New Zealand based developer Grinding Gear Games unveiled Path of Exile: Crucible, the latest expansion in a seemingly endless series that began with Sacrifice of the Vaal, the first expansion launched nine years ago.
Path of Exile: Crucible, due on April 7th for PC and April 12th for consoles, promises several key additions and improvements to the base experience, starting with the introduction of the Crucible Challenge League. This system is designed to allow players to augment their weapons with dedicated skill trees, whose bonuses will augment the character's style of play. To unlock the weapons' skill trees, players will need to consume experience from Crucible encounters. After they've picked a weapon to be improved at an ancient forge, a channeling will start, causing monsters to appear and combine into larger enemies.
There's a risk versus reward element to the challenge, as pushing the player's limit means leveling up the weapon faster but also increases the likelihood of failing the challenge. The Crucible Challenge League includes its own endgame, The Forge of the Titans, where a weapon's skill trees can be combined to create unfathomably powerful weaponry.
Path of Exile: Crucible also revamps two previous league mechanics, Abyss and Breach, which have been trimmed down and streamlined with more focused rewards. On top of that, Grinding Gear Games added the Atlas Gateways. These are new nodes that enable instant traversal within the Atlas passive tree, making it easier for players to build the tree they want for the content they'd like to do. That's not all, as the expansion also overhauls the Ruthless game mode, improves the Sabouter and Pathfinder ascendancy classes, reworks half of the Masteries, and adds nine new Vaal skills to the game.
With Diablo IV coming up on June 6th, the attention of hack-and-slash fans will likely be diverted to Blizzard's latest game for a while. Grinding Gear Games has been developing a sequel of its own to Path of Exile, although it will be treated more as a new campaign that also happens to add a full engine overhaul.
Path of Exile 2 was first announced in November 2019. The original plan involved a beta testing phase somewhere towards the end of 2020, but the arrival of COVID marked a long delay for Path of Exile 2. Last we heard, the game should be playable at ExileCon 2023 (hosted in Auckland, New Zealand, between July 29 and 30), with an estimated release date happening at some point next year.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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