New Zealand based developer Grinding Gear Games unveiled Path of Exile: Crucible, the latest expansion in a seemingly endless series that began with Sacrifice of the Vaal, the first expansion launched nine years ago.
Path of Exile: Crucible, due on April 7th for PC and April 12th for consoles, promises several key additions and improvements to the base experience, starting with the introduction of the Crucible Challenge League. This system is designed to allow players to augment their weapons with dedicated skill trees, whose bonuses will augment the character’s style of play. To unlock the weapons’ skill trees, players will need to consume experience from Crucible encounters. After they’ve picked a weapon to be improved at an ancient forge, a channeling will start, causing monsters to appear and combine into larger enemies.
There’s a risk versus reward element to the challenge, as pushing the player’s limit means leveling up the weapon faster but also increases the likelihood of failing the challenge. The Crucible Challenge League includes its own endgame, The Forge of the Titans, where a weapon’s skill trees can be combined to create unfathomably powerful weaponry.
Path of Exile: Crucible also revamps two previous league mechanics, Abyss and Breach, which have been trimmed down and streamlined with more focused rewards. On top of that, Grinding Gear Games added the Atlas Gateways. These are new nodes that enable instant traversal within the Atlas passive tree, making it easier for players to build the tree they want for the content they’d like to do. That’s not all, as the expansion also overhauls the Ruthless game mode, improves the Sabouter and Pathfinder ascendancy classes, reworks half of the Masteries, and adds nine new Vaal skills to the game.
With Diablo IV coming up on June 6th, the attention of hack-and-slash fans will likely be diverted to Blizzard’s latest game for a while. Grinding Gear Games has been developing a sequel of its own to Path of Exile, although it will be treated more as a new campaign that also happens to add a full engine overhaul.
Path of Exile 2 was first announced in November 2019. The original plan involved a beta testing phase somewhere towards the end of 2020, but the arrival of COVID marked a long delay for Path of Exile 2. Last we heard, the game should be playable at ExileCon 2023 (hosted in Auckland, New Zealand, between July 29 and 30), with an estimated release date happening at some point next year.
