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.

During today’s livestream event, Grinding Gear Games revealed a trailer and content details for the latest Path of Exile expansion, titled Affliction, which will launch on December 8 for PC and Mac, and December 13 for PlayStation and Xbox.

Path of Exile: Affliction Key Features:

• The Affliction Challenge League - In the Affliction League, you will encounter Sacred Wisps that beckon you to enter overgrown passageways that lead to the Viridian Wildwood. A vile Affliction has covered this forest with a foreboding darkness. You'll need to uncover the forest's mysteries to put a stop to the source of the Affliction.
• The Viridian Wildwood - As you approach the darkness, your Wisps burn away the affliction that shrouds the forest. Make sure you tread carefully, because your Wisps only have a limited amount of power before they run out and you are returned to Wraeclast. 
• Control your Challenge and Reward - As you return from the Wildwood, any Wisps you have saved from the Affliction disperse into the environment and inhabit randomly-chosen monsters, increasing their power and also their rewards. The different types of Wisps have different effects, and sometimes more than one type will inhabit a single monster, making the fight even harder and even more rewarding.
• Wildwood Ascendancy Classes - While exploring the Wildwood, choose which of the Azmeri Wanderers that you will complete quests for to unlock one of three new Ascendancy classes which you can have in addition to your regular Ascendancy class. 
• Valuable New Rewards - The Affliction Challenge League has many different types of rewards. Monsters you fight throughout Wraeclast can be affected by the Wisps you have brought back from the Viridian Wildwood, dramatically increasing the quality and quantity of items they drop. Path of Exile: Affliction also contains over 15 new unique items.
• The Return of Ultimatum - Ultimatum is finally going core. The Trialmaster has returned and will offer you a choice to undertake a deadly Vaal trial in exchange for great rewards. If you defeat the trial, he offers to go double or nothing with you. Do you take the risk and go for an even better reward? Or do you lock in the winnings you have already earned? We've done a full rebalance of Ultimatum and have added many new modifiers, Atlas passive skills, Keystones and rewards including both new and reworked Uniques.

In the Affliction League you will encounter Sacred Wisps which beckon you to enter overgrown passageways that lead to the Viridian Wildwood.

A vile affliction has covered this forest with a foreboding darkness. You'll need to uncover the forest's mysteries to put a stop to the source of the Affliction.

As you approach the darkness, the wisps burn away its affliction. Make sure you tread carefully, because they only have a limited amount of power. But be warned, the darkness is full of cursed monsters that emerge to kill you.

As you explore, you might see other types of wisps trapped inside the darkness. The wildwood is trying to guide you towards clues about its affliction. Follow the trails of wisps by collecting them, and you may uncover many different secrets. New characters to find, Shrines,
boss battles, and all kinds of new encounters are lurking in the forest just waiting for you to discover them. There are many rewards to earn, for those brave enough to seek them.

When the sacred wisps run out of energy, they will return you back to where you came from. Any other types of wisps you have collected will return with you to Wraeclast.

These wisps, having been saved from the affliction, disperse into the environment and inhabit randomly chosen monsters in the area, increasing their power, and also their rewards.

The different types of wisps have different effects on monsters, and sometimes more than one type will inhabit a single monster, making the fight even harder and even more rewarding.
If this happens to a boss, you could be in for a tough fight. But if you can overcome it, your efforts will not be in vain.

Primal Wisps grant an item rarity bonus to inhabited monsters. Wild Wisps grant an item quantity bonus, and Vivid Wisps cause them to drop currency items. If a monster gets all three types, they'll drop more items of a higher rarity and a lot of currency.

While exploring the Wildwood, you might find some of the last few Azmeri wanderers who have managed to survive in the forest since it was cursed.

Each of them have different survival specialisations, and they are willing to teach you if you agree to help them defeat the source of the Affliction: the King of the Mists.

Choose which of the Azmeri that you will complete quests for to unlock one of three new Ascendancy classes which you can have in addition to your regular Ascendancy class.

Up to 8 points for these classes are unlocked as you complete more quests for the Azmeri you are training under.

The Warden of Eaves can teach you to become a Warden of the Maji. A powerful class that takes advantage of wilderness knowledge.

A Warden of the Maji can learn to use tinctures which coat their weapon, granting various powerful effects.

You can equip Tinctures in your flask slots and toggle them on and off at will. You can only have one enabled at a time, but the effects are quite conditional so you may want to have more than one equipped and swap between them during combat.

For example, equip the Ironwood Tincture to gain the benefit of always stunning enemies on full life.

Tinctures can also get random mods. This one in particular adds stacks of Wither to targets on full life and steals frenzy charges on hit which makes it great as an initiator.

When you're fighting rare monsters or finishing off tough bosses, you will want to swap to the Oakbranch Tincture which grants Culling Strike, increased damage against enemies on low life and has a chance to steal a mod from rare enemies you kill.

You can buy more Tinctures from The Warden of Eaves using Primal Wisps when you find her in the forest, so keep an eye out for her.

As a Warden of the Maji gains more ascendency points, they gain access to more skills that let them further specialise in Tinctures.

For example, Nature's Concoction allows you to invest in having your Tinctures enhance your Flasks. This Ascendancy skill makes it important to think about which slot your Tinctures are placed in, and what flasks they are adjacent to. You'll have better uptime on those flasks and they'll be stronger as a result.

But there are plenty more skills to choose even if you don't want to engage with Tinctures. For example, another new ability to unlock is Barkskin.

It's a reservation skill that causes Bark to grow all over your body, increasing armour. As you take damage, the Bark falls off, increasing your evasion. Over time the Bark will grow back, removing the evasion bonus but increasing your armour again.

The Breaker of Oaths can teach you to become a Warlock of the Mists. An ascendancy class specialising in the darker arts of the Azmeri.

One powerful ability you can choose is Blood Hunt, which grants an active skill called Ravenous
This skill lets you see what type a monster is under its life bar, whether it is a Demon, Beast, Undead, Construct, or Humanoid.

Consuming a corpse with this skill gives a buff to damage against that type of monster, and reduces damage taken by it. You can only have one type active at a time, so it's a good idea to choose wisely for the area that you are in.

Some bosses like the Maven are Eldritch in nature and don't conform to the regular corpses that you have access to, but don't worry.

The Breaker of Oaths has a shop where you can trade Wild Wisps for corpses that you can place on the ground wherever you are.

Buy an Eldritch corpse and you will be able to get the bonus while fighting Eldritch entities like the Maven.

You may notice that most of the corpses he sells are not monsters you normally encounter.

You might want to try turning some of these corpses into spectres, to take advantage of some of the unique abilities that these monsters have.

The Warlock of the Mists gets access to many other abilities. For example, there is a trio of curses that you can pick from.

One of these curses targets your minions, giving them life degen and making them explode for massive damage when they are near death.

One of them prevents enemies from dealing damage for the latter portion of its duration, which is quite powerful against bosses. This curse creates the interesting build decision of whether or not you should increase curse duration, or reduce it.

The final curse is a Mark that causes enemy phantasms to be spawned when you hit the marked enemy. These phantasms aren't on your side, so they work well with on-hit and on-kill trigger effects, for example.

The Primal Huntress can teach you to become a Wildwood Primalist.

Unlike the other new ascendancies, The Primal Huntress lets you customise your tree.
You do this with Charms that you can buy from the Primal Huntress for Vivid Wisps. Charms have randomly generated mods which give stats from regular ascendancy classes,
allowing you to create your own hybrid ascendancy class.

Charms are magic items and are aligned with different attributes. So for example, this Ursine Charm is strength-aligned, and has gotten the "Melee Hits have a chance to Fortify" stat from the Champion, and the ability to stop your movement speed going below base from the Juggernaut.

This Int-aligned Corvine Charm lets you get the stat that makes your consecrated ground effects linger, from the Inquisitor, and the effect that makes cursed enemies explode, from the Occultist.
Some of the combinations of mods that you might find for sale on charms can be extremely powerful. So keep a look out for The Primal Huntress's shop even if you are not playing as a Primalist.

As a Primalist you also get access to a few other interesting abilities.

Use Warcries next to corpses and they have a chance to drop an extra item.

It opens nearby chests too.

The Primalist also gets access to a small extra backpack just in case you find yourself needing to cart more items to town during your map runs.

If you are unhappy with the class you picked or you just happen to find a really great item for one of the other classes, you are able to change which class you're using next time you find one of the Azmeri Wanderers. Just remember that you will have to do their quests in order to gain the ascendancy points for that class.

These quests will lead you towards the ultimate goal of the Azmeri. Finding the King of the Mists, defeating him, and cleansing the forest of its Affliction once and for all. There are new uniques to find, rewards to claim and even new Ascendancy classes to master in the Affliction league.

Core Game Changes

Now that we've covered what is in the League, let's talk about some of the changes you can expect to the core game in 3.23.

For a start, Ultimatum is finally going core. When talking to players at exilecon, it was the number one feature that people requested.

When playing through endgame maps you may sometimes encounter the Trialmaster who offers you a choice to undertake a deadly Vaal trial in exchange for great rewards.

If you defeat the trial, he offers to go double or nothing with you. Do you take the risk and go for an even better reward? Or do you take the winnings you have already earned off the table and go home?

We've done a full rebalance of Ultimatum and have added many new mods and rewards, including both new and reworked Uniques. The base number of rounds for an Ultimatum Trial is now always ten, with a chance to spawn the trialmaster boss fight on the tenth round, if you are able to make it that far.

As part of 3.23 we have also removed Metamorph from the game. All the Catalyst rewards from Metamorph have now been moved to be rewards for Ultimatum.

We've also added a new Vaal-themed catalyst that works on corrupted items.

As is normal for most content that gets added to Endgame, we have introduced new Ultimatum passive skills to the Atlas tree.

One great example is the Keystone Gruelling Gauntlet. It makes Ultimatums last 3 extra rounds, but you cannot choose the modifiers and it prevents the final Trialmaster boss fight from spawning.

The level of challenge becomes extreme during the last three rounds, and not being able to choose the modifiers makes it even harder. But the rewards are insane and for those with very high-end characters, it might be a bet worth making. There are lots of other atlas passive skills you can pick from for Ultimatum, so choose wisely.

Transfigured Gems

Now it's time to talk about one of the largest metagame changes we have ever made. There were three systems in Path of Exile that were all trying to subtly modify the behaviour of skills. These were alternate quality gems, labyrinth helmet enchants and unique threshold jewels. We have combined all of these together to create a new system called Transfigured gems that allows us to fully achieve the goal of these three systems, and then some.

Transfigured gems are alternative versions of existing skill gems that have different functionality and balance from their regular versions. We have added a huge number of these with interesting variations that drastically change how existing skills play.

For example, Frost Bomb of Instability. It changes it from a cooldown skill that you cast occasionally for a large explosion, into a skill that you can cast continuously but deals less damage and doesn't apply cold exposure. It changes the role of Frost Bomb from a utility skill into a main damaging skill.

Another example is Detonate Dead of Scavenging. You can't use it on corpses that were created by Desecrate or Unearth, but in exchange it does a whole lot more damage. You won't be able to use it as your main reliable source of damage, but it's a great skill to use as a 4-Link utility to get some extreme burst damage.

Raise Zombie of Falling. Instead of raising a zombie from a corpse, you summon them from mid air. They fall to their death dealing AoE damage where they land. While this sounds like a physical damage version of Firestorm, you should consider that it scales with minion damage and also triggers on-death minion effects.

Blight of Contagion. This version of blight is now spread by contagion, so you can use it as part of your Essence Drain build.

We have a huge number of these. Transfigure Firestorm into Firestorm of Meteors, transfigure Blade Trap into Blade Trap of Greatswords. Transfigure Barrage into Barrage of Volley Fire and so on. There is a lot to experiment with, and we look forward to seeing what builds you can come up with.

But how do you get transfigured gems? The Divine Font at the end of the Eternal Labyrinth has been changed to a gem crafting device that can modify your skill and support gems in a lot of new ways.

One of the options you can now choose is to turn a skill gem into one of three Transfigured gems.
But that isn't all the Divine Font can do. It has a lot of other gem-crafting options you can use, for example you can add quality to gems, add experience to gems, sacrifice a gem for one or more Treasure Keys to open Izaro's Chests, and you can even exchange Support Gems for Exceptional Support Gems like Empower or Enlighten. These are just some of the options you'll find the Divine Font is now capable of.

In order to replace the rewards in Heist that previously gave alternate quality gems, we have done a rebalance of the rewards of Heist as well.

Experimented base types have been rebalanced, new replica uniques have been added and old ones changed, and we have increased the amount of currency from display cases as well.

On top of this, we have gone through and buffed the quality stats on most damage-dealing skills. In most cases they will be significantly more powerful than before, and also more interesting.

Overall, this is one of the largest metagame shifts that we've ever done. There are so many crazy new skill combinations to plan around, so we expect to see some really interesting new builds.

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.