Path of Exile 2 Early Access Info And Steam Deck Offline Mode

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Not too long ago, I was offered a chance to check out Path of Exile 2's live stream before it went live. Now, the live stream may have passed, but a lot of information was covered! I decided to do a roundup of all the info discussed and the details for the endgame portion of the experience. We also had a little Q&A afterwards where they talked a little about the Steam Deck and whether an offline mode would be included.

So, if you missed the live stream, here's a rundown of all that was discussed:

Classes:

There are going to be six classes available when Path of Exile 2 launches in early access:

• Monk - A Martial Artist who can empower their staff and utilize lightning or shooting air blasts from the staff. They also have a skill with a big bell that you can hit to send shockwaves that can harm enemies all around you.
• Warrior - A slower class, but hits much harder. Attacks are a bit slow, but you can dodge out of attacks. Skills include slots of different brute-force attacks like slamming the ground and a war cry. They can also raise their shield which can block all damage, though watch out for your stun meter.
• Ranger - An agile class that revolves around using the bow and ranged skills. You will be able to jump around a lot, while using arrows that can have a variety of elemental damage like ice, poison, electricity, fire, and more, that can be modified further.
• Mercenary - Similar to the Ranger, with a focus on ranged attacks, but can utilize different skills across different weapon types like grenade launchers and crossbows. They focus on higher damage rather than agility.
• Witch - The witch can utilize hordes of undead monsters to attack enemies so you can sit back a bit. You will use Spirit, which can be utilized to add interesting effects to your skills. You can allocate and select which minions you want in your horde, all of which cost spirit. Your Sceptre weapon designates how many units you can have in your horde, or use corpses to raise a bigger army.
• Sorceress - A more general magic user that can use all types of elemental spells like fireballs, sending electricity through the ground, a flame wall, and more. You can also combine spells to make them more powerful, like sending lighting through a firewall will give the lightning extra fire damage.

Skills and Support Gems

Skills in this game can be very malleable and changed as you play, which is just a joy. You use support gems to augment your skills, and with hundreds to choose from, you can modify the skills to make your attacks much more devastating. I have seen attacks completely change into devastatingly powerful moves just by swapping a gem here and there, so farming and playing around with skills will be pretty amazing.

Passive Skill Tree

Of course, the gigantic passive skill tree has returned. There are over 1,500 different nodes, and while all classes share the same tree, each class starts at a different point on the tree. You will get a point every time you level up, and you can easily respec. The tree is organized by similar effects, with some notable nodes that can give extra bonuses like a 30% chance to pierce enemies. There are attribute nodes that can give you extra stats and more special nodes that can give both positive and negative effects.

It's very easy to respec, using only gold, and is significantly more user-friendly than before.

Weapon Specialization

There are a couple of interesting things here with weapons. A new mechanic allows automatic weapon swapping to utilize different skills more effectively, but you can also change your entire passive skill tree based on the weapon you have equipped. This allows you to build out different weapons to increase damage and skills to complement what it can do.

For example, you could use a staff that has extra fire damage and a different staff to make your lightning damage do more. Your game can automatically swap the weapons based on the skill you use, and you can specialize them with specific passive skill trees to augment specific types of skills, making your fire and lightning spells do significantly more damage without sacrificing anything.

Items

There are four rarity groups for items, and you will constantly get and upgrade new items. You can use different ores to upgrade your weapons, adding up to six modifications, making them do more damage, giving bonus stats, and more. You can also disenchant items to get the ores you need. Some items will also have gem sockets that can give even more bonuses, and there is a way to give sockets to items that don't have any. And yes, all weapons are randomly generated.

There is also a neat way to trade and exchange items, and all items except gold are tradeable.

Ascension

Each class will be able to ascend to one of three different classes, making them significantly more powerful with a focus on one way to play. In early access, each class will have two ascensions to start. For example, you could use your sorceress to ascend to a Chronomancer and freeze time or the witch being able to ascend to literally become a demon. This can change how you play, and it looks brutal.

You will find different Ascension Trials as you play, which is how you unlock ascension for your characters by getting two different node points. You must complete a grueling gauntlet to prove your worth and earn your ascension, so you must ensure you are very prepared, as these will not be easy. It seems like a small roguelike-esque mode, as you will choose different rooms to go in with different effects or find boons to give you some buffs and bonuses as you play.

The other trial will test your strength and give you modifiers as you go through different rooms. You will get different modifiers, which can become overwhelming since they keep stacking on each other, and you will find a boss at every three rooms.

There will be two different ascendancy trials at early access, with more coming later on. You can get all of your ascendancy points in just one trial or by trying both.

The Endgame

The endgame has had a lot of thought put into it. There is a 25-hour campaign in Path of Exile 2, but the Endgame has been designed to run for hundreds of hours. There are 50 bosses and over 400 monster types, with the entire game to double in size throughout early access. In early access, there are three acts to the campaign with two difficulties to get to level 65 before getting to the endgame. The second difficulty will

The Atlas is the core of the endgame here. It's completely infinite and spans across the entire continent. Your goal is cleansing corruption, and you will have to use waystones to go to different areas, and you can add mods to your waystones to give you some buffs when going to a new map. All areas feel completely distinct and are very randomized to make them feel more and more unique. There are a lot of random encounters within these maps as well! But be warned, if you die, the map will lock, and you will have to find another way around the node.

There are also trees for each part of the endgame content to make it easier or harder, but with better rewards. This was implemented so you wouldn't have to respec your tree to complete specific parts of the content.

As for what else you can do, we have Breach, which will have you killing demons that spawn out that you have to quickly kill to keep the breach open. There are ways to augment breaches to be much more friendly to you, and you can stack these to make it significantly easier. Breaches can give special rings that could be the strongest rungs in the game. You can also create a breach stone to bring the fight to the demon instead of in your world. You can also fight their leader, giving you special points to put into your Breach tree to make it harder, but with better rewards.

There are also ritual alters you can find. You will slaughter monsters in the ritual circle to feed the alter, and will have to fight to survive the monsters coming back to life as well. You will be able to buy items with tribute points, including items to modify or remove items you don't want.

Delirium is a new mode that keeps you in the mist to continually demolish enemies. The more you play, the more rewards you will get. You can even get a special item to augment waystones to be more powerful or attach notable skills to your items, acting kind of like a free skill point.

Expeditions will see you going to different dig sites to dig out artifacts. There are undead all around, so you will have to take them down, and you can exchange the artifacts for more useful items and tablets. You may also find special logbooks that bring you to bigger dig sites with a lot of treasure.

Outside of The Atlas, there are Endgame Trials. You will unlock more floors to these as you play, with four floors to unlock. There are many powerful items to find here, including jewels you can socket into your passive skill tree to modify it further. You can even get orbs to corrupt different items, which is risky but could give some huge rewards like adding a third socket.

Pinnacle Boss is the most difficult content in Path of Exile 2. You will find a fortress on The Atlas and you will need to find three keys to enter. First, you have to find and defeat the three factions which hold the keys. There wasn't anything else shown after that, but this is the hardest part of the game currently.

The Steam Deck

Through the presentation, there was also a Q&A section that answered a lot of questions, including some that relates to the Steam Deck! There will be no offline play on the Steam Deck unfortunately, since this is an online-only game, but they did confirm that the game is playable on the Steam Deck and recommends the 40 FPS lock for it.

And that's all that we discussed! I couldn't be more excited for the game, and I love how confident the developers are about it running on the Steam Deck. I do have some worries for endgame and how hectic it could get, but I am optimistic.

You can pre-order Path of Exile 2 now on Steam starting at $29.99. Surprisingly, it does say the game will also support HDR, which I was not aware of before!

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