Not perfect, but I tried to cover things at a high-level for folks who are on the more casual side. If you have any suggestions or tweaks, let me know.
Here's the text version:
Northwest — Atlas Fortress
- Overview: Progress through the giant Atlas Fortress by clearing maps and defeating gate bosses, pushing deeper toward the center for the main Atlas progression questline.
- Game Stage Relevancy: Core endgame progression.
- Crafting Mechanic: No dedicated item-crafting system of its own; instead, it rewards Atlas passive points for the revamped Atlas tree and unlocks Atlas Master specializations that shape how all other endgame systems behave.
- Specialized Items: Fortress / Atlas pinnacle uniques, Atlas passive progression, and Atlas Master endgame customization.
South — Breach
- Overview: Fight escalating waves of Hiveborn and invade Hive strongholds to collect Hive Blood and Wombgifts, eventually progressing into Breach domains and major boss encounters.
- Game Stage Relevancy: Early/mid-game crafting with long-term endgame progression.
- Crafting Mechanic: The Genesis Tree. Spend Hive Blood and Wombgifts in a deterministic crafting tree that gives increasing control over item base types, quality, mod pools, and affix outcomes.
- Specialized Items: Breach uniques, exclusive jewelry/base types, Wombgifts, and Breach-specific crafting currency.
Southeast — Expedition / Runes of Aldur
- Overview: Combines upgraded Expedition gameplay with the new Runes of Aldur league mechanic: use explosives to uncover rune remnants and resources while sailing through a new endless sea of island maps.
- Game Stage Relevancy: Probably early-to-late-game crafting and broad item progression, both remains to be seen.
- Crafting Mechanic: Rune crafting and runeforging. You gather Verisium, runes, and league resources to add Runic Ward to gear, create Kalguuran skills, enhance armor/weapons, and reforge uniques into stronger endgame versions.
- Specialized Items: Kalguuran uniques, 100+ runes, runeforged gear, Runic Ward-enhanced items, and Kalguuran skill/support itemization.
East — Abyss
- Overview: Fight swarms of monsters erupting from giant cracks and pits, then close Abyss paths across the overworld to track down one of the Abyssal faction bosses.
- Game Stage Relevancy: Mid/late-game crafting and progression.
- Crafting Mechanic: Choice-based affix crafting that gives more control over RNG, with “pick from options” style outcomes rather than fully blind rolling.
- Specialized Items: Abyss uniques, Abyss jewels, and faction-boss-specific rewards.
Southwest — Delirium
- Overview: Add Delirium fog and extra difficulty to maps, then spread that fog over a region of your choosing for deeper chains, special encounters, and scaling rewards.
- Game Stage Relevancy: Mid/late-game crafting and heavy map juicing.
- Crafting Mechanic: Emotion currency. These are used to instill passive effects onto amulets and, newly, to target special or exclusive affixes onto jewels.
- Specialized Items: Delirium uniques, special amulet rewards with multiple instilled effects, exclusive jewel affixes, and potent emotion currencies.
West — Ritual
- Overview: Fight increasingly dense waves of monsters in Ritual arenas to earn Tribute for an in-map reward shop, then chain Rituals across multiple maps for harder encounters and bigger payoffs.
- Game Stage Relevancy: Early/mid unique chasing, with late-game meta-crafting support from Omens.
- Crafting Mechanic: Tribute shop + Omens. Ritual rewards now focus on uniques and Omens, with Omens acting as consumable modifiers that influence crafting currency outcomes in more targeted or deterministic ways.
- Specialized Items: Ritual uniques, Omens, and Ritual-specific meta-crafting currencies.
North — Vaal Temple
- Overview: Build out a giant Vaal temple by chaining rooms together, creating compounding difficulty and rewards as the layout expands.
- Game Stage Relevancy: late-game progression and late-game crafting, remains to be seen after changes.
- Crafting Mechanic: Temple-style room progression and Vaal-focused crafting, including room-based reward specialization and socket-related manipulation.
- Specialized Items: Vaal uniques, Vaal unique affix manipulation, "Capstone" item crafting (corruption, double-corruption), and socket-related item manipulation/extraction.