Playing as one of six character classes, players find themselves banished for their past misdeeds to the dark fantasy world of Wraeclast. There, they will encounter hundreds of species of opponents laden with loot and mysterious artifacts as they explore the abandoned continent.

Players will be able to purchase in-game perks, such as extra victory animations, clothing and special effects. To protect the integrity of the game for all players, Grinding Gear Games has decided not to sell abilities or experience points – ensuring a level-playing field for everyone in game.

With an open-ended and flexible skill and item system, randomised items and random dungeons, the game promises three acts of visceral combat gameplay, with additional expansions already planned.

Grinding Gear Games has officially announced the next v3.17 endgame update for Path Of Exile’s upcoming major new content-driven features, Siege of the Atlas. 

Hailing as Path of Exile’s largest expansion of the last year, Siege of the Atlas introduces new endgame systems and new pinnacle enemies, and is accompanied by a new challenge league. Players can look forward to new unique items and rewards, new story quests in the end game, as well as game balance improvements.

In Path of Exile: Siege of the Atlas, two new Eldritch Horrors threaten to consume the Atlas of Worlds. Join Commander Kirac's militia and defend the Atlas and Wraeclast itself against these celestial foes. This large endgame expansion contains new Atlas systems, pinnacle bosses, one gigantic Atlas passive skill tree, Eldritch implicit endgame crafting, new unique items, the Archnemesis Challenge league and much more.

Having assumed responsibility for the defense of the Atlas, Commander Kirac has established a base in the Karui Archipelago with several map devices. He has heard rumours of your prowess and invites you to join his militia in order to scout the Atlas to learn about threats to Wraeclast. You encounter the Maven and discover that two new Eldritch Horrors are here: The Searing Exarch and The Eater of Worlds. They must be stopped before they consume everything.

The Searing Exarch and The Eater of Worlds are the most powerful beings that Wraeclast has ever seen. The path to defeating them involves exploring many influenced maps and slaying their formidable subordinates, The Black Star and The Infinite Hunger, yielding valuable rewards.

Most Atlas mechanics have been reworked with a goal of creating deeper systems that are easier to understand. Regions have been removed, so your Atlas specialisation affects every map you run. Where you'd previously collect 16 Watchstones, you must now earn four Voidstones which let you raise the tier of all maps on your Atlas until they are uniformly tier 16. Sextants can apply to Voidstones and be itemised and traded. Commander Kirac offers a large variety of Atlas objectives that add valuable content to your maps.

Say goodbye to regional Atlas Passive Trees and hello to one gigantic Atlas-wide Passive Tree with over 600 skills to specialise in. Every map as well as various Atlas quests you complete will earn you an Atlas skill point. In addition to the best skills from the regional trees, we have created many completely new ones that let you choose your own level of risk and reward for Atlas content.

The Searing Exarch and The Eater of Worlds each have a powerful set of Eldritch Implicit Modifiers, which can be imbued onto items using Eldritch Embers and Eldritch Ichor, respectively. Although this process replaces existing implicit mods, it's possible to have both types of Eldritch Implicits on an item at the same time.

You can use an Orb of Conflict to manipulate the tiers of these modifiers on your item, within the six tiers of modifiers available. When applied, the Orb randomly increases the tier of one modifier and lowers the tier of the other. The new Eldritch Chaos Orb, Eldritch Exalted Orb and Eldritch Orb of Annulment can manipulate the prefixes or suffixes of an item depending on whether The Searing Exarch or The Eater of Worlds has a higher Eldritch modifier on it.

The four new pinnacle Atlas bosses each have their own drop pools of new unique items to find. There are more than a dozen in total and they represent some of the most powerful unique items we have introduced to Path of Exile yet, enabling exciting new character build opportunities.

In the Archnemesis league, you'll build your own Rare boss fights by applying new monster modifiers to petrified monsters, found throughout every area. These modifiers add dangerous behaviours to their targets but also imbue them with valuable rewards. Each subsequent petrified monster you imbue within an area keeps all of the previous modifiers applied, allowing you to build some extremely difficult and rewarding encounters. There are over 60 new boss modifiers to discover, more than half of which can be created by combining other modifiers in specific recipes to unlock the most powerful and rewarding modifiers.

Aside from the usual buffs and nerfs of every Path of Exile expansion, our balance focus in Siege of the Atlas has been on improving two build archetypes that were previously under-performing and bringing them up to the level of other popular archetypes. In particular, we're focusing on buffing hand-cast spells and hit-based bow builds. You can find more detail about this in its balance manifesto or in the full patch notes.

Alongside the launch of Siege of the Atlas, Grinding Gear Games will be hosting a competitive event where players will race in the Archnemesis Hardcore Solo Self-found League to be the first to defeat a trio of bosses: The Maven, The Searing Exarch and the Eater of Worlds. We'll be providing more details on the event and its prizes in the coming week.

We're introducing two new specialised stash tabs which allow you to store up to 500 Gems or Flasks respectively. The introduction of these stash tabs also allows players to set affinities for these items on any other stash tabs that will hold them.

The Gem Tab lets you filter between Red, Green, Blue and White gems. You can also select whether these are sorted by criteria such as current gem level, required level or quality. The Flask Tab lets you filter between Life, Mana, Hybrid, Utility and Unique flasks. You can also select whether these are sorted by item level, base type or quality.

We're launching two new sets of Supporter Packs to celebrate the release of Siege of the Atlas and the Archnemesis League. These are the Wyrm and Emberkeep series. There are three price points available for each and they feature masses of points and several exclusive microtransactions like Apparition Effects, Armour Sets, Weapon Skins, and more.

Path Of Exile: Siege of the Atlas will launch for PC on February 4th and on February 9th for PS4 and Xbox One.

Key Features:

• Download and play for free, but never pay-to-win
• A dark and deep action RPG
• Unlimited character combinations with the game's gigantic skill tree
• Combine skill gems to create unique combat strategies
• Explore a dark and gritty world rendered from a fixed 3D perspective
• Explore randomly generated levels for nearly infinite replayability
• Craft weapons, magic items, and even end-game maps to become more powerful
• Cooperate or compete with thousands of other Exiles in a persistent online world
• Ascend online ladders in every game mode

Path Of Exile is available for PS4, Xbox One and PC.