Path of Exile: Delirium – Cluster jewels
So, you want to tackle Path of Exile: Delirium‘s mists and horrors in the Mirror of Delirium. But, what exactly will you get? Well, firstly, there are cluster jewels. These can drop as you’re doing the league’s content and they offer a revitalizing way of modifying your passives tree.
Cluster jewels are applied to the outermost sections of your passives tree granting specific effects. Affixes are random depending on the jewel type, and they may also grant notable passives out of a massive pool of 280 choices. Another good news is that, like regular items, you can use orbs to reroll or completely randomize the results. Yes, you can even corrupt them using Vaal Orbs.
Here’s an example of a small cluster jewel which only adds three passives:
You don’t like that one? Here’s a medium-sized cluster jewel with five passives, many of which focus on you and your minions’ survivability:
Pray to the gods of RNG and you might get something with a whopping 10 passive skills:
Unique cluster jewels
There are also several unique cluster jewels to be found. For instance, “Voices” doesn’t grant actual passives. Instead, it has three sockets that let you apply even more cluster jewels:
“Split Personality,” meanwhile, should be socketed as far away as possible from where you started in the passives tree. This unique cluster jewel grants a 20% increased effect for every passive skill between its location and your class’ starting point:
There’s also “One With Nothing.” This one’s quite a surprise since it grants you dual-wielding properties and increased attacking capabilities as long as you don’t have any weapons, offhand items, or gloves equipped. Yes, forget claw weapons because this jewel lets you play as an unarmed master of martial arts:
We’ve also asked how this Path of Exile: Delirium mechanic in our interview with Chris Wilson. After all, with so many new possibilities, how exactly will players use or refund their points?
Blade skills and Blade Blast
You’ve seen a unique way of playing as an unarmed monk, well, Path of Exile: Delirium has a treat in the form of reworks to Blade-type skills and the new Blade Blast. Previous expansions focused on specific archetypes and tweaking skills for them. In Delirium, the idea is to focus on “cool” skills that can help out regardless of the archetype that you’re building.
Now, Blade-type skills will leave, uh, blades behind in the area. This will allow other skills to interact with them. Blade Blast is one such example since it causes existing blades to explode. Likewise, using various support gems lets you trigger multiple Bladefalls and before activating Blade Blast to detonate all of them. You could even have “sharp-edged minions” following you around by using the Animate Weapon skill.
Kinetic Bolt and wands
Kinetic Bolt was inspired by the fact that Path of Exile‘s wand users needed a bit of love. As such, it’s a skill that’s good for leveling while also being viable in the endgame by way of proper scaling and support gems.
Kinetic Bolt fires at a forking arc using your wand’s physical damage. It’s got good AoE coverage and synergizes with a support gem like Barrage.
Unique items
Path of Exile: Delirium will introduce 13 new unique items. I’ve been told that nine of these are unique cluster jewels (we’ve mentioned three that have been revealed so far). The remaining unique items are gear pieces. Combining all of them will even make you look like Path of Exile: Delirium‘s mysterious antagonist.
As of now, there are two unique armor pieces that we know of. First, there’s the Algor Mortis. These caster gloves are for players who want to try out a hybrid cold + lightning build. The idea is to combine the chilling and sapping effects from these spell types to do maximum damage.
Second, we’ve got Perfidy. This chest piece is yet another surprise since it focuses on banner skills. It’s a situation/build that Grinding Gear Games hasn’t fully explored before. It’s helpful for those who like to use banners since you can now have two at the same time.
Atlas improvements
Along with Metamorph‘s content going core, Path of Exile: Delirium will provide much-needed improvements to the Atlas and other facets. For example, Vaal side areas found in endgame maps should be more rewarding but with some additional degree of difficulty (more enemy modifiers). Progressing through the Temple of Atzoatl will also be more gratifying and have higher mob density, and even its lower levels have had their rewards increased.
Likewise, Conqueror spawns on the Atlas will be deterministic. You’ll now see how many maps need to be completed in each region before a boss can spawn. You’ll notice that these marked as small yellow pips on the left-hand side of the Atlas:
As we get closer to Path of Exile: Delirium‘s release, Grinding Gear Games will also unveil two other skills, three new support gems, and the remaining unique items. Combined with the aforementioned cluster jewels, you’ll have more viability and flexibility when creating your build.
Last but certainly not least, you can also read more about the design philosophy behind Path of Exile: Delirium as well as other matters in our in-depth interview with Grinding Gear Games’ Chris Wilson.
Path of Exile: Delirium will release on March 13, 2020, for PC players. It’ll be available for PS4 and Xbox One owners the following week. You can download the Path of Exile client via its official website or Steam.
