After 12 years of avoiding it, Path of Exile is taking another swing at an old mechanic for its new expansion: 'This one just kinda felt right'

In the 12 years Path of Exile has been on this Earth, it's never gone back to an old system and remade it. Game director Mark Roberts tells PC Gamer that there's a few reasons for that, but mostly it's a fear that not making something fresh—as Grinding Gear Games has always done—might disappoint its loyal players.

But this time it "just kind of felt right," Roberts says. In the Keepers of the Flame expansion, which arrives on October 31, PoE will return to Breach, a nine-year-old mechanic that is basically about killing monsters in a circle until time runs out.

The simplicity of Breach will stay. Roberts stresses that the team wanted to be extremely careful about adding unnecessary complexity that might alienate its long-time fans. It will still involve touching a creepy hand and killing monsters inside of an expanding circle, but those monsters will have improved behavior thanks to tech that was worked on for the last Path of Exile 2 patch. And now there will be "unstable" breaches which call in a new boss to cap off the event.

Endgame areas will spawn Breach Hives, which are fleshy cities you can raid and destroy for access to a new type of reward for PoE: The Genesis Tree. Everyone knows PoE for its sprawling skill trees, so of course GGG made a new one just for the expansion. The Genesis Tree gives you access to an entire web of choices for incubating new items within its writhing limbs.

Along with gear and currency items, you can grow lanky arms called grafts. Grafts give you passive bonuses, like attack speed or the ability to auto-cast skills, and curse your character with dangling extra appendages when you have them equipped. There will be 16 grafts to grow as you play through the new quests.

These creepy hands will scoop up Graftblood as you play that can be infused into the big tree to improve the types of items you grow. In the announcement video, Roberts shows how choosing a specific node will let you grow a twisted version of the familiar exalted orb crafting item that will guarantee a more powerful stat will be added onto your gear when you use it. And that's just one of the many Foulborn currencies you can cook up.

The Genesis Tree is also a way for you to grow gear with specific stats you want. There are nodes that will make it more likely that your item will come out as boots for a dexterity-based class with movement speed, for example. You can also grow familiar unique items as Foulborn uniques that come with new effects.

Like with all expansions, GGG is also dropping some new skills into the mix. One of them rains down unstable blue kinetic energy orbs that explode when enemies touch them. And as a big fan of shotgunning bosses with a barrage of fire projectiles with PoE 2's Ember Fusillade skill, I'll gladly take PoE 1's energy-based version, Kinetic Fusillade.

GGG is also introducing 10 new Bloodline ascendancy classes for you to try out once you're high enough level. All of them come from specific endgame bosses, giving you a reason to hunt each one down. The new classes range in specialities based around the theme of the bosses they're taken from. The Unseen Hand is earned from defeating the King in the Mists and it gives you a third ring slot, but at the cost of losing your amulet, belt, and flasks.

And on top of everything, PoE 1 will get the asynchronous item trading system that recently came to PoE 2. For the first time in its history, PoE will let you buy and sell items without having to visit a website. All you do is drop items into a unique stash, set a price, and let other players come and buy them while you continue playing the game, or while you're offline.

"If it was going to work in one game, it was always going to go into the second game," Roberts says. "Players were kind of saying that they don't even need to make any other content, just start a new league with the trade system and I'll play."

Even as he watched players get excited about a remastered Breach from the recent teaser videos, Roberts is still a little nervous. "I'm kind of scared because people are clearly so passionate about this content and I don't want to make it something that they're now less excited about in some regards," he says. "[I'm] confident, pretty stoked with it, but you never know. We'll see."