This article is sponsored by playerauctions.
Considered by many as a widely successful action role-playing game (ARPG), Path of Exile (PoE) is a colossal game that has plenty to offer, with great rewards for the highly committed. Despite those challenges and being a free-to-play game, PoE still maintains a steady player count and healthy community since its launch in 2013.
With the release of it's previous expansion - Fall of Oriath in August, the game propelled itself into one of the largest ARPGs ever. Fall of Oriath bolstered the late game content of PoE by strenghtening the initial four acts that had various difficulty settings' into a streamlined ten-act campaign, more than doubling the game's plot lines.
The World Before The Elder
PoE also offers many things for players to do once they've finished the main story and all the difficulty loops, such as enormous directionless romps where players gather maps and travel to parallel dimensions. Each of these maps also feature random traits that generate randomized and mishmashed versions of familiar environments, monsters, bosses as well as loot. With that, players are already having a fun (and hard time) occupying themselves with the robust endgame structure, but Grinding Gear Games wasn't satisfied with just that.
Determined to push the boundaries, Grinding Gear Games delivers a wonderful gift to all their fans with an even richer endgame structure in their seventh expansion, titled War for the Atlas. The expansion is essentially a battle for world control designed for the game's more experienced players.
Battle For World Control
The setting for War for the Atlas is pretty straightforward: an ancient entity known as The Elder has emerged from the darkness to battle The Shaper for control over the Atlas of Worlds. This has resulted in a massive worldwide catastrophe that leaves The Atlas completely redrawn, resulting in 32 new randomized maps - each with its own end boss.
With the establishment of these 32 maps, the Atlas will show you who is in control. As The Elder grows his territory, he devours The Shaper's creations to manifest his own twisted Guardians. These Guardians will drain the colour out of the world, weakening your character as they draw nearer.
This expansion places more emphasis on the actions of the players, giving the option to choose your own path where your decisions may contribute to the spread of territory for either side. For example, you can choose to allow The Shaper to expand his reach and force The Elder out in one map and do the exact opposite in another.
This allows players to tilt the odds and plan for the type of loot they desire in certain maps and setup ideal controlled zones to farm for specific drops. Yes, the players are almost like the landscapers of the game. Additionally, War for the Atlas brings in more than 50 new Unique Items, 10 new skill gems, and 4 new necromancy skills for players to grind for.
More Endgame Features
The expansion also introduces four powerful Elder Guardians to challenge, that must be defeated before you gain access to the final villain: The Elder. There are also other special areas that can only be accessed via the Atlas, such as the Pillars of Arun, an obstacle course requiring the use of a movement skill in order to hop between platforms, a twist never before seen in Path of Exile.
If the war between The Shaper and The Elder doesn't keep players busy enough, the expansion also adds a new challenge league called The Abyss League. Similar to the previous seasonal event - Breach League, you'll wander maps in search of "cracks" or strange fissures with a time limit to defeat monsters. The idea is to slay all the monsters climbing out of the hole from the ground, causing new cracks to appear elsewhere, for you chase down the next horde, and so on. The monsters will grow stronger the longer the Abyss is open which awards you better loot. Higher-tier monsters have a chance of dropping Abyss standard orbs that allow you to customize your characters and items.
In conclusion, War for the Atlas is a welcoming inclusion for PoE endgame players with a huge amount of content and exploration to keep them hooked for a couple hundred of hours. Grinding Gear Games once again showcased their prowess in game design and their understanding of "grinding psychology" by creating such a flexible yet efficient structure.
This article is sponsored by playerauctions.
Freddy is the editor of IGN SEA. You can follow him on twitter at @freddytan.
