Idea for new League Mechanic

The Tower Ascendant: Infinite Depth, Infinite Power
Opt into difficulty. Earn exclusive power. Master the climb.

Introduction
I’d like to propose a league mechanic for Path of Exile 2 that empowers players to set their own difficulty ceiling—and rise beyond it. The Tower Ascendant, an infinite-level dungeon system that lets players progressively increase the challenge of their game and earn exclusive rewards without impacting balance for others.

This is about optional power. Not everyone needs to push it. But those who do… they get tested.

Core Mechanic – The Tower and the Key

In the endgame, players can collect Tower Key Fragments from maps (either static endgame or RNG drops). These fragments would have their own mods which would effect the monsters in the tower and the resulting buff to monsters globally once conquering those levels. You would need a new key for every 10 levels.

Combine X fragments to form a Tower Key.

Using the key unlocks The Tower Ascendant, a personal, infinite-level challenge tower.

Each level is harder than the last—scaling monster stats, density, and affix chaos.

Rewards scale with risk, encouraging strategic gearing and build investment.

Ascendant Buff System

When you clear higher levels, your character receives a permanent Tower Badge Buff.

These buffs are tied to your highest cleared Tower floor and apply globally, not just inside the Tower.

Examples:

Floor 10: +5% Monster Life, +3% Monster Resistances

Floor 20: Rare monsters have additional modifiers

Floor 50: Map bosses gain new abilities

Floor 70: Guaranteed tier 2 affix minimum on drops

Floor 100: Access to new affix pool exclusive to Tower loot

Floor 150+: Ascendant-only unique modifiers and gear themes that could be gameplay changing, allowing players to respec into an entirely new style of gameplay.

These modifiers persist across all content, effectively making the whole game harder for that character—but with exclusive loot to match.

Tower Gear – Ascendant Equipment System

Loot found in the Tower at specific depths carries a special “Ascendant Sigil” tag.

These items can only be equipped by characters who’ve reached that Tower level or higher.

This prevents low-level characters from trivializing content with ultra-high-tier loot, while preserving trading integrity.

Ascendant gear drops with:

Guaranteed minimum tier affixes

Possibility of exclusive mod pools (not available in base game)

Special crafting orbs, allow you to reroll pre-tower gear with the new tower set level implicits. Have a bow you loved before the tower, but now you want the buffs or to clear any low tier mods on it based on your tower level?

Gameplay Loop & Endgame Progression
The idea is to let players opt into self-scaling difficulty instead of being forced into a nerfed or homogenized meta.

Made a god-tier build and breezing content? Push your Tower deeper.

Want better loot, not just more loot? Tower gear is your new chase.

Enjoy buildcrafting and min-maxing? Ascendant modifiers give you new knobs to turn.

And because it's voluntary, there's no need to nerf powerful builds that some players worked hard to create. Instead, players scale the world to themselves.

Design Philosophy
The Tower Ascendant is about rewarding mastery without punishing experimentation. It keeps the power fantasy alive while offering long-term goals, creative gear progression, and replayability that scales with you.

Let players earn their broken builds. And when they do? Give them something worthy to break.

TL;DR Summary

Unlock an infinite tower with a crafted key

Clear levels to gain permanent buffs that increase global difficulty

Higher levels unlock exclusive loot only usable by characters who earned it

Provides long-term challenge and reward without needing build nerfs

Optional, personal, scalable difficulty that adjusts the game to the player

I think we already have that kind of thing in the game...

floor 10 = tier 1 map
floor 150 = tier 15 maps

and the infinity is something like rolling a juiced map

What if the tower went down instead of up?

Well, someone played Diablol lately...