PoE Necropolis will turn you into a gravedigger that buries famous people for loot

Developer Grinding Gear Games never fails to come up with new ways for Path of Exile players to scrounge for loot. In the upcoming Necropolis league expansion, you’ll do it by digging graves.

While it’s nowhere near Halloween, that isn't stopping the studio from releasing its most spooky content yet. Undertaker Arimor is the star of the show; a collector of spirits that now haunt the monsters of this universe. Naturally, it’s up to you to put a stop to them, which you’ll do with a fancy item called the Lantern of Arimor.

Upon entering a new area, you’ll peer through the lantern and use it to apply Spirits to monsters in the area, which makes them more difficult. As usual, higher risk means higher reward, so if you’re up to the challenge you can assign them in such a way that the difficulty is really over the top, but appropriately rewarding. Conversely if your build isn’t quite there yet, you can make it easier on yourself (for example, by assigning Spirits to enemies you’ll encounter less often). The UI is pretty transparent here, providing lots of information for you to manipulate as you see fit. So, if you die, it’s (probably) only your fault – not that that should stop you from complaining!

Some monsters won't be haunted but rather, 'Devoted'. When you encounter these guys (they're more likely to appear if you killed a ton of mobs in the previous area), they'll grant you simple rewards like increased XP or sometimes spawn the Nameless Seer NPC which gifts you a unique item if you defeat a series of packs affected by him.

Yet a third monster type is Unresolved Anguish. Yep, the old ghost with unfinished business trope is here in full effect. Once you find these guys, Arimor will take them to his Necropolis and store them in the morgue. When visiting it, you can get to work burying monsters to retrieve gear from them. From there, you can combine multiple monsters from multiple graves to assemble a strong item with a ton of high tier and relevant mods on them - kind of like Harvest but instead of plants you're using bodies. Fun, right?

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Even better, you can assemble new uniques by burying corpses from the famous Eternal Empire families. That is to say, burying an entire family of these folks together and exorcising them will see a unique specific to their lineage will appear.

For trade league aficionados, corpses are even tradeable (I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've typed that sentence), by way of coffins purchased from Arimor.

Taking it further, Embers can be used to replace monsters in an area. Combine them with the aforementioned Spirits and you're really in for a good time.

Still hungry? The Necropolis league mechanic will mark the first league to have support on the Atlas tree, meaning you can customize or enhance Necropolis gameplay as you see fit.

All changes in PoE Necropolis 3.24 - Keystones & scarabs, Tier 17 maps, & more

Unlike a lot of games, Path of Exile times its major patches with new expansions, and it's no different with 3.24. Based on all the quality of life improvements the developers have teased, I assumed Necropolis league wouldn't offer a lot outside of that and the league mechanic, but boy was I wrong.

Multiple Atlas trees

The first major change is the addition of multiple Atlas trees (three in total). A long-requested feature, these allow you to quickly switch between trees without having to fuss about with a ton of Orbs of Making. Since Atlas strategies are something you'll often switch between (especially if you're an efficient trade league player), this will come in terribly handy. It's also nice for characters made after your first - you can keep your 'main' tree on your current character while starting with an early game tree on your alternate, for example. Even better: you can name them!

New Scarabs

Next is up is a rework of sorts to Scarabs. In an effort to streamline endgaming, Sextants and Master Mission selection are being removed, with the options offered by these mechanics shifted into Scarabs. For example, one causes Beyond Demons to spawn when you kill monsters, while another adds an Ultimatum or Delirium encounter. Yet another causes more Divination Cards to drop for each different favoured map, but the map you're running will drop only cards from those favoured maps. (The developer suggests this as an alternative for Mageblood farming, although it remains to be seen how much you're rewarded or punished for 'only' committing to a few maps.) Lastly, Master Missions can now be accessed through Scarabs.

Atlas tree changes

One of the consequences of the Scarab changes is less access to a variety of content, but the Atlas will be changed to compensate, allowing reliable access to any mechanic you fancy. Some new notables will be added too (Remarkable Relics and Tainted Carapaces), enabling you to farm specific kinds of scarabs (whether type or tier).

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New league, new keystones: popular strategy keystones (Wandering Path, Grand Design, and Growing Hordes) are being replaced with Unwavering Vision, Unfettered Concentration, Back to Basics, and Thorough Exploration. Asked about these, Game Director Mark Roberts said, "We want less binary choices. Too often now it's just like 'this is strictly better or worse' and we want to encourage different styles of play instead. There's a new one that gives you less monsters but make monsters empowered to encourage boss rushing and map clearing; another prevents extra content from spawning but juices vanilla content, for example."

New Transfigured Gems

Aside from that, a couple handful of new Transfigured Gems have made it to market in Path of Exile 3.24. If you missed the boat on these last league, they're kind of like the Alternate Quality gems introduced in Heist (that have since been replaced). Essentially, in line with the Atlas keystone philosophy, they offer a different playstyle from the same skill. With 3.24, a ton of popular skills now have a Transfigured version (Ice Shot, Artillery Ballista, Incinerate, Kinetic Blast, Elemental Hit, Tornado, Summon Holy Relic, Static Strike, Poisonous Concoction, and Fireball), so if your favourite wasn't included before, there's a good chance it is now.

Endgame changes

One more before we go. The deep endgame has received some reworks: Uber bosses are no longer accessible via Atlas passives, but rather, fragments obtained from new Tier 17 maps (naturally, they drop from T16 maps). This is so the game's most difficult content is gated appropriately rather than making you feel bad you can't complete it despite it being right there.

Tier 17 maps will include special variations of bosses from various mechanics like Heist, Expedition, and so on. Each can drop a unique which has been pulled from the core drop pool (meaning you can only get them from these bosses now).

Coinciding with all these changes: endgame bosses and their 'Uber' variants have had their loot tables reworked, with some receiving new uniques.

There are plenty more changes coming in Path of Exile Necropolis, but those are all the major bits you can expect. While the Path of Exile 2 beta has been delayed, all this will surely ease the pain. Necropolis launches March 29, 2024 (simultaneously on consoles and PC this time).

Looking for more Path of Exile content? Check out Path of Exile Corrupted Gear, Explained, only on Pro Game Guides!