June's 2.3.0 Content Update marks the start of both a Standard and Hardcore version of the Prophecy Challenge League. These leagues have self-contained economies and provide an opportunity for you to enjoy a fresh start and demonstrate your mastery of Path of Exile.
Navali, Karui Soothsayer
"What would you do if you knew what lay at the end of your path? If you could glimpse your future? If you could change it? For a small gift of silver, you can. Together we will change the stars. Together we will rewrite your prophecy."
- Navali, Hatungo of the Karui
You will encounter Navali in each town you visit as you explore Wraeclast in the Prophecy leagues. Cross her palm with silver and she will tell your future, divining a Prophecy for you to fulfill. These Prophecies will take you to the farthest reaches of the continent as you strive to achieve your destiny.
Fulfill your Prophecy
Approximately one monster per area drops a Silver Coin. Navali will exchange one coin for a vision of your future. This Prophecy, along with up to six others, is stored in your Prophecy screen.
Some of these Prophecies affect specific locations you travel to. The Vaal Invasion substantially alters the Lunaris Temple. Others are fulfilled when you meet various conditions. Sometimes, a Prophecy yields a desirable reward. Othertimes, the Prophecy is the reward: "Monstrous Treasure" fills the map with Strongboxes rather than monsters.
In true Path of Exile style, you can pay Navali to turn your prophecies into items so that they are tradeable. This allows you to delay your fate or even capitalise on it.
Prophecy Chains
Some Prophecies unfold as multiple parts, forming a Prophecy Chain. Completing one stage of these Prophecies unlocks the ability to later acquire the next stage. Each of these Prophecy Chains culminates in a valuable reward, or a component that will allow you to face the Pale Council. Many of these rewards are unique items new to Prophecy or from past challenge leagues.
The league's ultimate encounter can be reached by completing four separate Prophecy Chains and combining their results. One of these Chains is shown below.
Fated Unique Items
Many of Path of Exile's unique items tell a story. Some of those stories are unfinished. Certain Prophecies will guide you to wield one of these items as you complete its destiny. The item will be permanently imbued with new power and a new name.
Challenges and Rewards
In addition to the generous rewards earned by fulfilling Prophecies, you will earn exclusive microtransactions as you complete challenges.
The Prophecy leagues include a set of 40 new challenges. When you complete 12 challenges, you receive the Prophecy Footprints Effect. At 24, you receive the Prophecy Weapon Effect. When you complete your 36th challenge, you receive Navali's Monkey Pet. These microtransactions are exclusively available in the Prophecy leagues.
From the 19th challenge onwards and for every third challenge after that, you receive pieces of a Prophecy Totem Pole decoration to display in your hideout. The Totem Pole permanently showcases how many of the Prophecy challenges you completed during this league.
The Endgame Labyrinth
The rumours are true. There is a fourth Labyrinth, and it's accessed through end-game maps. High level players will gradually complete difficult map versions of the Trials of Ascendancy to gain access to the Endgame Labyrinth.
This version of the Labyrinth features new puzzles and includes an entirely new type of trap.
The Endgame Labyrinth rewards you with a new tier of item Enchantment and two additional Ascendancy points. The new total of eight Ascendancy points open up entirely new build possibilities.
In this update, we're also streamlining the Trials of Ascendancy so that you only have to complete them once on each difficulty level per league.
New Skills
We have added five new skills in Content Update 2.3.0. Spirit Offering grants both offensive and defensive bonuses to a summoner's minion. A Necromancer character can claim those bonuses for themselves.
Ancestral Warchief is a new melee weapon totem that uses a powerful area attack and empowers its owner's attacks. Lacerate is a melee skill that performs two slashes, sending out a wave of force with each. It deals extra damage where the slashes overlap.
Frostbolt is a new cold spell that passes through enemies, damaging them when it hits them. Vortex is a new area spell that explodes in a burst of cold around the caster, creating an icy vortex. If used on a Frostbolt in mid-air, the Frostbolt explodes, letting the caster create vortices across the battlefield.
New Items
Content Update 2.3.0 introduces many new Unique Items and Divination Cards designed by Path of Exile's supporters. You can view a selection of them below.
In addition, we're adding three new types of Unique Strongboxes and a new end-game map base type: the Plaza Map.
Balance Changes
This content update also contains some balance changes. Ascendancy Classes are being reviewed, reworked and rebalanced to ensure they stay competitive with each other across a variety of builds. Sources of chaos damage conversion are being reduced across the board. We are buffing the implicit mods on Wands and Sceptres. In addition, Daggers, Wand and Sceptres will be slightly more likely to roll caster or attack prefixes if they already have related mods.
All players will receive a one-off passive tree reset (including Ascendancy points) so that they can adjust their characters to these changes.
Behind the Veil
This update doesn't just add new content - it contains some significant technical improvements. We've overhauled how Path of Exile manages its memory and have replaced its sound system.
Game assets are now loaded in the background as you play, making loading screens faster. You can now load to the login screen in less than a second on an SSD hard drive (two seconds on a non-SSD). Path of Exile 2.3.0 also uses far less memory than before, eliminating all out-of-memory crashes (which were most frequent on 32-bit systems).
We've replaced Path of Exile's audio system. This not only improves audio performance but gives our audio engineers powerful tools to make Path of Exile sound better than ever.
The Prophecy Supporter Pack
To celebrate the release of Prophecy, we're introducing the Prophecy Supporter Pack. It's loaded with exclusive microtransactions: the Shroud Armour Set, Prophecy Portal Effect, Prophecy Mask Helmet Attachment, Prophecy Supporter Forum Title and Social Portrait Frame. At $60 and including 500 points, it represents over $100 of value. The Prophecy Shroud Armour Set is ideal for players wanting to wear a cloth-based Armour Set on their caster characters.
The Prophecy Supporter Pack is available for purchase now and you'll receive its effects immediately so that you can begin preparing for the Prophecy leagues in style.
Coming on June 3, 2016!
Content Update 2.3.0 will be released at 1pm on Friday June 3 (US Pacific Time). This is 10pm in the CEST timezone and 8am on June 4 in New Zealand. The Prophecy Challenge Leagues will also start at this time.
This article does not contain the full patch notes for the 2.3.0 update. We'll be releasing more details on specific features over the next couple of weeks, culminating in the final patch notes a few days before the update is released.