Developer Grinding Gear Games announced the latest expansion for free-to-play action RPG Path of Exile. The Settlers of Kalguurexpansion and accompanying Challenge League will release simultaneously for PC, Mac, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on July 26, 2024. In addition, the company announced that it will soon be running a closed beta test for the upcoming Path of Exile 2. Those interested in participating can register on the game’s official website.
Settlers of Kalguur features some familiar faces from previous content and sees players help Kalguuran pioneers establish trade between Wraeclast and their homeland, assisting them in building the town of Kingsmarch that will act as a trading hub. Players are tasked with mining special resources, hiring and protecting skilled workers, building out a harbour, and managing trading.
During their adventures, players will find special minerals, where they need to defeat monster encounters to claim it. For example, Crimson Iron is found in corrupted veins that will spawn monsters when players approach, while Orichalcum is worshipped by demons and Bismuth causes the local area’s elements to become unstable. After claiming the resource, players will need to get someone to mine it, with miners and other workers — recruited by Raulf — needing to be paid in Gold for their services.
Each worker has their own specialities and wage cost. In addition to paying them, players will also need to keep them safe. Miners will collect the tagged ore in real-time, with the timer counting down even when players are logged out of the game. More miners, or better skilled and equipped miners, can reduce the time needed. Resources and Gold can be used to build and upgrade facilities in town. The Tavern helps acquire better workers as well as letting players meet important NPCs; the Mining Station improves efficiency of miners; and the Disenchanter lets players bring Magic, Rare or Unique items to be broken down into a new resource called Thaumaturgic Dust.
Once players build a Harbour, they can establish trade routes with Kalguuran and Karui ports. Players can then send their excess resources to these ports, where traders will haggle for deals, returning with various rewards based on the port they are sent to. However, as players send more resources, a risk meter increases. This meter will affect the chances of the shipment meeting monsters, pirates, or environmental hazards. It can be decreased by hiring workers that specialise in shipping. Players will be notified when their shipment successfully returns with the rewards, or meets with disaster.
The Settlers of Kalguur Challenge League endgame features returning character Isla. She helps players build Kalguuran-modified Map Devices. This lets players assign a queue of Maps and hire Atlas Runners, who will run the maps for them. Again, players will be notified when the maps have been run and can collect the rewards. However, there is the chance of the workers dying while attempting these runs, and players may prefer to run a map themselves rather than risking a skilled worker. In addition, new crafting options allow players to add powerful effects that can usually only be found on unique items onto normal equipment. It will also see the return of recombination.
Gold will also be used for two new quality-of-life features. The first is to respec Passive Points, a planned feature for Path of Exile 2 that is being brought into the original game. The higher the player’s level, the more this will cost. The second is for a Currency Trade Market. This will allow players to asynchronously buy and sell currency, plus most other stackable items. Players will be able to select the currency they want, the currency they have, and their preferred ratio. Returning NPC Faustus will make the trade happen if another player is selling for the same value, or less, for a small amount of Gold.
In addition to new content, the expansion will also introduce many other changes. Firstly, the Gladiator Ascendancy class is being fully rebalanced, while the Raider Ascendancy class is being replaced by the new Warden class. These changes also come with some major alterations to melee skills in the game, which will on average deal significantly more damage, while weapons and armour will provide more local damage and defenses respectively, alongside a variety of other changes. There are also new tweaks, alterations, and additions being made to endgame content.
Lastly, Grinding Gear Games has been working on native PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions of Path of Exile, which will be available with the expansion. These versions include reduced load times, reduced texture pop-in, higher resolution textures and water effects, and variable refresh rate support. The studio has also added some extra encounters and secrets to the base campaign.
Prev
Next
