Path of Exile: Expedition Launches July 28

Hack and slash RPG Path Of Exile has just launched another one of its expansions, bringing lots of game updates, tweaks, and a new challenge league. Path Of Exile: Expedition is an explosive one, challenging you to detonate expedition sites and kill all the creeps that come crawling out of them. POE's scheduled launch day maintenance has ended, so you're now free to jump into the queue to take a crack at what's new.

A group of Kalguuran traders has arrived in Wraeclast, following the footsteps of their ancestors who visited long ago but never returned. They seek to recover the artifacts lost to the past and have enlisted your help in facing the dangers lurking below. At marked Expedition sites, you must strategically place a series of explosives and detonate them. These explosions unearth a horde of undead Kalguur that must be slain in order to gather the equipment and artifacts buried among them. Each of the traveling Kalguur offers different styles of trade, influenced by their personalities. Gwennen, the Gambler, doesn’t believe in luck and that fortune only comes to those who believe hard enough. She offers items whose properties are not shown until after the purchase has been made. You might get something worth a lot or very little. Tujen, the Haggler is willing to negotiate his prices but be careful not to offend him by offering too little. Rog, the Dealer just wants to make a trade and will keep trying to upsell you by offering to upgrade the item you have bought. Dannig, their leader, takes artifacts of all types and exchanges them for other types to help facilitate trades with his expedition crew. Having enough POE Exalted Orb will help you a lot in this game.

In addition to the new challenge league, Expedition brings quite a few new skill gems, 19 of them, GGG says. You can get the details on all of them here in the Expedition patch notes. There are also a handful of changes to POE's first act, including making monsters more dangerous and adding new Cell Crawler and Ghoul enemy types. These skills alone would likely be enough to change the outlook of Path of Exile‘s best gameplay strategies, however, we’re taking it a step further by making some significant changes to the game’s balance. Not only are we fundamentally reworking the Flask System, but we’re also making significant changes to various systems to make Path of Exile the challenging game that it once was. If you haven’t tried Path of Exile yet, or if it’s maybe been a while, this is the perfect time to jump back in. Not only is there a fresh economy to compete in at league launch, but players are all equally trying to figure out the new best strategies and ways to play. As the community figures out this complex new landscape, you can be right there along with them.

If you'd missed it, don' worry, The Path Of Exile: Royale mode is back as a weekend mode. Not this weekend, mind, but every weekend after this one during the Expedition expansion's run, they've said. They plan to continue tweaking and improving it over the course of the season.