Path of Exile 2's castles open routes across the Atlas

Take a castle in Path of Exile 2 and you give every player on your side a new place to start exploring the Atlas. A faction that holds a castle can strike out into the surrounding territory and run special maps in its Hunting Grounds. Both benefits turn on who holds the fort. The most interesting thing behind those walls is a way into a part of the map you might otherwise have spent your evening working towards.

Grinding Gear Games unveiled Conquerors of Wraeclast at ExileCon. It arrives with the free-to-play 1.0 release on 11 December Pacific time, and its 100 contested castles sit on a shared map beyond the Atlas starting area. The league begins much earlier, with a mercenary rescue during the campaign. The distance between that first fight and a castle that opens up an entire stretch of the endgame gives the league a satisfying sense of scale.

A road through the castle gates

The Atlas is the map of Wraeclast you explore after the campaign. It links areas you can fight through, with Waystones used to open those encounters. A castle in friendly hands gives you a jumping-off point out towards the edges of that map. When a faction takes ground somewhere new, you have a reason to look beyond the route you'd already picked out. You can head out from the castle and explore the areas nearby.

The Hunting Grounds give those detours some character. They're maps around a castle with extra modifiers, and the people on the same side get access to the same modifiers. Two castles can therefore offer different reasons to turn up. One can be worth taking for the area it puts within reach, while another has Hunting Grounds you'd happily spend an evening clearing. Whoever takes the castle gets the bigger item rarity bonus, with a smaller one going to the rest of the faction.

Lose the castle and those perks go with it. Retake it and the Hunting Grounds reset. That gives territory a use even when you had little to do with its capture. You can come to the Atlas with a new piece of equipment to try and find a destination picked out by other players' work. A siege you lead can leave your faction with somewhere to go long after you've collected the loot from the fight. Taking another castle gets harder as your faction's holdings grow, so the side with the most useful routes also has a tougher job extending them.

From a rescue to an army

You start with Varek and his mercenaries. The league's campaign encounters send you after new recruits and enemy fortifications, with more than 70 points of interest offering troops to recruit or jobs to take on. Before a battle you place your soldiers, then fight alongside them. A front line of shield bearers gives enemy archers a harder target. That's a decision you can make before the first arrow flies, even if the rest of your attention will soon be on keeping your own character alive.

By the endgame, the troops you've been gathering have a base. You establish a stronghold in one of three faction styles, each with its own troops to recruit. That home stronghold is where you build up your forces. The contested castles are further out, and taking one means securing the surrounding ground and bringing enough soldiers for the siege. Grinding Gear Games has shown the scale of the late battles with siege engines that break walls and war elephants that charge through enemy ranks.

Give a commander the next map

Growing the stronghold also gives you a second way to make progress on the Atlas. An independent commander takes reserve troops and a Waystone, then clears a map over real time. You can queue several maps and collect what the troops bring back, with the commander keeping a cut of the gold. Eventually you can have up to three commanders. That's another use for the soldiers you recruited along the way, and a way to keep a few jobs going while you fight elsewhere yourself.

It also leaves a pleasing choice about where to spend your own time. Hand a map to a commander and you can take your character somewhere that's just opened up for your faction. The queue is handy for maps you've already picked. The castle gives you somewhere to go on the spur of the moment. If your faction takes a fort with attractive Hunting Grounds, you can try them while your troops are already working through the maps you set aside.

Our preview of the December release covers the completed campaign and the Duelist, useful starting points if you're coming to Wraeclast for the first time. Conquerors gives that long journey a good destination of its own. The soldiers you start out rescuing can eventually help you take a castle, and someone you've never fought beside can use it to reach their next map.