What do people mean when they say "a league is going core"? To know, we must take a look at how Path of Exile releases content and its two main game modes:

• Path of Exile is divided into Standard and League (think Seasons in most other games). Think of them as separate game modes, where your characters on one side don't share a stash with characters on the other.
  • League is divided into "softcore" and Hardcore where, if your character dies, it is automatically migrated to Standard.
• There's several other options such as Solo Self-Found (no trading) or Ruthless (Hard Mode), but they aren't relevant to our current discussion.

Here's an image from the character creation screen that better exemplifies this. Once you choose a 'column', you can tick any of its additional options to modify your experience:

The character creation screen during Necropolis league.

Now, let's take a look at Path of Exile's content updates:

• Path of Exile launches three leagues a year.
• Each league comes with two types of content:
  • Balance changes, or endgame improvements that affect both Standard and League.
  • A new league mechanic that is only playable by characters created in the league.
• A league lasts somewhere around 3-4 months, after which all its characters and stashes are migrated to Standard.
• The league mechanic is sometimes rolled into Standard (and thus, future leagues as well), and sometimes it is not.
  • When a league is added to Standard, it becomes "core". When it's not, it's "not going core".

Essentially, you can look at leagues as a testing ground for a new mechanic. If the developers like how the new mechanic performed, it remains in the game on a permanent basis. If the mechanic was too dull, or perhaps just didn't mesh well with the rest of the game, it's either gone for good or reworked and added to core Path of Exile at a later date. A good example is Ultimatum league, whose main mechanic took two and a half years to be made core.

Sometimes, a mechanic will not return in an impactful manner, but things associated with it such as league-specific Uniques or boss encounters are added to the core game.

Which Leagues are Core?

With everything in place, we can now take a look at which league mechanics are part of the core game. Note that Path of Exile has had something like 43(!) leagues to date, some of them even running at the same time, so this list will not be exhaustive! For the full list, make sure to check PoE Wiki's page. This following table will list the following:

• Which leagues are part of the core game, with a link to their PoE Wiki page if you want to read about their history.
• Whether the league is counted as "Extra Content", meaning its mechanic has a chance of randomly spawning in your map with no work on your end.
• A link to our guide on the league mechanic.
• The table is ordered from oldest to newest core league mechanics.

This table will not include leagues that added very little to the core game (such as Talisman or Onslaught). Only leagues whose mechanics can be affected by the Atlas Passive Tree will be present, plus Sanctum, which isn't on the tree but is a big juicy league.

*While the league is still called Beyond and its main mechanic is still much the same, its monsters and loot were replaced with those from Scourge league.

Bits & Pieces: Leagues That Only Partly Made It Through

Some leagues just didn't really work out, but a small amount of their essence can still be found in the core game. Let's see! The following table:

• Shows leagues that haven't technically been made core.
• Some major elements of theirs, but not the main league mechanic, have snuck through to core, not including Unique items.

Leagues That Were Core, But Later Went to The Farm

Some leagues were core, but were eventually removed due to either being too outdated, or not interesting enough to keep around in a game with an ever-increasing amount of core content. They are:

We hope this page has been very informative to you! With so much content, it's hard to keep track of where everything is in the grand scheme of things, or why you just bumped into something that belongs to a league that didn't go core. Make sure to check out our other guides to learn more about Path of Exile's increasingly complex game design!