Someone explain leagues to me

[Mr.America]

Before I dump an ungodly amount of hours into this game, someone tell me, how exactly is this league's thing supposed to work. AFAIK I just loose everything every couple of months or what.

[space]

you don't lose anything

[WeaverDuck]

When devs introduce league with new mechanics you have to make new char in that league to enjoy said mechanics.
Some time after league ends it will usually be ported over to standard in some capacity.

When league ends your league char will migrate to standard

You can still say "nah, im good" and play good old standard league no problemo if thats what you want.

At least thats how it worked in poe1. Who knows what they will cook this time

[Black Hodor]

no you dont lose anything but if you always want to play the newest content, you have to create a new character every couple of months.
when a new league starts all your characters will move to standard league where you can continue playing without the most recent update.

[Caldrin]

As others have mentioned in POE1 when a new league starts your characters from the last gets put into a standard league that does not have all the new stuff in the new league..

You can continue to play that character if you really want to but yeah you wont have access to any of the new league mechanics.

Most people start fresh with the new league.

[Brian (The Schmaltzy Cynic)]

As far as i understand, it's similar to seasons like Diablo 4 where your "old" characters are still playable but if you want to access the seasonal mechanics and trading league update you go for the new league. When the league is over, your character gets moved to standard.

The only thing I'm not sure of is if the Atlas progression will be shared across league characters.

[__MaX__]

It will be moved to "EA" permanent league.

So more or less, yes, you will lose everything.

It won't be standard so you won't be able to use it for standard characters. But still accessible to play in that "EA league". Since no one will play there, you can consider this as a nice "picture frame" you can look at from times to times, but beyond that...

[equinox1911]

First of all it's a bit unclear what will happen with EA characters.
How poe 1 works and poe 2 will work after release is that every 3ish months a new league releases. Alongside with it comes new content:
1) league specific content that can only be accessed in the new league which comes with a complete character and economy reset. About 85% of the playerbase plays there.
2) general game improvements like new skills, endgame changes and quite often old league content is brought back to the base game in a changed manner, this is rolled out to the whole game.
A new league moves all the old characters and items to standard league, so you can play long term. But if you want to engage with trading this is not advised. Standard can also be weird, bc if for example the passive tree changes enough your whole tree will be reset (keeping all points)

In short, you dont loose anything but standard is a much smaller community and is kinda weird at times.

[__MaX__]

Originally posted by equinox1911:

First of all it's a bit unclear what will happen with EA characters.

It's not.
It's specified in the EA FAQ : )
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2694490/view/4449088504440291717

[Mr.America]

Will there be wipes during Early Access?
No, there will not be a wipe. We will do new leagues but none of your characters will be wiped, they will just go to a league called Early Access (so they will never be in Standard). In some cases characters in old leagues might be somewhat broken by balance changes though. After launch the "Early Access" characters will still exist.

So this means, that EA characters will not be transfered to full release, they cannot be migrated, and the EA stash will also not migrate assumeably. Ok, so i can just waste all my stuff without a care in the world, because it's EA anyway, good to know.

[__MaX__]

They will be transfered, but in their own proper "EA" league.

Which will make this like a sort of "dead SSF" league if you were in trade league and you want to keep playing there. I'm pretty sure none of the poe2 player will ever play again in EA league after launch.