Want to know everything that’s coming in the Path of Exile 3.14 Ultimatum update? Along with the latest news about Path of Exile 2, a wealth of new information about the Path of Exile Ultimatum expansion was unveiled during a livestream from developer Grinding Gear Games. We now know more about what to expect from the update, including the new Ultimatum trials and a whole bunch of reworks and updates to the already released league updates.
Compared to previous expansions, 3.14 has far less new stuff, but when we say the prior league updates and expansions are getting reworks, we’re talking extensive reworks. Not only will more recent leagues get balance updates, but 3.14 also introduces a ton of loot drop updates and tweaks to older items to make them more competitive with items from more recent updates. Given that Path of Exile is now almost eight years old, that’s a ton of expansions to adjust.
Honestly, trying to round up everything into one neat package is an undertaking, but we figure that it’s best to just keep everything as brief and simple as possible for you. Here is everything that’s coming in the Path of Exile 3.14 Ultimatum update.
Path of Exile Ultimatum release date
The Path of Exile 3.14 Ultimatum update release date is April 16, 2021.
PoE Ultimatum trials
The big new feature coming to PoE is the UItimatum trials. When you accept a trial from the Trialmaster, you’ll fight hordes of enemies in a small arena, gambling your life for more and more rewards. Should you defeat or survive each wave, you’re presented with a choice: take your winnings and leave, or stay for another wave by choosing a stipulation and potentially win one more item. Be careful though, should you perish in combat, you’ll lose everything.
Aside from the regular Ultimatums, you’re also able to take on Inscribed Ultimatums. These require you to sacrifice an item to participate. So if the Trialmaster asks for exalted orbs, you’ll get double your exalted orbs gambled back should you win the trial.
There’s a bunch of new items that can be won from the Ultimatum Trials, such as the Glimpse of the Chaos Vaal Mask that drops elemental resistances in favour of buffs to life, mana, and energy shields, or the Mahuxotl’s Machination that grants you six keystone passives at once.
This isn’t just a single-player experience either. Should you party up with other players, you can work together to complete trials for your own separate rewards. Players will vote on which stipulations they think they can tackle (ties will result in the game choosing the stipulation at random), and if one player wants to back out, they can do so without compromising the rest of the party’s streak.
Other things that are coming to PoE Ultimatum are:
- Four new skill gems and four support gems that are themed around blood.
- Adjustments to the low life mechanic, including changing the threshold to 50%.
- Vaal Skills will get a balance pass, as well as a rework to get more souls for damaging unique enemies.
- Improved Atziri’s Reign so that it also grants a chance to regain all consumed souls.
PoE Reward system improvements and expansion updates
The other major part of the PoE 3.14 Ultimatum update addresses some issues with many of the previous major updates. Many of the item drops for older updates weren’t strong enough to motivate players to keep playing them. The above video explains in-depth details of everything that’s coming, but for your convenience, here’s everything that’s changing for each PoE update.
Core game
- Orbs of Binding and Veiled Chaos Orb will now drop from monsters and chests.
- You’ll also find five new Atlas Base Types dropped in specific regions of the Atlas of Worlds.
- Boss runs will get updated item drops to make fighting them more rewarding. New vendor recipes will also be available, and powerful league-specific unique items will be added to the core drop pool.
- There will also be a new type of reliquary key added to the core drop pool. Should you find a Vaal Reliquary Key in any chest or dropped from any monster in the game, you’ll be able to bring it to the map device to grant you access to a special vault. It’s going to be hard to come by these, as it’ll be the rarest reliquary key introduced to PoE to date. This vault has a chest that, when opened, gives you a ‘foil’ version of Vaal-themed unique item. All the uniques have an equal chance to drop.
Sacrifice of the Vaal
- The sacrificial garb base type item that drops from Atziri, Queen of the Vaal is now significantly improved. Now you can add the implicit mod to grant one level to all the other Vaal gems equipped.
- There will also be two new unique items in Atziri’s drop pool, and two more added to Uber Atziri’s drop pool, such as the Atziri’s Rule judgement staff that prevents you from being stunned or having damage dealt to enemies reflected, and grants you a new skill that alternates between Storm of Judgement and Flames of Judgement whenever it’s used.
Ascendancy
- Labyrinth enchantments are now shown to you in advance when you complete the labyrinth, rather than randomised.
- The Eternal Labyrinth now offers three different helmet enchantments in addition to the boots and gloves that will make it easier to find relevant ones to skills you use.
- Instead of rewarding gems for the fastest labyrinth runs of any given day, the unique jewels will now be added to the final reward chests as very rare drops.
- You will also now be able to consume an Offering to the Goddess in the map device to open portals directly to random trials.
- Two more unique items will be added to the labyrinth drop pool, one of which is the Scales of Justice unique shield that grants protection from shock and ignite, as well as bonus fire damage.
Cadiro Perandus
- Increased selection of unique reward items
- Rebalanced sources of perandus coins to make the Caidor Perandus expansion the best place to get the coins.
Talisman league
- Talismans now have the random anointment from previous updates removed.
Essence league
- Rebalance of essences to make them stronger than they were beforehand. Screaming essences can now be used to reroll rare items in addition to upgrading items to rare.
- Corrupted essences will have some less useful outcomes improved or replaced.
- The only way you can now get powerful upgrade-only top-tier essences is via the Remnants of Corruption.
Breach league
- Blessings can now be used to upgrade breachstones between tiers.
Abyss league
- Abyss jewels will be rebalanced to be more powerful than before, and Abyss chests drops will be buffed to make them the best place to get Abyss jewels.
- Abyss scarabs will also be added to PoE, along with four Abyss-specific jewels.
Bestiary league
- New beastcrafts will be added, including ‘add a mod to a map’ and ‘add a mod to an influenced item’. These consume existing beasts.
- A rework of beastcrafting is also in the works. When you use the Splitting beastcraft recipe on an item, both copies are marked as split, so you can’t split them again. They also can’t be imprinted.
Incursion league
- Temple of Atzoatl can now be itemised. When you access the Map Device, Alva can turn your completed and ready-to-run temple into a tradeable object that can be used in the map device, allowing players to either specialise in making or playing player created temples.
- Improved base unique items in the Temple of Atzoatl drop pool.
Omnitect boss will, in addition to its current drops, drops rare items with incursion mods that are themed around the rooms of your temple. High-tier rooms cause more rare item drops. - Specific temple rooms now add specific monster packs to give more monster density.
- Temple mods are to be buffed with bonuses if your temple includes more high-tier rooms.
- Rewards will be modernised so that they’re competitive with newer leagues.
- Explosive Rooms now contain basic chests that you can open with flashpowder kegs.
Delve league
- Increase to early rewards and reduction to quantity of high-tier rewards spawning at very deep depths.
Betrayal league
- Killing Catarina will now make all Syndicate members drop rewards one tier higher than before. Catarina also has an additional unique item in her drop pool.
- A fourth tier of reward for killing Syndicate members has been added, with powerful tier three items moved to the fourth tier. New items will be added to both tiers.
- Choices for unveiling mods will now be more powerful versions of existing ones.
- Progress towards unlocking crafting of veiled mods is now at a slightly faster rate.
- Some very powerful veiled modifiers are now only available at their original strength on the unveiled version. The crafted version of the modifier has also been lowered in power.
- The Veiled Chaos Orb added to PoE’s core drop pool rerolls the target item with new mods, but one of these mods is guaranteed to be a veiled mod. It’s best obtained from Aisling in some Betrayal Safehouses.
Blight league
- New Blighted incubator type added and modernised rewards from other incubators.
- Chests from Blighted maps now have their item yield affected by a portion of the map’s item quantity.
- Blighted maps rebalanced and reworked to have their own purpose and consistent increases in rewards as the oils get rarer.
- You will now be able to corrupt Blighted maps. These will very rarely drop a new Tainted Oil that allows you to apply anointments to corrupted items.
- Blighted Scarabs are now being added to the game.
Metamorph league
- New Metamorph incubator type added and modernised rewards from other incubators.
- Two new types of Catalysts added themed around speed and critical strikes. These are rarer than the previous types.
Delirium league
- New Delirium incubator type added and modernised rewards from other incubators.
Harvest league
- Rebalances the crafting and increases how often you’ll spawn the portals to the Sacred Grove.
Ritual league
- Ritual is now being added to the core game. It’s also going to be added to the Atlas passive skill tree system and is available as a Sextant mod. This will spawn at a standardised rate of 8%, and will be rebalanced.
And that’s all that’s coming to the PoE 3.14 Ultimatum update. It’s a lot, but hopefully you’ll now have a better understanding of what’s changing and what you should expect when the update drops later in the week.