Path of Exile News

From Aspirants to Elders, we've seen some incredible pieces of fan art shared within our community that we wanted to showcase today. Check out their works below!

[h2]Watercolour Shaper and Elder by fernsato[/h2]


[h2]The Saboteur by nylcostello[/h2]


[h2]Aspirant by HuntedSFM[/h2]


[h2]Big Spider and Little Witch by lolozori[/h2]


[h2]The Crossroads and The Old Fields by WidoXx[/h2]


We love seeing your creativity in action so if you’d like to share any artwork with us and your fellow Exiles, please post your submissions on the Community Showcase forum!

In preparation for the launch of our 3.15 expansion, we've been working on an update that includes some engine improvements and new performance metrics graphs. You can check out a preview of the patch notes in today's news post.

We're planning to deploy this patch before the end of the working week, possibly around two days from now. In the meantime, we've prepared a preview of the patch notes for you, which you can check out below.

Please note that these patch notes may be changed prior to their deployment.

Engine and Technical Changes:

• In addition to the internal engine improvements in this patch, there are some technical changes for you to be aware of.
  
• We have replaced the old Performance Metrics graphs with new ones that show a lot more information. We now graph several different metrics on the same graph and have bars that show relative load on different systems (CPU, GPU, System Memory, VRAM, Drive, Shader Compilation, Latency and the Instance Server). If one of these bars is maxing out, then that's the current bottleneck that you should consider upgrading. If critical issues such as insufficient VRAM are noticed, then the display will alert you to this.
  
• If you are encountering performance issues and want to make a video of it to show us then please have the Performance Metrics graphs on, as they have lots of information about what is bottlenecking your performance.
  
• If the Shaders bar alerts you about shader loading/saving being critically slow, consider changing what the drive that shader cache is stored on to a faster one. In the [GENERAL] section of the settings file, you can set cache_directory=x:\path\to\preferred\location to a folder on a faster drive.
  
• Like before, you can cycle through the three Performance Metrics states (hidden, FPS/performance, latency-only) by pressing F1. In the settings file's [UI] section you can set performance_metrics_state=fps (or =latency or =hidden) to set the default state.
  
• We have added a Gameplay tab to the Options panel and tidied up the Options.
  
• We have removed the button in the Options panel that allows you to clear your local cache. This can still be done manually by advanced users that have a specific reason to. The button was causing players to clear their cache, which removes the significant performance benefits of having a cache. The cache is automatically cleared once every league launch.
  
• We have removed the 32-bit Path of Exile client. Basically no one is running 32-bit versions of Windows anymore.
  
• Vulkan users with less than 2600mb of VRAM are now unable to select High texture quality, as there isn't enough video memory for the high-quality textures. DirectX users can continue to select it, but like before, performance will suffer on low memory systems as DirectX swaps assets into and out of system memory to try to cope.
  

General Improvements and Crash Fixes:

• Fixed a bug where tutorial notifications were not showing on macOS.
  
• Fixed a visual bug with Celestial Toxic Rain that caused flickering white boxes.
  
• Fixed an instance crash.
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Path of Exile Livestream Announcement
Tune in at 1pm on July 15th (PDT) to find out all about our next expansion!

The livestream will consist of new content reveals followed by a live Q&A with ZiggyD and Chris Wilson.

You'll catch everything you need to know at twitch.tv/pathofexile - We welcome co-streaming so be sure to encourage your favourite streamer to watch along with us.

Path of Exile's Expansion Launch Date
You'll be able to play the new Path of Exile expansion for free on July 23rd (PDT) on PC and on July 28th (PDT) on console.

We can't wait to see you then!

On July 10th and 11th (PDT), veteran community member, streamer and racer, Havoc616, will once again host the Havoc Blitz Event! Like the last Blitz, players will compete for points in a Private Ultimatum League. The winners will share in a cash prize pool as well as microtransactions provided by us.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Changes

• No qualification process: Simply click on a Private League invite link to join.
  
• New Class Ladder: Microtransaction rewards have been provided in addition to the Overall Rank based Prize Pool.
  
• Level Points in Boss Races: Additional points in Boss Races provides ladder progression for characters that have died, those that could not finish the race objective and those that cannot stream.
  
• More Meme Races!

Schedule Note: these are displayed in your local time. Day 1 Start: 10th of July 8AM PDT (Countdown is available here)
Day 2 Start: 11th of July 8AM PDT (Countdown is available here)

Prize Pool:
Total Prize Pool: $2000 (USD)
Final Standings Prize Pool Split:

• 1st: 25% ($500)
  
• 2nd: 23% ($450)
  
• 3rd: 20% ($400)
  
• 4th: 18%
  ($350)
  
• 5th: 15% ($300)
  

Class Standings Microtransactions Prize Pool:
Class Rank:

• 1st: Stygian Hood & 12 Apollyon Mystery Boxes
• 2nd: Stygian Hood & 8 Apollyon Mystery Boxes
• 3rd: Stygian Hood & 5 Apollyon Mystery Boxes
• 4th: 5 Apollyon Mystery Boxes
• 5th: 2 Apollyon Mystery Boxes

Note: Top 5 Microtransaction Prizes are available for each class: Scion, Ranger, Duelist, Marauder, Templar, Witch & Shadow.

If you would like to catch the action live, RaizQT will be casting the event over on his Twitch channel. Highlights will also be posted on Havoc616’s YouTube Channel.

Click here to learn more about the event, how to join, the rules in place, the point system or prizes. You can also join the POE Racing Discord here.

Shout out to community members DionyzRex#7230, Brittleknee, Xayazi, DadBodGamingGod, SK_Gunoo and Faderon for their work behind the scenes to help make this event a reality.

Good luck to everyone who’s participating!

In just two days, we'll reveal a short teaser of our upcoming 3.15 expansion which will also confirm the dates of its announcement livestream and launch. That means the Ultimatum League is near its end and you may be wondering what the future looks like for this content.

The short answer is that we won't be making Ultimatum a core mechanic as part of our upcoming 3.15 expansion. However, we do like its content and may bring it back at a later date. In order to do this, it would first need a few improvements.

We would want to improve the combat of Ultimatum encounters so that the experience is less overwhelming and more tactical. While we do like things to be challenging, we currently feel that there are too many monsters spawning within the tight space of the circle and too many things going on at once.

We would also want to rebalance the rewards. The intent of Ultimatum's reward system was to make the Trialmaster's offers the main reward for the challenge. This currently isn't the case with far too many items spawning at the end of the trial. For Ultimatum to return, we would want to shift the balance back so that the Trialmaster's offers are the main reward for doing the encounter while also compensating for the item fountain being turned off.

So while you may see the Trialmaster again in the future, if you really enjoy being heckled by an undead entity of Chaos, it's best to get your kicks in now while you still can.