In case you missed our first article about Path of Exile: The Awakening, here’s where you can catch up about everything that was previously announced.

The day is almost here! Path of Exile: The Awakening is due for release on July 10th 2015.

Since the beta release on April 20th, fans of Path of Exile have been exploring the new content available to them in Act 4. From new skills like Ice Crash and Summon Chaos Golem to new zones, monsters and items, they’ve had a lot to sink their teeth into.

With the closed beta coming to an end and The Awakening becoming available to everyone, we spoke to Chris Wilson about what we’ve got to look forward to.

Act 4

Act 4 centres around the town of Highgate, and the mysterious Beast that is at the heart of the corruption of Wraeclast.

Exiles will have to keep their wits about them as they match their strengths against powerful new bosses like Kaom, Daresso, Shavronne and Doedre across all-new zones.

The act will culminate as you encounter the mysterious Beast, and your quest to free Wraeclast from its corrupting influence.

New Active Skills

The release of the Awakening brings five new skills, on top of the skills already released during the closed beta.

Magma Orb: Throws a fiery orb that explodes as it strikes the ground. Magma Orb chains, releasing another fiery orb that repeats the effect.

Wild Strike: Strike an enemy with your melee weapon, converting some of the damage to a random element. Depending on the element chosen, it releases a fiery explosion, an arcing bolt of lightning, or an icy wave.

Frost Blades: Attacks with increased range, releasing icy blades from the struck enemy that fly at other enemies.

Flame Dash: Teleports you to a new location, damaging enemies and leaving a trail of burning ground in your wake.

Phase Run: A player favourite, removed with patch 0.10.0 before the game was officially released. Phase Run has been rebalanced and reintroduced to the game, making you move faster, harder to detect and granting you the ability to move through enemies, alongside dealing extra damage with your attack. Using any skill will remove the buff but increase the damage of your attacks for a short duration of time. Frenzy Charges can be consumed to increase the duration of Phase Run.

New Items

We previously teased 70 new uniques for The Awakening, but the staff at Grinding Gear Games have been hard at work to bring this number up to a staggering 110 new unique items and jewels.

Kingmaker is one of these new unique items. A two-handed axe, Kingmaker is forged by fusing two valuable unique items. Those of you more familiar with Path of Exile may recognise the distinctive art of two different unique weapons in this new axe.

Of course, you can expect to see all the new Maraketh Weapons, jewels and a host of new item affixes making you deadlier than ever.

New Maps

The Awakening will bring 13 new maps to the game. Aimed at the more hardcore players, these new maps will pose a tough challenge and will feature Act 4 bosses to defeat.

You can also expect changes to map mods in The Awakening, with changes to the way mods like More Magic Monsters and Increased Item Quantity work.

Divination Cards

Introduced during the closed beta as part of the new supporter packs, Divination Cards are a new type of item dropped by monsters in The Awakening.

Collecting the right number of cards in a set allows you to trade them in for a given item, such as a piece of chest armour with an addex life affix or a random unique axe. This presents a new and interesting way to farm for particular items, with certain cards being restricted to drop in certain zones. Chris teased The Carrion Crow as having a particular rule that determines where it drops, a rule as yet undiscovered by players.

New Challenge Leagues

With the release of The Awakening, two new challenges leagues will be starting.

Warbands League

In Warbands League, the new temporary standard league, warring clans are spread throughout Wraeclast. As you explore the world, you’ll occasionally encounter one of these three Warbands, a tough group of enemies who will work together to try and take you down.

Each of these three Warbands were designed by a different designer at Grinding Gear Games, giving them each a distinct personality.

These Warbands are made up of distinct warriors, who use a combination of skills with the aim of bringing you down. From regular warriors who will attack you directly to support members who will buff their allies and powerful leaders who can drop very rare unique rings. It has also been rumoured that warbands can sometimes drop magic items with a new mod exclusive to that particular warband.

The location of these Warbands will change as players encounter and defeat them, providing a good reason for players to continue to explore areas of Wraeclast that they might not normally return to.

Tempest League

The new temporary hardcore league is the Tempest League. Wraeclast has become affected by magical Tempests which cause a wide variety of effects that have an influence both on monsters and players. These effects range from altering drop rates, changing player or monster sizes or even automatically animating any weapons that drop.

Areas affected by a Tempest will occasionally spawn markers on the ground, indicating that the Tempest is about to strike that area. When the Tempest strikes, anything caught in the area will be affected, including any monsters or players. With both positive and negative buffs, it’s possible to kite enemies to negative Tempest markers to make them easier to kill, or position yourself to benefit from a powerful mod.

One example, the Shining Tempest affect causes you to find better items and affected monsters to drop better items. Positioning yourself and monsters in a marker will ensure that these effects work together to give you even better drops.

Much like other systems in Path of Exile, these Tempests have both prefixes and suffixes, with the prefix dictating the effect of the Tempest strikes and the suffix causing the entire area affected by a Tempest to exhibit a new behaviour. For example, an area affected by a Tempest of Living Weapons causes all of the weapons dropped by monsters to animate and fight you, you will need to fight them off if you wish to claim them for yourself.

Tempests affecting zones will change every hour and will be visible on the world map, not only that, but maps will also be subject to Tempest effects. Players will have to work with one another to know which maps to run at any given time to benefit from the best Tempest affects.

Challenges

Much like previous challenge leagues, there will be eight new challenges spanning across both leagues and the new content introduced in The Awakening. As challenges are completed, a unique Totem Pole decoration will become available for you to permanently display your accomplishments in your hideout. Not only that, but the first 50 players to complete all eight challenges will receive an exclusive Warbands/Tempest t-shirt.

Quality of Life Tweaks

The Awakening brings a large number of quality of life tweaks. The early game has been modified to be a smoother experience, with gems becoming available at vendors to ensure you can always find the basic skill gems you need for your build.

Item Filters bring about the ability to create custom loot filters, letting you focus on items you want to drop and decluttering the screen while you’re in the midst of a swirling melee.

Chris was very happy to announce that the changes to Path of Exile’s netcode have been successful, and that the new lockstep networking mode will be rolled out to all players.

Visit The Awakening now.

See you in Wraeclast, Exile.

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