Path of Exile 2 Unveils "The Third Edict" Update
Grinding gear games portends to publish "The Third Edict" for Path of Exile 2. This is all after a former update that attracted player reviews that were tagged negative in Steam due to nerfs and slower combat. That is the point in the foundation of this major update: big balance changes, a new campaign act, a new trading system, and the first-ever official league of the game.
Restructuring Act 4 and Campaign
The fourth act of the game is introduced by the said update, which then consists several islands. A weapon piece from ancient past will be sought by players in a non-linear fashion, whereby players get to choose which of the eight islands to sail to. Among other new features included in this act are over 100 new monster types and 12 new bosses.
Also a major revamping is the throwing out of the Cruel difficulty. No more will players have to press through the campaign a second time to end up in the endgame. Having accomplished Act 4, the player will go through a three mini-acts bridge into the endgame until the campaign is completed.
Major Overhauls in the Balance and Combat
"The Third Edict" brings an awful lot of balance changes and a few new mechanisms to improve the feel of combat:
- Buff to Classes: Every class is receiving buffs and skills entirely anew. An example of this would be quite an overhaul of the Ranger's cold skills and a lot of buffs in the Warrior's fire and shielding abilities.
- New 'Deflect' Mechanic: To cover the deficiencies in evasion, a new defensive layer called "deflect" has been made for dexterity builds. On a successful roll for deflect, it works for all attack types, reducing the damage received by 40%. There is no cap on the reduction, and it can be increased by passive and items.
- Sprinting: A new sprinting mechanic is being included for faster traversal, though if players get hit while sprinting, they will be knocked prone.
- Support Gem Provision: Support gems can now affect multiple simultaneously socketed skills. Gems will come with many tiers and newly improved and reworked effects. There are newly introduced unique "Lineage Supports."
A Modern Way to Trade: Asynchronous Trading
Probably one of the greatest single changes is asynchronous trading, where players can pass their items for sale to a new merchant NPC within their hideout. This way, other players can browse such entries on the official trade site and buy items directly from this NPC even when a seller is offline. This changes the old way of trading where both players had to be online and meet in-person to perform the trade.
New League: The Rise of the Abyssal
This update is also intended to set up the first official league in PoE2, '"The Rise of the Abyssal." In this league, players can build new characters into the new economy and fresh mechanics based on sealing fissures and takes on the bosses that emerge from them. Rewards include items that are the only means of adding new abyssal modifiers to rare gear.
Release Date and Free Weekend
The "Third Edict" for Path of Exile 2 will go live on August 29. At the same time, the game will be free to play on Steam during the same period, starting on the date of update release until September 1.
