Path of Exile – Patch 3.20.1 Adds New Relics, Unique Ring for The Forbidden Sanctum

Path of Exile’s latest expansion and Challenge League, The Forbidden Sanctum, has received some new content with patch 3.20.1. It adds seven new Unique Relics that drop from the Sanctum Boss’s final form.

These create a new challenge where equipping a Unique Relic and completing a Sanctum run at area level 80+ will cause Herald of the Scourge to drop specific or more items, including a new Unique Ring.  They can also cause Aureus Coins to convert into “certain outcomes” when the Herald is defeated. The Unique Relic is destroyed when the run ends, so if you fail, it’s gone until the next time the Herald drops it.

Other new additions include 41 new “Lycia’s Invocation” currency items. You can use these on non-Corrupted Sanctified Relics and add their Keystone. Another change sees characters taking even less Resolve damage when close to the target in Sanctum, providing some reprieve for melee builds.

Check out some of the patch notes below. Path of Exile: The Forbidden Sanctum is available for PC, Xbox One, and PS4.

3.20.1 Patch Notes

This patch introduces new Sanctum content, improvements to the current Kirac’s Vault Pass and adds support for the 2023 Core Supporter Packs as detailed in our news post last week. It also contains a variety of improvements and bug fixes to both Sanctum and non-Sanctum content, and some buffs to the modifiers applied to Blighted Maps through anointing them with Oils.

Sanctum Updates and Improvements

• Introduced 7 new Unique Relics that drop from the final form of the Sanctum Boss. These Relics challenge you to complete an entire run of The Forbidden Sanctum at area level 80+ under special rules. If you’re able to complete such a run, you’ll be rewarded in new and special ways. However, the Unique Relic will be destroyed regardless of the outcome of your run, so if you fail to complete it, you’ll forfeit your potential rewards.
• Some of these Unique Relics cause the Herald of the Scourge to drop additional or specific items, while others causes Aureus Coins to be converted to certain outcomes upon defeating the Herald of the Scourge.
• We’ve also introduced a new Unique Ring that can be earned by defeating the Herald of the Scourge with one of the new Unique Relics active.
• Introduced 41 new “Lycia’s Invocation” currency items. These can be applied to non-Corrupted Sanctified Relics to add their respective Keystone to the Relic.
• Boons and Afflictions that provide increases and reductions to the effect of your Relics now specify that they do not affect Unique Relics.
• Characters that are up close to their target now take even less damage to their Resolve.
• Sanctum Quests are no longer hidden with the “Enable Quest Tracking” option disabled. We’ve also made improvements to these Quests to reduce the chance they are missed when first entering the relevant town area.
• Party Members are now able to view the Map of the area owner’s Sanctum, if they currently have a run active.
• Party members can now store a Sanctum room for later when the map owner runs their Sanctum room for the area.
• The Resolve bar now flashes when you heal or damage your Resolve.
• Added a display to show which Affliction was removed when you cleansed an Affliction.
• The Sanctified Relic Slot has been moved from the Sanctum Map and is now located in the Inventory panel.
• Sanctified Relics can now be compared with your equipped one by using the Compare Item Descriptions keybind (Ctrl, by default).
• The wave skill used by the final form of the Sanctum Boss now spawns far fewer lightning bolts with each wave, though the lightning bolts are slightly larger. The delay between each wave has also been slightly increased.
• You can no longer gain a new multi-stage Boon or Affliction, such as Lilting Melody, if you already have a later stage of that same Boon or Affliction.
• The Hungry Fangs Affliction and Wooden Effigy Boon now impact Resolve multiplicatively, instead of being additive with stats that impact resolve on Relics.
• Tweaked the position of the skulls that fire tracking beams in the third floor of the Sanctum.
• Updated the Prayer Beads Boon to clarify Resolve is able to be lost after the next room has been completed.

Other Improvements

• Added support for the new Core Supporter Packs.
• Added five more microtransactions to Kirac’s Vault Pass in the form of these additional mystery boxes from Path of Exile’s past: Warlord, Polaris, Twilight, Harmony and Sin/Innocence.
• Huck now brings along his Rogue Equipment when accompanying you in Maps.
• Significantly increased the experience gained from killing Metamorph Monsters.
• You can no longer animation-cancel Vaal Venom Gyre, Vaal Volcanic Fissure, Vaal Blade Flurry, Vaal Caustic Arrow and Vaal Molten Strike before the point in the animation that damage is dealt.
  The Balance of Terror Unique Jewel no longer has a level requirement.
• Completing the Mastermind’s Lair now awards credit towards the Suspicious Syndicate challenge.
  Updated one component of the Complete Harbinger Encounters challenge to “Use any Harbinger, Ancient or Fracturing Orb”, instead of just Fracturing Orb.
• Updated various descriptions of conditional modifiers, such as the increased Damage against Ignited Enemies modifier on Gang’s Momentum, to clarify the kinds of damage they can apply to.
• Updated the “Cycling Resistances” monster modifier text to “Cycling Damage Reduction” as it is more accurate.
• The Cartographer Divination Card has received new flavour text.

Blight Atlas Passive Changes

• The Blight Atlas Passives that provided your Maps with Blight Encounters a chance to contain an additional Blight Encounter have irreconcilable issues that result in areas with two Blight Encounters failing to generate reliably, so we have replaced these stats.
• The small Atlas Passives now provide “5% chance on Completing your Maps to gain a free use of the Blight Map Crafting Option.”
• The small Atlas Passive at the entry of this cluster that provided your maps a +4% chance to contain a Blight Encounter now provides “Lanes of Blight Encounters in your Maps have 5% chance for an additional Reward Chest” and “2% chance on Completing your Maps to gain a free use of the Blight Map Crafting Option.”
• The Mycelial Swarm Notable Atlas Passive now provides “Blight Map Crafting Option is always available” and “50% reduced cost of the Blight Map Crafting Option.”