Blight league

"The Blight is here... And we are the cure ! In Blight, Sister Cassia is trying to stop the spread of the mind-controlling Blight by destroying Fungal Growths. When attacked, the Blight commands infected monsters to defend it. The monsters mindlessly follow the Blight's tendrils, only attacking foes directly in their path. The infected are unusually tough, so you'll need to build defensive towers to exploit each monster's specific weaknesses. For each tendril lane you defend, a chest will appear with your rewards."

- Description on the official Path of Exile website

The Blight league and Hardcore Blight league were challenge leagues launched on September 6, 2019 and ended on December 9, 2019 at 21:00 UTC.

In this league, the world was infested with Blight, and Sister Cassia tasks the player with defending her Purification Pump as it destroys the Blight's fungal growths. Once agitated, the growth spawns roots that summon waves of monsters to defend it. These monsters slowly follow a path along the roots and only stop to attack whatever is in its path, but are unusually tough. To assist with defending the pump, the player can summon Towers near the paths to attack and hinder the monsters. The Blight drops loot when the monsters are defeated, including special Oils which are used to Anoint items, adding an implicit Enchantment to the item to enhance Blighted maps, improve your towers, or even allocate a notable passive skill from the skill tree, including special skills that can't be allocated normally.

All characters and stashes were moved to Standard league and Hardcore league respectively when the leagues ended. Characters that died in the Hardcore Blight league were immediately moved to the permanent Standard league.

League mechanic
In each zone, you will find Sister Cassia as well as a Fungal Growth. Once you interact with the Fungal Growth, Cassia will place a purification pump on the growth, causing it to spawn roots in random directions. At the end of each root is a portal that spawns enemies that slowly move towards the core, only stopping to attack units in its way. Along the paths of the roots, you can construct a tower in specified areas to help defend the purification pump. Towers cost resources to build or upgrade, which is acquired at the start and from killing blighted enemies. When an enemy reaches the core, it will lower the durability of the pump and despawn itself. The pump has 10 durability, and when the pump's durability reaches 0, the Blight encounter fails and monsters will stop spawning. Once all enemies from each portal are defeated, it will spawn chests at where the portal was. These chests persist even if the pump gets destroyed afterwards.

Blighted Maps contain only a single Fungal Growth which spawns a large number of roots in the area. The player must defend the pump for 5 minutes then defeat all remaining enemies.

Modifiers
All map and most area have the modifiers:

Minimap
These new icons are introduced to the minimap:

Items
These items are introduced and exclusive to the Blight leagues:

New Unique items
These items require an area with Blight league flag active to drop as a world drop:

These items was required an area with Blight league flag active to drop as a world drop, but added to core loot table since version 3.14.0:

These items drop exclusively from Blight encounters and Blighted Maps.

Challenges and rewards
The Blight leagues include 40 optional challenges. Completing them awards the following microtransactions:

Version history

 * Introduced to the game.
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