Path of Exile Harvest Teasers
The newest Path of Exile league has finally been announced, and it’s looking like it’ll be a fun one. Introducing Path of Exile Harvest, or, as many are calling it, Path of Exile Farmville! With just over a week to go until launch, we’ve started to see some very interesting skills and mechanics. We’ll cover some of the bigger things here and keep our eyes peeled for more over the next week!
Harvest League Mechanics
As the fun name implies, Harvest league is all about getting seeds from maps, planting them, and growing your very own monsters – as gardening should be. From the trailer it appears you will be clicking on a group of pods within a map – likely opened as a result of slaying the surrounding monsters – and gathering the seeds that drop out. Once you have a handful of seeds, you can take them to the new NPC and travel to the ‘sacred grove’. When you are ready you can choose to sprout the seeds, which will spawn monsters to kill. These monsters will power nearby machines that you can place, allowing you to do crafting recipes within it. The machine system seems rather complex, allowing you to take fuel from one machine to another via cables. We’ll know more about how this works as it gets closer to launch.
This mechanic is interesting in many ways, but the biggest thing is that it is meant to make crafting far more accessible to the majority of players. It isn’t meant to push items to new crazy power levels, as other leagues such as Synthesis did, but it is meant to allow the average player far more access to higher tiers of gear. It is also all entirely within the game, so you won’t have to go to external resources to understand the systems, like you did in Bestiary and Synthesis. It is meant to improve the game without breaking it, and from what we’ve seen so far, it looks like it strikes a good balance.
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Harvest League Skill Reworks
There are a ton of skill reworks going into Harvest league. The major changes are coming to Brands, Slam Skills, and Warcries.
Brand skills were fully reworked. The biggest difference comes in the fact that now brands snap back to where they were first cast upon the death of their target, and now Brand Recall does not refresh the brand duration, meaning the Archmage shenanigans are gone. However, there are three new brands and a new brand support to compensate. Arcanist brand casts linked spells each time it activates. Wow. Just wow. That’s insanely strong. Penance brand doesn’t deal any damage during its duration, instead spreading to nearby enemies gradually. Upon being removed from the target, it detonates dealing massive damage. Wintertide brand deals cold damage over time to the attached target, dealing more damage the longer it is attached. The new brand support is Swiftbrand support, which lowers the active and inactive duration of a brand, but increases its activation rate. This is a massive damage increase with multiple brands in play.
Slam skills are being given, generally, larger AoE, higher damage numbers, and more reliable mechanics. Skills such as Sunder and Perforate are being changed mechanically to be more reliable. Tectonic Slam is having its ‘charged slam’ mechanic removed and replaced with larger AoE for number of endurance charges. It is also being smoothed out by losing one charge every three attacks, rather than with a 35% chance. There is a new slam skill being added as well, Earthshatter, which “sends out five damaging fissures in all directions when you slam the ground”. It also leaves spikes at the end of each fissure, which then explode if hit by another slam or warcry skill.
Warcries have been buffed across the board. Enduring cry now has a burst of healing as well as elemental resistances built into the existing skill. Intimidating cry can now be used as a gem rather than through items, and it empowers your next attacks to deal double damage. Ancestral cry is an entirely new ability which causes your next few strikes to also target nearby enemies. Seismic cry is another new ability which causes your slam effects to have larger AoE. Rallying cry now gives nearby allies a buff that grants a percentage of their weapon’s damage as additional damage, as well as boosting your next few attacks. Infernal cry is the new Abyssal cry, and now coats nearby enemies in ash, causing them to explode on death. Lastly General’s cry is yet another new ability which can be linked to melee attacks, and when used create ghosts that will use the ability once before dissipating – similar to how The Savior works.
Obviously there is a ton of new stuff coming, and I can’t wait to try it all out. Hopefully you guys are as excited as I am to test everything!
Skill Tree Changes
The biggest change, as usual, comes in the form of skill tree reworks. There are a huge number of them coming this time around, allowing for a ton of build diversity and many entirely new builds. Many of the changes come from the Timeless Keystones, where several of them have become core on the tree, while also being replaced by entirely new keystones within the jewels. For example, The Agnostic was previously part of the Militant Faith timeless jewel, but now it will be on the tree naturally. Within the jewel, it will be replaced by a new keystone, Transcendence. Transcendence reads: “Armour applies to Fire, Cold, and Lightning Damage taken from Hits instead of Physical Damage. -5% to all maximum Elemental Resistances.” As you can see, there are some very unique and build defining keystones coming out, this is just one of many.
There are also new notable clusters being added around the tree. As usual, they are extremely powerful, with new notables that give Elusive on kill, stronger brands, and even Tribal Fury as a natural notable on the tree – no more need to anoint it! Across the board these are strong buffs to a variety of builds, and enable many more. And there are still lots to come!
So far my personal favourite of the new additions is a timeless jewel keystone called Supreme Ostentation. It reads: “Ignore Attribute Requirements. Gain no inherent bonuses from Attributes.” This is absolutely the definition of build-enabling. Right off the bat this allows the use of Garb of the Ephemeral, which is likely the best item in the game, if you can wear it. But it also allows easier gearing for any build that doesn’t heavily care about stats. Which largely means that any build not heavily focused on health, energy shield, or stat-stacking can likely benefit from this. In particular the whole Shadow class will benefit in a major way, since they tend to have lower life totals, scant amounts of ES, and not scale off of dexterity in any way. I’m excited to see Garb of the Ephemeral shoot up to 100ex, and try my best to find one!
Final Word
This is everything we know so far about Harvest League, but there is so much more to come, and so many more exciting things to cover and try out. This league is already shaping up to be an exciting one, hopefully they can deliver on so many incredible concepts!
