Every 3 months, Grinding Gear Games announces a new league for Path of Exile. This hardcore aRPG that harkens back to Diablo 2 is arguably one of the best free to play video games ever made.
Each league includes new enemies to fight, locations or Maps to explore, and hundreds of new items to experiment with. While each league has gotten more ambitious with items, “Delirium” takes this to a new level with Jewels that add new pathing options to your passive tree and Uniques that can enable new builds. Of course, there is an equal chance for things to go wrong with this league. Here are 5 reasons we are excited to Path of Exile’s new “Delirium” league, along with 5 reasons why we’re worried.
10 Excited: New Encounters
Every zone in “Delirium” will contain a mirror that will spawn a thick fog and, spawning from that fog, a horde of nightmarish demons players get to slay.
These nightmares have modifiers that make them more dangerous than your average monsters. For leveling, this is going to be an amazing change of pace for those who’ve mastered the 10 Act campaign Path of Exile has to offer. For endgame players, this will also be fantastic to give Maps that extra risk and reward factor to them.
9 Worried: Difficulty
Since these monsters have powerful modifiers that make them tougher than most enemies, this can result in some odd difficulty spikes if Grinding Gear Games doesn’t balance it properly.
Of course, players can skip interacting with the mirror altogether if they wish to not participate with the mechanic, but then they are missing out on the whole point of the league. Since these nightmares also give existing enemies powerful talents, it could make leveling a complete nightmare or, worse yet, result in only a small subset of builds capable of beating endgame bosses like the Conquerers or Siris.
8 Excited: Economy Refresh
Tied to every league release is a fresh slate for every player, veteran or newcomer. Players will have to level characters from scratch with no items carrying over from Standard or past leagues.
Thanks to this economy refresh, items that would normally not be worth much are now highly sought after. The first week of a league, for example, players are looking to acquire good rare items with resistances and life upgrades to push harder content. Leveling Uniques gain value, and coveted endgame items that drop from tough bosses are worth an insane amount of currency. The rush to getting currency to make your perfect build a few weeks into the league is one reason why Path of Exile is considered one of the best aRPGs of all time.
7 Worried: League Mechanic Bloat
With dozens of leagues released for Path of Exile, most of them have found their way into the core game in some fashion.
Most leagues have been added to the core game through a random chance of spawning in Maps, typically around a 10% chance to occur. While this was fine for a few leagues, we are now at the point where two to three events can happen in one Map at once. With the inclusion of Orbs of Delirium and the league itself including older league mechanics, it can get fatiguing having to manage half a dozen meta-game systems at the exact same time every Map.
6 Excited: New Skills
One of the most enjoyable parts of a new league in Path of Exile is the new bundle of skills and support gems players get access to.
While only thee skills have been revealed so far, each seems to enable certain playstyles or make certain characters more viable. Take Blade Blast, for example. This skill will detonate remaining blades cast from skills like Ethereal Knives or Bladefall. Not only will this deal great damage to bosses, but these blades can also be manipulated for Animate Weapon characters, granting a consistent way of generating Animated Weapons during boss fights where there are no weapons on the ground to animate.
5 Worried: Simulacrum
The Simulacrum is “Delirium” league’s endgame Map that players are working to complete. Every Delirium encounter drops shards that will craft this Map after 100 are combined.
Similar to leagues like “Breach” and “Legion,” 100 splinters will create a dedicated Map that will store a difficult encounter that, when successfully completed, will reward a massive amount of loot. Unlike those leagues, “Delirium” only has one endgame Map to play instead of Breach’s four or Legion’s 5. This could result in Simulacrum runs becoming very boring after repeated runs. The loot could also be underwhelming in this Map as well, which could further exacerbate this issue.
4 Excited: Endgame Improvements
The “Conquerers of the Atlas” expansion was an overall success for Path of Exile, revamping an endgame system with new bosses and a much more engaging progression system.
Hardcore players were sad to see missing recipes to uncomplete Maps in order to target farm certain items in one or two Maps. This was impossible in “Metamorph” league, but GGG has heard the frustration and they are fixing this in the next update. Combined with the changes to make Conquerer spawns deterministic, completing your Atlas will be easier than ever before.
3 Worried: Reward Frequency
While splinters are likely to be plentiful in Delirium encounters, the drops monsters have themselves could be underwhelming.
Some leagues in Path of Exile added vast quantities of monsters that contributed to currency gains and potential Map drops. Leagues that focused more on bosses like “Bestiary” were disliked because there was little to compensate for the lack of currency drops every Map. While “Delirium” doesn’t seem to have an issue with monster quantity, a lack of good rewards from these monsters could result in players skipping encounters altogether, especially if the Simulacrum Map isn’t rewarding enough.
2 Excited: Passive Jewels
Cluster Jewels are new Jewels introduced this league. Unlike regular jewels that grant bonuses to your character, these Cluster Jewels introduce entirely new passive tree nodes to invest in.
The Cluster Jewel itself is randomly generated when acquired, determining the minor nodes and potential notables provided when socketed into the passive tree. With how large Path of Exile’s passive tree is, seeing a system for players to expand it is simply incredible. Over 280 new notable passives are included in this system, allowing for an unprecedented amount of customization since Ascendencies were added to the game.
1 Worried: Performance
Every league in Path of Exile has pushed the visual quality and technical performance of the game. It was not uncommon to have the game temporarily freeze in the past few leagues due to the sheer amount of things happening.
With “Delirium,” the number of enemies on the screen plus the dense fog could result in significant performance slowdown for most people’s PCs. Worse yet, this could make console versions of the game drop to the single digits if not optimized properly, making this league unplayable on the Xbox One or PlayStation 4 consoles. This could be the best league ever created for Path of Exile, but that won’t be any good if no one can actually play the new content without massive performance issues.
NEXT: 5 Reasons Path Of Exile Is Going To Be Better Than Diablo 4 (& 5 Reasons It Won’t)
