Occasionally, you'll get a entrance to a new zone called the Abyssal Depths instead of a trove. It's populated by a whole lot of abyss monsters and eventually a boss area. Mostly the boss is a type of totem that spawns tons of monsters until you've broken it, but in higher level Depths you might see a unique boss. I've fought two of those, and they're certainly a challenge. Tons of abyss monster adds, several of the totems to defeat, and of course the boss itself.
I really like the abyss feature. It's difficult, especially in the very low and very high levels. At the low end, your character might not be capable of handling a big swarm of enemies. At the high end, the sheer damage output of the rare and unique abyss monsters can be overwhelming. But that risk is accompanied by some great rewards. The troves have decent items, there's a lot of rare monsters that can drop good stuff, and there's a whole new class of abyss items that have mods not seen anywhere else.
As the War For The Atlas title indicates, there's also some significant changes to the end-game mapping system. There's been quite a bit of rebalancing, with a number of new maps and quite a few modifications. The Atlas of Worlds now has two factions fighting over it: Elder and Shaper. On the atlas, you'll see background effects indicating where the factions have influence, and if you run a map in an influenced area then there are additional faction specific hazards and item drops.
I'm just getting around to the middle of the atlas. I progress pretty slowly in Path of Exile terms, largely because I play almost entirely solo self-found (no teaming, no trading with other players). But I'm starting to see those atlas factions, and they certainly seem interesting. A few maps have had demon portals spawning tons of extra monsters, I've seen enhanced boss fights, and I've collected a few items with mods I've not seen before. Looking forward to seeing what else is in store as I move along.
As far as characters go, I'm mostly playing two. A Sunder Duelist Gladiator and my usual summoner Witch Necromancer. The gladiator is insanely powerful, as long as you avoid certain specific situations (physical damage reflection and lightning thorns, for instance). Sunder is so good that I'm not sure why anyone would bother with any other melee skill. As for the summoner, there have been some quality of life improvements in this version that are really nice. Most notably, you don't have to resummon your spectres every time you log in! In both cases I had one death and had to start a second version of the character, but both of those are running strong into the 80 levels.
The Path of Exile designers and developers continue to work their magic every few months, adding new and interesting features to what is already the best ARPG on the market. (In my opinion, at least.) I'm not sure how long they can keep it up, but as long as they do, I'll keep coming back for more.
