Path of Exile News

As you know, in Path of Exile: Conquerors of the Atlas we're introducing Support Gems Plus, a new type of Support Gems, available as a drop from endgame Conquerors. There are four of them on the announcement page, and today we will showcase six more alongside a video preview.

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Check out these Support Gems Plus here.

As part of the Conquerors of the Atlas expansion, we're doing a full review of Bow skills and other mechanics that influence Bow balance. Ranged Attack Totems have been under-utilised for a while, and we've made some significant changes to their core mechanics as well as adding some interesting new abilities which are unique to the archetype.

We've made a number of changes to Ranged Attack Totems:

• Ranged Attack Totem skills are now called Ballistas, with the existing support gem being renamed to Ballista Totem Support.
  
• All Ballista skills start with 3 maximum totems, as does Ballista Totem Support.
  
• Ballista Totems place much faster than other totems, letting you quickly deploy your full power.
  
• Ballistas are all placed quite close to your character now. This makes your positioning important, however it isn't a large disadvantage as most of the Ballistas have a long firing range.
  
• New passives have been added to the passive tree specific to Ballistas and other Attack totems, letting you gain additional Ballista totems.
  

Shrapnel Ballista is the new low-level Bow Totem. It fires three projectiles at once, and an enemy can be hit by multiple projectiles from a single shot. This makes the skill deadly when up close to enemies. The skill has a small amount of Added Physical damage, making the skill more reliable while leveling. Additional projectiles further multiply the damage. Use it to take down a boss quickly, or place multiple to create a line of defence that destroys any enemy that approaches.

Artillery Ballista is a new Level 28 skill. It fires up a series of arrows that rain down in a line, with all damage converted to fire. The skill has a similar damage pattern to Glacial Cascade, but unlike Glacial Cascade, the line isn't directly away from the totem. Instead, it looks at the positions of nearby monsters, and intelligently rains down its arrows in a diagonal line that would hit as many enemies as possible, making it very efficient at clearing spread out enemies, as well as dealing multiple hits to targets.

Ensnaring Arrow is a new bow utility skill that fires a single arrow. When it hits and doesn't pass through an enemy, a rope shoots into the ground, pinning that monster to that point. If they try to move from the point, they're greatly slowed. An enemy can have up to three ropes attached to it, each applying a separate speed multiplier.

In addition to the slow, it also increases projectile attack damage taken, and makes enemies always count as moving. Use Puncture on an Ensnared enemy to guarantee a full force bleed. Additional Projectiles let you pin multiple enemies at once, while Ballista Totem Support lets you create a totem that repeatedly ensnares enemies while you kill them with your other abilities. Check out new skill gems in action below:

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We've also added three new Support Gems that can be used with Bow skills, and have made some significant changes to some skills, including Explosive Arrow. We'll talk more about these in the weeks leading up to the release of Conquerors of the Atlas. Stay tuned!

The Atlas of Worlds will be undergoing a number of changes in the Conquerors of the Atlas expansion. Today, we're going to detail several new systems and clarify what will happen to any existing systems affected by these changes.

The first thing that you'll notice when opening your Atlas that you no longer start at the corners, where the Tier 1 maps were previously. Instead, you'll now be starting next to the map device in the centre of the Atlas. The Zana questline in which you pursue the Shaper and Elder throughout the Atlas has been replaced with a brand new story immediately following those events.

The Atlas has been divided up into eight regions. As you play through each region, completing maps as you go, you'll have the opportunity to fight new endgame bosses, who take up a Citadel on a specific map within a region. Upon defeating these bosses, they will drop a Watchstone. Watchstones can be socketed into your Atlas in any region of your choosing. Upon socketing a Watchstone, the associated region will be upgraded, increasing the tier of all Maps within that region and revealing previously hidden maps. Defeat each of the Conquerors and you'll be able to fully upgrade any given region, resulting in every map in that region ranging from tier 14 to tier 16. Repeatedly defeating conquerors will drop additional Watchstones, eventually allowing you to upgrade all eight regions. One neat result of this is that this means that all Unique maps will be able to drop at much higher tiers than previously possible.

Sextants are no longer applied to individual maps on your Atlas. Instead, sextants are applied to Watchstones and will affect whichever region that Watchstone is currently socketed into. This means that each region can be affected by up to four sextants at any one time. You will also have the ability to move Watchstones between regions freely. Additionally, sextant modifiers are no longer shared between one another. Instead, Apprentice, Journeyman and Master Cartographer's Sextants each have their own pool of modifiers that they can apply to maps. Naturally, the rarer the sextant, the higher quality of modifiers it can apply.

Shaper and Elder influence are no longer found on your Atlas. Shaper and Elder items will still be accessible through their usual means such as some league rewards, divination cards and drops from the Shaper and Elder encounters and Guardians. You will occasionally be able to obtain maps that have Shaper and Elder influence through the use of Scarabs, as well as maps that have a modifier which applies influence to the area. Shaper's Strongholds will also cease to exist. Shaper's Orbs and Elder's Orb will no longer be obtainable and existing orbs will be destroyed. Unshaping Orbs and Cartographer's Seals will no longer be usable.

Shaper Guardian Maps are no longer found on the Atlas. Instead, you will be able to find them through Zana missions. They will continue to drop their unique items and fragments. Combining each of the Shaper Fragments will continue to open portals to The Shaper's Realm. If you're interested in obtaining the Celestial Hideout, you'll want to do so before these changes, as access to the Shaper encounter is likely to be more difficult and expensive than it is currently.

Elder Guardians and The Elder will occasionally replace the Map boss of various Zana mission maps. Both Shaper and Elder will have a chance to drop fragments. Combining these fragments will open portals to the Uber Elder encounter.

We're very excited about the upcoming changes and boss encounters in the Conquerors of the Atlas expansion. We will likely have additional information to share in the near future but please let us know if you have any other questions pertaining to existing features and functionality and we'll do our best to get them answered as soon as we can!

This weekend we hosted ExileCon. We had more than 1100 international attendees plus a large New Zealand contingent (including our full development staff). We tried very hard to recreate Wraeclast at the venue, and had a great time entertaining our guests with presentations, interviews, impromptu Einhar appearances and the card game. Today's news post is a recap of some of the awesome memories from ExileCon.

The Aotea Centre in Auckland Was decorated in a true Path of Exile style with stained glass windows from the Chamber of Innocence, a Map Device table, a giant Hangman's Tree and a statue of the Hooded Figure, an NPC from Path of Exile 2.



We announced four projects at ExileCon: Path of Exile 2, Path of Exile: Conquerors of the Atlas and its accompanying Metamorph Challenge League and the experimental Path of Exile Mobile game.

Path of Exile 2 is a new seven-act campaign, sitting alongside the original Path of Exile 1. The initial campaign will still be fully playable and we'll continue to maintain it with updates and improvements. We'll be posting more information about the ongoing development of Path of Exile 2 and its systems over the next year. In the meantime, check out its announcement page and a trailer here.



Our next expansion is called Path of Exile: Conquerors of the Atlas and it will change the entire endgame system in Path of Exile by introducing a new Atlas storyline and five new endgame bosses. The Conquerors of the Atlas and its accompanying Metamorph Challenge League launch in less than a month, on the 13th of December (PST)! In the coming weeks we'll tell you more about changes to the Atlas system, new Bow Skill and Support Gems and new endgame bosses in the news. Starting from next Monday we'll be posting teasers until the launch day. While you're waiting, watch the 3.9 trailers and have a look at the announcement pages here.

Over the two convention days, we held more than a dozen various panels with presentations and interviews featuring our developers, community streamers and our special guests.



Some of these were streamed live, but we couldn't cover everything on the livestream, so we had each of the panels recorded for you to watch in the future. We're still sorting out all the video footage (over 30 terabytes of data!), so we'll be posting VODs of developer talks and interviews in the news over the coming weeks. If you'd like to rewatch everything that was livestreamed, there are two videos available at our YouTube channel (first day, second day).

Attendees also got a chance to chat with community streamers, GGG founders and Path of Exile voice actors at Meet and Greet stage.



As you may know, we also created the ExileCon Card Game as an icebreaker for attendees to engage with GGG staff members.



The card game became an absolute hit amongst both attendees and our staff. We had a blast playing it all weekend!

ExileCon concluded with tie23he, Waggle, tytykiller and Havoc facing each other in the epic Race Finale.



tie23he won the race, demonstrating his insane Path of Exile speedrunning skills, with Havoc and Waggle finished at 2nd and 3rd places respectively. Congratulations and thank you for a great race!



Thank you to everyone who attended ExileCon. It was great to finally meet you all! You are all amazing and we've had so much fun talking and playing the card game with you! Thank you to viewers of our livestream. Without all of you the event like this wouldn't be possible. Until the next one!

Exilecon is Tomorrow!
We're almost at the finish line! In less than a day we'll be hosting ExileCon, our very first Path of Exile convention!

The official livestream begins on Saturday the 16th at 9AM New Zealand time (Friday the 15th at noon PST) with a one-hour pre-show. If you're confused, just follow the countdown on the front page - the stream starts when this countdown ends! In case you've missed our schedule, check it out here.

We have also prepared a special webpage with an embedded twitch client, the ExileCon schedule and all the upcoming announcement pages in one place (they will stay locked for now, until formally announced on the day!) This page will be available in several hours. We'll announce when it's live.

As we mentioned yesterday, we've arranged the Twitch Drops promotion for the viewers of our livestream. By linking your Path of Exile account on PC, Xbox One or PS4 to Twitch and watching the ExileCon livestream at www.twitch.tv/pathofexile, you'll not only experience our announcements and developer presentations live, but will also get a chance to win cool microtransaction prizes.

Find out more here.

Get a Free Carnival Mystery Box When You Spend Points
Although we don't have a weekend-long sale, we've prepared several single-day sales for Path of Exile's most popular microtransactions. Keep an eye on them in the 'Specials' section of the store, and don't forget to check your Watchlist.

To make this weekend's sales even better value, we're offering a free Carnival Mystery Box when you spend any amount of points in the store! This offer is available on both PC and Consoles.

Please note: it's only possible to get only one free Carnival Mystery Box from this promotion. Making additional microtransaction purchases will not grant additional mystery boxes. Purchasing a supporter pack will not grant a free Mystery Box but spending points from a supporter pack can grant a free Mystery Box.

The offer will end at Nov 19, 2019 4:00 PM (GMT+13). Thank you for your support!

We've been working on the convention for more than a year and we're very excited to finally show you everything tomorrow. Whether you're attending ExileCon, or watching it live from home, we hope you'll have a great time. See you all very soon!