at the 19th challenge and above will earn Harbinger Totem Pole decorations that can be displayed in hideouts. These will be rewarded at every third level after 19. Think of it as notches on a gun to show off all of your successes.
Oriath also brought a number of changes to Chill, Shock and Charges. According to a new post on the PoE site, community members have expressed concern over some of the changes. As a result, devs have used a bit of virtual ink to explain the reasons behind recent changes and how they will play out in Oriath. While dated a bit before the launch of 3.0.0, it's still a great read if you're keen to understand the "whys" of the alterations.
With the release of The Fall of Oriath, we're going to be changing the threshold so that you only need to deal 10% of a target's life to gain a maximum effect shock. This will make it much easier to apply Shock effects to very high health bosses, which achieves our desired goal; Lightning and Cold based characters can now apply their own ailments to bosses, but not at a strength that would make the encounter too easy without appropriate investment. This means that we can now remove all Chill and Shock immunity from end-game boss encounters. We've removed the minimum, so as long as you'd have a 1% effect with your Chill or Shock, the ailment will be displayed and will have an effect.
Lastly, The Fall of Oriath has a new Mystery Box that follows the general expansion themes of Order and Chaos. Each box comes with a random microtransaction that is dedicated to either Order or Chaos. Items are valued anywhere between 30 and 320 points, the average coming in at 110. You can check out what you can receive in the video below.
Also of particular note, GGG has posted the odds for the Mystery Box:
In the interest of being transparent, we're revealing the odds of each microtransaction in the box. They're grouped into three rarities: Common, Uncommon and Rare. The microtransactions within each rarity are equally likely. Here are the odds of receiving a microtransaction from each rarity:
- Rare: 20%
- Uncommon: 35%
- Common: 45%
We're also sharing the prices of each microtransaction in the box to make it easier to decide whether or not you'd like to wait to purchase your desired microtransaction in the store later, or try your luck at getting it now from the mystery box!
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You can learn more about each item in today's article by heading to the posted links.
Are you playing Oriath? Leave us your thoughts about the expansion! Also, be sure to check out our impressions of the expansion as well.
