Path of Exile's next Challenge League is called Archnemesis. Releasing a teaser trailer to celebrate this occasion, Grinding Gear Games confirmed this new Challenge League launches alongside the upcoming expansion Path of Exile: Siege of Atlas. Without further ado, here’s what we know about Path of Exile - Archnemesis so far.
- Read More: Path of Exile 3.17 Update: Release Date, Siege of the Atlas Reveal, and Everything We Know So Far
Path of Exile - Archnemesis Release Date and Start Time
As confirmed in the new teaser trailer, we know that the Archnemesis Challenge League - alongside the Siege of Atlas expansion - arrives for PC players in Path of Exile on February 4, 2022, at 11am PT / 7pm GMT.
However, anyone playing Path of Exile on consoles must wait until February 9 before they can play the Archnemesis Challenge League and Size of Atlas expansion.
Archnemesis Challenge League Confirmed Changes
The following changes were noted by the development team following their Twitch reveal for the Siege of Atlas. These upcoming changes to the Archnemesis Challenge League were part of the wider PoE 3.17 Patch Notes: Here's everything that's set to change with the new challenge league:
The Archnemesis Challenge League Patch Notes
- Challenge leagues are a great opportunity for a fresh start in a new economy. All of your old characters and items are still present in the Standard and Hardcore leagues, but you're encouraged to join the new leagues, complete challenges and demonstrate your mastery of Path of Exile!
- Archnemesis is a challenge league that reinvigorates fights with rare monsters. It introduces around 60 new monster mods and allows you to customise your rare boss fights to control your level of risk and reward. These mods can be combined in over 35 recipes to create new, more powerful and rewarding mods. As you play through the league, you'll discover more recipes and learn how to best utilise them to get the most valuable rewards.
- When you slay regular Rare and Magic monsters in the Archnemesis League, they sometimes drop an itemised version of a new Archnemesis monster modifier. You store these in a dedicated inventory panel so that they don't clutter your regular inventory.
- Over the course of each area you play, you'll encounter four monsters that are frozen in place, petrified and bound to the Archnemesis statue. When you find such a monster, you can free it by empowering it with an Archnemesis mod. If you're able to successfully defeat the empowered monster, then you will receive the fixed reward that corresponds to that modifier.
- The mods you apply will accumulate as you play through the area. When you empower your second monster, it also has the mod you applied to the first monster. This results in a fight that has twice as many dangerous mods, and twice as many rewards. By the time you have empowered and slain four petrified monsters in an area, you will have received the first reward four times.
- More than half of the available mods are created by combining other mods together on the same monster. These recipe mods yield substantially more dangerous encounters and have more valuable rewards.
- To prevent you having to backtrack, there are more than four possible locations where you may encounter petrified monsters in each area, but only the first four you encounter can be empowered and fought.
- Archnemesis mods cannot be traded with other players. Your progress is your own.
- With 3.17.0, there are Standard, Hardcore and Solo Self-Found variations of the Archnemesis challenge league available. They have the same core mechanics and items. You can create private league versions of these leagues, with mods that make the game harder.
- The new challenge league includes a set of 40 new challenges. There are microtransaction rewards when you complete 12, 24, and 36 challenges. The challenge rewards are only obtainable in this league, and will be revealed in an upcoming news post.
- From the 19th challenge onwards and for every third challenge after that, you will receive pieces of the Archnemesis Totem Pole decoration to display in your hideout. The Totem Pole permanently showcases how many of the Archnemesis challenges you completed during the league.
Path of Exile - Archnemesis Twitch Reveal
Grinding Gear Games will reveal further details about the Archnemesis Challenge League on January 27, through the official Path of Exile Twitch account at 11am PT / 7pm GMT. Expect details on the mysterious statue shown in the teaser trailer, alongside any rewards that'll be a part of the Archnemesis Challenge League.
Currently, that’s everything we know. Details will be mentioned on the aforementioned Twitch stream, and we'll update this space as more information comes in.