Path of Exile - Atlas Changes in Path of Exile: Conquerors of the Atlas

Atlas Changes in Path of Exile: Conquerors of the Atlas

Posted: 19 Nov 2019 04:50 PM PST

The Atlas of Worlds will be undergoing a number of changes in the Conquerors of the Atlas expansion. Today, we're going to detail several new systems and clarify what will happen to any existing systems affected by these changes.

The first thing that you'll notice when opening your Atlas that you no longer start at the corners, where the Tier 1 maps were previously. Instead, you'll now be starting next to the map device in the centre of the Atlas. The Zana questline in which you pursue the Shaper and Elder throughout the Atlas has been replaced with a brand new story immediately following those events.

The Atlas has been divided up into eight regions. As you play through each region, completing maps as you go, you'll have the opportunity to fight new endgame bosses, who take up a Citadel on a specific map within a region. Upon defeating these bosses, they will drop a Watchstone. Watchstones can be socketed into your Atlas in any region of your choosing. Upon socketing a Watchstone, the associated region will be upgraded, increasing the tier of all Maps within that region and revealing previously hidden maps. Defeat each of the Conquerors and you'll be able to fully upgrade any given region, resulting in every map in that region ranging from tier 14 to tier 16. Repeatedly defeating conquerors will drop additional Watchstones, eventually allowing you to upgrade all eight regions. One neat result of this is that this means that all Unique maps will be able to drop at much higher tiers than previously possible.

Sextants are no longer applied to individual maps on your Atlas. Instead, sextants are applied to Watchstones and will affect whichever region that Watchstone is currently socketed into. This means that each region can be affected by up to four sextants at any one time. You will also have the ability to move Watchstones between regions freely. Additionally, sextant modifiers are no longer shared between one another. Instead, Apprentice, Journeyman and Master Cartographer's Sextants each have their own pool of modifiers that they can apply to maps. Naturally, the rarer the sextant, the higher quality of modifiers it can apply.

Shaper and Elder influence are no longer found on your Atlas. Shaper and Elder items will still be accessible through their usual means such as some league rewards, divination cards and drops from the Shaper and Elder encounters and Guardians. You will occasionally be able to obtain maps that have Shaper and Elder influence through the use of Scarabs, as well as maps that have a modifier which applies influence to the area. Shaper's Strongholds will also cease to exist. Shaper's Orbs and Elder's Orb will no longer be obtainable and existing orbs will be destroyed. Unshaping Orbs and Cartographer's Seals will no longer be usable.

Shaper Guardian Maps are no longer found on the Atlas. Instead, you will be able to find them through Zana missions. They will continue to drop their unique items and fragments. Combining each of the Shaper Fragments will continue to open portals to The Shaper's Realm. If you're interested in obtaining the Celestial Hideout, you'll want to do so before these changes, as access to the Shaper encounter is likely to be more difficult and expensive than it is currently.

Elder Guardians and The Elder will occasionally replace the Map boss of various Zana mission maps. Both Shaper and Elder will have a chance to drop fragments. Combining these fragments will open portals to the Uber Elder encounter.

We're very excited about the upcoming changes and boss encounters in the Conquerors of the Atlas expansion. We will likely have additional information to share in the near future but please let us know if you have any other questions pertaining to existing features and functionality and we'll do our best to get them answered as soon as we can!

ExileCon Recap

Posted: 18 Nov 2019 08:15 PM PST

This weekend we hosted ExileCon. We had more than 1100 international attendees plus a large New Zealand contingent (including our full development staff). We tried very hard to recreate Wraeclast at the venue, and had a great time entertaining our guests with presentations, interviews, impromptu Einhar appearances and the card game. Today's news post is a recap of some of the awesome memories from ExileCon.

The Aotea Centre in Auckland Was decorated in a true Path of Exile style with stained glass windows from the Chamber of Innocence, a Map Device table, a giant Hangman's Tree and a statue of the Hooded Figure, an NPC from Path of Exile 2.

We announced four projects at ExileCon: Path of Exile 2, Path of Exile: Conquerors of the Atlas and its accompanying Metamorph Challenge League and the experimental Path of Exile Mobile game.

Path of Exile 2 is a new seven-act campaign, sitting alongside the original Path of Exile 1. The initial campaign will still be fully playable and we'll continue to maintain it with updates and improvements. We'll be posting more information about the ongoing development of Path of Exile 2 and its systems over the next year. In the meantime, check out its announcement page and a trailer here[www.pathofexile.com].

Our next expansion is called Path of Exile: Conquerors of the Atlas and it will change the entire endgame system in Path of Exile by introducing a new Atlas storyline and five new endgame bosses. The Conquerors of the Atlas and its accompanying Metamorph Challenge League launch in less than a month, on the 13th of December (PST)! In the coming weeks we'll tell you more about changes to the Atlas system, new Bow Skill and Support Gems and new endgame bosses in the news. Starting from next Monday we'll be posting teasers until the launch day. While you're waiting, watch the 3.9 trailers and have a look at the announcement pages here[www.pathofexile.com].

Over the two convention days, we held more than a dozen various panels with presentations and interviews featuring our developers, community streamers and our special guests.

Some of these were streamed live, but we couldn't cover everything on the livestream, so we had each of the panels recorded for you to watch in the future. We're still sorting out all the video footage (over 30 terabytes of data!), so we'll be posting VODs of developer talks and interviews in the news over the coming weeks. If you'd like to rewatch everything that was livestreamed, there are two videos available at our YouTube channel (first day, second day).

Attendees also got a chance to chat with community streamers, GGG founders and Path of Exile voice actors at Meet and Greet stage.

As you may know, we also created the ExileCon Card Game as an icebreaker for attendees to engage with GGG staff members.

The card game became an absolute hit amongst both attendees and our staff. We had a blast playing it all weekend!

ExileCon concluded with tie23he, Waggle, tytykiller and Havoc facing each other in the epic Race Finale.

tie23he won the race, demonstrating his insane Path of Exile speedrunning skills, with Havoc and Waggle finished at 2nd and 3rd places respectively. Congratulations and thank you for a great race!

Thank you to everyone who attended ExileCon. It was great to finally meet you all! You are all amazing and we've had so much fun talking and playing the card game with you! Thank you to viewers of our livestream. Without all of you the event like this wouldn't be possible. Until the next one!