Path of Exile: The Fall of Oriath New Core Game Mechanics

The latest Development Manifesto from Grinding Gear Games talks about the game mechanics Breach and Legacy challenge leagues introduced, and the plans for those in the upcoming expansion. In short, Breaches are going to become a part of the regular end-game in The Fall of Oriath, while Zana, Master Cartographer, will provide access to past leagues as she did prior to the Legacy league. An excerpt:

While we know Breach resonates with our players, it is one of the more intrusive leagues we’ve run. This was an intentional part of the design, but it makes it problematic for us to add freely into the levelling process on a permanent basis. From 3.0.0 onwards, we will not have difficulties, so we have to carefully consider whether mechanics like Breach are worth the disruption they cause to the levelling experience.

We will therefore add Breach to maps, but not to main levelling content. Breaches will have a 10% chance to occur in maps by default.

We will also add a Sextant mod, available at all tiers, that guarantees at least one Breach will occur.

[…]

The Legacy league succeeded in being an excellent celebration of challenge leagues of the past. Players enjoyed the control over their experience of the game. Players were able to participate in old leagues, and in particular, play their past favourites.

This also gave players much easier access to league-specific uniques.

There were a few elements that worked less well with Legacy League. There was difficulty in properly communicating how to engage with the system, and after players had learned how, they had to put considerable effort into maintaining three Leaguestones and not accidentally using them where they did not mean to. Players also wanted to engage with the very rewarding Leaguestones that had mods, which needed to be reasonably rare.

Zana, the normal way players engage with past leagues, had too much overlap with Legacy League, and needed to be changed to not provide the same access. This left us with limited options, and what was implemented for Zana in 2.6.0 wasn’t received well.

While we look forward to using Legacy again at some point in the future, we will not be adding it to the core game at this time.

We feel it provides too much overhead for newer players, and is something we’d like to reserve for special occasions.

Leaguestones will therefore not function in normal leagues and will no longer drop. At the beginning of 3.0.0, Zana will once again provide access to past leagues.