Path of Exile Blight Basic Guide You Need To Know

Path of Exile 3.8 league name is Blight and September expansion contains the Blight challenge league, three revamped balance archetypes with new skills and support gems, plenty of new items, two old leagues being integrated into the core game, and a focus on giving you more freedom to choose which aspects of Path of Exile's content you play and when.

What are the Expansion contents of Path of Exile Blight？

- Areas will contain Fungal Growths that spread tendrils into the area around them. You must protect Sister Cassia (a new NPC) while she uses a pump to destroy the growths.

- When the encounter begins, mind-controlled enemies will begin spawning at the end of each tendril and running directly along the tendrils to attack the pump. They will follow the tendrils exactly and will not attack you unless you're in the way, but will destroy the pump if not killed. These enemies are unusually hard to kill.

- Sister Cassia builds towers in order to help you in the encounter. There is a range of towers available, and you can pick which towers are constructed and how they're upgraded. It seems that killing the enemies during the encounter provides the resource required to build/upgrade more towers.

- At the end of a successful encounter, you receive a reward from each tendril attached to the growth. This appears to use a similar system to Legion rewards, where each reward container has a symbol hovering over it and will give items of that type when opened.

- Rewards can also include oils, which you can use to place new enchantments on your gear. A combination of two oils can enchant a ring (and only rings) with an enchantment that provides bonuses to the towers used in blight encounters.

A combination of three oils can enchant an amulet or one of four blight-specific unique items to allocate any notable passive on the passive tree.

The result of this process will be shown before you consume the oils. These enchantments can be overwritten if desired, and that passives allocated via these enchantments cannot be allocated again on the skill tree.

- There are also 13 hidden notable passives that can only be obtained from enchantments.

- There are twelve types of oil, with differing rarities. They can be upgraded via a 3:1 vendor recipe, like essences.

- In the endgame, you can find blighted maps that contain gigantic blight encounters with exclusive rewards. Oils can also be used to modify these, but we don't know the details of this yet.

Owers have specific elemental and debuff effects once they target enemies. Some will throw flaming projectiles, some will arc lightning, some will slow down your foes, and so on. Killing monsters allows you to get sources that may be utilized to power up extra towers. You'll have the ability to play solo or with your Path of Exile buddies to complete these Blighted maps at your leisure, getting plenty of loot in return.
You and your teammates may also share resources throughout the encounter, and you can strategy ahead which exile requires which lane or side.
Now, tower defense wouldn't be total if there wasn't some kind of booster for specific setups. That's where a number of new distinctive things come in. There are actually four new Blight-specific uniques which you can get from this activity. These are often equipped, universally, by any class.

What are Oils and Anointment in Path of Exile Blight?

Sister Cassia's function in Path of Exile's tower defense-inspired expansion is that only she can "anoint" these unique items using the "oils" you obtain in the new Blighted Maps. There are 12 tiers of oils in total which get progressively rarer.

Oils are combined by Sister Cassia to anoint your new Blight-specific uniques with new properties — with each property increasing the effectivity of certain tower effects. For instance, combining two types of oils on an equipped item might lead to a boost in the damage dealt by arc-type towers, while another combination might provide an extra projectile being shot by flame towers. There are around 80 combinations when you use two oils. These anointments are also placed on top of any perks that your items already have (so don't worry about losing the perfect rolls you've obtained).

Note: Every anointment combination is deterministic — the results from oil combinations would be fixed and not randomized. You'll see these results as well prior to committing to the anointment action, so you can always back out without wasting your materials in case you don't want to have that result.

Also, order won't matter when you combine oils on the panel. For instance, "red + yellow" would still yield the same result as "yellow + red."

You'll also need two oils for any ring you may obtain in Path of Exile. That's right, you can now enchant rings with additional perks that'll change the effect of your Blighted Map towers. You can have multiple gear pieces that can improve your towers' crowd control or DPS capabilities.

Note: Items that can be anointed with oils will be noted once you mouse over them. The other uniques in the game can't be modified by Sister Cassia.

What are Amulets and Secret Perks in Path of Exile Blight?

But, that's not all. You can also have Sister Cassia anoint your amulets. You'll need three oils for this process, though.

The whole process might be well worth it. That's because these oil combinations for your amulet will lead to a vastly different effect: A new passive in your skill tree. There are now 13 secret passives that have been added! These are activated in the skill tree only from 13 specific oil combinations (out of 364 that are possible) for the amulet that you're wearing.

There are multiple combinations which Grinding Gear Games' head honcho, Chris Wilson, could not reveal yet. He did suggest that the Path of Exile community can discover these as they progress through the Blight expansion.
You can see the next two images of amulets that will allocate perks such as Dire Torment and Retribution if you wear them:



Oh, and the surprise? It won't matter where you've put points for your build because these passives can be made active no matter where you're at on the skill tree. One last thing: You can also use oils to anoint your Blighted Maps. Doing this will add new properties, making them harder (or more rewarding) if need be.

What are Necromancers and Minions in Path of Exile Blight?

One of the new uniques added in Path of Exile: Blight can drop from various moments in the game (even outside of the new tower defense maps). Take a look at the Triad Grip unique gloves. Notice the effects that'll buff minion damage depending on the sockets and gems you have on the item?

That's just one of the changes coming to Path of Exile's Blight expansion concerning summoner-type builds. Certain skills will now allow you to specialize deeper into certain minion traits (such as having faster minions), your summoned critters will be even stronger as your gems level up, you'd get the new Carrion Golem (buffs other minions and is also buffed by your minions in return), and there's even a rework for the Necromancer Ascendancy.

Players will have new support gems that provide an additional degree of control with the behavior of minions, whether they'd be more aggressive, defensive, or how they'd swarm over enemies. Grinding Gear Games wanted to provide Path of Exile players with more control, sure. But, they also wanted to avoid the hecticness that's common in the RTS genre where you had to keep clicking on multiple units that are engaged in a fray.

For instance, a build that supports "Death Mark" will have your undead or beast hordes beelining straight for an enemy that has been "marked." They'd focus all their attention on that mob as opposed to scattering all over the place just because there's a monster there.

What is Poison Assassin Archetype in Path of Exile Blight?

As Chris Wilson had told me, the Poison Assassin used to be one of the more broken builds in Path of Exile. After some nerfs, it no longer became viable. The upcoming revamp to the Poison Assassin makes it a feasible choice again due to complementary skills as opposed to prior exploitation of broken mechanics.

The Assassin's Ascendancy tree has been tweaked to focus even more on critical strikes and poison debuffs. Five new skills and one support gem have been added to complement this type of playstyle.

One new skill, Cobra Lash, lets you throw your weapon, chaining between multiple enemies and instantly poisoning them when you land a crit. A new buff called Elusive has been also added, increasing defense and mobility for a limited time. This effect slowly becomes weaker as time passes (the first of its kind), as opposed to instantly disappearing once the duration is over.

What is The Mine Saboteur archetype in Path of Exile Blight?

As for the Saboteur Ascendancy, there's been a revamp that focuses more on the Mine Saboteur archetype. Chris Wilson noted that its previous iteration hadn't been up to snuff, and few people bothered placing mines. Well, say hello to your new little (err, big and explodey) friends.

The revamp in Path of Exile: Blight makes the archetype more viable. Mines can be thrown from a distance, are deployed faster, will detonate in sequence, while rewarding players who can create longer-lasting detonations and chain reactions.

Like the Poison Assassin archetype, it's also received some new notable attack skills, support gems, and passives. One example is the Stormblast Mine which makes enemies more vulnerable to damage while sending shockwaves when several are detonated.

What has changed in Map and what is Missions in Path of Exile Blight?

In the past, Path of Exile players would find certain missions they can tackle while they're doing the endgame maps. The downside is that there's a potential to miss out on completing these activities if a player isn't able to handle them at the time, if they'd have to bounce back after trading, or when friends might want to do something else.

When the Blight expansion rolls out, players can now focus on the content they want to do without necessarily missing out on what NPCs provided in the past. The missions you obtain are now "stored" (as seen on the right-hand side of the panel), and you can choose to do them at any time you prefer by accessing them on your Map Device.