Trial of the Ancestors, a new expansion for Path Of Exile, will officially launch on August 18. During ExileCon 2023, they got quite a sneak peek at what to expect. So let’s recap what’s covered in this new expansion while we wait for more to be revealed in the future.
Trial Of The Ancestors
Trial of the Ancestors is an Auto-Chess style Tournament. You can travel to the afterlife, fight Chieftains and drop more POE Currency. Collect Silver Coins as you play new leagues and these Silver Coins can be used to enter Tournament.
You’ll assemble a team of 3 fighters and compete against 10 other Tribes in a double elimination format. After each round, you can choose which team to play against next. But once you lose two games, your Tournament journey is over.
Auto Battler Style
At the beginning of the game, you can see the configuration of the enemy team. For this, you need to arrange your warriors to fight them on the battlefield. Unlike other Auto-Battle games, you can always fight with warriors of your choice. This is great for players who build powerful characters.
You can respawn at the designated Totem and go into battle. Your goal is to destroy the other team’s Totem. When warriors die, they respawn at Totem for a short period. Once a totem is destroyed, warriors die instantly and cannot respawn. But don’t worry, Hinekora’s Sight will protect your core characters from dying in the afterlife.
Warriors
Therefore, strategy and tactics are very important to win the game. Different warriors have different strengths. You need to get the best results by placing these warriors accurately on the battlefield. Here’s what we know so far about the warriors:
- Turtle: Slow and hard to kill. It’s great for defense or dealing with enemies on the front line. Turtle’s low movement speed means you need to place him where he can easily reach enemies, or where enemies can easily reach him.
- Tuatara: Fast, deceptive, and good for all positions. Tuatara looks like an ideal warrior. Because it can break through enemy defenses and wipe out their totems before they have a chance to rally.
- Goliath of Night: You can place this in the center to intercept enemies chasing you, and to disrupt enemies rushing towards your Totem. His control effect can help you have enough time to deal with the enemy’s attack.
Favor
At the end of the game, it will reward you with Favor and POE Orbs. Each Tribe is individually Favoured and used to acquire enough warriors, field POE items and equipment for the upcoming battle. All Tribes have their own specialty and they can mix and match to form the perfect team.
You can activate these Field Items for their special effects during a match. If not activated, they will last until the next match. All warriors, field items and equipment are wiped after each match. It also means a fresh start and experience in every game.
Tournament Rewards
Success in Tournament increases your ranking in related Tribes. You get unique rewards for every round you win. You can see this reward when you choose the next Tribes to fight against.
Passive Tree Tattoos
Among them, a new exclusive reward is Passive Tree Tattoos. It allows you to enhance your passive tree by replacing base property nodes. All Tribes have its own unique Passive Tattoos with exclusive unique POE items. These Tattoos include:
- Tattoo of the Ngamahu Firewalker
- Loyalty Tattoo of Utula
- Tattoo of the Ramako Scout
- Tattoo of the Valako Storm Conduit
- Honored Tattoo of the Hatungo
- Honored Tattoo of the Wise Man
Omens
In addition to this, this Trial of the Ancestor also rewards a fully completed new item, Omens. Omens are in your inventory and will be activated once we met certain conditions. It can consume only 1 Omen per combat area, so you don’t have to carry around an inventory full of Omens. Omens are one-offs. Here’s all Omens we’ve seen so far:
- Omen of Return
- Omen of Refreshment
- Omen of the Soul Devourer
- Omen of Fortune
Hinekora’s Lock
As a new currency item, she allows you to see it will use which new currency item on the craft. You can also see the results of promoting an item before actually executing it.
New Atlas Passive Keystones
The Atlas passive tree changes your gameplay experience by allowing you to customize the alliance mechanics you encounter by allocating skill points. This time around, they’ve changed the ending dramatically by adding new Atlas Passive Keystones, offering even more ways to play Path of Exile.
The developer will show us the rest in the next few weeks. Atlas Passive Keystones they’ve shown us so far include:
- Cassia’s Pride
- Destructive Play
- Extreme Archeology
- Lucid Dreams
- Speaker of the Dead
New Support Gems
The meta is changing a lot. New Support Gems will change the way many abilities are used. Here are the seven Support Gems they’ve shown us so far:
- Corrupting Cry
- Returning Projectile
- Fresh Meat
- Flame Wood
- Frigid Bond
- Locust Mind
- Sacrifice
New Unique Items
Each Karui Tribes rewards a unique item that embodies its essence. These items can only be got by defeating Tribe through Trial of the Ancestors Tournament. Goddess of Death Hinekora offers 4 additional unique items to Tournament winners.
Sanctum
Plus, Sanctum is back in this expansion, and it’s better than ever. Sanctum is now a tradable item in the form of Forbidden Tomes.
Forbidden Tomes represent a tier of Sanctum. When a layer is completed, the next layer generates as a tradable item. She keeps all your progress. You can choose to play your Sanctum or trade POE 3.22 Currency with other players. Depending on the reward or danger ahead.
In this new expansion, the difficulty and monster levels throughout Sanctum have been rebalanced. The developers made adjustments to too many existing Boons and Afflictions. Your primary defense now also protects your Resolve loss.
That’s everything you need to know about the new expansion in Path Of Exile, Trial of the Ancestors. Hope this guide helps you get off to a better start when Tournament officially begins. Let’s look forward to POE 3.22.