Path of Exile: Heist Announced

Launching on September 18, 2020, Heist is the latest challenge league expansion for Grinding Gear Games’ free to play action-RPG Path of Exile. The league’s main new mechanic will have you planning and executing elaborate heists in pursuit of unique rewards and enchantments. Here’s a trailer to give you a general idea of how that will work:

You can find links to a number of previews over here, and here’s a general overview of the new stuff:

Path of Exile: Heist

In Path of Exile: Heist, you will hire skilled thieves to help you pull off risky Heists. Steal valuable artifacts to fund and train your crew as you plan towards the execution of a Grand Heist.

Our September expansion contains the Heist challenge league, nine new Skills and Support Gems, revamps of Curses, Steel Skills, and some Spells. Grand Heists offer exclusive new rewards such as Weapon and Body Armour Enchantments, Heist Trinkets, Alternate-quality Gems and Replica Unique Items.

Uncover the Rogue Harbour

Buy your passage to the Rogue Harbour where you’ll consort with a crew of thieves who offer nefarious services. Thirteen Rogues can be contracted to assist you with setting up or executing a Heist by filling roles such as transportation, lockpicking or demolition.

Hire a Specialist

In order to execute a Heist, you need to know the location of a valuable Artifact and what defences safeguard it. Contracts containing these clues can be found throughout Wraeclast alongside coins with the mysterious emblem of the Rogue Harbour. Travel there and turn in these objects to hire the expertise you need for your Heist.

Execute the Heist

If you can’t escape the Heist, you’ll lose everything you stole while infiltrating the facility. You’ll need to support your Rogue while they bypass security in order to reach the vault. Be careful with how much commotion you cause, or you may trigger the alarm, causing the facility to be locked down. When this happens, it’s time to run.

Equip Your Crew

Specialised items can be equipped to Rogues to make them stealthier, deadlier, and more adept at their roles. Like any other Path of Exile items, Rogue equipment can be crafted with currency items. A well-equipped crew is a great asset when undertaking the most difficult Heists.

Plan a Grand Heist

The ultimate goal of a thief is to pull off a Grand Heist. This requires access to Blueprints that show where the vaults are located inside sprawling facilities. These elaborate jobs require masterful planning, purchasing additional intel about the facility, and hiring multiple Rogues to assist with their many obstacles. This planning can result in a huge pay-off as each vault has its own exclusive rewards.

Thieves’ Trinkets

One of the exclusive rewards you’ll be able to steal from Grand Heists are Trinkets, which go in their own new equipment slot. These magical items influence what rewards you’ll find from future Heists you run. Some of their modifiers affect the items dropped by enemies and chests, while others modify the rewards you could obtain from a Heist’s special reward chests.

Alternate Quality Gems

Alternate Quality Gems come from Grand Heist reward rooms and provide even more depth for existing Skill and Support Gems. Each existing Path of Exile gem has up to three Alternate Quality versions which grant different quality bonuses than the original gems. Some simply increase the power of the gem while others entirely change which builds most benefit from the gem.

Replica Uniques & Experimented Base Types

Other rewards you can claim from Grand Heists are Replica Unique Items and Experimented Base Types. Replica Unique items result from attempts to re-create unique items of legend, where the end product has a few crucial differences. They’re often appropriate for entirely different character builds than the original item. Experimented Base Types are a variety of new item base types that have exotic properties that differ from their core-game counterparts.

Weapon and Body Armour Enchantments

The final type of new reward available from Grand Heists is a selection of Weapon and Body Armour enchantments. These enchantments come on unnaturally-powerful rare items and affect the magnitude of modifiers on those items. Some of these enchantments are so powerful that they involve substantial drawbacks.

Oppressive Curses

We’ve added a new Curse-related skill and a new Curse support gem. The new Doom mechanic causes a self-cast Curse to increase in intensity over time until it expires. This works well in conjunction with the Impending Doom support, which causes an explosion of chaos damage when a linked curse ends. Curses have also received a new look.

Sharpened Steel Skills

We’ve revamped Steel Skills by introducing Shards, deadly blades fragments that hover near your character. The Call of Steel Skill is available whenever you have a Steel skill equipped. It bursts Shards from the ground, providing more ammunition for Steel projectiles, and causes existing Shards to explode out of impaled enemies. We’ve also added one new Steel Skill and reworked both Shattering and Lancing Steel.

Powerful Spells

Alongside the introduction of six new spells, we’ve reworked Discharge and Glacial Cascade. A goal with these new spells is that while they are powerful in a variety of character builds, they have additional benefits when self-cast.

And Much, Much More…

Path of Exile: Heist also introduces over 25 new Unique Items, 12 new Divination Cards, a visual revamp to some skill effects and much more.

Path of Exile on macOS

We’re releasing Path of Exile for macOS alongside the Heist expansion! This version of Path of Exile is fully integrated into the main worldwide PC realm so you can access your existing accounts and microtransactions.

Heist Supporter Packs

We’re also launching two sets of Supporter Packs alongside Heist – the Spellblade and Eagle Packs. There are two price points available for each and they feature masses of points, several exclusive microtransactions and a new type of character effect that charges up as you slay monsters.

Path of Exile: Heist will launch on September 18 (PDT) on PC, and September 23 on Xbox One and PlayStation 4.