As the Crawler moves through the dungeon, players will spy all sorts of treasures waiting in the darkness. You can risk trying to grab them for extra sweet loot, but each second spent away from the light will rapidly drain your health. What's worse, monsters will try to ambush you and keep you from making it back to the Crawler in time. It's a tense game of risk versus reward at every step, especially if you're like me and hate the idea of leaving treasure behind POE currency trade .

The darkness is not your ally in Delve.
Fortunately, the Crawler leaves behind a string of lights as it goes. Once it reaches the end of the map, those lights illuminate. After you survive one final fight against a boss or waves of enemies, the delve is complete and you're free to go back and risk diving into darkened areas you skipped.

Even if you're risk-averse and stick to the light, delves will still offer great rewards and nail-biting challenges. Grinding Gear Games has added several new monsters with abilities that screw with the Crawler. One example I was shown was a creature that emits EMP bursts that temporarily shut off the Crawler's light completely.

Players will have their own source of light to rely on in those dire moments. Flares can be thrown on the ground to temporarily illuminate darkened areas. They are rare, though, so you'll have to ration them accordingly. Wilson explains that while some treasures are just a few meters beyond the light of the Crawler and can probably be reached before health runs out, much rarer items can be found much further off the beaten path. Players can risk it by making a pathway of flares, but those flares don't last forever. You'll have to move quickly and survive monster attacks to make it back.

Of course, this is Path of Exile and there always have to be layers of choice-driven progression behind every system.

Of course, this is Path of Exile and there always have to be layers of choice-driven progression behind every system. In the mines, players will find a resource called Azurite that can be spent on upgrading the Crawler and their flares. Players can increase the light radius of both to give them more room to maneuver while fighting, expand their total capacity for Voltaxic Sulphite or flares so they can go on longer delves, or they can boost more passive stats like resistance to the draining darkness buy POE orbs .