Path of Exile 3.22: Trial of the Ancestors is the upcoming expansion for the popular action role-playing game Path of Exile, developed by Grinding Gear Games. It is scheduled to launch on August 18, 2023, and will introduce a new challenge league, new items, new skills, class reworks, and the return of a fan-favorite past league. Here are some of the main features and content that you can expect from this expansion.
Introduce
The main attraction of this expansion is the Trial of the Ancestors challenge league, where you will visit the Karui afterlife and compete against ten tribes in a series of tournaments to earn valuable rewards. The Karui is a warrior culture that worships their ancestors and has a strong connection to the spirit realm.
In this league, you will use tradeable silver coins (a kind of currency) to gain passage to the Karui afterlife, where you will start out with a basic team of three Karui warriors to enter the tournament. You can choose which tribe to compete against based on the reward offered and examine their battlefield configuration and strategy. You can also recruit more warriors from different tribes, purchase field items and equipment, and customize your team to suit your playstyle.
The battles are similar to an autobattler or a sports game, where you and your party will fight alongside your warriors to destroy the opposing team's totems and win the match. Each tribe has its own specialties and unique items that you can only obtain by defeating them. You will also accumulate favour with each tribe, which can be spent on various upgrades and bonuses.
Exclusive Rewards
Some of the exclusive rewards that you can get from this league are:
• Passive Tree Tattoos: These are not applied to your skin but are instead engraved on your soul. They change what the attribute skills on your passive tree do, giving you more options and diversity for your build.
• Omens: These are items that can be stored in your inventory until a condition is met, at which point they are consumed, and their effect occurs. You can only consume one Omen per combat area, so you have to choose wisely when to use them.
• A lock of Hinekora's hair: This allows you to foresee the result of an item crafting outcome, giving you more control and certainty over your item creation.
• Exclusive unique items: Each of the ten Karui tribes guard an exclusive unique item that embodies the essence of their tribe. These valuable heirlooms can only be earned by defeating that tribe in the tournament. Hinekora, the Goddess of Death, also has four powerful unique items that may be offered to winners of the tournament.
New Atlas Keystones
Another major feature of this expansion is the introduction of 16 new Atlas keystones, which are powerful passive skills that can alter the way you play the game. These keystones are located on the Atlas of Worlds, which is the endgame map system of Path of Exile. You can unlock these keystones by completing certain objectives on the Atlas, such as defeating certain bosses or completing certain regions.
These keystones offer significant trade-offs and benefits for your character, such as changing how your skills work, modifying your damage types, granting new abilities or drawbacks, and more. Some examples of these keystones are:
• The Unseen: You cannot see enemies or their health bars until they are close to you. Enemies deal less damage to you when they are far away from you.
• The Unbound: You have no maximum mana or mana regeneration rate. Your skills cost life instead of mana.
• The Unyielding: You cannot be stunned or knocked back. You take 10% more damage from all sources.
• The Unforgiving: You cannot leech or regenerate life or energy shield. You gain life and energy shield equal to 20% of damage dealt.
These keystones offer new ways to challenge yourself and experiment with different builds and strategies.
Class Reworks
This expansion also reworks two of the Ascendancy classes, which are specialized subclasses for each of the seven main classes in Path of Exile. The two classes that are reworked are:
• Guardian: This is a subclass for the Templar class, which focuses on supporting allies and summoning minions. The rework makes the Guardian more versatile and adaptable, allowing it to switch between different modes depending on the situation. The Guardian can now choose between three modes: Protection, Aggression, and Harmony. Each mode grants different bonuses and penalties to the Guardian and its allies, such as increased defenses, damage, or utility.
• Chieftain: This is a subclass for the Marauder class, which focuses on fire damage and totems. The rework makes the Chieftain more thematic and powerful, enhancing its connection to the Karui culture and the spirit realm. The Chieftain can now summon ancestral spirits that grant various benefits and abilities, such as increasing fire damage, creating firestorms, or reviving fallen allies.
These reworks aim to make these classes more interesting and fun to play, as well as more relevant to the expansion's theme.
New Support Gems
This expansion also adds 14 new support gems, which are skill gems that modify the effects of other skill gems. These support gems offer new ways to enhance your skills and create synergies with your build. Some examples of these support gems are:
• Ancestral Bond Support: This support gem causes your skills to summon an ancestral spirit that mimics your skill. The spirit has a limited duration and deals less damage than you but benefits from your modifiers and buffs.
• Firestorm Support: This support gem causes your skills to create a firestorm at the target location, dealing fire damage over time to enemies in the area. The firestorm's duration and frequency depend on the skill's base duration and cast speed.
• Soul Link Support: This support gem causes your skills to link you and your allies with a soul bond, granting you a portion of their life, mana, and energy shield regeneration rates. The bond also transfers some of the damage you or your allies take to each other.
These support gems offer new possibilities and combinations for your skill setup.
The Forbidden Sanctum
Finally, this expansion brings back a fan-favorite past league, The Forbidden Sanctum, which is a roguelike-style dungeon with random modifiers and rewards. The Forbidden Sanctum was introduced in Path of Exile 3.20: Echoes of the Atlas and was widely praised by the players for its difficulty and variety.
The Forbidden Sanctum is now a permanent addition to the endgame and has been rebalanced to fit the map system. You can find Sanctum items while playing maps, which represent a whole floor of the Sanctum. You can trade these items with other players or use them to enter the Sanctum and complete the floor. Each floor has random boons, afflictions, and resolve states that affect your character and the enemies. You can also find chests that contain rewards or curses.
If you complete a floor, you will receive the next floor as a tradeable item, with all your states built-in. You can continue this way until you reach the final floor, where you will face a challenging boss fight. The rewards for completing the Sanctum are proportional to the difficulty and risk involved and can include some of the rarest and most valuable items in the game.
Conclusion
Path of Exile 3.22: Trial of the Ancestors is an exciting expansion that offers a lot of new content and features for both new and veteran players. You can find more details about this expansion on the official website or watch the announcement trailer on YouTube.