The Grinding Gear rooster has crowed, signifying the dawn of a new expansion and league. And what might they be? Welcome to Path of Exile: Chickens of Doom! Just kidding. (Although I’m very tempted by such a title!) The next expansion joining the content hen house – er, lineup – is Settlers of Kalguur. And while it isn’t based on chickens, believe it or not chickens are involved. Chickens, sheep, crops, farming, sailing, trade — this is one league you may never have expected. Prepare for Path of Exiles’ version of city building, where you truly build up your own settlement in Wraeclast. This all-new experience begins next week on July 26th at 4:00 p.m. EDT when Settlers of Kalguur launches on all platforms.
How exactly does this idea of city building work for a game like Path of Exile? During a preview with Game Directors Jonathan Rogers and Mark Roberts (POE and POE2, respectively), I learned about the the mechanics involved and the ideas behind them all as well as the upcoming changes and quality-of-life improvements for the the whole game. It really is a new way to play, but with plenty of the old way still to keep things familiar. More farming mobs, not corn.
What the cluck?
When prepping for this preview, I had the idea to start with something outrageous. So, chickens. Who ever would have thought that it would actually come to pass in a fashion? Just how can GGG keep coming up with new ideas for leagues – the devs have to run out sometime, right? Wrong. For Settlers of Kalguur, they leapt far outside of the box in a direction few could have seen coming. It’s a marriage of real-time mechanics and your typical POE slaughterfest fare.
Rogers shared that ideas for leagues can come from random movies or other games. Roberts noted that the ultimate inspiration here was the just the thought that it would be cool to make a city in Path of Exile. Then they considered what it would take to make that happen and explored from there.
As Rogers put it, “Settlers of Kalguur is a very experimental league, with new mechanics that will completely change how you play the core game.”
“This is the first Path of Exile league that experiments with true real-time mechanics. You can send out shipments, go and have lunch, and come back to your rewards. Many mechanics in the league work this way, so you’ll always have some ongoing project or outcome to look forward to.”
The important thing is to keep the city building action quick, as players expect in much of their POE play. To achieve this, players can set up queues of actions for the town workers to make while the players go out and kill stuff. Roberts emphasized that it was ultra important to make sure that players could queue lots up to happen so they didn’t have to constantly return every few minutes and micromanage the town. And Rogers pointed out that no system will ever circumvent POE play; the currency needed to build the town is dropped from mobs during play.
Old McExile had a farm
In a nutshell, players will find resources, hire workers, and conduct seafaring trade all to plan and grow a personal settlement called Kingsmarch. But don’t worry: Action still reigns supreme. You won’t be confined to the settlement just watering crops and feeding livestock. The city planning part of this league is all about hiring NPC workers to follow your established plans. Pick what to build and upgrade, what to grow, what to ship, and what maps to run and then let the workers do it all while you get to go out slaughtering mobs and continuing your adventures.
It all starts with King’s Hand of Kalguur, Johan, hiring exiles to help build Kingsmarch. He hires you, then you hire NPCs. Delegation, baby! To upgrade the town from its humble beginnings of just a tavern and a field, you must find special ores while adventuring through Wraeclast. Slaughter the mobs guarding them, then your hired miners can come and collect the resources. Of course, you’ll need food to feed the miners, so you have to hire farmers to tend crops and livestock. Soon you’ll need crafters and other specialty workers like blacksmiths. You’ll even get to hire Atlas runners at endgame to run maps and collect goods for you. “Over the course of the league you’ll be searching for your perfect employees for each job,” Rogers explains. “Once you have them, you’ll have to keep them paid, safe, and alive.”
For the town to grow, you build new facilities and upgrade existing ones. One town expansion is a dock, where you hire sailors and traders to conduct trade with specific NPC towns. You send out resources you have gathered, and ships come back laden with loot. However, it isn’t always smooth sailing; there is a risk meter attached to each ship that fluctuates depending on the value of the cargo as well as the skill of your workers. Higher risk does mean higher reward as you can get rich as long as your cargo is not sunk by storms or stolen by pirates en route. The one disappointing aspect of this for me is not losing loot; it’s not being able to go on the journey with the ship to protect my investment! However, the pirates might just invade your town anyway, so you will have a chance to battle them there.
How will players pay for all this? A new currency drops from mobs, an actual currency this time: gold. More gold means more and/or better workers. Can you find or afford the best ones? And if your ships or Atlas runners are kidnapped by pirates, can you afford the ransom for them? Of course, you can just fight to try to rescue them when the three new pirate bosses will assault your town. Or, as Rogers pointed out, you can just ignore them and let nature take its course. – then hire new ones.
Speaking of gold, one POE2 feature is here for Settlers of Kalduur. If you have an excess of gold (whether through drops or saving on ransoms!), you can use it to respec passive points. Note that the higher level you are, the more expensive it gets.
Blending in past leagues
One aspect I really appreciate in Settler of Kalguur is how it seamlessly brings together aspects of past leagues. The premise behind Settlers of Kalguur is that Dannig, Rog, Tujen and Gwennen from the Expedition League are trying to establish trade between Wraeclast and their homeland of Kalguur. As the town develops, more familiar faces from other leagues move in and begin to work.
The engineer Isla from the Heist League comes to build a series of Kalguuran-modified map devices. Rogers shared a special map strategy:
Be careful though, the difficulty of the map impacts the risk of your workers perishing! Try to pick your best workers, or perhaps just ones you just don’t like. Consider the difficulty too, sometimes it’s better to just run it yourself.
Isla offers more Kalguuran tech benefits with the return of what Rogers declared a formerly overpowered crowd-favorite: recombination. While it isn’t as powerful as before, players can combine two items.
Another Heist returnee is Faustus. He’ll man a Currency Trade-Market for player-to-player transactions. Rogers explained that “this will allow players to asynchronously buy and sell currency, and most other stackable items, with other players without the nuisance of price fixers and people who never respond.”
Players set their trade perimeters and Faustus makes it happen — as long as there is someone selling on the other end for the same rate or less. Of course, you need to pay him a small fee in gold for his efforts. Rogers shared that the team is excited to see how this system works out, as it is “an experiment to see if this type of asynchronous trading has a place in future Path of Exile releases.”
Much, much, more
Of course, there is so much more to Settlers of Kalguur than just the league, as interesting as it sounds. But that’s too much to add here, so stay tuned for info on the rebalancing, the big melee revamp, the new items, and more in our next Wandering Wraeclast!
What if your world changed every three months? What would you do differently? Path of Exile does, and MOP’s MJ Guthrie explores and experiences each new incarnation in Wandering Wraeclast. Join us biweekly for a look into each new challenge league and world expansion — and see whether MJ can finally reach the end of one world before it ends!
