Path of Exile Launches New Expansion Called with Expedition League

Path of Exile, the hardcore-focused free-to-play action RPG, has received a new expansion titled Expedition. Available to play on PC and consoles now, the highly acclaimed title’s latest expansion is packed with new and exciting content to sink your teeth and PoE Expedition currencies into.

Developer Grinding Gear Games has touted tons of updates and activities for PoE players to further their characters’ progress. Kicking off with the new Expedition League, PoE’s newest add-on includes new merchants, a slew of new Skill and Support gems, changes to balance, a rework to the flask system, and all-new items types.

Expedition League Mechanic

The main mechanic of PoE’s new Expedition League is pretty straightforward to understand. During your regular encounters, you’ll come across one of the 4 new NPCs. Each of them will have their own objective for you to complete. Typically, this will involve finding an artifact by doing the encounters.

Your goal is to try to maximize the amount of reward you get while also paying attention to the difficulty of the encounter itself. While on the field, you’ll find skulls on spikes, chest signs, and items called Unearthed Remnants. By placing detonators next to all of these, you can blow them up to activate them. What is important to pay attention to are the effects of the Remnants. Each of them has two, one that will make the encounter more difficult and one that will increase your reward.

The order in which you place these detonators matters. For instance, if a Remnant has an effect that grants a higher reward from Runic monsters, you’ll want that to blow up first in order to apply to all other Runic monsters you activate.

After defeating the monsters in the encounter, you can collect the artifacts and head back to town. There, you can speak to the NPC you engaged with earlier to exchange your artifacts for items. Depending on the NPC, their reward scheme will be different.

19 New Gems Introduced

As PoE’s metagame is heavily based on its Gem system, Grinding Gear Games have added 19 new ones to shake things up. These shiny new Skill and Support gems are all based on the Ascendancy Classes:

Ascendant

Spectral Helix – Tosses a spectral version of your weapon

Juggernaut, Berserker and Chieftain

• Boneshatter – Strike foes with a forceful blow that erupts into a shockwave when it stuns
• Rage Vortex – Unleash a spinning vortex that hits all enemies in its radius after consuming your Rage
• Earthbreaker Support – Makes Slam skills summon an Ancestor totem

Champion, Gladiator and Slayer

• Defiance Banner – A defensive tool that reduces critical strike of enemies while raising your armor and evasion
• Shield Crush – Slam enemies with your shield, creating waves that strike foes based on your shield stats
• Behead Support – Slaying a rare enemy with the supported Strike will one of its modifiers for 20 seconds

Raider, Pathfinder and Deadeye

• Storm Rain – Shoot up arrows that stick to the ground that pulse with lightning and chain across enemies
• Explosive Concoction – A skill that must be used unarmed. Toss an explosive projectile which can be enhanced with flasks
• Focused Ballista Support – Makes your ballistas focus on your target and only attack when you do

Assassin, Saboteur and Trickster

• Ambush – Teleport to an enemy and blind them before striking with a one-handed melee attack
• Blade Trap – Toss a trap on the ground with copies of your weapon on them that spin around dealing damage to enemies that walk over it
• Voltaxic Burst – Grants a countdown buff that explodes into a lightning and chaos shockwave

Occultist, Elementalist and Necromancer

• Forbidden Rite – Toss an explosive projectile that launches more projectiles
• Eye of Winter – Fire an eye projectile that blasts enemies with shards
• Summon Reaper – Summon a powerful reaper that slashes at nearby enemies

Hierophant, Guardian and Inquisitor

• Manabond – Deals lightning damage in a circle based on your mana deficit
• Absolution – AoE damage enemies and apply a debuff to them
• Battlemage’s Cry – Taunt enemies nearby and exert subsequent attacks

Other Changes

One of the most important changes that Expedition has introduced is the flask rework. Flasks that grant permanent power have had their levels greatly reduced. In addition, a new item, the Instilling Orb, will allow you to change utility flasks so that they trigger under specific conditions.

These changes are part of Grinding Gear Games’ effort to make PoE become more challenging again. As part of this effort, they’ve made enemies in the game’s first act more dangerous.

Path of Exile: Royale, the joke mode introduced during April Fools, has also made a temporary return. It can be accessed on weekends for the duration of the Expedition League.

Finally, two brand-new Supporter Packs are up for grabs to help you on your adventures.

Whether you’re new to Path of Exile or a returning player, the game’s currency system can be quite overwhelming. Even the devs themselves have acknowledged this and are actively looking to adjust the number of PoE currencies you need to use. You don’t need to be part of the confused crowd, though. We stock up on PoE currencies to help you skip the grind and focus on enjoying the new Expedition League.