Since its 2013 launch, the free-to-play action-RPG Path of Exile has seen many changes and upgrades. Today, Grinding Gear Games announced that a new expansion was in the works called "Betrayal".

In Betrayal, you will find old "Masters" vanishing and being replaced by new ones, alongside a challenge league that deals with the rise of a group known as the "Immortal Syndicate." These two elements are no doubt related.

In addition to the larger pieces of content coming in Betrayal, there's also a number of quality of life updates and gameplay tweaks that have been included.

Below we will take you to see all the content known in the Betrayal league.

Quick Jump

• POE 3.4 Betrayal - Immortal Syndicate
• POE 3.4 Betrayal Hideouts & Recipes & Mods Changes
• POE 3.4 Betrayal Masters Changes
• POE 3.4 Betrayal New Skills Show
• POE 3.4 Betrayal Maps & Item Changes
• POE 3.4 Betrayal Release Date & PS4 Version

POE 3.5 Betrayal - Immortal Syndicate

In Path of Exile Betrayal, a new threat in the form of the Immortal Syndicate emerges after the events of the previous expansions Delve and Incursion, which altered aspects of the timeline. The changes have also caused the disappearance of the Forsaken Masters, who previously helped your character gain new skills and gear throughout the journey. This mysterious organization has amassed immense power, and you'll need to dismantle their influence--one member at time.

Immortal Syndicate

In Betrayal, the entire theme is investigating a criminal cartel, complete with a bulletin board of pictures and strings to show relationships and note significant information. That would be the Immortal Syndicate. This syndicate has discovered a way to revive its fallen members and bring them back to life using an artifact stolen from Jun Ortio’s Order of the Djinn. Jun Ortio’s goal, with your help, is to find out who is in charge, what its goals are, and thwart them. In a nutshell, players will be investigating the four branches of the Syndicate: fortification, transportation, research, and intervention. Chis explained that information includes relationships, items they have, and who is superior or subordinate to whom. And here is where things get really interesting.

Early on in the game, you’re introduced to Jun, who tells you what the Immortal Syndicate is and what they’re planning. They’re a criminal cartel that has members in various parts of Wraeclast. Then, via a panel, you get to see the individuals that belong to the infamous group. You’ll see the branches they belong to as well as relationships that they’ve formed within their inner circle.

To start, each branch of the Syndicate has a different encounter type. Fortification is just as it sounds, with an encounter consisting of a fortification protecting Syndicate supplies. For transportation, players encounter a convoy of supply vehicles. The research arm involves stumbling across an underground lab where players must stop members from destroying evidence. As for intervention, that means that you’ve gotten the attention of the Syndicate and it has sent assassins out to get you!

Although all 18 members of the Syndicate are initially unknown, players will uncover information about them as they play, starting with the underlings and moving to the leaders. But players don’t just uncover information, they manipulate it! Each game world area will have some form of Syndicate activity, and players will need to subdue the Syndicate member (or members, as there is often another who comes to the aid of its fellow!). Once subdued, players have options on what to actually do with the enemy.

Choices

Now that you know their specific branches and your objectives should you seek them out, what exactly would you do once you’ve beaten them into submission? Well, you have four options available (two are available at any given time depending on the prerequisites):

• Interrogate – Once you’ve taken out a Syndicate member, interrogation is the safest choice of what to do next. When you interrogate a member, they’ll divulge information about others in their brotherhood or additional information about a safehouse.
• Bargain – When you’re up against a sole Syndicate fighter and you’ve subdued them, bargaining would be a viable option. It can lead to a random result such as changing character relationships in the Immortal Syndicate panel. Or they can even give you some items.
• Execute – If a Syndicate member has backup or you’re feeling a little bloodthirsty, you can kill them in cold blood. They aren’t called the “Immortal Syndicate” for giggles, though, because they can actually revive dead members! Executing one will see them revived later on, albeit more powerful due to their leaders promoting them (they died for a cause, after all). They will remember the atrocity that you’ve committed, though.
• Betray – Another option, should you have multiple Syndicate members submitting to you, is to have one of them betray the other. This is only possible if they have a direct relation or one is a subordinate. Betrayal will tend to switch or change the positions of these members (ie. a subordinate would end up becoming higher ranked).

POE 3.5 Betrayal Forsaken Masters Changes

Managing director Chris Wilson gave a detailed what Betrayal changes to the core of Path of Exile, and how it's a culmination of not only a year's worth of expansions, but the work they've done since launch.

"At the beginning of 2018, we took a long look at Path of Exile and asked ourselves 'what piece of content needs the most attention?'" Wilson said. "Our eyes fell on the content of the Forsaken Masters, which was something we introduced fairly early on in the game back in 2014. These NPCs give you missions to do and gave you hideouts in return. It was a solid expansion, but it was really starting to show its age. We've done our best to keep the game up to date, so we decided we had to do something about it. Betrayal is our way of tie up all that came before, particualrly with the previous expansions this year."

New Master

As Chris Wilson mentioned during our interviews, the folks over at Grinding Gear Games felt that Masters were one of the weakest elements in Path of Exile. While it’s true that there were a lot of them, he admitted that the missions they provided were of a lower quality compared to what the rest of the game could offer. And so, Arguably the biggest change coming to Path of Exile with Betrayal is to the Forsaken Masters, who are being replaced in favour of four characters from 2018’s various leagues.

Four of the old master have mysteriously vanished, and in their place you’ll find Einhar, Alva, Niko, Jun Ortoi, and Zana, who remains from the old Forsaken Masters. This freshens up the grind a little and ensures the mechanics of this year’s leagues, most of which have been very popular, remain integral to the game.

There have been some minor tweaks to improve each master’s gameplay loop. For example, Einhar from Bestiary will no accompany you on hunts and act as the net thrower, meaning you no longer have to worry about timing the throw just right and concentrate and clearing mobs instead.

Master Crafting Changes

Previously, in order to gain crafting recipes from Masters, you had to keep leveling them up by repeating those daily quests. Since these are gone and replaced with the five (Einhar, Alva, Niko, Jun Ortoi, and Zana) mentioned above, there’s an entirely revamped Master Crafting experience. Rather than leveling them up, the method is now more streamlined. You can find these recipes based on the content you’re doing that’s attached to these new Masters.

POE 3.5 Betrayal Hideouts & Recipes & Mods Changes

Hideouts

Another reason why players leveled up Masters in the past was to gain decorations for their Player Hideouts. These hubs sort of defined your personality or quirk depending on your Master of choice. However, it’s worth noting that this could be a tedious process in the past. Apart from needing to level up Masters, you also needed to refurnish your Hideout after each Challenge League.

Now hideouts are getting a major overhaul. The biggest change is that players no longer need to make a new hideout each and every league! Instead, hideouts will be saved as templates that players can load up instead of spending time starting over again and again. Once unlocked, the hideout template can be saved — decorations and all!

New Unlock Method To Recipes

Hideouts are pretty important when we are talking about master crafting. This is the name of the process of using the crafting options provided by the masters in your hideout to modify your items. This system has been revamped, from a better user interface (not the newsworthy change according to Wilson) to changing how recipes are learned (this is the good part!). Gone are the days of repeating master missions to gain influence and fill up a progress bar in order to learn recipes. Instead, players will unlock recipes through an achievement system as the players play the game; completing various objectives within the master missions themselves (delving, hunting for beasts, and temple incursions) will unlock the recipes. Wilson also noted that many mods are tied to places/situations that make sense, such as a poison mod in a poison room in an incursion. Wilson expects the wiki to be updated fairly quickly as players determine exactly where and how to find each mod recipe.

Mods

In the Betrayal league, targets have the chance of dropping any of the 15 new veiled mods, which are the rare and unique item of this league. Jun Ortio will unveil the item for players, which will uncover three possible modifiers. Players then choose one of those three. A little RNG and a little choice, the best of both worlds. Wilson noted that these modifiers have unique effects not found on any other item, and have three benefits. One, you get to specialize the item how you want to. Two, these crating options become permanent crafting options you can use when creating other items. And three, the more you craft that mod the more it can level up and become more powerful for you crafted items.

POE 3.5 Betrayal New Skills

Finally, you can expect a total of ten skills to be either introduced or revamped in Betrayal. So far we only have details on two of them.

Winter Orb

This channeling spell spawns and powers up an orb that moves alongside you. This orb will periodically fire projectiles at nearby enemies that explode on impact, increasing the rate of fire the more powered up the orb is. You can buff this skill with the Additional Projectiles support gem so that extra projectiles are fired in a line, providing this with an unusual but handy damage pattern. Alternatively, you can use the Duration support gem so the orb remains active for longer after you’ve stopped channeling. Finally, you can use the Area support gem so each projectile damages with some AoE and overlaps.

Storm Brand

A brand is a new type of spell that summons arcane runes on the ground a bit like a trap. Runes will bind to nearby enemies and will activate repeatedly with their effect until the rune expires or the enemy dies. If the latter, the rune will return to the ground and await a new target. Storm Brand in particular zaps three nearby enemies at once and can be supported with Chain, Increased Aura, and Concentrated Effect support gems. You can also support Storm Brand with Life Leech so each zap returns life to you, which isn’t possible with other trap-like skills.

POE 3.5 Betrayal Maps & Item Changes

In addition to introducing new skills, Betrayal has added four new randomized maps. These are all based on tilesets introduced in Delve, such as cavernous areas.

As for unique items, one that we already know about is the Bitterbind Point. This is a unique rarity shield that has a Veiled Mod. Veiled Mods are usually not possible on unique items, but you might be able to find some Betrayal uniques that have them.

The Bitterbind Point boosts your summoning capabilities and minion damage output when you land critical strikes with spells. It’s meant for a summoner/spellcaster type of playstyle (think Necromancer). It's just one of 15 new Unique Items coming to Betrayal. Some of these new Uniques can be found on existing content though many are exclusive solely to the upcoming Betrayal League.

POE 3.5 Betrayal Release Date & PS4 Version

We believe many players will care when we can play Betrayal League. The release date is set for December 7, 2018 on PC and sometime in mid-December on consoles. December will be a particularly big month for Path of Exile. In addition to the launch of this expansion on the December 7, the game will also see its release on PS4 soon after.

The above is a general introduction to Betrayal , as the date approaches, the official will continue to release news about the new league. We will continue to pay attention and share it with all players in the first time. Let us look forward to the arrival of the new league!