‘It’s way more casual-friendly’: Path of Exile director on adding PoE 2’s convenience features to PoE 1

Path of Exile can be intimidating for newbies, but game director Mark Roberts assures us the new expansion, launching on July 26, does plenty to make the game more accessible.

“Settlers of Kalguur is pretty intuitive,” Roberts tells Dot Esports. “You can play it at your own pace. You can play it how you want. It’s way more casual-friendly.” Alongside city building, the expansion introduces a host of convenience features that should reduce Path of Exile’s barrier to entry—many of which came straight from Path of Exile 2. 

For starters, Settlers of Kalguur adds Gold as a currency. With it, you can respec your Passive Points, which Roberts says makes experimenting with builds far more forgiving. “New players make lots of mistakes. Now, they can just farm some Gold, then go and respec.”

There’s also a Black Market where you can buy “better-than-normal” items for Gold. “If I don’t have a good ring or weapon, I can target it. It’s a very, very good tool,” Roberts says. “[Path of Exile 2] caused us to reevaluate all our fundamentals, and when we did that, we determined Gold was the right idea.”

But the “big one,” according to Roberts, is that Settlers of Kalguur’s main reward mechanism isn’t locked behind difficult content—you only need Gold. “Gold is very easily acquirable by just playing the game and killing monsters. You don’t need any advanced knowledge to actually be able to achieve [things].”

“I want knowledge to be rewarded, but not to the degree where it’s daunting.”

Settlers of Kalguur also makes several balance changes that Roberts says are “moving toward being far less complicated.” Melee builds are getting the biggest revamp, so in PoE 3.25, it’ll be “much harder to go wrong as a melee character.” You won’t need to worry about combining lots of abilities—you can simply “grab a big weapon, grab a skill, and just destroy things.” Roberts explains: “I want knowledge to be rewarded, but not to the degree where it’s daunting.”

The quality-of-life changes don’t stop there, though, as Settlers of Kalguur adds plenty more convenience features. Waypoints will automatically activate when you walk past them and reservation effects like Heralds and Auras will persist through death. You’ll also be able to Harvest with a single action. These changes are bound to reduce friction and improve the user experience.

Settlers of Kalguur even adds an exchange where you can trade Gold for Path of Exile’s myriad other currencies, so you won’t need to rely on external websites. “The lessons [from PoE 2] are countless,” according to Roberts.