Essence league

Ultimatum Patch Notes

Essence Changes

• Various Essence outcomes have been rebalanced. Please read the Essence Balance section for more information.

Breach Patch Notes

Essence Changes:

• Added the contents of the Essence League to the core game. You can now find monsters trapped in Essences throughout Wraeclast, but at a lower rate than when it was the current challenge league.
• The rate of finding multiple essences at once has been significantly increased in maps (especially higher maps).
• At level 47 areas and above, Whispering Essences can no longer appear.
• At level 67 areas and above, Muttering Essences can no longer appear.
• The values of mods from Wailing Essences of Woe and above have been reduced, resulting in a notably lower value of all mods from higher-tier Woe essences.
• Fixed a minor issue where the Muttering Essence of Woe amulet mod granted values that were 1% too low.
• The gloves mod from Essence of Insanity now grant "Socketed gems have 16% More Attack and Cast Speed" (down from 20%). Existing items will not be changed.
• The weapon mod from Essence of Horror now grants a 16% chance to gain a power, frenzy or endurance charge on kill (up from 10%). Old versions of this mod can be updated using a Divine Orb.
• The weapon mod from Essence of Delirium now deals 750 chaos damage per second for 10 seconds (down from 1,000).

Introduction

The Essence league and Hardcore Essence league were past challenge leagues. The leagues started along with the release of Atlas of Worlds expansion (version 2.4.0). There were 40 optional challenges, and players were rewarded with Essence-themed microtransactions after finishing 12, 24, and 36 challenges.

In this league, zones contained a pack of frozen monsters which held an Essence, where taking it freed the monsters imbued with its power. Essences can be used to modify items with a specified guaranteed affix, some of which are exclusive to Essences. Essences can be traded to vendors for higher tiers and can even be corrupted for a chance to gain an even stronger Essence or destroy it.

At the end of the leagues, all characters and stashes were moved to Standard league and Hardcore league. Characters that died in the Hardcore Essence league were immediately moved to the permanent Standard league.

Minimap

These new icons are introduced to the minimap:

Modifiers

All areas had:

• Areas can contain Essences
  map extra content weighting [1]

Essences

Players encounter groups of monsters with a rare one in the middle possessed by one or more essences, each granting him a special ability. These monsters are trapped and don't perform any actions until the player clicks a few times on the possessed rare to release the whole group. When the possesed monster is killed the essences will drop as items.