Skip to main content

Path of Exile announces Delirium as player hours spiked again in 2019

@jason_wilson

Getting Delirious

Above: Step into the mirror … and prepare to face a horde of monsters.

Image Credit: Grinding Gear Games

The Delirium expansion is the 3.10 update to Path of Exile, and it’s coming March 13 to PC (and one week later to PS4 and Xbox One). It’s the first expansion for 2020, and it brings in the following changes:

  • The Mirror of Delirium: A mirror appears in each area, and it bears a reflection of your character. Entering the mirror takes you into the “state of Delirium” for a short time, in which you fight a host of monsters.
  • You enter an area shrouded in mist … and full of monsters. The existing creatures have new abilities, and Delirium spawns different monsters as well.
  • The further you range from the Mirror, the more monsters you encounter. This enables you to have a bit of control over the difficulty you encounter. But the deeper you go into the mists, the greater the challenge … and the loot … becomes.
  • In Delirium, powerful monsters get an additional boost — they can manifest mighty demons that attack you.
  • Delirium can seep into every corner of Path of Exile, including Act Bosses and other major encounters.
  • Delirium’s core combat feels similar to expansions and leagues like Breach, but you have control over the difficulty, and it stacks with other Path of Exile content. It’s not a self-contained encounter, like Delve.

https://youtu.be/oO3gLp__tRg

  • Each area has a specific type of random Delirium reward. Grinding Gear’s examples include currency items, map items, and a rare armor piece. If you slay enough monsters inside Delirium, you receive one of these treasures. Once you do, it resets progress, and while you can earn another item, its returns just aren’t as good as with the first you get.
  • Endgame maps have Delirium encounters like the rest of the game.
  • You can find Orbs of Delirium, which you can use on maps to uniformly apply Delirium to that map. Each additional Orb boosts the density of Delirium, making it harder and more rewarding. Each Orb has a reward theme as well, setting it for that map. By doing all of this, players can make endgame maps harder with hellacious difficulty.
  • The Delirium League also has special cluster jewels that can greatly expand your passive skill tree. You put them into external sockets of the tree to create new passive skill clusters, which can then have their own additional sockets. Grinding Gear notes this is the biggest change to building characters since Ascendancy classes in 2016.
  • The Metamorph League, Grinding Gear notes, was so popular that it’s going to become part of the core content for Path of Exile. You’ll encounter it occasionally.

Skills for the bills

https://youtu.be/pa9BIbCnwJQ

Wilson notes that Grinding Gear has for some time been focusing on specific archetypes and creating new skills for them. Delirium is going to add new skills for any archetype.

June 5th: The AI Audit in NYC

Join us next week in NYC to engage with top executive leaders, delving into strategies for auditing AI models to ensure fairness, optimal performance, and ethical compliance across diverse organizations. Secure your attendance for this exclusive invite-only event.

The first is a new skill called Blade Blast. Previously, all Blade skills left blades on the screen. Blade Blast makes them explode, harming all foes in their area of effect. You can also use Animate Weapon to animate the blades left behind by Blade skills.

And if you enjoy using Wands (as I do), you will get Kinetic Bolt. Recognizing it has ignored Wand wielders, Grinding Gear said it wanted to add a skill that works well at low levels and can scale to the endgame. Kinetic Bolt creates a forking bolt that dishes out physical damage with what the studio calls a “solid” area of effect. It can combo with support gems like Barrage as well.

New loot!

Above: The Algor Mortis will enable new cold/lightning combos.

Image Credit: Grinding Gear Games

Delirium is bringing 13 new unique items. Four of them will be part of a cosmetic set. It can make you look like Delirium’s antagonist (which Grinding Gear isn’t talking about right now).

Wilson shared info on two unique items:

  • Perfidy: This is a melee-focused body armor. This enables you to carry up to two banners (items that you wear on your back that charge up as you kill monsters, granting you a big bonus based on how many you’ve slain when you set them on the ground). Perfidy gives the banners massive buffs.
  • The Algor Mortis: These gloves are caster-themed, and they open up new hybrid cold/lightning builds. They’d make a Force Lightning-wielding Sith Lord jealous!