Path of Exile Wants You Back
The dangerous part of returning to Path of Exile is how quickly an evening can become a routine. Open the familiar notes, repeat the familiar decisions, wonder where the time went. Covens of Umbra has an argument for interrupting that habit.
The free expansion launches Friday, November 13 (Pacific time). Grinding Gear Games is replacing Scarabs with Threads of Creation and redesigning the Atlas passive tree. Veterans will have some relearning to do.
I welcome that prospect. Efficiency is satisfying until you realise you have stopped making decisions. An expansion should occasionally make an experienced player hesitate. Whether this one makes that hesitation enjoyable remains to be tested.
How much trouble do you want?
In the new league, defeating covenites lets you select a Fate for the area’s boss, raising the difficulty and rewards. Those empowered bosses can yield Viscera for your Wickerman, granting you some of their power.
That is an appealingly nasty bargain. Greed becomes something you choose before the fight, with the possibility that you have just made your own evening harder. A reward is more interesting when you remember what you risked for it. The balance could still spoil the bargain, of course. An announcement cannot tell us where the point of frustration will fall.
Give yourself room to experiment
Threads go into the Map device to apply a chosen league mechanic and alter monster difficulty and rarity. Spending them can also trigger additional random effects. The refreshed Atlas tree changes the decisions surrounding those runs.
That is enough reason to leave the old farming plan closed for the first session. Choose an activity you used to enjoy, inspect its new options, and find out what you want to try. A returning player does not need to turn every unfamiliar choice into homework before touching it.
The distinction matters. Reading a guide can save you from wasting resources. Letting a guide make every decision can save you from the part you came back to enjoy. I would give this expansion an evening of deliberate inefficiency before trying to optimise it.
We have not played Covens of Umbra. This is a recommendation for approaching its announced changes, not a verdict on the finished league. Start with the original Path of Exile, check the new Atlas choices when you reach them, and pick one familiar activity to reassess. Let the spreadsheet wait until you have something of your own to put in it.
