Grinding Gear Games, the developer behind Path of Exile, has managed to keep its newest expansion under wraps over the last few months, but details about it are now ready to be shared. The new expansion is called Path of Exile: Heist and it will be coming to PC on September 18, with a console release on September 23. Screen Rant was recently able to sit down with the Managing Director and Co-Founder of Grinding Gear Games, Chris Wilson, in order to discuss all the details of Heist and what players can expect from it when it releases.
Heist is adding a lot of new content to the Path of Exile for players to check out. There is the new Heist League, as well as 13 NPCs, Unique Items, Experimental Base Type items, a new set of spells, and many other additions to the game. Wilson informed us that the team originally intended to release the game back in June, but complications due to the COVID-19 shutdown pushed development back considerably. Despite the shutdown still being in place in New Zealand, Wilson said that the team has finally adjusted to working from home which has allowed them to complete the update.
Path of Exile: Heist‘s Heist League will task players with traveling to a new area called Rogue Harbor, where they can meet up with a group of rogues and begin planning large scale criminal adventures together. These new heists have different hurdles, like locked doors or traps, that players will be forced to hire rogues with special skills to help them with. The goal of each heist is to make it through the area without setting off alarms or alerting the guards to your presence. If the player manages to make it to the vault without setting off any alarms, the gurds will then be alerted and players will need to quickly decide what item they would like to steal before trying their best to make it out alive.
There are many different types of rogues in the update that players will be able to choose from. Each of these rogues have a specific skill set that will be necessary to make it through a heist without setting off an alarm or understanding how to escape successfully. Four of the rogues will be able to provide players with information about each heist location or offer them transportation. Nine will have skills like lockpicking or demolition that can be used to help players get in and out of a heist area successfully. In order to use these thieves effectively players will need both contracts and markers, which are brand new items to Path of Exile: Heist.
Contracts are maps that represent each heist location, and each one lets players know what Artifact they will need to steal from the area as well as what types of skills a player’s rogues will need to complete the heist efficiently. Just like all items in Path of Exile, Contracts can also be crafted and modified. Players can use all of the normal methods of crafting items in order to change the difficulty of the heist, which will in turn give players access to better rewards that scale with the challenge. Markers are a new form of currency added in Path of Exile: Heist that players will be able to hire rogues with, and can also be used to complete other objectives or as payment in other scenarios. Players will be able to earn both Contracts and Markers by completing heists or killing enemies.
Once players have obtained a Contract and the necessary amount of Markers to start a heist, players can take the materials to the Wayfinder in Rogue Harbor to try and complete the heist. As we’ve already stated, the object of each heist is to make it to the main vault room and steal the special Artifact that is being held there, but players also have the option of looting other items from special treasure rooms along the way. Doing so will come at a cost, however, and will raise the alarm as greedy players attempt to line their pockets further. Wilson showed us an example of what happens when players hit the limit on their alarm, and it can go south for the player very quickly. As soon as the alarm starts blaring, dozens of enemies will come rushing into the area to cut off the player’s escape. If the player can’t make it out alive, they will lose any loot that they picked up during the heist – and will have the sting of a failed criminal venture in the back of their minds for their follow-up attempt.
The thing that Wilson seemed most excited to show off was the inclusion of Grand Heist Blueprints. These special blueprints work very similarly to Contracts, but contain the details for a job much larger than a normal heist. Blueprints will require players to collect intel to plan their route through the area. By spending Markers, players will be able to reveal parts of the blueprint like escape routes or special treasure rooms. On top of this, players will also be able to hire several rogues for the job rather than just one like in the normal heist scenarios on offer in Path of Exile: Heist.
Each Grand Heist has several wings to explore with their own unique items as well as their own Alert Level that players will have to manage. Players are forced to decide which rogues are better suited to a wing of the heist, as each wing presents its own unique challenges. At the end of each wing players will be presented with a few glass display cases containing items for the player to choose from. Players will only be able to take one though, so they must choose wisely.
Wilson says that the most interesting aspect of all of this is that it adds some completely new mechanics to Path of Exile. Typically players aren’t forced to think about room layout and stealth as much as they need to worry about combat and tactical plotting in Path of Exile. Path of Exile: Heist completely turns those ideas on their head. Heists force the player to think more strategically in terms of environment as they plan their entry and exit points of the area. Players must also decide if they would rather fight a group of enemies or sneak past them to stop the alarm from being raised. This level of strategic thinking will be a completely new concept for a lot of Path of Exile players, though rogues familiar with tabletop RPG settings will at least have some experience to draw on.
Along with the Heist League, Grinding Gear Games is also adding several new items for players to acquire throughout the game. Most of these items are tailored for specialized builds that use odd combinations of skills to give them boosts in combat. An example of these unique introductions is the Corpsewalker Unique Boots, which create corpses behind the player as they walk. Wilson says that players who use builds where they raise the dead or detonate corpses will be be able to use these boots very effectively.
Many of the classic spells for Path of Exile are being reworked and rebalanced for the new update, and there are four brand new spells being added in. We were shown two of the new spells and how they will work in-game. The Flame Wall predictably creates a wall of fire in front of the player. Players can use this to put a barrier between themselves and their enemies and even fire projectiles through the wall, which will catch fire and deal additional damage. The other new spell is the Void Sphere, which creates a black hole that will slow enemies down and pull them into the center, a particularly useful spell for overwhelming odds.
The last thing that Wilson revealed to us was the fact that Path of Exile is now coming to Mac. The new Mac edition of the game is identical to the PC build and this version will be fully integrated into the PC servers. The Mac version of the game will release at the same time as Path of Exile: Heist. There is a massive amount of content coming with this update to the game, so Path of Exile players on every platform should have more than enough to keep themselves busy.
Path of Exile: Heist will release on Windows PC and Mac on September 18th and PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on September 23rd.
