Path of Exile: Harvest takes you to the Sacred Grove to meet Oshabi, farm your seeds, and duke it out with monsters. Still, one has to wonder about the types of rewards that can be obtained other than powerful crafting options. Well, you’ll find new unique items to bolster your playstyle. There are also new skills and overhauls for existing ones such as Slam skills (ie. Fist of War and Tectonic Slam), Warcry skills (ie. Seismic Cry and Rallying Cry), Brand skills (ie. Arcanist Brand and Penance Brand). Similarly, you’ll see revamps to the passives tree and a bit of rebalancing done to over 50 unique items. Oh, and, yes, Delirium‘s content is going core, but there’s a slight twist.
Note: Please be reminded that the images and gameplay videos included herein are from a Path of Exile: Harvest preview build and may change accordingly.
Path of Exile: Harvest – New unique items
Doryani’s Prototype
Path of Exile: Harvest includes 12 new unique items for players to find, and some of these are exclusive to the Sacred Grove’s content. One example is Doryani’s Prototype, a unique armor that greatly empowers your electrocuting attacks by lowering the lightning resistance of enemies.
However, it uses your own character’s lightning resistance to determine how impactful these types of spells are versus enemies — the lower it is, the more susceptible enemies become. Lightning attacks against you will, instead, be soaked by your armor stat.
Storm Secret
Next up is Storm Secret. This unique ring synergizes with the Herald of Thunder skill. Instead of having Herald of Thunder cast lightning bolts whenever enemies are killed, the effect will instead trigger whenever enemies are shocked.
You can use a combination of other lightning skills like Orb of Storms to bring the thunder (seen in the video below). I guess you can start calling your character “The Rock” — because you’ll become “The Most Electrifying Man in Wraeclast.”
Rebalancing existing uniques
Path of Exile: Harvest will also make significant changes to existing uniques in the loot pool. Expect over 50 unique items to get some cool and refreshing changes to their functionality.
Moonbender’s Wing
Previously, the Moonbender’s Wing unique ax only converted a percentage of your damage to cold and lightning. It also had the Lightning Warp teleportation which didn’t trigger automatically.
Now, Moonbender’s Wing adds up to 100% of your physical damage as extra cold or lightning damage, randomly choosing which one to use and potentially doubling your DPS. Even better, Lightning Warp teleports you automatically on hit.
I know what you’re thinking: “Yeah, but that ax is a melee weapon. It’s pretty pointless to teleport to a mob that’s right next to you.” Well, you could try some nifty tricks (which we’ll explain in a while).
Wake of Destruction
These unique boots, oddly enough, made enemies run away from you. Sadly, nobody wants that to happen since the goal is to kill entire packs to get more loot. Instead, Wake of Destruction now leaves a trail of “shocked” ground whenever your character moves. Enemies standing therein will take more damage.
In the video below, you’ll see a showcase of these two newly-tweaked unique items. The Lightning Warp from Moonbender’s Wing is procced by Lightning Strike. All the while, Wake of Destruction electrifies the ground underneath you (including your teleportation path) and debuffs enemies to take more damage. Think of this as a fun way of breezing through a level while also taking out lots of opponents.
Slam skills
Next up, let’s talk about Slam skills. There’s a bit of rebalancing for two-handed weapons, additional passive skill tree support, and several melee skills have been reclassified into “Slams.” Some of these changes tend to help one-handed melee builds as well.
The Fist of War support gem
This new support gem synergizes with any Slam-type skill. It spawns a spirit to do a slam in tandem with your character for that extra damage.
You can watch it in action in the video below:
Tectonic Slam
Tectonic Slam receives upgraded visual effects as well as a tweak to its usage thanks to Path of Exile: Harvest. It now only removes one Endurance Charge every three uses, making the charges easier to maintain, and its AoE is also increased. As such, relying on this skill will have you investing in Area of Effect and Endurance Charge-generating capabilities.
Warcry skills
Path of Exile: Harvest adds four new Warcry-type skills while reworking three existing ones. Warcry skills have been around in 2015, but, as Chris Wilson notes, they haven’t seen much use in recent times. As such, it’s important to improve their functionality and visuals while adding more passive tree support.
All Warcry skills can taunt nearby enemies while providing effects to allies or hostiles. Likewise, Warcry skills are now based on a “monster power” system. Rather than relying solely on the number of critters around you, they now scale properly even if you’re only fighting against stronger solo entities like certain bosses. The tougher they are, the stronger the boost from the Warcry’s effect.
Seismic Cry
This new Warcry skill in Path of Exile: Harvest creates a shockwave that pushes enemies back while also taunting them. Your Slams will be “exerted,” becoming more powerful with each attack and increasing their AoE effectiveness. Oh, and you also gain a buff that makes foes easier to stun. Check out the video below:
Rallying Cry
Previously, Rallying Cry increased mana regeneration for you and your allies, while also buffing damage versus enemies. Due to a rework in Path of Exile: Harvest, the skill will, instead, grant a percentage of your weapon damage to you and your allies based on the “monster power” of hostiles close to you. It also “exerts” your attacks, providing bonus damage based on the number of nearby allies.
Rallying Cry’s new effects can be used in conjunction with the Herald of Purity skill (which summons sentinels when you defeat an enemy). Even if you’re only playing solo, your own summoned minions can wield empowered attacks (while also buffing your own).
Brand skills
The most popular (and abusive) Brand build has been rebalanced to be slightly weaker, though there will be new options for players to try out in Path of Exile: Harvest. The league will have three new Brand skills and one new Brand support skill.
Arcanist Brand
When an enemy approaches the Arcanist Brand, it’ll trigger linked spells in sequence. Think of this as akin to The Poet’s Pen, except in Brand form. You can have a multitude of spell options to choose from as though they suddenly became Brands themselves.
You can see an example below where Arcanist Brand is used in conjunction with Magma Orb, Shock Nova, and Purifying Flame:
Penance Brand
Penance Brand is another new skill. It attaches to nearby enemies and then quickly spreads to additional enemies whenever it activates. If you use Brand Recall or if the enemy dies, the built-up energy in each enemy is released in a massive explosion. Check it out in the video below:
Path of Exile: Harvest – Revamping the passive skill tree
Path of Exile: Delirium introduced Cluster Jewels. Harvest, meanwhile, adds many new keystone passives and notable passives to the entire tree.
We’ve already mentioned additional support for certain concepts such as two-handers/Slams and Warcry skills, and there are a few more you can expect. For instance, some of Legion‘s keystone passives from Timeless Jewels — such as The Agnostic — will now become part of the main tree.
Delirium’s content and Vulkan tech
As mentioned earlier, Path of Exile: Delirium‘s content will go core. By default, there’s only a 10% chance that you’ll encounter the Mirror of Delirium portal and mists in various game levels. However, the chances increase depending on the number of additional content from other leagues in that area. It’s to encourage players to add more stuff such as sextants or Zana’s mods, customizing the areas of play, to make it likelier that they’ll encounter Delirium‘s content
Grinding Gear Games has also recently announced a Path of Exile technical beta test using the Vulkan API. Full integration will happen as part of the Harvest expansion as well.
The team’s aim is to make Path of Exile‘s graphics and performance more stable. It’s also to solve stuttering issues that were occurring with the game’s DirectX 11 renderer as a result of the graphics driver uploading shaders to the GPU. Plus, there are graphics technology improvements such as a new Bloom system that’s extensively used in the Harvest league, alongside highly detailed visuals and monster designs handled by the Path of Exile 2 team as mentioned in our league mechanics overview.
Grinding Gear Games plans to release Path of Exile: Harvest on June 19 for the PC. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One owners will be able to see what’s in store within the week after that. You can download Path of Exile via its official website or Steam.
