You son of a rogue, of course, I'm in! Path of Exile's next brand new expansion is taking players on a Heist later this month, and the specific date is September 18th, 2020.

As we all know that Path of Exile has been mainly about surviving an island that filled with various monsters, evil magic-wielders, and forces that far beyond our natural realm. The studio Grinding Gear Games has been experimental with its dungeon crawler over, and over the years; however, the idea has often led back to the original premise, which is you need to explore the Wraeclast continent and then strive to survive in its harrowing forces. For the next expansion of this game, things are about to get a little different. And that is to say; it's time to assemble a merry band of thieves for the new league for Path of Exile: Heist.

The studio Grinding Gear Games has been quite good at surprising the Path of Exile player base before and I, of course, do not think anybody had "Ocean's 11-style Heist film homage" in the pool just for expansions, however, that is indeed the main premise behind Heist. This new Heist will take players to a new place named the Rogue Harbour, over there, they will meet 13 new NPCs (Non_Player Characters) known as the Rogues. The idea is to infiltrate guarded facilities, maneuver through them undetected, and search for a valuable artifact, catch it, and make a clean getaway.

In order to access the Rogue Harbour, Path of Exile players will need to pick up PoE Heist Markers, which are drops found throughout the entire League. Here is the fact that you need to know in Path of Exile Heist league that markers are also the PoE currency used to recruit Rogues for your next job. And you should aware that there 13 different Rogues all have different specialties, therefore, you will need to look at your Contract (of course, drops that also contain Heist jobs) and decide who will be best suited for what's ahead. And for Heists, you will only be able to recruit a single Rogue, so you need to select wisely. Some of them will mainly offer transportation or intel while others serve on-the-job purposes, for example, disarming traps or lockpicking.

You will take your Contract to the Wayfinder once you are ready to go on your Heist; Wayfinder in PoE Heist is an NPC (Non-Player Character) who lives at the Rogue Harbor who takes your Marker payment for partner Rogues and then transport to and from the facility. After you get to the facility, your goal is to swipe the Artifact without triggering any alarms. It might sound relatively easy, but you will frequently find a lot of rooms filled with treasures. And those shining treasures might lure you a lot, and you might take the risk of using these treasures. However, the alert level will rise as you steal more PoE items, and as you waste more time. What we encouraged the most is stealth, cause you know, killing guards will also raise the alert level. If you are too careless with the alert level, well, you will probably make the alarms go off and then trigger Lockdown, and that means more guards will appear and you will now be on the clock to grab the Artifact and escape, and that requires you to finish as fast as possible. One thing that should be noted is once you grab the Artifact, Lockdown gets triggered, which means you will only have so much limited time to escape. You need to move fast, cause once you die, you not only lose the Artifact, but also you will lose any rewards you collected during the Path of Exile Heist like the POE currency you buy on EZNPC and some other valuable items and walk away with nothing.

A lot of players may not realize that working with Contracts and Heists is just the beginning, because they will train players for Grand Heists. Players even can craft Blueprints and use any intel collected from previous Heists to plan for Grand Heists, which, of course, contain much bigger prizes. Once you are ready to go on a Grand Heist, then you will hand a Blueprint off to the Barber, whose name is Whakano, and then he will craft the Grand Heist map and use any intel gathered to provide additional information, just like enemy locations, reward rooms, escape routes, and more. Although Blueprint drops are not so common, one major element of this expansion is the ability to trade for Blueprints and Contracts. If none of this Heisting stuff sounds like just right for you, well, another option is you can trade your Blueprints and the Contracts between players for a quite considerable profit.

Being too much larger in scale, Grand Heists will let players recruit three Rogues. Every wing in this Grand Heist facility will have its own alert level, therefore, you need to plan that very carefully. Planning carefully that also means pre-planning your escape route in order to minimize conflict with those endless waves of guards once you grab the Artifact. Some players might imagine that a Grand Heist would mean the prize is much greater than before, right? And for the Grand Heists, the destination is a Vault, which contains numerous rewards hidden behind glass display cases. Players will only get to keep one of these items and then leave the rest behind. Among the rewards are a brand new item type named Replica Unique Items. Unique Items are just what they are. There only exists one copy of them in the entire game. And Grand Heists will just provide Replica Unique Items, which copy a lot of the original's attributes, however, that will, of course, contain some noticeable differences, for example, different mods. And there are about 100 Replica Unique Items and you need to know that these can be only picked up by finishing a Grand Heist successfully.

The big success in Grand Heists means your Rogues will also need to be up for that job. Luckily, gamers can equip them with PoE items found during normal Heists. Moreover, these items will increase a Rogue's damage output, stealth factor, or some other main attributes. Some of them might even reduce the Rogue's cut of the profit at then end of the Path of Exile Heist. Rogue gear could be upgraded in the very same way normal mods are upgraded, just by using standard Path of Exile currency.

And here comes another question and that is, are Grand Heists really worth the trouble or not? The Replica Unique Items, of course, look like they are worth their weight in gold. Let me give you a for instance, the Iron Commander Death Bow does incredible damage while working off player totems. The Replica will carry pretty much similar stats while switching from a Siege Ballista to a Shrapnel Ballista. In the same way, the Ambu's Charge Crusader Chainmail carries heavy stats and then provide a regenerative property. Even though the regenerative property would be changed to a "damage over time" property, the Replica of this will still carry much greater statistics. When you are experimenting with Replica Uniques will show hundreds of new build possibilities for hardcore Path of Exile players, and some of which could wind up being the best the game has to offer if players are lucky enough.

And apart from Replica Unique Items, players also can find the special weapon and armor enchantments. The very first introduced with the Ascendency expansion, enchantments now will grant those special properties on items just without taking up a modifier slot. Moreover, these enchantments are almost game-breaking to the point that if players find the top ones, they will, however, notice that they might come with some significant drawbacks. For instance, the Storm Ruin Pernarch will make physical modifiers a 15% increased effect, but in exchange will need double the attribute requirements to wield. And for some other enchanted items, just like the Eagle Shroud Full Dragonscale armor, will, you know, have only benefits, just like having all Sockets linked for a much better re-rolls.

This brand new expansion will introduce a brand new item type in PoE named Trinkets, which will affect drop probability during Heists. As you know, these will go in a new equipment slot, and that is to say, players can equip Trinkets without compromising their current build. Here is another tip that you should know, the trinkets could have various effects on drop during Path of Exile Heist period. For example, improving the percentage of Corrupted drops, increasing the quality of the reward, or improving the opportunity to find special drops during a job. All of these Trinkets are now Corrupted, therefore, gamers will not be able to craft these little items. These are quite special items within this expansion. During this Grand Heists, alternate-quality Gems will also prove to be a quite tempting reward. These will see quite different stat increase as they gain quality allowing for multiple build possibilities.

Apart from the heisting component, Path of Exile's latest expansion, Heist will look to re-design several existing elements of that game. Curses in PoE will start to take an overhaul that encourages players to self-cast them just by increasing their intensity over time. The most important thing is, players might notice that many of the existing Curses will have enhanced visual effects and some slightly different attributes. When it comes to the Steel Skills (Lancing Steel and Shattering Steel) are being re-designed to utilize both the Impale mechanic and an brand new Shard mechanic that increases their area-of-effect damage. Searching for a few reworked spells, as well as some new ones just like Flame Wall, which creates a fiery wall that damages enemies over time, and Void Sphere, which causes a black hole that sucks in nearby enemies and then makes them stuck in place. Look for 25 new Unique Items in this Heist, such as the Corpsewalker Unique Boots, which creates corpses every 0.3 seconds as you move. That one will be, well, as you know, handy for corpse builds. And another Unique Item example is the Chains of Emancipation, which inflicts a Temporal Chains curse on you that grants full Rage when broken.

Here comes the good news is that Path of Exile: Heist is a noticeably different type of expansion for the Grinding Gear Games studio. It's the very first such expansion where players can select rewards prior to finishing their encounter, but also run the risk of losing everything if they do not escape while they are still alive. It's also the first such expansion to feature a party-building mechanic, encouraging a lot of players to create their best roster for this upcoming job. Heists are also offering the studio Grinding Gear Games an opportunity to utilize a new AI, which sees a lot of guards vigorously defend their territory in those organized formations. If any of this new expansion's assets look visually sleeker, well, that is just purely because some of the new monsters were originally set to debut with the upcoming Path of Exile 2. Well, if none of this is up your alley, then just as I stated above, it's completely possible to trade nearly every itemized element of this latest new expansion, including Blueprints, Contracts, Rogue equipment, and many many more.

Path of Exile: Heist now is already launched on September 18 on the PC platform and Mac. That's correct, Path of Exile is debut on Mac with the new release of Path of Exile Heist, even though it will have to be downloaded directly from the Path of Exile website because it will not be on the Mac App Store at release. The most important thing is, search for the PC version of Path of Exile to hit the Epic Games Store, as well. In the meantime, the expansion is scheduled to hit Xbox One and PlayStation on September 23, 2020.