Path of Exile: Necropolis, the game's upcoming major update, is set to be fully revealed later today during a Twitch livestream. Ahead of the official reveal, let's take a look at what we know so far, as well as how to watch the stream and get the Suffering Back Attachment microtransaction Twitch drop!

How To Watch Path of Exile: Necropolis' Reveal Stream

First things first: The stream will take start at 1PM PDT (for reference, that's 8PM in the UK) and last about an hour, followed by a Q&A segment where the developers will answer questions from Twitch chat. Now, for the cold hard facts:

  • Here is the link to the stream: twitch.tv/pathofexile 
  • The Twitch drop (which you can see in the video showcase below) will be awarded after 45 minutes of accumulated watch time on any channel streaming Path of Exile during the event.
  • You will need to link your Twitch and Path of Exile accounts in order to successfully receive the cosmetic.

What We Know So Far

For starters, we have the teaser (embedded at the top of the article) that introduces us to a mysterious new character related to the Eternal Empire, who has seemingly allied with Catarina (semi-immortal big bad of Betrayal league), Lycia (a properly immortal big-bad of Sanctum league that is buds with the Beyond demon lord Beidat) and what look to be the three Abyssal Liches found in Delve cities. That's quite the roster of folks that, to say the least, have a bone to pick with the player! How they relate to our new character's plan to resurrect the Eternal Empire is yet to be revealed.

Before we look at other POE 1 teasers, it's important to note half the stream will also include a segment on Path of Exile 2, this time around showcasing the Ranger class. Check out the teaser below:

Right, now that we're done with all the pre-production work, let's dissect everything we've been shown in all the other short teasers leading up to today, in a clear and concise manner:

Quality of Life Improvements

This time around, Grinding Gear Games have doubled down on adding lots of requested features from the community. This is generally seen a an omen of major nerfs to come, so temper your expectations just in case!

  • Upgrades to Pantheon Powers are now league-wide. Once unlocked, other characters will only have to defeat the respective boss to unlock the power and all its upgrades. There may, however, be even more changes coming to this system. There will be an option to toggle this on/off for specific characters.
  • When trading with other players, holding down CTRL+Shift and left-clicking on a stackable item will move all stacks of that item from your inventory to the trade window.
  • Holding CTRL+Left Click on Orbs of Fusing and Jeweller's Orbs will now keep re-applying said orbs on an item until it is deselected or it hits the maximum number of sockets or links. This also applies for other quality currencies.
  • Breach Hands in Breaches will now open automatically by simply walking over them.
  • Masters are no longer mutually exclusive and can appear together in the same map.
  • The craft to upgrade your amulet to a Talisman has been moved to Bestiary.
  • Flasks can be corrupted to add a random quality value from -10 to +10. So, if your flask had 20% quality, applying a Vaal Orb will randomize that to a value within the 10%-30% range.
  • Items placed in the Horticrafting Station will now always display the stats box, so you no longer need to hover over the item to see changes to it after every craft.
  • Using a Vaal Orb on a map will no longer have a chance to make it Unidentified.
  • Vaal Orbs can now add new implicit modifiers on maps, such as: Increased item quantity, increased pack size, increased effect of atlas passives, removing soul gain prevention, and even making map crafting options have no cost (on the particular map).
  • New skill gem: Automation, which automatically triggers and instant spell when off cooldown, with a penalty to cooldown recovery rate.
  • New skill gem: Call to Arms, which automatically triggers a Warcry when off cooldown, with a penalty to cooldown recovery rate.
  • You can now exchange Uber Elder fragments of the same color between each other at the cost of 800 Vivid Essence!
  • Maven Invitations no longer drop. You can now just casually open them by talking to Kirac, removing the need to grind for the invitations themselves. Valdo's Maps that granted invitations now give Scarabs.
  • Monsters' Detonate Dead ability has received a visual overhaul to make it slightly more visible.
  • Strongboxes now appear on the minimap.
  • Divine Orbs now stack to 20!
  • Anarchy Scarabs are now a thing.

Quality of Life Deteriorations

Here you can see all the changes that, while presented in the context of 'quality of life' video teasers, aren't really that great:

  • Aisling's Betrayal reward of removing a random modifier and replacing it with a Veiled modifier has been moved to the Veiled Chaos Orb, now simply called "Veiled Orb". The issue here is that Veiled Orbs now exclusively drop from Catarina and we can only assume it's not a guaranteed drop. Making this craft tradeable might be overshadows by the orb's rarity.
  • The ability to craft your items to have quality over 20% has been removed from Betrayal Safehouse rewards.
  • Resistance flasks have had their implicit of "20% less [element] damage taken" reverted to the old "+5% maximum [element] resistance", which is nothing to riot over in the grand scheme of things, but it does change a lot of things for some builds.
  • Stacked Decks and Diviner's Strongboxes will no longer drop cards for boss-specific uniques. Say goodbye to getting that Nimis!
  • Instant cast abilities can no longer be bound to the left click hotbar slot.

One thing we still don't know: What sort of scarab this (in the picutre below) is! Notice the fancy purple item to the right of the Orb of Scouring. Is it a new tier of scarab? Is it something more sinister, such as scarabs only having a single tier now and receiving a visual update? We'll find out later today!

I think one thing is clear: We can't really say we know what to expect from this next league. Personally, I'm all for revisiting past leagues and bringing parts of them together, which seems to be the vibe GGG is going with. But how will all these different characters, from mechanically distinct leagues, work together in Necropolis and most importantly, what's their loot going to be like? If you have any ideas, let us know in the comments below!