On April 8th, Grinding Gear Games held a live streaming session that featured the full reveal for Path of Exile: Ultimatum, a new trailer for Path of Exile 2, and more. Ultimatum is coming on April 16th, and it is a much bigger and bolder expansion than anticipated.

Ultimatum is a Vaal-themed League in Path of Exile, where players will be able to interact with the Trial Master. The patch comes with a lot of major improvements and quality of life adjustments to prior Path of Exile Leagues, making all of them much more enjoyable and much more useful than before: all except two, which have received a nerf and some minor renovations to compensate in one case, and only nerfs in the other.

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Accepting the Trial Master's challenge will activate the characteristic fight of the League, where players will have to defeat all opponents in battle within the area around the Vaal statues. The difficulty increases the more players keep refusing to take the current item offered by the Trial Master with his ultimatum, as they up the challenge in order to get progressively better loot. This League resembles Last Epoch's Arena, an endgame mode where difficulty escalates up until gamers either die or decide to stop fighting enemies.

Loot can be a strong drive for players to engage in more dangerous encounters, and what Ultimatum does right is letting everyone decide what is best for them. For example, party play will not be hampered by other players dying or wanting to stop, as each player will individually make their own choice. The only thing that is decided as a group is which modifiers are applied to monsters, and it's refreshing to see. The new stuff does not end there, however, as there are new Unique Items coming with Path of Exile: Ultimatum. Some of these are going to be Vaal-themed as well, harnessing the inclination of Vaal-related content to be chaotic, including strong connections with Vaal Orbs and randomness itself.

Furthermore, Path of Exile: Ultimatum is going to feature eight new gems, divided into four Active Gems and four Support Gems. They all have in common a strong, League-wide theme of blood sacrifice. These gems are in most cases working much better with lower amounts of Life, or they require Life to be used. This is something that was only tapped into by spell-based builds revolving around Pain Attunement and reserving Life via Auras, always playing at Low Life in order to deal more damage. PoE: Ultimatum changes that, and now players will have more choices for their builds, including literal blood magic, not just the Blood Magic Keystone.

Lastly, Inscribed Ultimatums will become available. When used in a Map Device, they open portals to the Trial Master's domain. Here, the Trial Master will ask players to risk a specific item, usually doubling the amount risked upon successful completion. This means players will be able to double stacks of Exalted Orbs, or getting end-game items from risking more common ones. However, the monsters will also have several modifiers to make them extremely powerful. Finally, the Inscribed Ultimatums can also be traded with other players.

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The first things to be reworked are world drops. Orbs of Binding and the all-new Veiled Chaos Orbs will now be available in the loot table for regular monsters and chests. There are five new base-type items that are going to be region-specific loot in the Atlas once Ultimatum goes live.

Final bosses from each Act are now dropping much better items to give a deeper feeling of achievement for beating challenging encounters. Last but not least, several League-specific Unique Items will now be available in the loot table for regular monsters, including all-powerful items like the Pledge of Hands, Maloney's Mechanism, the Badge of the Brotherhood, and the controversial, game-breaking Headhunter. This revolution in the game's loot is going to have a huge impact on the game's economy.

Another big change is coming in the form of new vendor recipes becoming available when Ultimatum drops. GGG's take on this is that it misses the days when players were having hard times figuring out exactly which items new recipes required. Every once in a while new recipes would come out, and players would go crazy trying to solve the puzzles that GGG created by trying every possible combination. In fact, no one knows which recipes will be added, what they will require, and what the rewards are going to be.

Lastly, Path of Exile: Ultimatum will see the return of Reliquary Keys. This item category was first introduced with the Legacy League, back in March 2017, with patch 2.6. The original keys opened a portal to the Reliquary, a zone with no monsters in it that had a big golden chest in the middle, which could award players with Unique Items with legacy values and legacy modifiers, allowing for overpowered builds to become available once more. The Ultimatum Reliquary Keys, however, are going to award Vaal-themed Unique Items and retain the foil version aspect that Legacy introduced.

Path of Exile: Ultimatum will mark a new era for Path of Exile, with all past Leagues becoming more rewarding when playing their content. This is going to impact how the end-game is played and what Atlas passives to use for maximizing the results.

The changes to Betrayal will make farming its content slightly more valuable, with GGG finally giving PoE fans more reasons to fight Catarina despite the fact that the Syndicate board resets. Abyss is also seeing improved Abyssal Jewels, the introduction of Abyss Scarabs, and the addition of Unique Abyssal Jewels to create more synergy between them. This is something players have been asking for some time now, and these changes can make a difference.

Ascendancy's Offering to the Goddess can now be used in the Map Device, opening a portal to a random end-game trial, increasing the speed at which they are found. Another change is that the Divine Font now grants players a choice between three Enchantments, finally introducing a semi-deterministic way to obtain them.

Another prominent change is that Temple of Atzoatl layouts can now be itemized and sold to other players, or stored for later use. The Temple itself is becoming a much more reliable way to farm currency in Path of Exile: Ultimatum, as monster density and general rewards are both increased. Blight will feature the new Tainted Oil, which makes anointing corrupted amulets possible. This is a great change that opens up many options, and that justifies the nerf to Talisman and its signature drops coming with Ultimatum.

Despite the overall nerfs to Harvest and its crafting options, GGG is going to significantly increase the rate at which players find the Sacred Grove. While this is unlikely to solve issues with deterministic crafting becoming less relevant, more Harvest encounters can at least partly compensate for that. At last, Ritual is going to be added into the core game. GGG is adjusting the rate at which some past Leagues appear in the game, including Ritual. The Atlas Skilltree will also see the addition of Ritual nodes, but details remain to be seen.

Path of Exile: Ultimatum is available on April 16th for PC and April 21st for consoles.

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