You are an Exile, struggling to survive on the dark continent of Wraeclast, as you fight to earn power that will allow you to exact your revenge against those who wronged you. Created by hardcore gamers, Path of Exile is an online Action RPG set in a dark fantasy world. With a focus on visceral action combat, powerful items and deep character customization, Path of Exile is completely free and will never be pay-to-win.
Key Features
Freedom. Power. Revenge.
Path of Exile is an online Action RPG designed around a strong online item economy and deep character customisation.
Path of Exile is set in the dark fantasy world of Wraeclast. Scarred by mysterious catastrophes of the past and inhabited by creatures of nightmare, the very environment challenges exiles who dare explore it. You play as the Duelist, Witch, Ranger, Templar, Marauder, Shadow or the Scion class. From forsaken shores through to the city of Oriath, explore Wraeclast and uncover the ancient secrets waiting for you.
Unlimited Character Customization
Create and customise hundreds of unique skill combinations from tradable itemised gems and our gigantic Passive Skill Tree. Combine skill gems, support gems and trigger gems to create your own unique combination of power, defence and destruction.
All of Path of Exile's character classes share its vast Passive Skill Tree. Starting at one of seven distinct locations dictated by their chosen class, players can focus on the core specialities of their class or travel across the tree to build complex combinations of skills from various disciplines. Scattered across the tree are Keystone passives, Masteries and Jewel Sockets that drastically alter the way a character is played.
Armed to Kill
Path of Exile is completely designed around items. Our flasks are persistent items that have mods. Our endgame areas can be found as Map items that have mods altering their challenges and rewards. We've gone as far as removing gold as a currency and basing our trade economy around orbs that can randomly reroll the properties of other items. We have carefully constructed our item system for veterans of the best Action RPGs.
Explore the Atlas of Worlds
The Atlas of Worlds is a series of more than a hundred high-level maps that truly test the limits of your build. As you explore the Atlas, you will eventually unveil its dark secrets and face the most dangerous bosses that Wraeclast has ever seen.
In the true Path of Exile way, the Atlas of Worlds has its own Passive Skill Tree. Earn skill points for the Tree by completing maps on the Atlas and create your own unique endgame experience.
Deadly Missions
In your journey through Wraeclast, you will meet fellow Exiles who seek your help. Capture wild beasts for Einhar, delve into the depths of the Azurite Mine with Niko, explore the secrets of the Temple of Atzoatl with Alva or investigate a mysterious Immortal Syndicate with Jun. This optional content in Path of Exile will reward you with valuable currency, powerful tradeable items and new ways of crafting.
Customise Your Hideout
In your extensive travels throughout the Acts and the Atlas of Worlds, you will discover secret locations swarmed with dangerous monsters. Defeat them, claim the Hideout for yourself and create your own personalised town. Use your Hideout as a quiet place to trade with other Exiles, craft after battle, or expand it and use it as a personalised Guild Hall with hundreds of decorations.
Be Ruthless
Ruthless is an optional game mode which offers a more challenging way to play Path of Exile. Ruthless players can expect extreme item scarcity, limited crafting and many other changes such as support gems being drop-only. Ruthless is a mode about friction, tension and anticipation. It's much more difficult, but overcoming that difficulty feels highly rewarding. In a world where your items are far below par, every item drop has the potential to be the breakthrough one you need.
Fair-To-Play. Never Pay-To-Win.
We're committed to creating a fair playing field for all players. All Microtransactions in Path of Exile are purely cosmetic and do not affect gameplay.
Storyline
All exiles are given the same choice: to sink or swim. Those that don't drown will reach the forsaken shores of Wraeclast, where the only welcome is the clinging embrace of undeath. However, a small band of survivors has managed to hold fast in a ruined lighthouse, desperately repelling both the grasping undead and the manic scavengers that stubbornly cling to their last shreds of humanity. Under the commanding gaze of Axiom Prison, snarling goatmen roam the craggy bluffs, always keeping their cloven feet well clear of the rhoa-infested swamps in the lowlands. All along the coast, rotting shipwrecks litter the shoreline, the spirits of the stranded sailors still haunting the wreckages of their ill-fated ships, waiting to take out their sorrow and rage on those who yet live. All the while, the Siren herself continues her sweet, sad song, luring ever more ships to their watery graves.
Farther inland, through the twisting caves and darkened forests, the ruins of civilisation become more apparent. The ravages of time have worn many buildings to rubble, and stripped away decaying flesh, leaving only grotesquely grinning bones. The dark, fetid caves and underground passages are a clattering refuge for these skeletal ranks, while the open forests and riverways brim with monstrous beasts with a taste for blood. Recently, ragtag groups of bloodthirsty bandits have built fortified camps in the forest, openly challenging one another while extorting food and supplies from the small, struggling village that sits between them atop a stone dam. Ignored by the squabbling bandits, strange newcomers clad in black armor have been seen skulking around various large ruins, their purpose both mysterious yet unsettling.
Atop a sheer cliff of ruptured mantle, straddling the river feeding a mighty waterfall, lies the fallen capital of the Eternal Empire. Its former glory rots amid the ruins of a blasted cityscape, the buildings decrepit and mouldering. But Sarn is far from uninhabited. Many of the original citizens still lurk the dark recesses, their humanity washed clean by the cataclysm of centuries past. These Undying monsters roam the city at night and skulk the shadows during the day, for the naked sunlight is anathema to their shrivelled, leathery skin. The sun-scarred days are far from peaceful, however. A legion of soldiers from Oriath has occupied the area to the west of the river, and is fighting an all-out war against the multifarious denizens of the city. Every day their black-clad soldiers battle twisted insects that scuttle and breed, feasting on anything that moves. Every day they throw battalions against the army of floating, red Ribbons that eviscerate all who trespass on their domain. Every day they skirmish against a small group of exiles who have barricaded themselves on a small island in the middle of the river, caught between certain death on both sides.
Steam
Metacritic
