A new expansion titled Harvest will be released later this month for Path of Exile, the popular free-to-play online action RPG by Grinding Gear Games. Available on June 19th for PC and June 24th on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Harvest will introduce new mechanics and features, lots of new loot (and overhauled old loot), and lastly a new Vulkan renderer on PC that should affect game performance in a positive way.
Take a look at the announcement trailer coupled with developer commentary below.
In Path of Exile: Harvest, Oshabi is cultivating the Sacred Grove, an ancient garden of mysterious power. Plant seeds that grow into dangerous enemies and craft their Lifeforce onto your items.
Our June expansion contains the Harvest challenge league, powerful new crafting options, eight new skills, two new support gems, revamps of Two-handed Weapons, Warcry skills, Brands, Slams and the Passive Skill Tree itself. We've also introduced 12 new unique items and rebalanced over 50 existing ones.
Seek out the Seed Cache in every area you explore. Take its seeds through Oshabi's portal to the Sacred Grove. Sow those seeds to grow dangerous and rewarding monsters. While most seeds grow easily, rarer high-tier ones require more careful planning but yield more valuable results.
When your monsters are ready for harvest, slaughter them and claim their Lifeforce. Every enemy you fight in the Sacred Grove is one you intentionally planted. Customise your combat around your character's capabilities and what rewards you're seeking.
Every monster you defeat in the Grove grants you a crafting option. Performing one of these powerful crafts consumes Lifeforce from the monsters you just harvested. In order to maximise your Lifeforce and hence crafting potential, you'll want to take on as many monsters as you dare handle. Harvest Crafting provides powerful directed crafting to an extent that Path of Exile has never seen before.
As you build the ultimate garden, you'll discover exotic seeds with specific needs that must be met in order to grow. Various pipes, condensers and dispersers can help you fertilise your garden with any remaining Lifeforce.
Oshabi speaks of the legend of three primordial beasts: Ersi, Janaar and Namharim. For those able to cultivate these rare seeds, the immense monsters that emerge can yield Harvest's most valuable rewards.
Delirium and Cluster Jewels are being integrated into the core Path of Exile experience! Because Delirium stacks with other league mechanics to make them more difficult and rewarding, the chance of encountering it rises exponentially with the number of other league mechanics in the area.
Last week we released a Beta of our new Vulkan renderer which has greatly reduced stuttering and smoothed out game performance. This renderer has made a massive improvement for many players, and we aim to fix issues that other players have encountered before the release of Harvest. This new renderer comes alongside continued graphics technology improvements such as a new Bloom system that is used extensively in the Harvest league.
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.
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