While its sequel may be preparing for launch in December, the original Path of Exile isn’t simply laying quietly in the wings – quite the reverse. Grinding Gear Games has promised that both games will continue to run simultaneously, tossing seasonal leagues back and forth between one another to ensure that every possible player type is catered to. Path of Exile 2 is very much carving out its own path, after all, so why put one of the best RPGs of all time to bed? I’m live at Exilecon to hear exactly what we can expect from the PoE 3.30 update, Covens of Umbra, which arrives in just one week.
Path of Exile 3.30 drops us right into a “centuries-old conflict between the Witches of Umbra.” Alongside that comes what Game Director Jonathan Rogers calls one of the biggest transformations to the endgame in a long while, with overhauls to most systems. Even more exciting is that Mirage, the hugely transformative mechanic first introduced with the 3.28 league, is now ready to go core. Rounding things out is a pretty beefy loot rework, which should mean far less item quantity spam and much more valuable rewards up for grabs, even among drops on the ground.
Starting with the league, we’ll be running into the Coven Queen’s minions right from the opening areas. Encountering witchy rites will give you the opportunity to twist their power in your favor, stealing their power to invoke multiple fates that ramp up the challenge and potential rewards of major boss battles. The further you progress, the more of these you’ll encounter, until you’re collecting four or five fates in an area, with the potential to combine up to three of them for a single fight. Some will even bear special combo effects that will trigger should you fulfil the additional conditions, and stacking duplicate fates dramatically boost their effects.
The other addition for Covens of Umbra is the Wickerman, which you’re able to bind your character’s soul to in order to gain power from your fallen foes. Defeating fate-enhanced enemies has a chance to drop various grisly trophies such as their limbs, which you can then infuse into the Wickerman to gain a scrap of their essence, empowering your character. You’re able to impale up to four at once – head, body, arm, and leg – and with three tiers of increasing rarity and potency, you’ll want to farm for the best buffs.
Covens of Umbra really needs you to encounter all the big area bosses for its core mechanic to work, so GGG has rearranged campaign zone layouts “where necessary” to make sure you always run into them without too much map scouring. What about those locations without a boss? Over two dozen new additions spread across the campaign will have you covered there, and all bosses can be farmed through their endgame variants when you get there.
There’s one final aspect to watch out for as you farm: Grim Fates. These are special variants of the modifiers that are specifically attuned to individual pinnacle bosses, transforming or empowering many of their attacks to challenge you in completely fresh ways. Each of these you collect will be stored in a special slot on your Wickerman so you can use them when the time is right, and defeating fate-empowered pinnacle bosses opens the door to snagging their own viscera trophies, promising some of the strongest buffs in the league. Once you’re feeling strong enough, take on the Coven Queen herself.
While the league is more than plentiful enough to keep us busy, PoE 3.30 also introduces a “far-reaching and comprehensive endgame shakeup, with changes to almost every single core league mechanic.” The recently reshaped Atlas map now has various colored regions that allow you to determine which mechanics you’ll run into, with increasing stacks as you tackle multiple maps within a zone. As you’d expect, bumping these up means additional danger, but with amplified payouts to match.
“We’ve tried to create new and interesting mechanics for every primary league mechanic you can find on the Atlas,” Rogers notes. Blight introduces new modifiers such as Mycotic lanes, more diseased Blight cores, or lanes entirely populated with Rogue Exiles carrying uniques. In Ritual, you’ll encounter the option to invite the gaze of the Bodach, reigniting the ritual with additional phantasmal attacks to ramp up the challenge, or to dump your excess tribute to summon a minion of the King in the Mists.
Ultimatum might now offer the chance to ‘double down,’ letting you gamble on running twice as many rounds but without any opportunity to pull out. Alternatively, you might find Soul Cores that you can strap to your back, amplifying the speed of encounters but with the caveat that monsters will be able to snatch those souls as they attack you, empowering themselves. Or there’s the Trialmaster’s Beating Heart, which grants your character a massive surge of adrenaline if you take it down.
Let’s say you fancy Expeditions. “You might sometimes find one that’s just huge,” Rogers says. Other possible options are Runic Obelisks that can be detonated to revive every magic and rare monster already killed for a second round, or glowing monster markers that will spawn exclusively rare foes. How do you maximize your chances of getting both of these synergistic mechanics together? One way is by raising that mechanic’s rank, but you’ll also be able to use a new system for 3.30 called Threads of Creation, which is replacing Scarabs.
There are Threads of Creation that you can find among your regular loot for each of the primary league mechanics: Abyss, Blight, Legion, Breach, Incursion, Betrayal, Bestiary, Expedition, Ultimatum, and Ritual. Toss these into your map device to juice up that specific mechanic, going up to a total of eight if you really want to pump the possible problems and payouts on offer. As you get deeper in, you’ll be able to do this for three mechanics at once. Your Atlas also remembers the Thread loadout you last used, allowing you to repeat it quickly for each map you challenge if you want.
Do so for Betrayal, for example, and you might find Caterina’s Corpse Sculpture to pull in all the Syndicate members in your prison at once, with the potential for Caterina to join them. Defeating her can reward you with Jewels bearing veiled modifiers, along with mastery stats. Veiled mods on Syndicate items can also drop as fractured.
All the old Scarab mechanics aren’t just vanishing, however – they’re being spread across other systems, most notably the new-look Atlas passive tree. “Our intention is that the average player is getting a similar amount of juice to what they were getting before with Scarabs, but as a baseline from the tree,” Rogers explains. “Then the additional layer of Threads on top adds a bunch of other new random outcomes as well that lead to fun jackpots that keep things fresh.”
The entire Atlas tree has been refreshed for 3.30, including many of those Scarab-inspired modifiers, and a whole range of new effects. Perhaps you’d like to infuse map bosses with Golden Volatiles that pay out plenty of currency if you’re able to catch them, or guarantee that Mercenaries will show up with specific classes of your choosing. Expect plenty of ways to dramatically bolster the likes of Abyss Rifts, Incursion Architects, Ultimatum encounters, and more.
GGG isn’t done; Rogers wants to add “more overlapping axes of randomness” by creating ways for different league mechanics to cross over and interact. For example, a Tormented Spirit spawning next to an Expedition will bury it under a haunted gravestone. Strongboxes could be infected by Blight, letting you open them multiple times with empowered rewards. Mercenaries in close proximity to an Abyss pit might be joined by the Chaplain of the Well, a special unit with additional power, distinct rewards, and of course the potential to be recruited should you get your hands on a Warrant.
“There are dozens more examples like this,” Rogers teases. “Ultimatums and Strongboxes interacting, or Essences and Expeditions, or Harvest and Rituals… We made a ton of these.” Other modifier mechanics such as the Viridian Wildwood and Sentinels can now spawn at any tier of map as a baseline, making them more common sights across the endgame. Biggest of all is that Mirage is now a core mechanic, and it’ll cover the entirety of maps that it affects, essentially more than doubling the area you have to explore “and then some.”
GGG has breathed fresh life into many other systems as well. Look out for constantly spawning Beyond portals and an upgraded boss fight; a new Sacred Roots encounter for Harvest that replaces the Grove in maps; and experience and gold-boosting buffs from Settlers. Delve, Heist, and Sanctum will now have their required resources marked on the Atlas so you can guarantee getting them without having to farm and hope. Bestiary no longer requires yellow beast captures, Expedition lets you flip a coin to gamble between two possible crafts on an item, and Temple offers new potential for double Vaal corruptions.
That’s still not all. “Over time, the core drop pool has become stale,” Rogers remarks. Magic and rare ground loot can now appear at specific tiers, with tier-five magic items having a chance to drop as fractured bases. Alongside this, a shakeup to magic find and rarity bonuses will make it so that your best currency comes from unique and boss mobs, and you should encounter plenty of worthwhile items on the floor at long last.
Path of Exile 3.30, Covens of Umbra, launches on Friday November 13. You can play for free on Steam or via the Grinding Gear Games launcher. Combine that with the full rundown of Path of Exile 2’s 1.0 launch, and whatever flavor of PoE you love, 2026 is going to be rounding out in style, with plenty to look forward to as the new year rolls in.