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Path of Exile's Legacy of Phrecia event changes the ARPG's endgame completely

Watching Grinding Gear Games experiment is a fascinating thing. The original Path of Exile is a beloved spiritual successor to Diablo 2 that's still active, better than ever after more than a decade, and which is expected to run alongside its sequel for the foreseeable future. But recently, we were told that - for a short while at least - PoE 1 was going to sit dormant, with GGG fully focused on ensuring smooth, timely updates for Path of Exile 2. And yet, after players lamented news that PoE 1 would fall silent, GGG has responded by crafting an emergency, 'experimental' event that promises to be one of the most unique and interesting in its history.


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The Legacy of Phrecia FAQ

Since we revealed our plans for the Legacy of Phrecia event in Path of Exile 1, we've seen lots of questions from the community regarding the event. We'll be answering the most common ones in this news post, as well as showcasing three more Ascendancy classes!

[h3]More Ascendancy Classes[/h3]
Check out the Daughter of Oshabi (Ranger), Antiquarian (Marauder) and Surfcaster (Shadow) Ascendancy classes below!

As an Azmeri, the daughter has a great respect for nature - particularly the forest. She shares many of the powers of the Warden of the Maji, as well as being empowered by Shrines or utilising Sacred Wisps to aid Wand attacks. This Karui Collector hails from the port of Ngakanu. Over the course of his long career he has traded for historical artifacts, many of which he can employ in combat. Choose from Kalguuran relics, Karui trinkets used by legendary Chieftains or equipment from one of the great Karui enemies, General Marceus Lioneye. The Surfcaster is simply a Chill guy. His home is with the sea, for which he attunes to gain control of the Cold and Lightning elements. An expert fisherman himself you can reap great rewards for holding a Fishing Rod, if you can find him one.
We have a number of important questions we wanted to clarify. Here are some of our answers below, please keep them coming and we'll try to address as much of your feedback and questions as possible!

[h3]When is the event?[/h3]
We will be announcing this very soon! Keep an eye out on upcoming announcements.

[h3]How powerful are the Idols? What is the expected amount of juicing compared to the Atlas Tree?[/h3]
Idols can be found as either magic or rare items, they are unmodifiable but each modifier is approximately two to three times the power of a corresponding Atlas tree node. Not all stats are reflective of this however, for example if you had 100% chance to have Strongboxes be re-openable you'd be opening the same Strongbox all day, so in some cases the stats are more conservative values and in other cases they're higher like being able to get more Ritual rerolls and even reduce the cost of rerolls to be free. It is relatively difficult to describe the power difference between this system and the Atlas Tree but with a fully optimized set of Idols you could easily have more than three times the amount of different content or over three times the power of one type of content.

[h3]How do the Idols drop and how often are we expected to find an Idol?[/h3]
The Idols are in the core drop pool and will start dropping at Endgame, they completely scale with juicing and there is also a static drop chance of 50% for them to drop from the final Map boss in Maps to alleviate randomness. It is not intended that you are at the whims of randomness to find these as they are the gateway to fun. As you get further into the endgame and start applying more juice to your maps you will find more and more of these, certainly getting many per map.

[h3]Is the Idols system replacing the Atlas Tree?[/h3]
Only during this event. It is an old throw-away idea we didn't think would be good enough to replace the Atlas Tree. For this event we wanted to create an almost "alternate reality Wraeclast" vibe and thought this would be interesting to experience alongside the alternate Ascendancy class ideas also. After the event we will be adding the alternate Ascendancy Classes and alternate Endgame (Idols) to the Private League list so that people can have leagues with just one or the other at their leisure!

[h3]The Idol mechanic seems to be one that is lacking Quality of Life features, given the feedback are you considering improving this, or would you consider adding it during the event?[/h3]
Yes. The original intention was to be able to deliver an event quickly to give something new and fresh to play to help fill the time until we can deliver an expansion. Given the popularity and feedback for this event we've decided to develop these ideas further so we are currently (literally at the time of writing this) now implementing a loadout like system for the Idols, hopefully this will be ready in time but if not it will be shortly into the event starting.

[h3]Is there a meta-system to the Idol mechanic?[/h3]
Yes, initially there are locked slots (similar to Relics from Sanctum), you can unlock these slots by completing the same content that unlocks Favoured Map Slots. This will allow you to use the entire inventory and maximize your juice. You initially have access to 20 slots and can eventually unlock 12 to get a total of 32 slots.

[h3]Are there any rewards for participation in this event?[/h3]
Yes! We will release a video for an armour set you will be able to earn by achieving level thresholds in this event. Currently we're aiming for Level 80 to attain all four pieces of the Armour Set.

[h3]Is this content being used as a testing grounds for future expansions or Path of Exile 2?[/h3]
Not at all, as mentioned this was a throw-away development idea from the past, we have no current plans to use it for anything outside of being a future private league modifier.

[h3]There are concerns that one month isn't long enough, would you consider running this event or some deviation of it again? Or perhaps extending the duration?[/h3]
We're completely open to running additional events in the future using these based on your feedback. We are also open to extending the duration to give players more time to experiment and find all the broken builds with the Ascendancy classes and give more opportunity to earn the armour set mentioned above. The intention here was to help fill the time until we can deliver the much desired and deserved expansion so we can extend events and run more to fill that time until 3.26.0 is ready so it depends on that!

[h3]Atlas nodes close to the tree origin bias hard toward map sustain. Will there be anything similar in Legacy of Phrecia, such as low ilvl Idols biasing hard toward map sustain?[/h3]
We've just added Implicit modifiers to the Idols that grant x% increased chance to drop Maps. This should mean even if you find an Idol that isn't ideal for your strategy you can still use it to sustain more Maps.

[h3]Will the effect of Atlas Blocker nodes (such as Black Thumb – your maps cannot contain Harvests and cannot drop Harvest scarabs) be available?[/h3]
These are available in the form of Unique Idols.

[h3]Will Legacy of Phrecia be parented to the Settlers league, to Standard, or something else?[/h3]
Settlers League. When your characters are migrated out of the league their Ascendancy points are respecced and you'll be assigned one of the core Ascendancy classes.

[h3]Given that this is using Settlers League as a base, doing all the town upgrading again is becoming tiring, can there be a way to make this more efficient?[/h3]
Yes, we will be making early upgrades in particular cheaper in Settlers leagues (including this event and the core league) to streamline this process.

Legacy of Phrecia Endgame Specialisation System

The Legacy of Phrecia event will feature a new system for specialising in endgame content, replacing the existing Atlas Passive Skill Tree. As you progress through the endgame you'll find Idols, which can be placed into a new tab on the Map Receptacle UI to modify your maps.



Magic Idols can have up to two modifiers, Rare Idols can have up to four modifiers, and there are Unique Idols for Keystones from the Atlas Passive Skill Tree. Idols are tradeable but they are not modifiable.





This is a pretty drastic change to how the Endgame will play given the Atlas Tree has been such a fundamental part of the Endgame for some time, in many different formats and versions.

One of the major changes is that it turns specializing into different leagues to be less deterministic because it relies on you finding items. On the other hand it adds a layer of excitement to item drops in the Endgame not previously there.

This allows you to have an infinite number of different Endgame loadouts for content, no more respeccing your Tree at all, now just take out the Idols you don't want, and put in the ones you do. You'll probably end up with a set of Idols for each league.

With the Atlas Tree, you can only get so much of a given stat because that's how much we put on the tree, but with this system you can get a lot more of certain things pushing limits and boundaries further than ever. For example, if you want to have all Essences on monsters be at the highest possible tier, or a much higher number of Blueprints you find to be fully revealed





Given that this is an opportunity for us to let you play with more developmental concepts you can rest assured you'll find a bunch of broken outcomes in true Path of Exile fashion.

Full disclosure, due to these features being experimental for this event we haven't done the layers of Quality of Life that we would normally try to do to accompany it. For example you would want different inventories for different league sets or loadouts but instead during this event you will simply have to do the inventory management yourself. Based on the popularity of this system we can add more of these features in the future to streamline it to minimize item micro-management.

Given that players afterwards will likely want to experiment with the Ascendancy Classes or the alternate Endgame mechanic individually, we will be adding both of these as Private League options some time after the event.

We'll be posting the full details of the Legacy of Phrecia event later this week and will be teasing some more of the event Ascendancies in the meantime. If you missed them, the teasers can be found here.

Unique items in Path of Exile 2 need to take more inspiration from Grim Dawn's diarrhea pants




We all have our vices, and mine is a loot pile. There are few sources of dopamine more potent than dealing a final blow to a fortuitous skeleton and being rewarded with a multi-colored geyser of greatswords, quivers, amulets, and greaves. But while Path of Exile 2 has been supplying me with a steady drip of loot-triggered neurochemicals, all those drops have fallen just short of delight for one main reason:..
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New Path of Exile event features a time-bending witch and the ultimate gambler

The recently announced Path of Exile update now has a name, as developer Grinding Gear Games details two of its experimental new ascendancies. While Path of Exile 2 early access is ongoing, GGG has put some resources aside to ensure players have the chance to return to its beloved first ARPG. Legacy of Phrecia is a new event for the free Steam game that aims to fill the gap until the studio is ready to deliver its delayed 3.26 update and the next full league.


Read the rest of the story...


RELATED LINKS:

The original Path of Exile has some "unhinged ideas" ahead of 3.26 delay

Path of Exile 3.26 is on hold as the next PoE 2 update takes priority

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