Grinding Gear Games has announced that its next major expansion for Path of Exile, Echoes of the Atlas, will launch on PC on January 15th. According to the press release, the expansion delivers new end-game content, a new challenge league, new skills, and a new pinnacle boss simply known as The Maven.
Path of Exile: Echoes of the Atlas promises to test the mettle of players brave enough to face its many challenges. Slaying three map bosses in The Maven’s presence will earn players a summon to her realm where she will request they defeat these bosses simultaneously. Once players defeat ten bosses, The Maven will challenge combatants herself.
As players prove their worth, they’ll take control of their Atlas by unlocking regional passive trees. Content they encounter and rewards received will be augmented while exploring various regions. New end-game rewards include three types of Craftable Watchstones that allow players to upgrade their Atlas and boost rewards found from maps. These new Craftable Watchstones can be traded, do not expire with use, and their benefits are stackable, making them superior to regular Watchstones. Another new end-game reward, called The Maven’s Orb, is able to randomly upgrade items that have two or more influence modifiers. While one of these influence modifiers will be upgraded, the others will be removed, so choose wisely. If a modifier that’s being upgraded has already reached its highest tier, it’ll be upgraded to a new elevated tier. A total of 13 new unique items and a number of Divination Cards can be earned in Echoes of the Atlas.
A new challenge league called Ritual League will pit players against a combination of the Ritual Altar’s arcane powers and escalating waves of monsters enclosed within a Ritual Circle. The more rituals completed, the better the rewards and the more difficult the enemies. As players slay monsters during Rituals, they’ll earn Tribute which can be spent on a variety of items and rewards. Rituals can be enhanced end-game by obtaining tradeable Ritual vessels. Up to four vessels can be placed within a map to add their monsters to the rituals already present, which substantially increases both the difficulty and rewards for those Rituals.
In addition to all of the updates available in the Echoes of the Atlas expansion, Harvest and Heist are being rolled into the core game with a few improvements as well. In Harvest, players will discover portals to established gardens instead of planting and managing their own Sacred Grove. They’ll need to carefully weigh the encounter difficulty from each pair of options against the crafting outcomes prior to making a choice. Slaying monsters that spawn will reward players with Lifeforce, which can be used to greatly improve items. For Heist, contracts will begin to drop from Act Six and onwards. Rogues level up their skills faster, markers drop with higher stack sizes and quest contracts are now dropped for you at the next smuggler’s cache as soon as that quest is available.
Path of Exile is also launching two new sets of Supporter Packs to celebrate the launch of Echoes of the Atlas and the Ritual League: the Renegade and Faithsworm Packs. Both packs have different price points and feature tons of points and several exclusive microtransaction items, such as armor sets and character effects.
Lastly, a total of eleven new maps have been added to the Atlas of Worlds. These maps cover a wide variety of environments and, of course, come with their own challenging boss fight. The visuals of these maps are a huge improvement over previous ones thanks to the ongoing work of Path of Exile 2.
Enjoy!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
these games are job simulators for autistic introverts living off welfare.
I’m genuinely curious about what games you like.
I don’t hate action rpgs, I just think they waste my time.
I hate games that fit into these categories :
-2d games
-button mashing games
-games with dark souls combat system
-turn base games
-pixelated games
-simulators
-walking simulators (oh I hate these ones)
-looter shooters
–games that are related to japan’s history or culture (generally any asian country), especially anime.
that’s it.
So you only like western RTS games with 3D graphics?
is that the only genre left?
But you love Goat Simulator.
job simulator? PoE is literally the most complex ARPG that has ever been created. You actually need an IQ to understand the game
Can’t agree more.
“You actually need an IQ to understand the game”
yikes, good luck in life bud.
just stfu you f*ckin idi*t, I responded to you politely and you just keep being a smart*ss annoying ad hominem c*nt, nobony cares what you think just do one simple thing: STFU
you new to this site?:) if u are then u get use to it:)just block this psycho and save your self a lot of time and nerve
Tencent killed the game… Titans Quest and Grim Dawn are WAY better…
When Tencent became parent of Path of Exiles , I dropped the game .Is it impossible to stay afloat without being bought by corporation ?
Yeah, another bad news for this stinky and corrupted industry
It IS possible but most people are greedy so they will gladly sell out.
Do you tell your employer, “No, no, no! That’s too much pay!”?
Owning a business is an entirely different thing.
You’re neither reading nor thinking. The point is not the source of the money but your desire for personal profit. You don’t tell your employer or the person buying your property to pay you less.
Your clumsy deflection is an admission. Thanks for conceding the point.
“Different” only because you can’t refute it.
The point is not the source of the money but your desire for personal profit. You don’t tell your employer or the person buying your property to pay you less.
This game is so incredibly hard to get into as a new player I’ve stopped even trying.
It has a 100 systems on top of each other, and you need to follow a build online to not die in Act 6 and for a new player there’s like one valid witch build.
Me, always playing heavy armor warriors don’t like that.
The game’s too complex and does a poor job of teaching new players, I’d like to play it but it’s just not fun because of these reasons.
yeah it’s funny, I had a bad impression of Diablo 3 because of the direction they took compared to Diablo 2, but when I played it I really enjoyed it (apart from the story).
The game is not even 1/10th as complex as POE but I enjoyed it so much more. Diablo basics just feel better. Movement, animation for example, so much more satisfying. Diablo 4 looks even better in this regard.
Diablo 3 does have that Blizzard polish for sure. It’s a little too simple for my tastes but PoE is waaaaay too complicated for new players.
I did play D3 some 600 or 800 hours total but I’m not too excited about D4.
Grim Dawn > PoE
It’s an ok game.