Grinding Gear Games’ dual-development process of Path of Exile and Path of Exile 2 is resulting in a little bit of crossover. For the first game’s next expansion, Curse of the Allflame, a lot of changes are coming such as the removal of colour-locked sockets.
In the new expansion, players will find the “abyssal minions of Kulemak” with brand-new skills compared to their counterparts in POE2. For the ongoing ARPGs, there’s some degree of back and forth development with devs for one game sharing ideas with devs working on the other.
Earlier this year, Path of Exile 2 introduced the brand-new Build Planner feature, an immensely useful tool that allows players to track and follow a community build within the game. In a roundtable interview for Curse of the Allflame, we asked whether this feature will be coming to the original Path of Exile and, good news, it is!
“It will come, yes, is the short answer,” game director Mark Roberts told us. However, it might not launch in the same state as its POE2 counterpart, and it will obviously have its own differences to better service the first game.
“What might end up happening is that the passive tree side of it comes sooner than the other parts,” Roberts continued. “Because the passive tree is, ultimately, pretty similar between the two games so that part would be easier to implement in POE1, but obviously the skill, you’ve obviously got the uncut menu with the actual skill trees and there’s a bit of an easier analogue to see here’s the recommended gems to cut. We don’t really have that to the same degree [in the first game].”
Roberts explained that, despite the work needed, “it is doable, obviously”, and there is a future where the Build Planner will made its way into the original Path of Exile. However, it can’t be a cut-and-paste job between the two, and it will require a lot of work to pull off.
“My hope would be that we don’t prevent the passive tree and maybe the item notes side of it… that said, having a kind of an incomplete build recommendation could confuse some people to some degree, but I’m sure there’ll be a middle ground that’s nice, that’s easy to do, and then we’ll try and figure out the skill and support gem side of it another time.” he said.
Path of Exile game designer Octavian explained that they “cannot promise a timeline” for when the Build Planner could be implemented into Path of Exile. However, the feature is definitely coming, and should help to make the ARPG a little bit more accessible to those that are intimidated by its massive skill trees.
