Grinding Gear Games is calling Acts 6-10 "Part 2," promising they'll feel plenty different from your first time through. Some areas will be more heavily changed than others. Rogers ran through a swampy morass from an early act POE currency trade , explaining to me how the land was corrupted by a boss, then loaded up what that same area looked like in Part 2. With the boss dead it had reverted to a verdant field, with new not-so-zombieish enemies to fight through.

In some areas of Part 2 players will take a different route through a previously explored region, while in others retreading the same ground will be dramatically different. In Act 1, players fought through the swampy Fetid Pool against appropriately zombie-like shamblers. When they return in Act 6, having killed the boss who was poisoning the place, it's changed tilesets into a lush forsest. In a prison, players will be able to pass through a previously locked door and climb Shavronne's Tower, where a tricky dual bossfight with some familiar faces awaits.

Winters also excitedly loaded up the city of Oriath, explaining everything that's happened since players were exiled from the city at the start of Act 1. For players who care about the story, this will be a big moment: returning to a place they've heard so much about, ready for some good old revenge.

With this expansion to the campaign Path of Exile now seems like a truly massive game. Regular players will likely say it was already—infinitely replayable because each act's maps are procedurally generated, with a deep end-game and regular "challenge leagues" that give you reason to roll a new character and play through the campaign with new mechanics and special item drops that will only exist for a limited time.

In addition to the big story update, The Fall of Oriath will bring Path of Exile to version 3.0.0 and entail some big changes to underlying systems and game balance. Rogers called out one that the Path of Exile diehards will likely have strong opinions on: Grinding Gear Games is eliminating double-dipping, a key element in most of the game's optimized high-end builds. Removing double dipping will have a huge impact on players who currently take advantage of it, but in the end they say it will let them introduce more viable buy POE currency , better balanced builds.