PoE 3.30 Covens of Umbra: Release Date, League Mechanic and Big Endgame Changes

Path of Exile 3.30, Covens of Umbra, launches on November 13, 2026 at 11:00 AM PST (19:00 UTC). It's free on every platform the game runs on, including PC, PlayStation and Xbox. The new league has you disrupt witch covens, pick Fates to power up bosses, and bolt their remains onto your own Wickerman for permanent buffs. The bigger news is the endgame: Scarabs are removed and replaced by Threads of Creation, the Atlas passive tree is rebuilt, almost every league mechanic is changed, and endgame magic and rare items can now drop with a tier.

Key Takeaways

• Launch: November 13, 2026, 11:00 AM PST (19:00 UTC), free on all platforms.
• League mechanic: kill covenites, pick Fates to make the area boss harder and more rewarding, then put the Viscera it drops on your Wickerman.
• Scarabs are gone. Threads of Creation go straight into the Map Device and add a league mechanic to your map, with up to three mechanics per map.
• The Atlas passive tree is rebuilt, and many old Scarab effects are now tree effects that everyone can get.
• Loot rework: unidentified endgame magic and rare items can drop with a tier, and rarity on maps and monsters now boosts currency, divination card, gem and unique drops.

When Does PoE 3.30 Covens of Umbra Launch?

Official Covens of Umbra key art: a tall wicker figure made of twisted branches, with glowing blue magic around its hands, against a black background.

Covens of Umbra goes live on Friday, November 13, 2026 at 11:00 AM PST. GGG's launch post gives the date, and the countdown on the official Covens of Umbra page ends at exactly 19:00 UTC that day. It's free to play "across all available platforms," which includes PC, PlayStation and Xbox.

The current challenge league ends at 1:00 PM PST on November 9, so there are about four days without a new league (GGG).

If you plan to start on day one, read our 5 mistakes to avoid at PoE 3.30 league start.

How Does the Covens League Mechanic Work?

Path of Exile gameplay: a character faces a pack of pale crawling creatures beside a swirling vortex around a glowing orange cauldron in a dark, grassy clearing.

In every area you'll find covenites: witches performing rites to summon their Coven Queen. Kill them and you disrupt the ritual. Then you walk to their cauldron and choose a Fate for the boss of that area (GGG).

The loop is simple:

1. Find and kill the covenites in the area.
2. Use the cauldron to pick a Fate.
3. Invoke your Fates on the area boss. The fight gets harder, and the rewards get bigger.
4. Kill the empowered boss for a chance at its Viscera, a body part you attach to your Wickerman.

This works in the campaign too, not only in maps, so you'll see it while leveling through the story.

What Do Fate Cards Do?

A Fate is a card that adds a set of effects to the boss. Every Fate makes the boss more dangerous and adds rewards at the same time (GGG). GGG's press screenshots show four of them:

Fates also have reward icons that show what kind of loot they add. Maxroll's reveal summary adds that you can invoke up to three Fates per boss, matching reward icons form combos, and invoking two Fates of the same type triples their rewards. GGG hasn't put those numbers on its own page yet, so check the patch notes before you plan around them.

What Is the Wickerman and How Does Viscera Work?

The Wickerman is a wicker figure in your town or hideout. When you kill a boss that has Fates on it, it can drop Viscera: a body part with one strong bonus. You attach it to the Wickerman and keep the bonus (GGG).

The Wickerman has four slots: head, torso, upper limb and lower limb. Every campaign boss and every map boss on the Atlas has its own unique Viscera, so invoke Fates before you kill a boss or you'll miss its drop. Higher-tier "Greater" versions are stronger. These are the five examples on GGG's page (preview values, so numbers can change):

In practice, the Wickerman works like an extra set of gear slots that you fill by playing the league. Most of the revealed bonuses aren't tied to one build type, so many builds should get something useful from it.

What Are Grim Fates and the Coven Queen?

Grim Fates are the endgame version of Fates. They let you empower the hardest bosses on the Atlas, the pinnacle bosses. Beat them and you can earn Pinnacle Boss Viscera, the strongest Wickerman parts. Greater Sirus' Head in the table above is one of them (GGG).

At the very top sits the Coven Queen herself. GGG only teases her: "Perhaps… you'll even be able to hold back the Queen herself." Maxroll's summary says beating Grim Fate-empowered pinnacle bosses gives a chance to face her. We'll update this once the patch notes confirm how she's unlocked.

What Are Threads of Creation (and Why Are Scarabs Gone)?

Scarabs are removed. Their replacement is Threads of Creation. You put Threads directly into the Map Device. Each Thread type adds one league mechanic to your map and scales up the rarity and difficulty of its monsters (GGG). Examples on GGG's page are the Abyss Thread, Legion Thread and Blight Thread, which stack to 100. Atlas regions can add Threads too: in the press screenshot above, a Defiled Cathedral map inside an Expedition region gets one Expedition Thread as a region bonus.

How Threads work, from the keynote:

• More Threads, more juice. "Juicing" means making a map harder so it drops more loot. You choose how many Threads to spend on a mechanic. Each one makes it harder and raises the chance of random powerful bonus effects. At eight Threads, that mechanic is "very hard," with rewards to match.
• Up to three mechanics per map. As you progress the Atlas quest line, you unlock three Thread slots in the Map Device.
• Bonus effects can stack. The keynote showed Betrayal examples: Catarina's corpse sculpture can appear in a map, Catarina can arrive to help her Syndicate members, and she can drop jewels with veiled mods (hidden modifiers you unveil to pick from). Veiled mods can also drop fractured, which means locked in place so crafting can't remove them.

GGG's reason for the change is less busywork. Juicing a map with Scarabs meant buying and slotting lots of small items. Threads cover the same job with one stackable item per mechanic. That also means 3.29 Scarab setups, like the ones in our Hivefortress vs Unstable Breach farming test, won't carry over to 3.30.

What Changed on the Atlas Passive Tree?

The Atlas passive tree is completely refreshed, with a new layout and dozens of new wheels, stats and effects (GGG). Many of them used to be Scarab effects, and now you can guarantee them.

The keynote explained why: the Atlas tree is available to everyone, no matter how much currency you have. Basic juicing that used to need a stack of Scarabs is now something every player unlocks while finishing their Atlas.

The Atlas map itself changes too. When you first reach the endgame, it's split into shaped regions, and each region adds a different mechanic to the maps inside it. That means you can choose your favorite mechanics from the very first maps. Completing maps makes the rest of the region stronger.

How Do League Mechanics Interact Now?

Path of Exile gameplay: a glowing green tormented spirit hovers over a haunted gravestone among rows of Expedition marker poles on dry, sandy ground.

GGG wants every map to feel different, so league mechanics now interact when they spawn next to each other. The keynote called this "overlapping axes of randomness." Examples:

• Tormented Spirits and Expedition: a spirit that spawns next to an Expedition detonator gets buried under a haunted gravestone. Blow it up, and spirits come out one after another, sometimes with rare monsters to possess.
• Abyss and Mercenaries: GGG's press kit shows these two together, and Maxroll reports a mercenary next to an Abyss brings a special abyssal mercenary.
• More pairs: the keynote mentioned dozens more, including Ultimatum with strongboxes, Essences with Expedition, and Harvest with Ritual.

Mirage is now part of the core game. Mirages can spawn randomly in maps or roll as a map modifier, alongside Mirrors of Delirium and the Viridian Wildwood. A Mirage now covers the entire map, so you effectively run the whole map again. Saresh is back as well, and GGG warns he's "a far more challenging fight" (GGG).

Which League Mechanics Were Reworked?

GGG says "almost every endgame league mechanic has been augmented, modified, or revamped in some way" (GGG). These are the changes shown in the keynote:

For crafters, the Bestiary change is a big quality-of-life win. Beastcrafting used to mean capturing piles of yellow beasts. Now recipes don't need them.

How Does the Loot Rework Change Drops?

Path of Exile gameplay: a character fights a hulking covenite and two thin covenites beside a blood-filled wicker cauldron and two corpses on dusty ground.

This is the change GGG called "unlike anything we've done before." At endgame, unidentified magic and rare items can now drop with a tier. A higher tier improves the whole item: better modifiers, more sockets and links, and better base types (GGG). GGG's page shows Shagreen Boots marked "Unidentified (Tier 4)," so you can see an item's tier on the ground before you pick it up.

The key points from the keynote:

• Tier 5 is the jackpot. Strong crafting bases like Simplex Amulets and Cord Belts can drop as tier 5 items from normal content.
• Fractured bases move to ground loot. Tier 5 magic items have a chance to drop fractured.
• Harder monsters drop better tiers. The higher a monster's item rarity, the more likely tiered items are. Pinnacle bosses have high rarity built in, so they're great sources.
• Rarity now boosts everything. Item rarity on maps and monsters now increases currency, divination cards, gems and uniques, not only magic and rare items.
• Rarity on your gear is different. Rarity from your equipment still only increases magic, rare and unique items, not currency.

GGG's goal is fewer, better drops. Instead of adding item quantity, which floods the ground with junk your loot filter hides anyway, they can raise rarity and give you items you actually pick up.

What New Uniques Were Revealed?

GGG says 3.30 adds new unique items and showed three on its page. These are preview values, so numbers can change at launch.

Full preview stats from GGG's page:

• Hide of the Vendigo (Exquisite Leather): +25% chance to Suppress Spell Damage, 189% increased Evasion Rating, +35% to Cold Resistance, 194 to 301 added Cold Damage with Unarmed Attacks, 17% increased Attack Speed if you've used an Attack Movement Skill recently, can attack as though using a Claw while main hand is empty.
• The Sword of Ages (Exquisite Blade): +50% to Global Critical Strike Multiplier, triggers level 20 Temporal Mirage on using a Movement Attack, +2 to level of all Movement Skill Gems, 263% increased Physical Damage, 24% increased Attack Speed, 113% increased Damage with Movement Skills.
• Putrid Seed (Mycelium Core): grows four random passive skills when anointed, passives grown are influenced by the oils used, goes in an allocated Large Jewel Socket.

What Does 3.30 Mean for Your League Start?

This part is our opinion, based on what GGG has shown so far. Treat it as a starting point until the patch notes are out.

• No Scarab shopping on day one. Early mapping used to mean buying cheap Scarabs to juice maps. In 3.30 you get extra mechanics from Atlas regions and the Atlas tree, so new and returning players can push maps without spending currency first.
• Pick your mechanics from your first maps. Shaped regions let you head straight for the mechanics you like, such as Expedition or Legion, instead of waiting for Atlas points.
• Invoke Fates in the campaign. Every campaign boss has its own Viscera. A few Wickerman parts early, like extra glove bonuses or physical-to-lightning conversion, could noticeably speed up leveling.
• Pick up tiered items. Tier 4 and tier 5 unidentified rares and magic items are now worth checking, especially Simplex Amulets and Cord Belts. Update your loot filter once filter makers support tiers.
• Expect early balance changes. A rework this big usually needs hotfixes in the first week, so don't sink all your currency into one strategy right away.

For the usual day-one traps, read our 5 mistakes to avoid at PoE 3.30 league start.

Frequently Asked Questions

What time does PoE 3.30 launch?

November 13, 2026 at 11:00 AM PST, which is 2:00 PM EST, 7:00 PM GMT and 19:00 UTC. In GMT+7 that's 2:00 AM on Saturday, November 14.

Is Covens of Umbra on consoles?

Yes. GGG says it's free "across all available platforms," which includes PlayStation and Xbox as well as PC.

Are Scarabs completely gone in 3.30?

Yes, Scarabs are removed. Threads of Creation replace them, and many former Scarab effects move to the new Atlas passive tree.

Do I need to invoke Fates to get Viscera?

Yes. Viscera drop from bosses empowered by Fates. Every campaign boss and every map boss has its own Viscera, so invoke Fates on the boss before you kill it.

What hasn't GGG revealed yet?

Quite a lot of the fine print. GGG hasn't published the 3.30 patch notes, so skill and balance changes for existing builds are still unknown. The exact numbers behind Fates (how many per boss, how combos pay out), how you unlock the Coven Queen fight, and the full list of new uniques are also not confirmed on GGG's own page yet. Treat anything beyond what's in this post as rumor until the patch notes arrive.

When are the 3.30 patch notes coming?

GGG hasn't announced a date. In past leagues, patch notes have usually arrived a few days before launch. We'll update this post when they're out.

Sources:

• GGG: Path of Exile: Covens of Umbra (official page)
• GGG: ExileCon 2026 Announcements
• GGG: 3.30 release date announcement
• GGG: ExileCon 2026 Day 1 stream, Path of Exile 1 presentation starts at 3:08:33 (YouTube)
• Fubgun: ExileCon reaction video, replays the PoE 1 presentation from 22:17 (YouTube)
• GGG: Covens of Umbra trailer (YouTube)
• Maxroll: 3.30 Covens of Umbra reveal summary
• Images: official Covens of Umbra press kit from Grinding Gear Games. All game art © Grinding Gear Games.