Path of Exile: Awakening closed beta has been running for a while and there have been 1 character wipe already. Quite a few people have been invited but now it is possible to purchase the privilege of being the one of closed beta players by paying $30-$1100 for supporter packs, each of which includes closed beta access. I had a chance to try it out a bit and would like to write about what awesome things are to be introduced to the game.
[wp_ad_camp_2]Act 4 – Highgate
Awakening is the expansion in which long awaited act 4 is added to the game. It seems very intriguing lore-wise because players get to fight well known personalities from Wraeclast – Kaom, Daresso, Voll for example. Also, we can expect map system to be revamped a little, the lowest map level is 68 now, highest – over 80. Some maps have their level swapped, for example Orchard map is now considered as one of the high level maps. Some unique maps have their base changed, for example Olmec’s Sanctum is catacomb map instead of maze.
Golems
This is great news for people who love companionship while playing the game. They might not be real players, but they are badass. There are 3 golem skills for now – summon chaos golem, summon flame golem and summon ice golem. Each of the golem type has their unique ability – chaos golem provides physical damage reduction for you and uses melee to attack. Flame golem keeps its distance from monsters and acts like a turret shooting them with fire projectile attacks, in addition to that, golem gives its master damage increase. Ice golem is the one with high mobility and the one dealing the most damage of the three golem types, it also gives the player increased accuracy rating and critical chance rating.
Path of Exile Jewels
While new players thought currency as orbs and skills as gems were confusing, let’s throw in another type to make it even more complicated, heh. First of all, Awakening introduces the change in passive skill tree, not only nodes are optimized, changed, there are now sockets added to the tree – that’s where Jewels go. They are used to add further customization to your builds, personally, I am ecstatic about this change and have already started to theorycraft some builds with Jewels. Jewels come in several rarities – magic, rare and unique. While rare and magic versions give you some stat increases, unique versions can be used as build enablers. Personally, I find this jewel – Intuitive Leap to be very interesting. It allows you to allocate passives in the jewel’s radius without being connected to the previously taken path. This can open up some exciting possibilities and further increase build diversity.
Path of Exile divination cards
One more interesting thing to be added – divination cards. First of all, they will be exclusively designed by supporters, so it’s totally up to them, what kind of items you will be able to get using them.
Getting specific uniques, especially the expensive ones like Shavronne’s Wrappings, Windripper, etc has always been a struggle for many players. By introducing the divination cards, this situation is expected to be remedied a little – they are used to get specific items in more deterministic way, meaning that players can farm them for specific item they want to get. The cards are going to work as follows – you will have to collect a set of cards for a specific item, when the set is complete, you will be able to exchange it for the item the set is for. The set will consist from one to several cards, depending on the item, my guess is that high end unique items will require more than 15 cards to get full set. The cards will be obtained by farming the specific zones, ensuring that you will eventually get what you’re working towards if you keep grinding through the zone.
Path of Exile Awakening release date is expected to be somewhere in the second week of July 2015.