Taking control of an exile, players can choose to play as one of seven character classes – Marauder, Duelist, Ranger, Shadow, Witch, Templar, and Scion.

Players are then tasked with fighting their way back to Oriath, defeating ancient gods and great evils during their journey.

[9][10] Players can choose from seven available classes to play as (Duelist, Marauder, Ranger, Scion, Shadow, Templar and Witch).

[13][14] Items are randomly generated from a wide variety of basic types and endowed with special properties and gem sockets.

[17] All classes share the same selection of 1,325 passive skills,[18] from which the player can choose one each time their character levels up, and as an occasional quest reward.

These passive skills improve the core attributes and grant further enhancements such as increased mana, life, damage, defences, regeneration, speed, and more.

The passive skill tree is arranged in a complex network starting in separate trunks for each class (aligned with the permutations of the three core attributes).

The player must therefore not only focus on maximizing all modifiers related to their primary offence and defense, but must also take care to select the most efficient path through the passive skill tree.

As of the 3.0 Fall of Oriath Release, the maximum possible number of passive skill points was 123 (99 from levelling and 24 from quest rewards).

"Turbo solo immolation" leagues, as another example, are running on the same maps as standard modes, but with much harder monsters, no partying, replacing physical damage with fire damage and monsters exploding on death—and return the survivors to Hardcore league (while dead characters resurrect in Standard).

The player starts the game waking up on the shores of Wraeclast, a continent that once was the center of a mighty empire but is now a cursed land which serves as a penal colony for criminals and other unwanted individuals from the nearby Island of Oriath.

It is discovered that Dominus has been secretly working with his assistant Piety studying thaumaturgy and is the cause of many of the troubles in Wraeclast.

The corrupt templar are exercising their power to wrest control of Oriath, enslaving a race of people known as Karui.

A plan is formulated to return to Wraeclast to extract the essence from the Beast's dead body and use it to stop Kitava from destroying Oriath.

[22] In the time since then, Grinding Gear Games has published a number of development posts on their website ranging from screenshots of new classes, monsters, and skills to presentations of gameplay or technical aspects.

[25] The developers of Path of Exile stated that one of their core goals is to provide a genuinely free-to-play game financed only by "ethical micro-transactions".

Path of Exile mainly offers cosmetic item skins for players willing to spend money on the game, but it does also gate specific account features such as semi-automated public trading inventories or additional character slots behind a paywall.

One of the main topics discussed in the reveal video was the current trend in free-to-play mobile business models (such as "pay-to-win microtransactions, time gates, energy bars, random nag screens, notifications, video ads") and that POE Mobile would aim to avoid that approach, and retain the full gameplay of the desktop version.

Vulkan beta support continued into Harvest with updates at the start of the league but negatively affected performance.

Another release late into the Harvest league with 300+ changes that affects both DirectX and Vulkan beta support are still waiting for feedback.

[35] The next major patch, 1.3, was considered part of the expansion,[45] which adds another NPC, the PVP Master, Leo, new leagues Bloodlines and Torment, new gems and more.

[117] Eurogamer was not impressed by the graphics and presentation, saying that "Path of Exile doesn't have Torchlight 2's sense of style or Diablo 3's polish".