Path of Exile's latest expansion is out now, and completely changes the way that the ARPG's endgame works. It adds 32 new maps to battle through, each of which has a boss at the end, as well as four powerful Elder Guardians that you'll have to defeat before you reach the new bid bad: the Elder.
Before the update you fought through randomly generated maps to reach the Shaper, a Cthulhu-looking boss. Now, the Shaper and the Elder are at war, trying to separately spread their taint across the map. These taints affect the way maps look and feel: the Elder's minions will literally suck the colour out of the world, weakening your character if they're nearby, for example.
By choosing a particular path you'll be able to control the spread of both bosses, shepherding them towards particular maps, or fighting back against the taint of one in particular, allowing the other to take over.
This will let you to determine the type of loot you get in certain areas (and there's buckets of new, rare items to get your mitts on), and control zones that you want to farm for goodies. It's a fairly complex system that Steven interviewed the developers about last month.
The update also adds new character customisation options, with four new skills gems focused on necromancy and six support gems.
Lastly, it adds a new challenge league called the Abyss. There, you'll wander maps in search of cracks that nasties will spill out of. Follow the cracks and you'll find a bigger group of enemies climbing out of a hole in the ground. Slay them all and new cracks will appear, leading you to another hole, and so on. The enemies get more challenging as you progress and you get less time to clear them.
Read more about the update here, and again, read Steven's interview with the devs if you're interested.
