PoE 3.13 Echoes of the Atlas Announcement Reveals and Expectations

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By | January 12th, 2021 | Categories: Path of Exile

The newest Path of Exile league has been announced, PoE 3.13 league will be Ritual League. However, far more exciting is the fact that along with Ritual league comes a new full rework of our end-game content, in the form of the Echoes of the Atlas expansion. We’ll do our best to go over the big new content that has been announced!

Who is Maven?

Maven is the new end boss in PoE 3.13. She doesn’t take the place of Shaper, Elder or Sirus, they all remain in the game. However, she is an entirely new boss, with an extremely interesting way of engagement. Rather than fight us herself, she brings us to an arena where we can fight bunches of bosses that we’ve defeated, all at once.

The way she works, from what we’ve been told, is that while completing the atlas you will encounter her during a boss fight. She will show up, have some commentary about watching you fight, and make the boss more difficult in some way. Upon completing the fight, you will gain access to a button on the map device. Selecting the button while putting in a map will allow you to force Maven to buff up the boss that you are fighting.

Once you have fought a handful of bosses, an orb will drop. This orb will allow you to fight all of the bosses you have fought with Maven watching, at once. The cycle will then repeat until you get to the point where you are fighting ten bosses at once. At that point the orb is no longer granted to you, but rather is a tradeable non-quest item. This means that you can trade them and farm Maven as long as you want. We’re unsure of all of the rewards so far, but there’s a new Maven orb which allows for boosted influenced modifiers, and will be worth a pretty penny.

What are PoE 3.13 Atlas Skill Trees?

PoE 3.13 brings with it one of the biggest changes that I’ve seen in my entire time playing Path of Exile. Atlas Skill Trees. While progressing through the Maven fights you will earn skill points that can be used on the trees for each region of the Atlas. Each region has their own, different tree, making each region unique and worth farming depending on what you’re after. All of the nodes on these trees are based around boosting existing map mechanics. There are buffs for Breach, Legion, Metamorph, Blight, Einhar, Niko, and more.

Each tree will have 20 nodes – 10 small and 10 large. The small nodes, from what we’ve seen, give minor boosts to the chance of the mechanic appearing. For example, the small Harvest node shown in the trailer grants 2% greater chance for the Harvest mechanic to appear. The large nodes, on the other hand, fundamentally change how the mechanic works, and grants massive buffs. For example, one of the Breach nodes states that Breach Bosses defeated in that area will have a 5% chance to drop a full breachstone, with a small chance of it being Charged, Enriched, or even Pure. Another node says that Blight encounters in that area will spawn 100% more non-unique monsters and the monsters will spawn 100% faster.

From this brief description I’m sure you can see how powerful these nodes are. If you want a full list of all of the skill trees and their locations, the official post is here. This is a huge change to Path of Exile as a whole. Not only will every map feel so much more enjoyable with these added bonuses, they will also allow players to target farm the content that they enjoy, something that we’ve been asking for a lot recently. Finally, we’ll have an answer to the content bloat that a lot of players have been dealing with.

What About the New PoE ‘Ritual’ League?

All of these big changes don’t even touch the fact that we’re also getting a league at the same time! PoE 3.13 comes as the Ritual League. Ritual heavily reminds me of Perandus, but with far more choice. While mapping you will encounter ritual pillars surrounded by enemies. Slay the nearby enemies then activate the pillar. You will be locked in, and the mobs that you just slew nearby will respawn, alongside a specific buff from that altar. Slaying them again will grant you ritual points. Clicking on the pillar once the event has finished will open an inventory full of items which you can spend your ritual points to purchase.

There will be several pillars in each area, and completing more of them will reveal more rewards. So, if you plan to full-clear the area, there’s no point to looking through the stock until the final pillar. Ritual points are not stored between zones, so you may find yourself in a situation where you cannot afford the item you want, and there are no pillars left. In this situation, you can choose to defer an item, which will cause it to appear again later at a reduced cost. You can also choose to reroll the items a single time per zone. Notably, the Ritual specific uniques all come from the Ritual inventories, none of them drop randomly.

This mechanic isn’t the most revolutionary, but it’s interesting and will lead to a lot of loot, which is what most players enjoy. And since Ritual League is coming alongside a full atlas expansion, a straightforward kill-enemies-get-loot league is exactly what most of us will be looking for. Personally, I’m quite excited for Ritual, it will be a good way to feel like I’m getting more out of my maps without feeling as if I have to do some extra confusing mechanics.

Final Notes on PoE 3.13

PoE 3.13 is just around the corner, and it will be bringing with it some of the biggest upheaval we’ve ever seen in Path of Exile history. The Echoes of the Atlas rework brings a new endgame boss, but far more interestingly it brings an entire skill tree for your atlas! That plus a new league full of loot and PoE 3.13 is shaping up to be an extremely exciting league. Hopefully you all enjoy the new content!

Check our guides on other leagues here:

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