New Path of Exile league starting soon

New massive update is aimed at the most hardcore players.

Tonnes of new content is being added to Path of Exile in the upcoming Bestiary update.

The main focus of this expansion is the Bestiary record book, requiring you to complete it by capturing monsters and then fight them all at once which rewards you with new items and augmentations and crafting options. The monsters that you capture are kept in your menagerie until you’re ready to brutally slaughter them.

The new crafting system, added to Path of Exile’s already incredibly in-depth crafting system allows you to hunt specific monsters in order to fulfill a recipe, allowing you to not only upgrade existing items but also create whole new powerful gear.

“Once you craft your monsters it consumes them, so you have to plan very careful how you use them. “Some of these are very rare and you might only encounter them every 10 to 20 hours” says Chris Wilson, Game Director at Grinding Gear Games.

Perhaps the most enjoyable part of Path of Exile is the end-game content, taking the form of running randomised maps in increasingly difficult tiers, and crafting the most powerful gear in the game. This is added to further in the Bestiary update, with very difficult spirit beasts for high level players to capture.

Wilson adds, “These spirit beasts are actually very powerful, and you actually get to them by using crafting and likewise when you capture them you also get to use that in crafting itself. So they’re heavily entwined in the crafting process.”

Another addition coming in the Bestiary update is set items. Players of other action RPG games such as the Diablo series may be familiar with how these items usually function but Path of Exile is taking a different approach. Wilson explains:

“Set items in other games have been both positive and negative. On one hand it was cool to complete a set and get some synergy going. But on the other hand it can actually dilute your creativity and freedom.”

As such, set items with each have their own individual power, but set bonuses for wearing more than piece will be purely cosmetic. Fated uniques are another new progression system being added. This allows players to upgrade their old unique items by using prophecies, allowing them to reach new higher power levels.

The Bestiary update is coming to PC and Xbox One on the second of March. If you haven’t played Path of Exile yet, why not? You can download Path of Exile on Steam for free.