Earlier today Grinding Gear Games announced the next challenge league headed for Path of Exile, Harbinger League!
Released alongside Path of Exile’s sixth major expansion, The Fall of Oriath, the Harbinger Challenge League augments the new content with challenging encounters and new rewards. Challenge leagues have self-contained economies and provide an opportunity for you to enjoy a fresh start and demonstrate your mastery of Path of Exile. As usual, there are Hardcore and Solo Self-Found variations of this league.
This new League centers on the new Harbingers. These new enemies empower and command other mobs, making zones with Harbingers far more dangerous for players to traverse. The Harbingers will have unique buffs that they grant to enemies as well. Harbingers cannot be damaged directly, killing it’s summoned mobs is a key to defeating a Harbinger.
But fighting hordes of summoned and buffed mobs for the pure challenge isn’t the only reason to take down these dangerous foes. Upon death, Harbingers drop shards that can be combined to create new Uniques and even Currency items.
And thanks to datamining of the Fall of Oriath Beta, various new currency types have been uncovered that will be added to Path of Exile in 3.0. In addition to the shard of existing currency dropped by Harbingers, the new currency items are:
| Orb of Annulment | Removes and Random Item Property | Applied to Magic or better Items |
| Orb of Binding | Upgrades Normal item to Rare with up to 4 Sockets | Right click Currency, Left Click To Apply |
| Orb of Horizons | Reforges a Map Item as another of same Tier | Right click Currency, Left Click To Apply |
| Engineers Orb | Improves Quality of a Strongbox | Right click Currency, Left Click To Apply |
| Ancient Orb | Reforges a Unique Item into another of the same class | Right click Currency, Left Click To Apply |
New Currency items aren’t the only thing datamined this time around. A whole heap of new Labyrinth effects from Dark Shrines, as well as general map mods, have been uncovered. Click here for a full list.
The new Uniques do give us a hint that the end-game of this League may function to similar Leagues like Breach. Players will have to hunt the Harbingers on their own turf (Possibly new maps like Breachstones?) and then kill a Harbinger to get these drops. Or at least that’s how the Uniques section of the announcement reads.
GGG will be introducing the new Supporter packs for Harbinger League when they pull the current Supporter packs ahead of August 4.
Path of Exile: The Fall of Oriath and the Harbinger Challenge league will be released at 1pm on Friday August 4th (PDT). This is 10pm in the CET timezone and 8am on August 5th in New Zealand. In the coming week we’ll reveal the challenges and rewards for this league as well as the full patch notes for the 3.0.0 expansion: The Fall of Oriath.
