The Path of Exile Crucible release time is almost upon us, meaning players will be lining up in their thousands to get their hands on the new weapon passive skill trees coming to the RPG game with its seasonal Crucible league. With plenty of talk about Diablo 4 and similar loot games such as Last Epoch getting fans fired up, the 3.21 patch could be one of Path of Exile’s biggest, so read on to find out about the PoE Crucible release time and the boss kill event taking place at launch.
The eponymous Crucible Forges are the cornerstone of the Path of Exile Crucible league. These statues appear across the world of Wraeclast, and can be charged up to infuse your weapons with experience. This process levels up new passive skill trees with potent abilities including the likes of notable passives and support gem effects applied to your gear, but it comes at a cost – increasingly challenging hordes of enemies that must be defeated.
We’ve already taken a look at all the new skill gems in PoE Crucible, and there are some spectacular additions that promise to shake up builds. I’m currently looking at Vaal Lightning Arrow for my starter build, but I’m also tempted by the potential of tools such as the self-freezing Vaal Ice Armour in a potential mad scientist build, or how to manipulate the random elemental damage of the Prismatic Burst support gem to my advantage.
Also taking place at launch is a Path of Exile Crucible boss kill event, which challenges the game’s top players – or anyone who thinks they can earn that title – to compete for a chance to craft a new unique item with the team. There are also opportunities to grab VIP tickets to the upcoming ExileCon, where all the hottest details on Path of Exile 2 are expected to be unveiled. You’ll have to be on top form, though – read on below for the full details.
Path of Exile Crucible release time and server downtime
Path of Exile Crucible releases on April 7 at 1pm PDT / 4pm EDT / 9pm BST / 10pm CEST, which is equivalent to April 8 at 7am AET for those in Australia. The servers will go live following three hours of server downtime, when patching will begin. Path of Exile servers will go down on April 7 at 10am PDT / 1pm EDT / 6pm BST / 7pm CEST (April 8 at 4am AET).
Here are the PoE Crucible release times for your region:
| Region | Servers Down | PoE Crucible release time |
| US West | April 7, 10am PDT | April 7, 1pm PDT |
| US East | April 7, 1pm EDT | April 7, 4pm EDT |
| UK | April 7, 6pm BST | April 7, 9pm BST |
| Europe | April 7, 7pm CEST | April 7, 10pm CEST |
| Australia | April 8, 4am AET | April 8, 7am AET |
Path of Exile Crucible boss kill event – how to join, rules, and prizes
To join the Path of Exile Crucible boss kill event, all you need to do is create a character in Crucible Ruthless Hardcore Solo Self-found mode. I say “all,” but that means you’ll not only need to be playing the new league (so don’t start before the release time above), but you’ll also have to enable all of PoE’s most challenging modifiers.
Your character will need to be playing in Path of Exile Ruthless mode, the game’s extra-punishing variant that imposes extreme item scarcity, making it tougher than ever to find those perfect items. You’ll also have to be playing on Hardcore, so any death will mean restarting from the very beginning. Finally, you’ll need to be in Solo Self-found, which means your character will be alone and unable to trade items or currency with other players.
Once you’ve done this, the goal is simple – be the first player to kill both the Uber Eater of Worlds and the Uber Searing Exarch, perhaps the two hardest boss fights in the entire game. That’s right; good luck with that. Additional rules and prizes for finishing in the top spots are listed below, courtesy of Grinding Gear Games.
Path of Exile Crucible boss kill event prizes
- First Place: Work with our design team to design a new unique item to add to Path of Exile. Transferable ultra VIP ticket to ExileCon (Ticket only – flights and accommodation are not included. This ticket can be gifted or sold to others if you’re unable to attend).
- Second and Third Place: Transferable VIP ticket to ExileCon (Ticket only – flights and accommodation are not included. This ticket can be gifted or sold to others if you’re unable to attend).
Additional rules
- If there are operational problems with the event (like significant realm stability issues at launch), Grinding Gear Games may restart the event at any point. The way we will do this is to create a new event league and indicate that players who wish to compete in the new event must make new characters there.
- Players who migrate from a private league to the event league during the event are ineligible for prizes.
- Placings and prize eligibility are entirely at the discretion of Grinding Gear Games.
- While the event being SSF reduces a lot of scope for outside help, any form of account sharing (or other breaches of the Terms of Use) will disqualify a player from receiving prizes.
- Grinding Gear Games Employees (past or present) are not eligible for prizes.
- Players who have played on the Alpha realm since March 30th 2023 (when the expansion was first deployed) are not eligible for prizes.
- You must kill both bosses on a single character. Accumulating kills between characters, or using multiple characters to kill a boss will not count.
- Dying or migrating your character out of the league doesn’t remove prize eligibility as long as the kill occurred while in the league.
PoE Crucible certainly promises to be a great way to spend your time while waiting for the Diablo 4 release date. Blizzard’s latest has certainly learned some lessons from GGG’s long-standing action-RPG, so if you’ve never tried Path of Exile then why not give it a shot now? If you don’t fancy it, we’ve picked out more of the best games like Diablo for you to browse, along some plenty of other fantastic free PC games, to keep you entertained.