We’re at Exilecon 2026 for all the details on Path of Exile 3.30, the Covens of Umbra league, and there’s plenty of life in the older ARPG.
While its sequel may be preparing for launch in December, the original Path of Exile isn't simply laying quietly in the wings - quite the reverse. Grinding Gear Games has promised that both games will continue to run simultaneously, tossing seasonal leagues back and forth between one another to ensure that every possible player type is catered to. Path of Exile 2 is very much carving out its own path, after all, so why put one of the best RPGs of all time to bed? I'm live at Exilecon to hear exactly what we can expect from the PoE 3.30 update, Covens of Umbra, which arrives in just one week.
Path of Exile 3.30 drops us right into a "centuries-old conflict between the Witches of Umbra." Alongside that comes what Game Director Jonathan Rogers calls one of the biggest transformations to the endgame in a long while, with overhauls to most systems. Even more exciting is that Mirage, the hugely transformative mechanic first introduced with the 3.28 league, is now ready to go core. Rounding things out is a pretty beefy loot rework, which should mean far less item quantity spam and much more valuable rewards up for grabs, even among drops on the ground.
Starting with the league, we'll be running into the Coven Queen's minions right from the opening areas. Encountering witchy rites will give you the opportunity to twist their power in your favor, stealing their power to invoke multiple fates that ramp up the challenge and potential rewards of major boss battles. The further you progress, the more of these you'll encounter, until you're collecting four or five fates in an area, with the potential to combine up to three of them for a single fight. Some will even bear special combo effects that will trigger should you fulfil the additional conditions, and stacking duplicate fates dramatically boost their effects.
The other addition for Covens of Umbra is the Wickerman, which you're able to bind your character's soul to in order to gain power from your fallen foes. Defeating fate-enhanced enemies has a chance to drop various grisly trophies such as their limbs, which you can then infuse into the Wickerman to gain a scrap of their essence, empowering your character. You're able to impale up to four at once - head, body, arm, and leg - and with three tiers of increasing rarity and potency, you'll want to farm for the best buffs.
Covens of Umbra really needs you to encounter all the big area bosses for its core mechanic to work, so GGG has rearranged campaign zone layouts "where necessary" to make sure you always run into them without too much map scouring. What about those locations without a boss? Over two dozen new additions spread across the campaign will have you covered there, and all bosses can be farmed through their endgame variants when you get there.
There's one final aspect to watch out for as you farm: Grim Fates. These are special variants of the modifiers that are specifically attuned to individual pinnacle bosses, transforming or empowering many of their attacks to challenge you in completely fresh ways. Each of these you collect will be stored in a special slot on your Wickerman so you can use them when the time is right, and defeating fate-empowered pinnacle bosses opens the door to snagging their own viscera trophies, promising some of the strongest buffs in the league. Once you're feeling strong enough, take on the Coven Queen herself.
While the league is more than plentiful enough to keep us busy, PoE 3.30 also introduces a "far-reaching and comprehensive endgame shakeup, with changes to almost every single core league mechanic." The recently reshaped Atlas map now has various colored regions that allow you to determine which mechanics you'll run into, with increasing stacks as you tackle multiple maps within a zone. As you'd expect, bumping these up means additional danger, but with amplified payouts to match.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.pcgamesn.com/path-of-exile/3-30-covens-of-umbra-exilecon-2026
