The Expedition expansion and challenge league for Path of Exile is now available on PC and should be coming to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One next week. The expansion introduces four new merchant NPCs, 19 new Skill Gems, numerous balance adjustments, a flask system rework, and more. It also brings back the curious Battle Royale mode that was initially released as an April Fools’ joke.
You can find the complete patch notes here and check out the new and updated gems over here. But before you do, here’s a quick expansion trailer:
And an overview of the Battle Royale mode:
And here are the major new features:
The Expedition Challenge League
Challenge leagues are a great opportunity for a fresh start in a new economy. All of your old characters and items are still present in the Standard and Hardcore leagues, but you’re encouraged to join the new leagues, complete challenges and demonstrate your mastery of Path of Exile!
In the Expedition Challenge League, you’ll meet a group of Kalguuran traders and assist them with recovering their ancestors’ runed artifacts. At marked Expedition sites, you must strategically place a series of explosives and detonate them. These explosions unearth a horde of undead Kalguur that must be slain in order to gather the equipment and artifacts buried among them. These artifacts may be turned into one of the Kalguuran traders who each offer a different style of trade themed around bartering, gambling, dealing and exchanging.
You may also discover Logbooks which chronicle the locations of sprawling Expedition sites. These can be crafted and traded with other players. Take them to Dannig, the leader of the Kalguur, and he’ll grant you passage to one of the locations outlined in the Logbook. In these exotic locations, you’ll find a large Expedition that must be excavated with an even longer chain of explosives.
During your Expeditions, you must be careful to manage your levels of risk and return. Signs located at the Expedition sites clearly mark out the most dangerous areas to excavate. Special monsters and remnants of past Kalguuran settlements are clearly marked and detonating them can make your Expeditions much more challenging.
With 3.15.0, there are Standard, Hardcore and Solo Self-Found variations of the Expedition challenge league available. They have the same core mechanics and items. You can create private league versions of these leagues, with mods that make the game harder.
The new challenge leagues include a set of 40 new challenges. When you complete 12 challenges, you will receive the Expedition Footprints. When you reach 24 challenges, you will receive the Expedition Weapon Effect. At 36 challenges completed you’ll receive Expedition Portal Effect. These microtransactions are only obtainable in this league.
From the 19th challenge onwards and for every third challenge after that, you will receive pieces of the Expedition Totem Pole decoration to display in your hideout. The Totem Pole permanently showcases how many of the Expedition challenges you completed during the league.
Major New Content and Features
Added a new Strength Skill Gem – Rage Vortex: Spin with a sword or axe to deal damage in an area around you. Sacrifices some rage to send a ragestorm forward. While enemies are inside it, the ragestorm will slow its movement and repeatedly deal attack damage based on your attack speed.
Added a new Strength Skill Gem – Shield Crush: Swipe your shield, dealing area damage in three waves in front of you. Enemies can be hit by two of the waves where they overlap.
Added a new Strength Skill Gem – Boneshatter: Attack enemies with a forceful melee strike that also hurts you. Successive uses will raise the damage dealt both to enemies and you. Stunning an enemy with the strike releases a damaging pulse. Requires a Mace, Sceptre, Axe or Staff.
Added a new Strength/Intelligence Skill Gem – Battlemage’s Cry: Performs a warcry, taunting nearby enemies to attack the user and exerting the user’s next five melee attacks. Grants a buff which boosts critical strike chance and allows attacks to benefit from increases to spell damage. Exerted attacks trigger a supported spell with their first melee hit.
Added a new Strength/Intelligence Skill Gem – Absolution: Damages enemies in an area, applying a debuff for a short duration. If a non-unique enemy dies while affected by the debuff, the enemy’s corpse will be consumed to summon a Sentinel of Absolution for a longer secondary duration, or to refresh the duration and life of an existing one instead if you have the maximum number of them.
Added a new Strength/Dexterity Skill Gem – Defiance Banner: Cast to reserve mana and carry a banner which increases the armour and evasion of nearby allies, and reduces the critical strike chance of nearby enemies. Gain stages over time while carrying the banner near enemies. Casting the skill again places the banner, ending the mana reservation. Once placed, it becomes more powerful for each stage gained.
Added a new Strength Support Gem – Behead: Supports strike skills, causing them to deal more damage with hits and ailments against enemies on low life. Killing blows against rare monsters grant one of their modifiers for 20 seconds.
Added a new Strength Support Gem – Earthbreaker: Supports slam skills, causing them to summon an ancestor totem that uses the skill for you while you’re near it. Being near it grants you increased area of effect for melee skills.
Added a new Dexterity Skill Gem – Storm Rain: Fires an arrow into the air to land at a targeted location, dealing area damage. The arrow sticks in the ground where it lands, and periodically fires a beam of lightning to another arrow near it, dealing area damage between them.
Added a new Dexterity Skill Gem – Explosive Concoction: Throws an explosive bottle that deals unarmed attack damage in an area. Can consume charges from your Ruby, Sapphire, and Topaz flasks to add further damage. Requires an empty main hand.
Added a new Dexterity/Strength Skill Gem – Spectral Helix: Throw a spectral copy of your melee weapon. It spins around while flying in a large spiral, damaging enemies in its path, and bouncing if it collides with walls.
Added a new Dexterity/Intelligence Skill Gem – Ambush: Teleports you to a nearby enemy, applying a buff to you for a short duration and blinding the enemy for a secondary duration. Performing a melee attack with a One-Handed Weapon removes the buff to exert that attack.
Added a new Dexterity/Intelligence Skill Gem – Blade Trap: Throws a trap which, once triggered, swings two copies of your equipped Dagger, Claw or One Handed Sword around it in a circle, each repeatedly damaging enemies they spin through.
Added a new Dexterity Support Gem – Focused Ballista: Supports skills that summon ballista totems, causing them to only attack when you fire an attack projectile. Cannot modify the skills of minions.
Added a new Intelligence Skill Gem – Forbidden Rite: Lobs an exploding projectile near the targeted location, and extra projectiles toward enemies around you. The projectiles deal chaos damage based on your life and energy shield. Casting this spell damages you.
Added a new Intelligence Skill Gem – Eye of Winter: Fires a single eye projectile which constantly releases shard projectiles in a spiral. The shards will damage enemies they impact, dealing cold damage. The eye cannot damage enemies. When the eye dissipates or collides with terrain, it releases a faster spiral of extra shards.
Added a new Intelligence Skill Gem – Summon Reaper: Summons a powerful Reaper which uses a variety of slashing area attacks. The Reaper’s presence weakens your other minions, and it will consume them to temporarily empower and heal itself. Using this skill while the Reaper is already summoned causes it to dash to the targeted location and perform a powerful attack.
Added a new Intelligence Skill Gem – Manabond: Deals lightning damage based upon your missing mana in a circular area around the targeted location, as well as in four rectangular extensions whose lengths depend upon your remaining mana.
Added a new Intelligence/Dexterity Skill Gem – Voltaxic Burst: Each cast of this spell applies a buff to you for a short duration, releasing a burst of lightning and chaos spell damage in an area around you when that buff ends. Enemies killed by this damage, or shortly after, will explode. The explosions of the corpses are not affected by modifiers to spell damage, and cannot be reflected.
Introduced a new defence type, Ward, found on Expedition items. Ward protects you from all damage types, taking damage from a hit before your life or energy shield up to the amount of Ward you have. Ward is broken when any damage is taken from it, even if the damage taken was lower than the amount of Ward you have. Ward is instantly restored after 5 seconds.
Introduced a new Utility Flask – the Gold Flask: Grants increased rarity of items found. This item has been added to the core drop pool.
Introduced a new Utility Flask – the Corundum Flask: Grants increased stun threshold. You cannot be stunned more than once during this flask effect. This item has been added to the core drop pool.
Introduced a new Utility Flask – Iron Flask: Grants additional Ward and restores Ward on use.
Introduced the Enkindling Orb, a currency item that adds an enchantment to a utility flask that will improve it but prevent it from gaining charges during its effect. This item can be found as a drop throughout the game.
Introduced the Instilling Orb, a currency item that adds an enchantment to a utility flask that will cause it to be used when certain conditions are met. This item can be found as a drop throughout the game.
Added 12 new Divination Cards, designed by our supporters.
Added 9 new Unique Items, including one designed by a supporter.
Added 9 new equipment base types, available in Expeditions.
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Val Hull
Resident role-playing RPG game expert. Knows where trolls and paladins come from. You must fight for your right to gather your party before venturing forth.
