As far as free to play games go it’s hard to keep and maintain an audience. Getting something for free means no risk on the consumer’s part; they can come in and get out relatively quickly if they don’t like it. It says a lot about a free game that’s managed to not only regularly increase its player base, and also crank out enough regular content to keep the most hardcore players occupied, but that’s exactly what Grinding Gear Games has been able to do with Path of Exile

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This spring it will receive a new update – titled Bestiary – that adds tons of new activities, items, recipes, and challenges for high-level players...all for the low price of free. We got a chance to see some of the content players can expect from the update.The heart of the Bestiary expansion is the record book. It’s a collection of monsters, crafting recipes and other goals for late game players to accomplish and collect. However, the goal isn’t to kill the monsters and collect their materials like you would do in a game like Monster Hunter. Instead you are tasked with capturing a certain amount of them to fulfill quest objectives and then fight them all at once in order to craft powerful new gear and augmentations. You’ll be given access to an area known as the menagerie. Think of it as your own personal zoo, where you can see all of the monsters you currently have captured in one easy to access area. You can also see what monsters you have collected in your bestiary as well.One of the most appealing things about Path of Exile is the deep customization options it gives players to outfit their characters. The Bestiary update (out March 2 on PC and a bit after that on Xbox) comes with a brand new crafting system build entirely around capturing specific monsters in order to use them in recipes for new items, or to augment existing ones. Once you’ve captured the monsters necessary for your recipe you won't just click a button and create an item, you’ll have to battle the monsters inside an arena located in your hideout. If you fail, you lose the monsters used in the recipe. But if you succeed, you’ll be able to augment a property of an already existing item, or craft one of the new powerful pieces of gear. Once you win the fight, the monsters you’ve collected and fought will be gone, so if you want to craft that recipe again, you’ll have to go out and recapture those monsters.“Once you craft your monsters it consumes them, so you have to plan very careful how you use them,” says Chris Wilson, Game Director at Grinding Gear Games. “Some of these are very rare and you might only encounter them every 10 to 20 hours.” This system is cleverly designed in that it actually makes players work for the gear they want to acquire, and locks out any potential for a friend to carry you through difficult encounters and capture monsters you can’t beat on your own.For higher level players there are the spirit beasts: high level boss encounters that can only be reached by crafting a portal. The fights are difficult, but if you’re able to capture the bosses you fight, you’ll be able to use them to craft high level items. “These spirit beasts are actually very powerful, and you actually get to them by using crafting,” says Wilson. “And likewise when you capture them you also get to use that in crafting itself. So they’re heavily entwined in the crafting process.”For the first time in Path of Exile, armor set pieces are being added into the game. However, they don’t act the way you’d expect high level armor pieces to work in other RPGs. “Set items in other games have been both positive and negative,” says Wilson. “On one hand it was cool to complete a set and get some synergy going. But on the other hand it can actually dilute your creativity and freedom.” For now, the only thing set pieces share is aesthetic. Instead, each individual piece has a special ability associated with it. In this way players can avoid having to use entire sets for one or two benefits, and instead mix and match many different items from multiple sets.Grinding Gear Games is also adding in a substantial amount of fated uniques. Fated uniques are a type of unique item that allows you to upgrade them to the highest power levels. For example if you were playing the end game last expansion, suddenly one of the unique weapons you like is probably going to become obsolete. By finding items called prophecies and defeating the boss required, you can upgrade your item to a higher power level.The atlas is also receiving some end game content for more hardcore players. Previously, both the elder and shaper bosses couldn't appear on the same map. Both encounters were considered to be some of the hardest content in the game. This content, according to Wilson, is only meant for the top 0.1 percent of hardcore players. It’s meant to be as difficult as possible and inspire Twitch streamers to push themselves to the limit. “Two of these fights are the hardest in the game,” says Wilson. “It’s kind of designed for Twitch where very few people are gonna get a chance to see it and when they do play it, it’s gonna be a big event in the community.” The team believes that there should always be content for lower level players to aspire to, and in a world where lots of games are forsaking that in order to try and grab a more casual audience, it’s a breath of fresh air.With that difficulty comes incredibly powerful items that only a few people will ever get access to. “This [item] is probably only going to be used by eight people and that’s it,” says Wilson. “But it’s still worth making the content and everyone watches it on Twitch so it’s still worth it for us to do that.” One of the unique items we we were able to see was a quiver called the Voidfletcher, which fired void arrows on top of the arrows you are already shooting. Wilson says these items are incredibly powerful and only meant to be chased by incredibly high-level players.Additionally, Grinding Gear Games is completely reworking the ascendancy system for every class in PoE. The developers thought that over time the viable class choices offered in the ascendancy system were gradually getting lower over time, especially as many of the mechanics available in those trees were cropping up on different items and skills. So to breathe new life into the classes the developers have gone back and created entirely new abilities only available in the ascendancy trees, in order to try and differentiate the classes from each other and hopefully provide players with more viable build options.Overall, while the idea of capturing monsters doesn’t exactly resonate with me, I love the new crafting system and the reworked ascendancy system. I doubt I’ll ever get a character up to date to do most of this content, and honestly that’s fine. I like Grinding Gear Games’ willingness to create content that only the hardest of the hardcore will be able to play or experience.

Joshua Mobley is a Gameplay Editor at IGN. Talk more with him on Twitter at @TheJawaJosh