In Path of Exile 3.13.0, GGG is looking to achieve a few goals:
GGG wants to reintroduce some of the ominousness that came with the eldritch feel of the Shaper and Elder. GGG also wants to inject more story into regular mapping with an element of unpredictability.
GGG also wants to address some of the omissions and gaps in the Conquerors of the Atlas storyline, and build upon what was already there. Although it’s important to note that the new storyline exists in addition to and parallel to the existing Atlas content.
Finally, GGG wants to provide narrative hooks for the future. This means some questions will remain unanswered for a little while, but if you’re a fan of speculating, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
Path of Exile 3.13.0 Expansion Teaser
The first true endgame overhaul since the introduction of Maps during Path of Exile’s beta, Atlas of Worlds was intended to provide a visible framework and very high-level goal for player’s to pursue. Atlas of Worlds introduced the Shaper as an adversary, and turned the Forsaken Master Zana into your ally and guide for this storyline.
This expansion was relatively light on narrative and contained the ‘twist’ that the Shaper was Zana’s father all along. It introduced the “Shaper Quotes” read out by the Shaper himself as you entered new maps for the first time. It was a reasonable foundation for a story, but with only 7 little memory fragments and a few little updates from Zana, it did not contain much other than the core mapping experience to keep players moving forward. The Shaper was also strictly endgame content, with only occasional appearances on the way to the final encounter.
Path of Exile: Atlas of Worlds is the fifth expansion for Path of Exile. It was officially announced by Grinding Gear Games on August 12, 2016. This expansion has a large focus on improving the end-game, in particular the mapping experience which has been left untouched by previous expansions.
This took the successful parts of the Atlas of Worlds and built on them, introducing the Elder as a new foe, and positioned the Elder and the Shaper as opposing forces. War for the Atlas changed the Shaper’s origin somewhat, and revealed his relationship to Zana much earlier, giving the player (and Zana!) a larger emotional handle to grab hold of.
The Elder and the Shaper each had their own ‘influence’ on the Atlas, which allowed them to be much more present than in the Atlas of Worlds. We took careful steps to introduce the Shaper in increments, positioning him as an entity to be wary of, then introduced the Elder as something even the Shaper is afraid of.
Slightly counterintuitively, you were able to fight and defeat the Elder much earlier than the Shaper, though you were unable to seal the Elder away until you’d completed Zana’s storyline and reached very high tier maps.
Path of Exile: War for the Atlas is the seventh expansion for Path of Exile. It was officially announced by Grinding Gear Games on November 16, 2017 and was released on December 8, 2017. This expansion focuses mainly on reworking the endgame Atlas of Worlds system.
The most recent Atlas expansion at the end of 2019, accepted the sealing of the Elder and the defeat of the Shaper as canon, but was handled by a different group of Exiles than yourself. The Elderslayers were hired by Zana to do exactly what players had done in the War for the Atlas, but in the Conquerors of the Atlas, the player instead witnessed the effects of long-term exposure to the Atlas (and the Elder in particular) on these Exiles.
Conquerors introduced the NPC Kirac, as well as 5 characters to pursue through the Atlas incrementally — Baran, Veritania, Drox, Al-Hezmin and Sirus. Each had a series of story glyphs to help fill in their back-stories and motivations, but due to the lengthy structure of mapping to reach Sirus, as well as some time constraints, Sirus seemed to more or less come out of nowhere.
Path of Exile: Conquerors of the Atlas is the ninth expansion for Path of Exile. It was officially announced by Grinding Gear Games on November 15, 2019, during ExileCon and was released on December 13, 2019, alongside the Metamorph league. This expansion continues the War for the Atlas storyline and introduces a new endgame, including a revamped Atlas of Worlds, new influenced areas and bosses, four new influenced item bases, and enhanced versions of support gems called Awakened Support Gem.