Hey, Junkies! In a few days– on August 20th– Grinding Gear Games (GGG) releases their very anticipated expansion to the Path of Exile series. Forsaken Masters, coming to you as a horizontal follow-up to the vertical “Sacrifice of the Vaal” free content pack, this time GGG sets their sights on giving the player more goals to grind towards on their journey through Wraeclast.
Check out some of the features of the upcoming release:
The Masters act as additional side and daily quests in your already content-packed journey. They offer distinct rewards for obtaining levels of reputation with them.
New missions will be able to occur anywhere in the game, even randomly generated end-game maps. This serves as a “freshener” to what some people might consider rudimentary content areas. With random monster modifiers and unique bosses known as Rogue Exiles, this content boasts a certain level of difficulty Hardcore players won’t take without a heavy dose of caution. The thrill of difficulty has always been a strong point for GGG and these missions are sure to hold true to it.
Ahh… The Hideout– a staple in many games that wish to add an element of player impact on the game world. Most end up not being worth a whole lot. Show ponies at best. Path of Exile adopts a bit of the flair but injects a healthy dose of power into these player-customized side areas. With crafting stations and master NPC locations, you’ll spend a pretty decent amount of time here.
Previously in Path of Exile, crafting consisted of finding high item level base gear and rolling stats on them at random with various currency items found or traded for in-game. Now, in Forsaken Masters, you’re able to take said currency items and choose from a specified list of item modifications to craft them onto a piece of gear.
The type of Crafting options range from adding mods to manipulating skill sockets– all determined by which Masters you’ve gained favor with. Gone are the days of blasting 2000 fusing orbs to try and six link your Shavronnes. Spend 1500 for the guaranteed thing! A very rejoiced addition among the community.
Path of Exile‘s item pool is already bursting at the seams. With the addition of 16 new unique items, build-defining mods on vendor and crafted items, and purchasable Skill Gems, PoE pushes its item catalog into a realm other ARPGs have yet to traverse in.
Skills in Path of Exile are the bread and butter of the character customization and advancement sandwich. A new bow attack, self buffs, and aura support gem will be added in, rounding out a few areas of the Bow, Elemental, and Aura Support character builds that have become popular recently.
Leagues are what previous ARPG players would call a Ladder or Leader Board. The largest amount of competition will be found in these two upcoming leagues. Rampage League is where you gain increasingly awesome buffs and effects as you slay your way through as many monsters as you can chain together.
Beyond League, the team’s offering up additional challenges to the already-challenging Hardcore ruleset with the addition of demon portals– a somewhat more player-controlled version of its previous Invasion League. Killing a large enough pack of monsters spawns small portals which produce minor demons. If enough small portals were summoned near each other, a larger set will appear producing more difficult demons. If enough large portals spawn near each other, a much larger portal opens up and releases a unique boss.
People are going to RIP (die) to these bosses and it will be a glorious river of tears.
Brutus with spikes and skeletons!? Merveil with channeled ice spears? As if these bosses weren’t hard enough, this revamp freshens up already gnarly content. The community is definitely looking forward to seeing these up-scaled murder machines in action.
See you on August 20th!
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