Path of Exile News

We've prepared a small update which should fix the portals to the Rogue Harbour from Heists, as well as a handful of other issues. We're planning to deploy the 3.12.2b update by the end of this week, likely today (Thursday NZT). In the meantime, check out a preview of its patch notes.

Please note that the patch notes below may be changed prior to release of the 3.12.2b update.

• The Rogue Harbour is now a private area which only you and your party members can access.
  
• Fixed a bug which caused Grand Heists to sometimes fail to spawn an entrance to a Wing.
  
• Fixed a bug where Agility Jobs could sometimes not be completed in Underbelly.
  
• Fixed a bug introduced in 3.12.0 where Skitterbots preferred pathing towards allies, rather than enemies.
  
• Fixed a bug where Animated Guardians didn't lose their items when they died.
  
• Fixed a client crash that could occur when stealing a modifier from a Nemesis Rare monster.
  
• Fixed a client crash that could occur when applying the Revenant Explosive Arrow Effect microtransaction.
  
• Fixed an instance crash that could occur when using Infernal Blow.
  

We'll deploy more improvements to the Heist league next week in the 3.12.3 update. Thanks for your feedback and patience!

During the development of the Heist expansion, just when we were about to record voice lines for the league, New Zealand went into a second lockdown to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Nick, one of our narrative designers, has written an article about the process of recording the Heist voice acting from Level 3 lockdown.

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Earlier this year, New Zealand, like much of the world, went into mandatory lockdown to stop the spread of the coronavirus -- right in the middle of development for Harvest. Thankfully, Harvest was relatively light on narrative, and we were able to record Oshabi's dialogue after restrictions had been eased. Harvest's simpler story let us put more effort into Heist, which was intended to be much more story- and character-driven.

I'd started concepting characters a month or two before development began in earnest, and had run through more narrative ideas than I can actually remember. From the outset, this looked like it would give Betrayal -- the previous dialogue heavyweight -- a run for its money, but at least we were on track.

Then, on August 11, it was announced that Auckland, where GGG operates, would be put in lockdown again.

Uh oh.

At that stage, we had maybe two out of thirteen scripts complete, but we'd luckily already cast the majority of characters, and writing can thankfully be done basically anywhere there's a steady supply of coffee and snacks. But recording the characters, well, that can't be done from home.

...Usually.

The first character we were to record was Kurai, voiced by Miriama Smith. She was, at the time, in managed isolation (AKA quarantine) as she'd just returned from a shoot in Australia. The team at Native Audio went to her hotel and handed off a home-recording kit, and the bulk of Heist's story framework was recorded in her hotel room, with us listening in from our homes.

It was a trial by fire, and a necessary one, because it turns out that was how we'd be recording nearly all of Heist's characters. Many of the people we'd cast had home studios -- some even lived in, and recorded from the UK -- and the ones that didn't either got a home kit temporarily or went into the Native Audio studios under very rigorous hygiene restrictions.

The end result isn't perfect. One of the main reasons to consistently use the same studio is to ensure all characters have the same quality to the voice, and in Heist, there are a few characters that distinctly sound a bit different when heard in isolation. But we had to record dialogue earlier for Heist than most leagues so we could implement them into our new conversation system.

Given the circumstances and challenges we faced, the end result is honestly pretty stellar.

We implemented a new system for handling conversations for Heist. This system lets us rank dialogue by priority, with higher priority dialogue cutting off lower priority dialogue and preventing any new lower priority dialogue from playing. We did this specifically to avoid the Betrayal issue of characters yelling over each other in an unintelligible mess. Then we made our poor programmer Josh make a bazillion exceptions to this so I could intentionally have characters talk over each other. Making Huck and Tullina awkwardly and repeatedly talk over each other is probably the greatest abuse of my power I've achieved while working at GGG, and hearing it brings me endless joy.

In a future post we'll talk about how we build out some of the lore for this league, and some interesting facts and connections you might not know about, so keep an eye out for that!

We're now in the second week of the Heist league and the team is continuing to monitor your feedback and reported issues. In this news post we'd like to give you an update about some recently reported issues and to provide a general indication of what we're working on. Please note that a lot of the plans here are early and may change as they undergo development and internal testing.

[h3]Experience from Monsters in Heists[/h3]While there's currently no experience penalty on Heist monsters, we agree that in actual gameplay, they don't grant enough experience. We plan to significantly increase the experience that Heist monsters grant, with a focus on monsters encountered during Lockdown.

[h3]Heist Areas (in maps) are too long[/h3]We're going to standardise the size of Heists so that once you hit maps, they don't get any larger than the current Tier 1 size. You'll find a greater density of reward rooms in the higher-tier ones, of course.

[h3]Opening Job Doors in Heists[/h3]We have reduced the number of Heist Job doors along the direct path to the primary objective which need to be opened prior to Lockdown. We have also increased the speed at which Karst and Tullina complete the Agility Job.

There are some Heist Jobs that currently can't be sped up, but we're investigating the possibility of allowing this. In addition, some of the Heist doors have timing values that we'd like to make faster.

[h3]Observer Totems[/h3]Observer Totems, which can be found in Heists that require the Perception Job, increase Alert Level when you are close to them. One of the core issues is that it isn't necessarily obvious when you are approaching these totems or when you are in range of their Alert Level aura. We will be improving their visibility in a future update (both where they are and indicating when your Rogue specialising in Perception has made them vulnerable to damage).

Currently when a totem uses its Alert Level generation skill on you, your Alert Level goes up unless you kill it before it finishes using the skill. We will be changing it so that the skill essentially travels out in a wave that you can run away from or avoid. It will only increase the Alert Level if you are hit by it.

[h3]New Heist Bosses/Quests[/h3]We plan to enable two new boss encounters (and their accompanying questline) in an upcoming patch this week. Following that, we are aiming to enable another boss encounter (and questline) next week!

[h3]Heist Rewards[/h3]We have completed a large pass on Heist rewards. Our current plan is to increase the value of various reward types, such as Generic, Talismans, Metamorph and Harbinger. We want to provide further incentive to prioritising Reward Room Chests, therefore we will be moving some of the special rewards from Main Path Chests into Reward Room Chests.

Various Reward Room Chests will have a chance to drop Scarabs which match their respective rewards. We will be reducing the frequency at which Generic Reward Room Chests appear in Heists as well.

We have increased the Rogue Marker value of Heist objectives by up to 40% (based on the Tier of the Contract).

We have reduced the revealing cost for high-tier Blueprints by up to 15%. Alongside the increased Rogue Markers generated by running Heist Contracts, we expect that you should feel less strained by Blueprint revealing costs.

Additionally, we plan to change Blueprints to display all of the Reward Rooms that the Wings contain, rather than just the Reward Rooms that can be revealed. This way, you'll be able to see all of the potential rewards in a given Wing, giving you more information to decide whether you'd like to reveal a given Wing.

We are also considering some changes to how much you can extend the lockdown timer, such that it's still an effective strategy, but not one that trivialises opening all reward chests.

[h3]Portals back to The Rogue Harbour[/h3]There's a problem where returning to the Rogue Harbour can put you into the wrong Harbour, preventing you from returning to your Heist. We attempted to fix it last week but ran into some big problems and had to revert the fix. We have another plan for fixing it which we hope to deploy later this week.

[h3]Client and Instance Crashes[/h3]We aim to fix crashes as soon as possible, prioritising crashes based on how frequently they're occurring and how many players they're affecting. On Saturday, we fixed the most common client crash. We will continue to fix crashes as quickly as possible in our upcoming patches.

[h3]PlayStation 4 Crashes[/h3]The common client crash on this platform has the full attention of our engine development team at the moment.

[h3]Stash Tab Folders and Stash Tab Affinities[/h3]Stash Tab Folders are nearing completion. We will then be doing extensive internal testing. As soon as they're ready to go, we will be patching them in.

Stash Tab Affinities will take a little bit more time to complete, but we don't want to delay Stash Tab Folders. We're aiming to have Stash Tab Affinities released within the next few weeks.

It's critical that both of these features are implemented very safely and tested thoroughly, due to their nature.

[h3]Official macOS release[/h3]Since our unofficial release of an experimental macOS client immediately before the Heist release, we have been working on fixing commonly-reported issues. There are still a few important issues remaining, so we don't have a release date locked down yet. We'd like it to ideally be next week though.

[h3]The following commonly-reported issues are fixed and are awaiting testing/deployment:[/h3]

• Fixed a bug where Tullina could fail to open a Heist door in the Underbelly.
  
• Fixed a bug where some Prophecies would trigger and be consumed in Heists.
  
• Fixed a bug where Elemental Overload would not show its buff timer.
  
• Fixed a bug which caused Grand Heists to sometimes fail to spawn an entrance to a Wing.
  
• And many more - we'll post a preview of patch notes once we have them tested and assembled into a patch.
  

Thanks for making it through this long post! We'll continue to monitor feedback as these changes are deployed. We're likely to make additional improvements, and we'll keep you updated about those too.

In Path of Exile: Heist we introduced 13 new Rogues which assist you in Heists. We are very happy to see that a lot of players are enjoying the personalities of these NPCs and their interactions with each other. We'll talk about the process behind creating their lore and dialogue in the coming weeks. In the meantime check out the pieces of concept art of the Rogues created by our art team.

















We'd also like to take a moment to mention that we're going through all the Heist feedback now and are keen to address the issues in a news post later this week (potentially tomorrow). In the meantime the devs are continuing working on improvements and fixes to the Heist and will be releasing them as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.

Prior to Heist's launch, we revealed the Cursed Words divination card which redeems for the Maw of Mischief Unique Item. I was generously given the opportunity to design this card by one of our players and was also able to design a unique item that the card redeems for. In case you missed it, check out the Cursed Words card below!



We have so far kept the Maw of Mischief item secret but it's coming out soon so it's time to finally reveal it!



Death Wish is a channelled skill with thirteen stages that selects one of your minions per channeling stage. While channelling, the selected minions have immense Attack, Cast and Movement Speed and have the ability to pass through enemies. When the channelling is released, these minions will explode.

Each explosion deals a flat amount of fire spell damage in an area. It also deals 13% of the minion's maximum life as fire damage in the same area. The life-scaling portion of the damage does not scale with spell damage. Each explosion will deal more damage the more stages you built up.

In addition to the benefits of the skill, wearing the helmet makes your minions aggressive which means they'll target enemies from further away and find their way to enemies for maximum pay-off when the explosion occurs.

Here's a video of the Maw of Mischief in action!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

When I started to think about what I wanted to design for a Divination Card, it felt very appropriate for it to have some sort of representation for what my role within the Path of Exile community has been for the last 7 years. I wanted something that spoke about the relationship I have with the community and tied to various elements related to that.

Initially, as many of you speculated, I wanted to create an item that was mostly a joke that did mysterious things that would cause players to scratch their heads. We discussed various things like creating an 'Orb of Confusion' as a throwback to one of our past Halloween Boards. We talked about the possibility of adding it into the map device alongside maps and it spitting out patch notes that were both real and fake.

Ultimately, we worried about unfairness to other Divination Card creators who wouldn't have the same opportunity to create such things as well as the novelty wearing off after a while. Also, most players play the game without interacting with the forums or other community areas and would likely not be 'in' on the joke and simply find it strange.

I returned to the drawing board of creating something more serious. After thinking about it for some time, I realised I wanted to theme both the card and unique item around the feeling of anticipation. As a community manager, a lot of what you're working with boils down to managing people waiting - either with excitement or sometimes with a sense of dread (in the case of fixes or nerfs). This manifests both as teasing new content and communicating fixes and potential balance changes. Two sides of the same mindstate - anticipation.

We nailed down the basic function of the unique item first. I wanted to create something that works with allies, essentially groups of people as a representation of the community. I also wanted something that included a sense of anticipation which resulted in the channelling function creating a delay and then a payoff. I also wanted something that generated explosions because explosions are neat.

In terms of name and flavour, we were working from the idea of words having the ability to bring both joy and despair. I feel that the flavour summarises this perfectly.

The line that divides hope and fear,
Life and death, crowd and mob
Is as thin as a whisper.

It refers to both the power of words and the place that community managers occupy in the scheme of things. 'The line that divides' talks about the space between these two worlds of the community and the development team. 'As thin as a whisper' brings it back to being about communication. We followed a similar train of thought in naming the skill, 'Death Wish' as a sort of play on words about whispers that cause people to frenzy in anticipation, in this case culminating in deadly explosions.

The 'Maw of Mischief' name sort of came about quite naturally in talking about my role as a speaker. It's a bit obvious really - words come from the mouth and they're sort of cheeky sometimes. I also liked that the idea of a 'maw' sort of inherently called for creepy art for the helmet's look which was something I was hoping for.

After nailing down much of the unique item, the Divination Card came about sort of easily. While I wanted the unique item to stand alone as a contribution separate to my identity, I felt I could have a little fun with the Divination Card. We stuck with the theme of anticipation and words. The anticipation coming from the card being the only way to gain the unique item and the pursuit of its hidden meanings.

I chose the number 13 for the channelled stages and divination card stack size because it is a sp00ky number and because I joined GGG in 2013.

'Cursed Words' is sort of a cheeky play on 'curse-words' as well as referring to the words you might speak to cause someone to pursue their hidden meaning, perhaps for fun or perhaps to their detriment. I chose the art because it was a wonderful opportunity to put my own personal stamp on Path of Exile, it happened to work well with the themes of the card and item and being in line with the style Divination Card art is usually done in. Plus for many of you, it is instantly recognisable.

I feel incredibly humbled to have been given this opportunity to contribute to Path of Exile in this way. Working with the Grinding Gear Games team and alongside the Path of Exile community for so many years has brought so much joy to my life and created amazing memories that I'll hold onto forever. Being able to create the Maw of Mischief puts this time into the legacy of Path of Exile and I'm beyond grateful for that. As my role in the company continues to mature over time, I am sure I'll always look back on this period with fond memories.

I wanted to say a special thank you to James and Nick for helping me work my ideas into these formats as well as to Aneruok for gifting me the Divination Card design. I also want to thank you, the community, for joining me in so many wonderful moments and for supporting Path of Exile so that we can continue to create these moments. I hope you enjoy the unique!

Thank you.