Grinding Gear Games has announced Path of Exile: Curse of the Allflame, the latest expansion for the long-running action RPG, which will launching on July 24 (PDT). The update introduces a brand-new challenge league, sweeping gameplay improvements, a new Scion Ascendancy, revamped endgame systems, and extensive balance changes.
Explore the Frozen Depths
The centerpiece of the expansion is the Curse of the Allflame league, where players join corsair captain Valerie and her cursed navigator Vesper on an expedition beneath Wraeclast’s frozen seas.
Using an Allflame-powered Bathysphere, players descend to the ocean floor, placing Allflame Lanterns to create temporary safe zones while exploring dangerous underwater ruins. Expeditions are filled with hidden treasure, deadly sea monsters, and valuable resources such as Dead Man’s Sulphur, which powers both exploration and new crafting mechanics.
Build Rewarding Voyages
Each completed expedition unlocks Charts, which can be combined on a new Voyage Board to create interconnected underwater expeditions.
Players can strategically arrange up to nine Charts, each adding unique modifiers that affect neighboring areas or the entire Voyage. These modifiers can increase loot, summon helpful allies, empower enemies, or unlock hidden locations such as abandoned treasure fields, lost Kalguuran shipments, and sunken Abyssal pits.
New Allflame Crafting System
The expansion introduces Allflame Crafting, a new crafting mechanic aboard The Sovereign. By combining an item, crafting currency, and Dead Man’s Sulphur, players can split an item into multiple possible crafting outcomes before selecting their preferred result. The system offers greater control over high-risk crafting while adding long-term decision-making through diminishing future possibilities.
Players can also discover rare Ancient Ducats, special relics that unlock exclusive crafting effects unavailable elsewhere. These include the ability to duplicate item variations, alter attribute requirements, or grant powerful new item properties.
Scion Receives New Luminary Ascendancy
One of the expansion’s biggest additions is the Luminary, an all-new Ascendancy Class for the Scion. Designed around commanding companions, the Luminary can permanently recruit, equip, and customize Mercenaries, creating entirely new character builds focused on powerful AI allies.
Meanwhile, the Mercenaries of Trarthus system returns as a permanent core mechanic. Beginning in Act 3, players can challenge mercenaries to duels, recruit defeated warriors to fight alongside them, and even obtain tradable Warrants that allow those mercenaries to be summoned again in future maps.
Major Endgame Revamps
Several endgame mechanics have received significant updates:
- Abyss has been completely redesigned with faster encounters, improved pacing, a new Pinnacle Boss, updated Atlas Passives, and exclusive sources for Abyssal Jewels and Stygian Vises.
- Legion introduces Vestigial Unique Items alongside Enshrouding Crystals, allowing players to transfer powerful modifiers between Unique armors. Encounters have also been streamlined with faster combat flow and improved reward tracking.
- Talismans have also been refreshed as Bestiary-exclusive rewards featuring new enchantment mechanics and updated Unique items.
Discover Atlas Anomalies
The expansion also adds Atlas Anomalies, mysterious self-contained encounters that appear after completing Voidstone-influenced maps.
These locations feature unique activities involving mechanics such as Heist, Expedition, Sacred Grove, Reflecting Mists, and Cadiro Perandus, giving players additional optional endgame content without requiring a traditional map.
Spellcasting and Socket System Overhaul
Curse of the Allflame delivers one of the game’s largest gameplay updates in years by redesigning the socket system for the first time since the original Path of Exile launched. Players can now freely socket any colored skill gem into linked equipment while socket colors instead provide quality-based progression bonuses.
Spellcasters also receive extensive improvements, including stronger caster staves, rebalanced Intelligence Ascendancies, clearer elemental identities, and a new category of Exceptional Skill Gems known as Pacts, which grant powerful spell effects in exchange for dangerous demonic drawbacks.
New Supporter Packs
Launching alongside the expansion are two cosmetic Supporter Pack collections: The Plague and Remidus.
Inspired by opposing themes of corruption and purification, the packs include exclusive armor sets, weapon skins, pets, portals, hideouts, map devices, and other cosmetic items. As with all microtransactions, the cosmetics are purely visual and are fully compatible with both Path of Exile and Path of Exile 2.
For more details, please refer to PC, Steam, Playstation, Xbox, and the Epic Games Store for more information.
