Path of Exile – What to Expect Over the Coming Months

If you’d like to know what Grinding Gear Games has in store for Path of Exile as we’re nearing the release of the game’s final challenge league expansion for the year, you should check out this announcement that mentions some end-of-league events, the studio’s pre-release plans for the upcoming expansion, and the challenging Ruthless mode that we’ll get a chance to experience soon.

Have a look:

As the end of 2022 approaches, we wanted to take a moment to let you know what to expect in the coming months and over the end-of-year holiday period.

3.20 Expansion Timeline

We’ve been looking at our upcoming schedule for the next year and have decided to move our 3.20 expansion launch date back from late November to early December.

This date works a lot better for alignment with the holiday period. Previous December launches have shown that launches roughly two weeks before Christmas allows players the most free time to play the league during the holiday season. In addition, this date is well clear of any holiday time that our developers are taking.

We have a busy schedule of releases leading up to Path of Exile 2, so we’ll be using this extra time to get a headstart on 3.21.

End-of-League Events

Because the 3.20 expansion delay extends the Kalandra League by a few weeks, we’re planning to host a series of short events towards the end of the league! We will announce these in more detail at a later date but we can share that the first of the event series will launch on November 4th (PDT). There will be around 2-4 events with a variety of twists on regular Path of Exile gameplay with plenty of prizes up for grabs for top racers and regular players alike. Each event will likely run for a week or less. The events are similar to ones that we have run in the past, but with a few tweaks and updates. Keep an eye on the news for more info.

Balance Manifestos

In the lead-up to our 3.20 expansion, we’ll be sharing a series of Balance Manifestos. Typically, we share one manifesto that covers as much of the balance changes as possible without spoiling the announcement livestream. This time around, we’ll be sharing more topics in advance than usual, even if some of them reveal portions of the livestream, in the interest of trying to provide better communication and transparency.

We are also planning to break these down into individual topics to be shared one at a time to better facilitate feedback and discussion. For clarity, us signaling this early is not meant to set an expectation of many and/or severe balance changes, just simply that this information is coming early and will be shared across several posts.

“Hard Mode” News

Last year, we indicated that we were working on an additional optional game mode for Path of Exile, codenamed “Hard Mode”. We’re proud to announce its official name: Ruthless.

Ruthless is an additional character creation flag alongside Hardcore and Solo Self-Found that allows you to opt-in to extreme item scarcity and various other changes. In early November, we’re planning to announce full information about what Ruthless involves and will kick off its Alpha testing phase. We expect to release the mode to all players alongside the 3.20 expansion. For clarity, this mode is entirely supplementary to the 3.20 expansion and doesn’t affect the scope of the new league and features we’ll be announcing on our livestream.

As the name implies, Ruthless is quite a different experience to regular Path of Exile and is designed for a specific type of player. We don’t expect it to appeal to everyone, but if you’re interested, you’ll be able to sign up for the Alpha test in November and may be invited in one of the waves of players that we seek feedback from prior to its official launch. Note that the Ruthless Alpha test will be the current version of 3.19, not the upcoming 3.20 which has its own alpha test on the regular alpha server. Please don’t directly request access to either alpha test, as we can’t add people that way.

Core Supporter Packs

In mid-December, we’ll be releasing a new set of core supporter packs with new physical goods in the series’ top tiers. This means that the current set of core supporter packs will soon be leaving the store forever at that time. If you want to consider getting yours, check them out here!