Path of Exile 3.21 Crucible League Mechanics Reveal

In Path of Exile: Crucible, you’ll learn about the ancient titans who once shaped the primordial surface of Wraeclast. If you’re powerful enough, you will earn the ability to forge their power onto your weapons.

Path of Exile 3.21 Crucible League starts on 7th April 2023

April expansion introduces the Crucible challenge league, nine new Vaal Skills, Atlas Gateways, over ten new Unique Items and improvements to Breach, Abyss, Passive Tree Masteries, the Saboteur, the Pathfinder, Ruthless and much more!

Seize the Power of the Crucible

Crucible Forges are scattered throughout Wraeclast. When you find one, select one of your weapons and channel the power of the ancient titans to spawn a challenging encounter. The longer you channel for, the more the molten monsters merge together to form more fearsome foes. You’re in control of the difficulty and reward of these encounters.

Forge your Own Path

In an iconically Path of Exile way, your weapons can now be imbued with powerful Passive Skill Trees of their own. Encounters at Crucible Forges grant you experience that lets you uncover the tree on a weapon and gradually progress through its skills. You can only allocate one skill from each tier, so choose your path through each Crucible Passive Tree carefully. If you’re lucky, you’ll find certain skills that, when allocated, are worth valuable currency or unique items when sold to a vendor.

Stand Before the Titans

Crucible’s endgame takes place in The Forge of the Titans, a dangerous area harbouring an ancient power: the ability to melt a weapon down, merging its Crucible Passive Tree with that of another weapon. This process produces unpredictable results, incorporating elements of each tree as well as random upgrades, downgrades and changes. Through careful use of the Forge, it’s possible to craft some incredibly powerful skill trees on your weapons.

Journey through Atlas Gateways

Among other endgame improvements, Path of Exile: Crucible introduces Atlas Gateways – nodes on the Atlas Passive Tree that allow instant travel between two locations. There are three pairs of gateways, each allowing travel from the left side of the tree to the right side or vice versa. Each end of the gateway consumes one Atlas Skill Point to allocate, but using them makes it possible to easily engage with all the content that you want to play, regardless of which side of the tree it’s on.

Survive the Breach

We’re overhauling Breach in many ways. Regular Breachstones are now much higher level, replacing Charged, Pure and Enriched Breachstones entirely. Flawless Breachstones can now be upgraded to with Blessings, or earned from an Atlas Tree passive. Breach monster pacing and density have been improved so that the pressure and rewards are consistent throughout an encounter. We have also tweaked Breach Scarabs, the Betrayal Research Safehouse, Breachstones from Kirac Missions, the Breach Harvest Crafting Option, the Fragment Stash Tab, Divination Cards, Breach Unique Items, Atlas Passives and more.

Stare into the Abyss

Abyssal Depths now always contain an Abyssal Lich. Abysses have a chance to spawn a Stygian Spire in place of their reward chest, which drops a Stygian Vise, jewels and other items. You’re now guaranteed to always get a four-hole Abyss alongside your Abyssal Depths, rather than just a single hole. We’ve also updated Abyss passives on the Atlas Tree, Abyssal Lich encounter balance, Abyss uniques and Abyss Scarabs.

Master an Evolved Meta

The Crucible expansion provides a lot of new ways to build characters and improve your favourite ones. We have revamped approximately half of the Masteries on the passive tree with lots of new build-improving stats to pick from. We have also bolstered the tree itself with new clusters for Link Skills, Stun Mitigation and Marks, and have added a few new Masteries.

We have also overhauled the Saboteur and Pathfinder Ascendancy Classes. In addition to Traps and Mines, the Saboteur can now specialise in Triggered Skills and Cooldown Recovery, including the ability to slow down the cooldowns of enemy skills. The Pathfinder now has the ability to turn many of its skills into Concoction-like abilities that consume its flask charges for additional effects.

The Crucible Challenge League also starts with a competitive boss kill event! The first player to kill the Uber Searing Exarch and Uber Eater of Worlds in Ruthless Hardcore Solo Self-found will get to work with our design team to add a new unique item to Path of Exile. They’ll also receive a transferable Ultra VIP ticket to ExileCon in July. Second and third place finishers will receive a transferable VIP ticket to ExileCon. If you’d like to enter the event, just create a character in Ruthless Hardcore Solo Self-found on launch day!

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