The Biggest Changes in Path of Exile: Settlers of Kalguur

Grinding Gear Games just blew everyone’s minds when they released Path of Exile’s Settlers of Kalguur trailer and roadmap. If you thought the whole Scarab, T17 maps, and atlas tree reworks were big in the Necropolis league, 3.25’s Settlers of Kalguur makes every other league look minuscule in comparison. While there are a lot of changes, we’ll only show the biggest and most significant changes in Path of Exile’s Settlers of Kalguur.

Best Changes in Path of Exile 3.25’s Settlers of Kalguur League

Complete Melee Rework

Melee skill gems all receive a massive increase to their base damage. While most of the skills remain the same in terms of mechanics, the added base damage becomes extremely significant when you level the gem to 20+. With these massive buffs, they also completely removed totems, as they didn’t want the melee playstyle to revolve around static gameplay.

Magic Find Builds Get a Shake Up (No More Quantity Increases)

Personally, this might be the biggest change as it heavily influences the market and how the players approach their farming strategies. Since players won’t feel forced to create Magic Find build to quadruple their loot, builds will not compete against other builds when it comes to farming efficiency (remember those MF Meatsacks strats?). Builds can now focus on strengthening their speed, power, and consistency without worrying that someone out there is farming ridiculously more than you.

New Item Tiers and More

Since there were a few nerfs to auras in general, the defense needs a good boost. It’ll come in the form of new item tiers that give significantly more stats as a base and you can also roll higher maximum life rolls and others. It is interesting to see if this is enough, as they also removed most of the Physical Damage Taken conversion stats.

There’s also a new set of chisels to improve your maps. Maven’s Chisels will improve a map’s drop rates depending on the type of Maven’s Chisel you use. You can add currency, scarab drops, and more to your maps using the new Maven’s Chisels.

Introducing the Gold Currency and a Currency Exchange Market

Two of the biggest additions to Path of Exile, maybe of all time, are the introduction of Gold as a currency and the Currency Exchange Market. Gold will now drop as you defeat enemies and you can use that gold to respec passives, purchase items in the black market, pay for fees in the Settlers of Kalguur league mechanic, and many more.

However, its uses are still limited as natural currencies like Divine Orbs and Chaos Orbs still play a big factor when it comes to the game’s economy.

The introduction of a Currency Exchange Market will help players exchange their currencies for whatever they need. The price is dictated by purchase and sell orders, similar to most gaming markets such as Steam’s marketplace, Ubisoft’s R6S marketplace, or even a real-life stock exchange.

Nameless Seer Map Scrying

Since GGG tested out the Divination Scarab of Curation in Necropolis league, where players can add loot tables from other maps to the map of their choice, it is fitting that they just added this mechanic to the Nameless Seer. When you find the Nameless Seer, you can scry a map’s loot table to another map.

For example, you can add Crimson Temple’s loot table (Apothecary, Seven Years Bad Luck, The Enlightened, and more) to Strand or Beach maps. You can farm these Strand or Beach maps and get a chance at getting the best loot in the game.

Bringing Old League Mechanics

Veterans of the game are rejoicing over the return of the best features of their previous leagues. The biggest one is the Recombinators from the Sentinel League, where players can craft items in a more deterministic fashion. They also added Sentinels that power up enemies but also increase the loot. However, these come in the form of a “shrine” buff in maps rather than an item itself.

They also added the reflections from the Kalandra league where you can choose between reflected items with increased positive and negative stats. You can also find the Reflecting Mist item that breaks an item in half, giving two reflective stats on both items.

The Wildwood area from the Affliction League also returns, but finishing the area will only boost the loot of the current map you are running.

With all these returning League mechanics, it seems they skipped over the Crucible League. It does make sense because that league powered every build to new, never-before-seen heights.

Bye Raider, Hello Warden Ascendancy and Gladiator Rework

The Ranger’s Raider ascendancy has been completely scrapped and is now replaced with the Warden ascendancy. If you played the Affliction League, this is quite similar to that Warden Wildwood tree. The Warden focuses more on elemental damage attacks and it is interesting to see how it would play out with a huge meta change in the league. Lightning Strike build comeback incoming?

The Gladiator rework adds a lot of damage nodes that give increased stats to attack speed, critical, weapon damage, and more. Since the melee gems got a new rework, there might be some strong melee builds coming from the Gladiator ascendancy. Slayer could still be the top, but we don’t know yet.

Other Notable Changes

• 6-slot Map Devices
• Double anointed necks exclusive to Blight-Ravaged maps
• Simulacrum rework (15 waves with more loot)
• Auras remain activated on death
• Tincture (new form of flasks)

With all these massive changes, Path of Exile Settlers of Kalguur hopes to re-establish itself as the best ARPG in the market. But we all know that massive changes don’t mean player retention will still be there. The Necropolis League proves that and we can only hope that these changes make the game better. On paper, it looks amazing.

Path of Exile Settlers of Kalguur is scheduled to release this Friday, June 26.