Inven Global

With the official release of Path of Exile 2, a new league begins where players can recruit armies, build strongholds, and conquer territory from other factions. Its name is 'Conquerors of Wraeclast'. It features a blend of traditional combat-focused league content with troop management, base building, and factional competition.

Grinding Gear Games (GGG) revealed detailed mechanics and endgame content for the new league during its keynote at ExileCon 2026 in Auckland, New Zealand, on November 7. At first, players lead a small mercenary warband into battle, but as they progress through the campaign, they expand their forces and eventually manage their own stronghold. Later on the Atlas, players can assign mapping duties to commanders or compete with other factions for control of strongholds.

'Conquerors of Wraeclast' begins with an event where players rescue captured mercenaries. After witnessing a Count's soldiers arresting and hauling away mercenaries who betrayed them, rescuing them prompts Varek, the leader of the mercenary band, to offer his cooperation. From then on, Varek oversees mercenary recruitment and army management, guiding players through the league content.

Combat in the new league follows a different structure from standard monster hunting. Before a battle begins, players must position their available forces on the battlefield. Each unit type has specific roles and match-up advantages, and combat efficiency varies depending on where they are placed. For example, shield-bearing mercenaries resist arrow attacks well, making them ideal for the front lines where ranged attacks are concentrated.

However, placing your troops does not mean the battle resolves automatically. Once combat starts, the camera zooms out to show an overview of the battlefield, and players leap into the front lines alongside their army. Players must attack enemies directly while supported by their troops, intervening as needed. Game Director Jonathan Rogers emphasized that this is not content where your army fights all battles for you.

Managing mercenaries also requires resources. Mercenaries are hired in exchange for gold, and embarking on expeditions requires securing supplies needed to feed and maintain your forces. Supplies are collected from supply crates found in various areas throughout the campaign. Therefore, managing resources to sustain your troops for future battles is just as important as amassing a large army.

The campaign features over 70 points of interest tied to the new league. In these locations, players can recruit new mercenaries or participate in separate battles, with 23 battles available in the campaign alone. Players can defend villages, attack enemy fortresses, and experience siege battles breaking down castle gates. As the league expands, combat scales up from small skirmishes to large-scale siege warfare.

League battles feature bosses, and defeating a boss rewards a key to a stronghold's treasury. While the treasury offers gold and loot, the more vital reward is the new crafting materials introduced in this league. This introduces a new crafting method where players select desired modifiers on existing items and re-roll them.

A featured material introduced at the event is 'Crimson Iron'. Using this material allows players to directly select which explicit modifiers on an item they want to replace. Holding multiple materials lets players select multiple modifiers. Taking the item to a 'Reforging Bench' then replaces the selected modifiers with new random ones.

However, there is a crucial difference from standard modifier rerolling. Modifiers newly added through Reforging become fractured (locked) and cannot be altered again later, restricting further Reforging on that piece of gear. In other words, while it grants an opportunity to reroll unwanted modifiers, constraints prevent rolling back the results.

As a result, Reforging is far from a system players can repeatedly spam until ideal modifiers appear. Players must carefully choose which modifiers to keep and which to swap, as the outcome can dictate the item's final direction. It can be used to replace a single undesired modifier on an item that already has several good stats, but carries the risk of accepting whatever random modifier rolls.

Later in the endgame, higher-tier crafting methods emerge to grant specific modifiers more directly. Utilizing 'Infused Blood' tied to the league's narrative allows players to add specific new modifiers instead of random ones. Each blood type carries a different modifier pool, providing effects tailored to specific builds.

Two examples for the Shadow class were demonstrated on stage. One triggers a dark wave upon hitting with Chaos skills, while the other causes Strike skills used from Stealth to inflict Corrupted Blood on enemies. Thus, the new crafting system goes beyond merely raising item stats, serving to enhance class-specific combat mechanics as well.

After growing a mercenary warband through the campaign and entering the endgame, the league expands to a whole new scale. Players can establish a base for the forces that fought alongside them. By building a custom stronghold and expanding buildings and facilities, players lay down operational foundations for their army.

Strongholds can be constructed using architectural styles from one of three factions: Ezomyte, Maraketh, or Karui. Each offers over 20 unique buildings and upgrades. Developing your stronghold unlocks expanded functions for recruiting and maintaining troops. Once requisite facilities and gold are secured, players can even produce additional troops directly at their stronghold.

Through this process, a new system distinct from direct combat is unlocked: Commanders. Players can assign troops to dedicated commanders and order them to clear Atlas maps on their behalf. During the live demo, 'High Adjudicator Atella' was introduced as the first independent commander.

To deploy a commander, players must first assign a portion of reserve troops stored in their stronghold. After providing a Waystone for the designated map, the commander leads their unit to clear it. Once the mission is complete, players can claim the dropped loot, though the commander takes a cut of the gold earned as their reward. By supplying troops and paying a fee, players can cut down on time spent clearing maps manually.

A commander's map run is not instantaneous. Completion takes real-world time based on map distance and difficulty, with harder maps requiring longer waiting periods. However, multiple maps can be queued up. Players can assign several maps to a commander and return later to claim all accumulated loot at once.

As the endgame progresses and stronghold features expand, players can manage up to three commanders simultaneously. This allows players to assign separate maps to commanders while manually exploring the Atlas themselves. However, whether map clearing continues offline when fully logged out of the game was not explicitly clarified during the showcase.

This system provides a new alternative to Path of Exile 2's core loop of repetitive mapping. While acquiring loot previously required players to open maps and slay monsters manually, the new league lets players spend accumulated troops and resources to delegate map clearing. In essence, growing an army and stronghold directly ties into endgame farming efficiency.

One of the ultimate goals of 'Conquerors of Wraeclast' is seizing 100 strongholds placed along the outskirts of the Atlas. GGG described this as a type of content never attempted in previous leagues. Beyond individual players running maps independently, multiple factions compete for control of strongholds on a shared Atlas.

Strongholds on the shared Atlas can be captured by a specific faction, providing benefits to that faction based on control. A player who directly captures a stronghold receives a substantial Item Rarity bonus, while other players in the same faction receive a smaller Item Rarity bonus. Individual achievements directly benefit the entire faction.

Captured strongholds also affect access to special hunting grounds. Dedicated maps called 'Hunting Grounds' exist around strongholds, accessible to any player belonging to the controlling faction. These maps feature extra reward modifiers, offering far more efficient farming opportunities than standard maps.

Additionally, captured strongholds can serve as new starting points for Atlas exploration. Rather than travelling from distant default hubs, players can use faction-secured strongholds to explore adjacent areas. Capturing strongholds not only yields extra rewards but also changes how players access different parts of the Atlas.

However, factional control competition on a shared Atlas does not necessarily mean direct PvP combat against other players' characters. Current details indicate that factions capture strongholds and share outcomes, but further clarification is required regarding how ownership transfers or how opposing factions defend them.

The narrative of the new league progresses alongside castle conquest. In the endgame, players uncover a conspiracy by forces attempting to resurrect a vampire lord named 'Severa'. Maraketh factions infuse blood into gems and attempt to transport them to an ancient stronghold to revive Severa, who promised them immortality. However, Maraketh is not the only faction seduced by Severa, forcing players to battle all three affected factions before launching a final assault on her stronghold.

Massive siege engines also make an appearance. Featured siege weapons with unique traits range from catapults to war elephants crewed by goblins and 20-headed chimeras capable of scorching their surroundings. Thus, league combat begins with standard monster hunting and expands to troop positioning, siege engine operations, and climactic boss encounters.

'Conquerors of Wraeclast' is designed so that recruiting and growing an army connects directly to character combat, item crafting, and Atlas progression. While players fight on the front lines to command troops in the campaign, the endgame opens strategic options such as managing strongholds and assigning maps to commanders. Combined with shared Atlas territorial warfare, it adds faction-wide objectives to Path of Exile's traditional individual-focused farming loop.