Starting on April 7, 2023, Path of Exile players will have the chance to experience a brand new way to utilize their items. Path of Exile: Crucible will be the next challenge league that grants items their own unique skill trees that require clearing challenging encounters to level up. After players push their weapons to the absolute limit two weapon skill trees can be combined at The Forge of the Titans.
Into the Crucible
During the Path of Exile: Crucible league, players will be able to forge the powers of the ancient titans directly into their weapons. One of the great things about this league is it will be accessible to all players right out of the gate. There will be no reason to wait until endgame to start the Crucible farm!
In order to imbue your weapons and shields, players will need to complete Crucible encounters. Weapons won’t start with a skill tree initially, but channeling an item at a Crucible counter will reveal that tree and unlock its first skill. Items have varying depths of skill trees and only one ability can be selected at each tier.
There’s a crucible in each area that can be channeled and the longer the channel the more powerful the monsters that spawn. More powerful foes mean more experience but channel too long and you might become overwhelmed. Not all weapon skill trees are created equally and only endgame items gain access to all of the skill tiers.
Additionally, endgame encounters can drop Igneus Geodes that reveal Primeval Remnants. These are rare items with both positive and negative mods that act as a map to The Forge of the Titans. These items can be traded to other players if the modifiers aren’t ideal and surviving the area will allow two Crucible trees to be merged into one. This merge is random and takes parts from both skill trees, which is similar to the recombinators applied to item modifications.
Initially, only non-unique weapons can have Crucible trees imbued on them, but certain mods of The Forge of the Titans map will allow a unique weapon to receive a Crucible tree, which can then be leveled up through normal Crucible Encounters. Furthermore, Crystalline Geodes can unlock a special version of The Forge of Titans that will allow the trees on two unique items to be combined together. This will require two of the exact same unique weapon and also destroy one of those weapons during the process.
Finally, there is another way to leverage Crucible skill trees. Although most of the benefits are combat in nature, some of the skill trees increase the value of an item or allow it to be sold for special currency. Therefore, players will need to choose whether they want to level an item for using or for selling.
If that wasn’t enough, Grinding Gears Games is kicking off the Crucible League with a Boss Kill Event. It’ll take place in Ruthless Hardcore Solo Self-found mode and require players to kill the Uber Searing Exarch and Uber Eater of Worlds. The top three winners will receive VIP tickets to ExileCon while first place will get to design their own unique Item.
Overhauls and Improvements
In addition to the new Crucible league, many other parts of Path of Exile are getting a facelift. For example, the Atlas Passive Tree is getting an update that allows players to use gateways that can unlock skills on different parts of the Atlas Tree without needing to obtain all of the skills in between.
Breach and Abyss are also receiving their own revamps. The baseline levels of Breachstone are being raised while Flawless Breachstones can now only be obtained through Blessings and the Atlas tree. Breach durations have been reduced while monsters spawn more frequently. Abyssal Depths have been improved to always include an Abyssal Lich while also having a chance to spawn a Stygian Spire in place of a reward chest.
In addition to the major content updates, passive and mastery trees will be improved, and two ascendancy classes have been reworked. The Saboteur has been made more flexible and have a new specialization called Triggers. Two new passives were revealed, Like Clockwork grants the increased cooldown recovery rate stat and The Perfect Crime summons two Triggerbots that override a triggered spell and cause it to trigger twice. The Pathfinder, on the other hand, will receive improved Concoction and flask-themed skills.
Finally, there will be new unique items such as the Blood Price, which is a helmet that reduces the maximum health for nearby enemies, and a slew of new Vaal skills will be released.
Vaal Absolution will upgrade a Sentinel of Absolution and grant it some massive AoE skills. Vaal Arctic Armor encases you in ice, which will massively reduce damage. Vaal Lightning Arrows shoot a large number of piercing projectiles that cause lightning to strike and can hit a single target more than 20 times. Vaal Reap deal area damage and also leaves a pool of bleed that deals damage to enemies standing it in. Five other skills were announced without specific details including Vaal Animate Weapon, Vaal Domination, Vaal Ice Shot, Vaal Rejuvenation Totem, and Vaal Firestorm.
If this wasn’t enough Path of Exile content, the developers also noted that they’re still working hard on the development of Path of Exile 2 and Path of Exile Mobile. While too much couldn’t be revealed, the team is keen on making the mobile experience as close to the original as possible while making tweaks more appropriate for mobile devices but not watering down the core experience. Additionally, local co-op is being tested for Path of Exile 2 (although not confirmed to be in the release), which is personally exciting for me as I always love a good couch co-op session.
Those interested in trying out the Crucible league can jump in on PC starting April 7, 2023 and console on April 12, 2023.
