The Exiled Tribune – Atlas of Worlds Expansion Unveiled and More

By William Murphy on August 22, 2016 | Columns | 0

In this new weekly column, we seek to cover all the week’s Path of Exile news, fan creations, community hot topics, and more. This week, The Atlas Weekly is all about the new Atlas of Worlds expansion reveal, the new base items, free Darkness Mystery Boxes, ZiggyD’s Hydra of the Guardian Boss showcase, and a brand new community podcast. Read on!

The big news over the past week is that Path of Exile: Atlas of Worlds was unveiled back on August 12th. Our own coverage can be found here, and the Path of Exile community rounded up a slew of the previews from around the web. Aside from the surprisingly fast turnaround and release of the expansion on September 2nd (yes, that fast), this one focuses largely on the endgame for the exiles that have been playing through the game for months or years now, while luring back new players with the prospect of all these new maps, more than a dozen new bosses, and tons more gear and items to procure.

Atlas of Worlds is basically a whole new way to approach the braving and generation of the game’s random maps as players will have to uncover the (wait for it…) Atlas of Worlds and eventually fight the Shaper as the new big bad end-game boss. You can watch our video preview below for a sense of everything included. You can read more at the official site, and purchase supporter packs (with some frankly wicked-awesome cosmetic rewards over at the store.

Our video preview of the Atlas of Words expansion.

In Atlas of Worlds, there are 30 new maps being introduced, bringing the total of maps (all randomly generated) to over 100 in the game. The Grinding Gear folks unveiled the Vault Map in a new video, which can be previewed here. I got to see about 10-15 of the new maps during my preview with Chris Wilson, and I can say that they all introduce a great deal of visual variety and color to an already impressively vista-tastic ARPG. Along with the Vault map, Bex and GGG unveiled some of the new base items being added to the maps, which unlock new crafting and unique opportunities as well as upgrade paths for some of the existing base types that become less useful early on. This was only five of eleven new base items coming with the expansion.

It’s also worth noting that if you’ve got any micro-transaction points burning a hole in your pocket, or if you’re planning on buying one of the Atlas supporter packs, you’ll get another free Darkness Mystery Box all the way up until the Prophecy Challenge Leagues end on August 30th. If you already got one before they decided to reinstate this program, it’s time to spend your last few points because you can get another before Atlas comes out.

The Chimera Supporter pack in Atlas of Worlds - $220 of awesome.

Rounding out some more Atlas of Worlds news, YouTuber ZiggyD got an exclusive look at the Guardian of the Hydra Atlas Boss we’ll all be facing off against come September 2nd. It shows off a lot of the new mechanics added to the bosses in this expansion, raising the level of challenge and tweaking the meta of how you build your characters this time around. It’s really worth a watch below.

Lastly, I want to end this first week of The Exiled Tribune with a shout to the brand new All Path of Exile, All the Time Podcast: The Lioneye’s Watch.

As Bex puts it: “Three of our seasoned Path of Exile streamers, LiftingNerdBro, HegemonyTV and ProjectPT have developed a brand new community podcast. They released their first episode today where they discussed and speculated over the Atlas of Worlds announcement.

The Lioneye's Watch podcast is live every Sunday 21:00 (GMT+2) or 2:00PM CST on LiftingNerdBro's Twitch channel and can later be found uploaded on Hegemony's Youtube Channel. If you're looking for a place to discuss relevant Path of Exile topics with the community, then we recommend checking it out. "

That’ll do it for the first weekly PoE column: The Exiled Weekly. We hope you get some use out of our round-up, and be sure to offer up any topics you’d like to see covered here in the comments! Good luck in the last week of the Prophecy Challenge League, and prep hard for Atlas of Worlds.