Path of Exile: Crucible Expansion Preview
While literally millions of gamers worldwide wait for Path of Exile 2, developer Grinding Gears Games continues to release significant new content for Path of Exile. Still hugely popular, Path of Exile has been a consistent alternative to Diablo. Mention action RPGs and Path of Exile is at the top of many lists. It’s not hard to understand why. For starters, it’s free to play, with microtransactions largely paying for cosmetic or quality-of-life enhancements. Path of Exile has a robust, MMORPG-like multiplayer component and a dedicated community. Ten years after release, it still looks great and character builds provide infinite variety. Crucible is literally a game changer for Path of Exile.
Titans Quest
Crucible’s narrative and gameplay changes center on the Titans, an ancient race of powerful beings that shaped the primordial surface of Wraeclast. The Titans left behind Crucible Forges. They are essentially gates to a supernatural molten realm. Players pick a weapon and battle a steady stream of enemies from the Forge. The longer the encounter, the higher the rewards.
Defeating enemies at the Crucible Forges earns a specific type of XP. That experience can be spent on imbuing weapons with passive skills from a dedicated skill tree. There are multiple tiers and selecting a path along the tree opens up powerful combinations.
But wait, there’s more! Crucible’s endgame takes place in The Forge of the Titans. While not for the faint of heart, The Forge contains the ability to melt a weapon down, merging its Crucible Passive Tree with that of another weapon. The results are, to some extent, randomized. The new weapon might be insanely powerful or actually a downgrade. Overall, the Forge of the Titans adds yet another interesting mechanic to an already richly rewarding set of systems.
Longtime Players Haven’t Been Forgotten
Aside from the Crucible-specific content, Grinding Gears has made a very long list of changes, improvements, and additions to the always-evolving base game. Though, after ten years of free expansions and new content, vanilla Path of Exile is probably nowhere to be found.
Just a few changes include overhauls to the Saboteur and Pathfinder Ascendancy Classes and revamped Masteries on the passive skill tree. There are new Vaal skills: Vaal Absolution, Vaal Arctic Armour, Vaal Lightning Arrow, and Vaal Reap. Others include Vaal Animate Weapon, Vaal Domination, Vaal Ice Shot, Vaal Rejuvenation Totem, and Vaal Firestorm.
Abyssal Depths now always contain an Abyssal Lich. Regular Breachstones are now much higher level. They replace Charged, Pure, and Enriched Breachstones entirely. Finally, Path of Exile: Crucible introduces Atlas Gateways – nodes on the Atlas Passive Tree that allow instant travel between two locations. There are three pairs of gateways, each allowing travel from the left side of the tree to the right side or vice versa. Doing so consumes one Atlas Skill Point.
Aside from those many enhancements, there is a new Crucible Challenge League, with specific weapon rewards. Altogether, Crucible includes ten new weapons.
Yummy Salad
For those not deeply into Path of Exile, all that might be word salad. For longtime players, though, it’s a nutritious feast of fun. Path of Exile is such a popular game that there’s even a real-world meetup of players called ExileCon. Crucible is the latest expansion for one of the best ARPGs out there. Diablo IV might be getting a lot of buzz right now, but for thousands of players, Path of Exile remains their go-to game.
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