Path Of Exile Devs Answer FAQs About The Upcoming Harvest Expansion

Grinding Gear Games has just dropped a new Path of Exile FAQ with more details on the upcoming Harvest expansion, with emphasis on the new Sacred Grove monster garden, seeds, planting, and harvesting.

According to the FAQ, seeds will be stackable and can either be saved for future use or traded to other players. Seeds also have varying growth cycles which need to be completed before they’re ready to harvest. Opening a seed cache, which can be done even outside the garden, counts as one growth cycle. Once the seeds are ready for harvesting, simply kill the monsters that grow from the seeds to collect their Lifeforce which will give you additional stat-adding crafting options. Grinding Gear explains:

“[. . .] If you plant eight seeds that grant 'Reveals a random Physical modifier crafting effect when Harvested', slay those monsters and gather their Lifeforce - you'll be presented with different options with outcomes like 'Reforge a rare item with new random modifiers, including a Physical modifier', 'Augment a Magic or Rare item with a new Physical modifier', 'Remove a Physical modifier from an item' or 'Randomise the numeric values of the random properties of Physical modifiers on an item'. You may have multiple uses of some of these, based on the randomly determined outcome of each seed. There will be a total of 8 outcomes, including the multiple uses, though you'll usually not have enough Lifeforce to use them all. But you'll hopefully get and be able to afford the one you really wanted.”

One of the more interesting questions answered in the FAQ is whether low-level players will also benefit from tending their own monster gardens. The answer is yes. In fact, the studio says that lowbies will have an easier time getting through the storyline content and into the end-game if they start tending their gardens early. Low-level players even have the chance to get harvest crafting options that work just like Exalted Orbs, valuable end-game items that allow players to add a physical modifier on any item.

“Normally, Exalted Orbs are very rare due to a combination of their power, tradeability, and that they work on any item,” says the studio. “If we drop too many early in the game, they'll lose a lot of their value. However, we can give a lot of ‘Physical Exalts’ early in the game through Harvest as they can only be used on lower level items and don't have any implications for Endgame items. By end-game, the ‘Physical Exalts’ become rarer again because their value rises exponentially as they affect more items.

Head over to the Path of Exile official forums for the full FAQ. You can also check out the Q&A stream below for more info on the upcoming expansion.