Path Of Exile 3.26 Pause Function: What Will It Do To Your Game Experience?
Posted: May 29, 2025 Views: 178
If you’re a fan of both games in Path of Exile series, you’ve been busy lately! You were originally only focused on POE 2 Dawn of the Hunt league, but the first game’s 3.26 new league was recently announced to be launched soon.
The league is named Secrets of the Atlas and is expected to be launched on June 13. Although more information will be announced at the press conference on June 5, some news about 3.26’s new features and mechanics have been leaked, and the most popular one is undoubtedly the addition of the pause function.
Based on this, we will introduce you to the information related to this feature and speculate on how it may affect the entire game after the launch of POE 3.26.
How Will The Pause Function Work?
Unlike the combat elements in casual games, in ARPGs like Path of Exile series, combat is the main source of your character’s survival and the core gameplay of the game. Therefore, it is normal for a virtual battle to take more than ten minutes. The higher the difficulty of the battle, the longer it takes.
But this is likely to cause real-life problems, such as when someone knocks on the door while you are fighting, or you receive an important call that you have to answer. If you ignore it and focus on the game, you may miss the instant message, but if you leave the battle, your character will be killed and you will lose XP and POE currency you have earned.
Obviously, the new pause function was born to solve this problem. To be honest, there is nothing to explain in terms of mechanism. It just allows you to pause the game in battle to solve real-life problems. Or you can also utilize this function to unlock more skill points for “temporary” upgrades during the battle to win more safely.
This Function Is Not Original
Considering the characteristics of ARPG, there should be other games on the market that have added similar pause functions, including even Path of Exile’s own sequel.
The pause function was added to the game when POE 2 was first released in December last year. Perhaps because it was well received by players, the development team decided to add it to 3.26 league after half a year.
But if you have played POE 1 before, you should have found that it also had an automatic pause function. When you open any full-screen menu in the game, or when there is an uncontrollable accident such as network delay, the battle will automatically pause to prevent you from suffering losses.
However, in order to prevent players from exploiting this loophole, such as trying to find more safe areas in the battle by repeatedly pausing so that the challenge of the battle is weakened, the game will not automatically pause when you fight a pinnacle boss or other difficult battles in Path of Exile.
Impact On Gameplay
Whether it is automatic pause or passive pause caused by your operation, the key issue is still “randomness”. It is not ruled out that you will encounter situations where you have to pause the battle due to accidents, but if you abuse the pause, it will undoubtedly destroy the balance and playability of the game.
Since 3.26 has not yet been launched, more details about the pause function may have to wait until the press conference to know. But in fact, according to the setting of automatic pause, it can be inferred that the development team will probably consider the problems you can think of.
The problem of possible abuse of the pause function should be solved by adding no-pause zones like automatic pause, or setting a maximum number of pauses for simple battles. After all, in general, the pause function is still necessary.
To be honest, as an ARPG player, you should also understand the feature of long game battles, so it is best to arrange your game time reasonably based on the pause function to ensure that you will not be disturbed by the outside world when entering the battle, especially the difficult boss battle.
Read More: What Exactly Does Path Of Exile Have In Content For The 3.26 Expansion: Secrets Of The Atlas?
Noteworthy 3.26 Endgame Changes
Based on the trailers that have been released and the names of the new leagues, it can be inferred that the endgame changes of 3.26 will focus on Atlas and the map device.
For example, you can reroll elder and conqueror guardian maps through Orbs of Horizon, or change the guardians on the area and map device. In addition, a new inventory grid will be added to the map device to facilitate the placement of areas you want to explore in order.
The Connection Between POE 1/2
As games belonging to the same series, the continuity of the main story of Path of Exile is not very strong, so the connection between the two games is not close from the perspective of the plot. But there are many connections between other elements.
Whether it is the setting and selection of classes, the way of fighting, or the currency and trading system, there are many similarities between Path of Exile 1 and 2. Of course, in order to ensure their respective playability, they also have some exclusive gameplay.
However, from a practical point of view, without affecting the independence of the game, the two games can completely introduce the basic functions that each other has, just like POE 2 pause function introduced by 3.26 this time.
As for POE 2, which is being improved, the first game has more places to learn from after more than ten years of development. If POE 2 wants to launch the official version as soon as possible, learning from 1 is an indispensable learning process.
In any case, from 3.26 League and the upcoming release of POE 2 patch 0.2.1, it can be seen that the entire Path of Exile series is moving forward steadily and is bound to occupy a more important position in ARPG market in the future.
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