In Path of Exile: Ultimatum, you must undertake the trials of Chaos and choose whether to risk it all for ultimate power.

Our April expansion contains the Ultimatum challenge league, eight new Skill and Support Gems, improvements to Vaal Skills, an overhaul to past league reward systems, dozens of new items, and much more. We've also just released a new trailer and gameplay showcase for Path of Exile 2.

The ancient civilisation of the Vaal was built on sacrifice. They understood that in order to attain great power, great risks must be taken. On behalf of a Vaal entity known only as Chaos, the Trialmaster seeks to discover challengers who are willing to make immense sacrifices in the pursuit of power. As you survive each of his challenges, will you risk it all and accept his next Ultimatum?

The Trialmaster offers you a reward and a challenge with three difficulty modifiers to choose from. If you succeed in his trial, you may claim your reward. However, you'll be presented with an Ultimatum: leave with your spoils, or attempt more challenging encounters for more valuable rewards. But be careful how many trials you undertake - if you fail, you'll lose everything you've earned so far.

In the endgame, Inscribed Ultimatums indicate an offering you must bring to the Trialmaster's Domain. If you're able to succeed at the inscribed challenge, the Trialmaster will reward you with an item of roughly double value. But if you fail, you forfeit the offering that you put on the line. Inscribed Ultimatums come with a challenging assortment of Ultimatum difficulty modifiers and can be traded to other players.

As the difficulty of the Trialmaster's encounters escalates, so too do the rewards. In addition to some of Path of Exile's most valuable items, you might be offered new Ultimatum-exclusive Unique items. We've designed this league to be very compatible with party play - each player gets their own rewards, can vote on difficulty modifiers and can choose whether they want to risk the next round or not.

The Vaal Reliquary Key can drop from anywhere in Path of Exile and opens a portal to the Vaal Reliquary. This ancient vault contains a chest with a special foil version of a Vaal-themed Unique item, dropped with equal weighting. Due to the value and power level of the items contained within, this is the rarest Reliquary Key ever added to Path of Exile.

We've introduced eight new Skill and Support gems that are themed around the concept of blood: sacrificing life for power. These gems open up even more possibilities for characters built around staying on low life, the threshold for which has been increased to 50%. We've also rebalanced Vaal Skills and increased the number of souls gained from damaging Unique enemies.

In Ultimatum we've buffed the core drop pool with more valuable items to find from any content in Path of Exile. We've bolstered the core drop pool with new currency items, secret vendor recipes, a selection of powerful league-specific uniques (including Headhunter!), new Atlas base types, and have made Act bosses worth farming again. But that's just the start. Almost every other reward system in Path of Exile has been improved as well.

We've made several improvements to the rewards in The Lord's Labyrinth. You can now see enchantment outcomes before you pick them and a choice of three specific helmet enchantments are offered in the Eternal Labyrinth. The Emperors' jewels that used to be awarded for fastest daily Labyrinth runs can now drop rarely from the Labyrinth's reward chests. We have introduced two new Labyrinth-specific Unique items. You can now consume an Offering to the Goddess in the map device to open portals directly to a random trial.

When you slay Betrayal's Mastermind, her Immortal Syndicate Members now drop their rewards at one tier higher than their current tier. A valuable fourth tier of rewards has been added to allow this, and a few of the best existing rewards have been moved to that tier. Veiled Modifier crafting now unlocks faster and modifiers that are unveiled on items are now more powerful than their crafted counterparts. A new Betrayal-specific unique item can now drop from the Mastermind.

Perandus Coin drops have been rebalanced and can now be used to purchase a wider range of items from Cadiro. We've rebalanced Essences so that they are generally stronger and have allowed Screaming Essences to reroll rare items. There are four new unique Abyss Jewels, which alongside other rebalanced Abyss jewels are now best found from Abyss chests. We've also introduced Abyss Scarabs.

We have added new Beastcrafts, such as ones that can add mods to maps or influenced items. It's no longer possible to imprint items that have been split (a process which is now limited to once per item). Incursion has received many improvements to its rewards, including the ability to turn your Temple of Atzoatl into an item that can be traded to other players.

Alongside new Blight, Metamorph and Delirium Incubators, we've modernised other Incubator rewards. We have introduced Blight-themed Scarabs and two new Catalysts. Corrupted Blighted Maps can drop the new Tainted Oil which allows anointment of corrupted items. Chests in Blighted Maps now benefit from the map's item quantity value.

Ritual has become a core game mechanic, spawning in 8% of maps, which is the new game-wide rate for past league mechanics. We've improved Atziri's rewards by buffing her exclusive Sacrificial Garb base type and adding new Unique items that only she can drop.

There are also nerfs to a few past leagues that are currently too powerful. Talismans no longer drop using the well-rolled mod system, but their anointments can be changed using a Tainted Oil. Some Harvest crafts have been removed or restricted, but Harvest now spawns more frequently and the Heart of the Grove encounter is now a tradeable map fragment.

Path of Exile 2's first gameplay showcase at ExileCon was set in the dark forests of the Island of Ogham. Our latest showcase takes place in the ancient dunes of the Vastiri Desert and uses two new weapon types - Spears and Crossbows - to demonstrate Path of Exile 2's next-generation action combat.

Path of Exile 2 does not have a release date yet, but we are targeting a Closed Beta in 2022.

In addition to the recently-released Core Packs, we're also launching two new sets of Supporter Packs to celebrate the release of the Ultimatum League: the Silver Crescent and Imperial Sun packs. There are two price points available for each and they feature masses of points and several exclusive microtransactions like armour sets, helmet skins, weapon skins and more.

Path of Exile: Ultimatum will launch on April 16 (PDT) on PC and Mac, and on April 21 on Xbox and PlayStation.