If it's been three months since the last huge Path of Exile reveal, you know what that means! Yep, it's time for the next big thing, this time called Legion. Grinding Gear is shaking things up and giving players a lot more agency in Legion, so sit back and check out a few of the fun new stuff coming in the next few weeks as players set off on a journey that will review some of the game's history and will provide players with lots to explore as well as gear them up with awesome goodies.
The entire premise of Path of Exile is one of a war-torn world, of conquest and battle. In Legion, players will have the opportunity to face off against five different armies and with the generals who lead them. Not to worry, this doesn't mean all at the same time. In fact, Legion is offering players more agency than ever in how difficult they want their encounters to be.
Here's how it works: Players working through any given Legion league zone in the game may encounter a Monolith. Activating the monolith makes two of the armies appear in a ghostly looking form. While they are visible, players need to damage them to "untether" them from the Domain of Timeless Conflict before time runs out. Several of the ghostly soldiers will have special symbols over their heads that indicate valuable rewards that will drop.This is where player agency kicks in. The more ghostly soldiers that a player damages, the more difficult the battle will be when the timer runs out. When it does, the monsters that were tagged by the player will become active and begin to attack. The key is weighing the risk versus the reward.
Of course, what is a PoE league without awesome rewards? During the battles mentioned above, monsters have the chance to drop Splinters that, when combined, form an Emblem that is specific to the Legion army that dropped it. As there are five armies, players will need to gather as many splinters to create as many Emblems as possible. Doing so unlocks a pretty wild endgame battle.
Once five Emblems are collected, players can place Emblems in their newly updated Map Device that now contains five slots instead of four. Since every battle consists of two sides and two Generals, players will need to place a minimum of two Emblems in the Map Device. However, the bravest of adventurers can place all five in which means that all five armies and all five generals will be present on the battlefield.
Legion monsters can also drop a new item called an Incubation item that can "modify a piece of equipment to guarantee a certain type of item drop". When place, for instance, in a weapon, the Incubation item activates a progress bar. Once a certain number of monsters have been killed, the item drop occurs. These Incubation items can be placed in all of a player's equipment simultaneously. Of course, these items have a variety of rarities as well, but the good news is that these can be traded to other players so that everyone can get the things they want most.
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Armies will also drop some new jewels that will shake up endgame content quite a bit. These jewels can be placed in the Passive Skill Tree. They modify other passives surrounding them in completely new and different ways. Each army has its own jewel and its own set of unique passives that will be brought to bear when placed. "The Vaal jewel corrupts nearby passive skills into Vaal passive skills. Each distinct Vaal jewel has a different potential result in each socket" so it will be up to players to discover which ones work best dependent on placement.
As for new uniques, there will be a dozen new ones to collect and fifteen previously existing, but perhaps less useful, uniques have been upgraded to make them fantastic additions to any player's arsenal. Chris Wilson provided this example:
Voll's Protector is an existing templar-themed unique item. In Legion, we had a good look at its usage throughout Path of Exile and felt that it'd be safe to add an additional property to make it more powerful. Inner Conviction is a new keystone passive that causes you to gain power charges instead of frenzy charges, and your power charges have larger spell damage bonuses than before. This is a substantial upgrade to an existing item that will help it see a lot more use in its new form.
PoE players will also be happy to hear that Melee Combat has been given a massive update to remove the "clunky" nature and core issues it has had since the game launched in 2013. Players will be able to cancel attack animations to provide a more responsive feel. Movement skills also activate instantly and low-level movement skills are included too. Players of any class will find some pretty nifty dodge movements. Melee attacks will hit more than one enemy at a time and support for animation chaining has been added. This update is an end-to-end rebalance of all melee abilities.
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Other pretty cool additions coming in Legion include:
- the Blood & Sand Gladiator archetype
- the Rage Berserker archetype
- early game monster rebalancing
- Atlas Map improvements
- South Korean launch with Kakao Games is coming June 7th
Last, but not least, ticket sales for this November's ExileCon are moving along with a hefty crowd ready to come learn all there is to know about the game and to hobnob with the devs. Tickets are still on sale for the event, so there's still time to get in on the fun.
Learn more on the Path of Exile site.
