Here's When Path of Exile's New Expansion Launches

The latest expansion for Grinding Gear Games' role-playing game Path of Exile, Atlas of Worlds, will launch on September 2, the developer revealed today.

According to developers, Atlas of Worlds is a reimagining of Path of Exile's current end game. Using the game's map generator and crafting system, players can change the properties of the maps they generate and the content they'll find therein. The expansion includes 30 more areas and 19 new bosses, as well as a refreshed, higher-quality look for all existing older maps.

These new maps aren't just random areas, either. Grinding Gear Games has added narrative content, wrapping the reason and purpose behind these new areas into a larger new story.

Areas offer higher difficulty as well. Areas around the outskits of the new map are expected to offer content around level 28, while levels closer to the middle of the map--and the final bosses--will include content around level 86.

According to Grinding Gear Games, the studio found that the longer players spent time in the game, the less variety they had because they were grinding away at the same small number of high-level maps. The ability to customize maps and upgrade them to higher levels is meant to alleviate this. The higher the map level, the higher the level of the items you'll find; so if you're looking for items for minions, you may want to spend some time on upgraded maps in the graveyard area, as that's where you'll find the minion gear.

Grinding Gear has also worked to improve the performance of Path of Exile with this patch. According to the developer, the game now runs at twice the speed, with double the frame rate for when there are many enemies on screen.

Path of Exile was released in October 2013 after a successful crowdfunding campaign.