The Awakening marks the start of two new Challenge Leagues - Warbands and Tempest. These leagues have self-contained economies and provide an opportunity for you to enjoy a fresh start and demonstrate your mastery of Path of Exile.
The new leagues contain eight difficult challenges. Completing your first challenge awards you a Totem Pole decoration, which can be displayed in your Hideout and grows taller and more impressive as you complete more challenges. If you're one of the first 50 players to complete all of the challenges, we'll also send you an exclusive Warbands/Tempest T-Shirt!
Warbands is the upcoming standard Challenge League. In the Warbands league, warring clans have spread throughout Wraeclast. These warbands are tight-knit groups of enemies who cooperate and use synergistic skills to take you down. At higher levels, elite and leader enemies are present, who direct their Warband in combat and can take matters into their own hands if the tide of battle turns against them. Each of the three Warbands have exclusive Unique Items that only drop from them. The presence of the warbands in Wraeclast fluctuates over time and responds to the Exiles' efforts to hunt them.
Tempest is the upcoming hardcore Challenge League, in which Wraeclast is affected by magical Tempests. These can cause a variety of effects that influence both monsters and players, such as changing their sizes, causing damage, altering drop rates or even automatically animating weapons that drop. With careful positioning you can deny monsters from getting positive buffs or kite them into negative ones.
When a Tempest affects an area, it affects it for everyone in that league for an hour. You can look at the world map to see what Tempest affects each area at the moment. Some of the rarer tempests grant significant item finding benefits, so are worth keeping a lookout for.