Grinding Gear Games will be releasing a hefty expansion to Path of Exile tomorrow with Conquerors of the Atlas. Along with the new Metamorph Challenge League, the expansion completely revamps the Atlas of Worlds end-game, buffs bows and their respective gems, and much more. To prepare for the same, the developer has released some very detailed patch notes.
There’s a lot to go through so here are some sticking points. Arc, Molten Strike, Caustic Arrow, Rain of Arrows and more have been buffed. Keystone passives like Point Blank now only deal 30 percent additional damage at close range with projectiles as opposed to 50 percent. The passive tree also has a new cluster dedicated to Watchtowers for bonuses to attack totems and summoning one more Ballista Totem.
Check out some of the major highlights of the patch below. Path of Exile: Conquerors of the Atlas will be available for PC players tomorrow but Xbox One and PS4 players will get it a week after. Stay tuned for when the expansion and Metamorph League go live.
Major New Content and Features
- Conquerors of the Atlas: A brand new endgame mapping experience. The Shaper and the Elder have both been defeated! …Just not by you. Another group of Exiles has saved Wraeclast from these celestial harbingers of doom, but that wasn’t enough. They continued to cut paths through the Atlas, leaving carnage in their wake, and forcing Zana to seal them in the Atlas forever. But they are trying to find a way out… Can you stop them before they bring ruin to Oriath?
- Featuring 5 new endgame boss encounters, powerful rewards (including new currencies), and new ways to modify your Atlas.
- Added a new Dexterity Skill Gem – Artillery Ballista: Summons a Ballista Totem that propels a sequence of fiery arrows into the air. The arrows impact the ground in a line, each dealing area damage to the enemies around it.
- Added a new Dexterity Skill Gem – Shrapnel Ballista: Summons a Ballista Totem that fires multiple arrows with extreme force, breaking them apart into shrapnel. Enemies can be hit by multiple arrows from the same attack.
- Added a new Dexterity Skill Gem – Ensnaring Arrow: Fires an arrow that remains in the ground behind its final target, tethering that enemy to it. Ensnared enemies always count as moving, and have less movement speed while trying to break the snare. The snare will break if they leave the area of effect.
- Added a new Dexterity Support Gem – Greater Volley Support: Supports skills that fire projectiles from the user. Supported skills fire 4 additional projectiles. Supported skills also fire projectiles from up to 4 points on each side of you. It’s like Volley, but greater.
- Added a new Dexterity Support Gem – Arrow Nova Support: Supports bow attack skills that fire arrows forwards as projectiles. These skills will instead fire a payload arrow into the air that lands at a targeted location. The supported skills’ arrows then fire out in a circle from where it lands.
- Added a new Dexterity Support Gem – Barrage Support: Supports projectile attack skills that use bows or wands. Supported skills fire projectiles sequentially. Supported skills fire 3 additional projectiles and have more attack time per projectile.
- Added new currencies: Crusader’s Exalted Orb, Hunter’s Exalted Orb, Redeemer’s Exalted Orb and Warlord’s Exalted Orb. Each of these currencies will add an additional modifier to a rare item from its associated pool of Influence modifiers.
- Added new currency: Orb of Awakening. This item can be used on any item with influence (such as a Shaper-influenced Ring), and then any item of the same type (a ring in this case) to transfer that influence to the new item. The original item will be destroyed as a result of this process, but some of the original item’s mods may be carried over to the destination item. An item can have two Influence types attached to it if they are transferred in this way.
- Added 16 new Unique Items.
- Added 35 Awakened Support Gems, which are more powerful versions of existing Support Gems. These Gems are only available from the Conquerors of the Atlas content.
- Added 14 new Divination Cards, designed by our Supporters.
Minor New Content and Features
- You can now add Item Filters to your account through the Path of Exile website. When you then log into your game client, no matter where you are logging in from, you will then have access to all of the Item Filters tied to your account (even if you’re playing on Console!).
- Lioneye’s Watch has been visually updated and uses our latest rendering technology.
- There’s a new loading screen as you enter Lioneye’s Watch to match the town’s new look.
- Added a vendor recipe for your spare Catalysts.
- You can now refund multi-choice passives (such as those on the Ascendant) to reselect your choice without having to refund all the passives after them as well.
- Added 3D Art for Torchoak Step and Machina Mitts.
- Ranged attack totems are now called Ballistas and have a cool new look. It’s a Ballista!
- A lot of ranged attack skills have received major visual improvements, including the basic wand and bow attacks, Burning Arrow, Barrage and Puncture.
- Arrows that collide with terrain now have a chance of bouncing off. This doesn’t do anything other than look really cool (and help performance in situations where players are firing thousands of arrows).
- Other skills have also received visual improvements, including Firestorm, Frostblink, Freezing Pulse, Heavy Strike, Magma Orb, Summon Skeletons, all the Warcry skills, Lightning Tendrils, Flesh Offering, Arc and Sunder
- Added Labyrinth Enchantments for the new skills, as well as for Burning Arrow and Explosive Arrow.
- The Cosmetics Filter will now also check the description of your Cosmetics, rather than just the name.
- Improved the Shadow’s double-dagger Dual Strike animation.
- Continued to incrementally improve the sound, art, effects and environments.