Path of Exile News

The third week of the Blight League just started and we wanted to give you a small update about what we're working on at the moment. While we don't have a big patch scheduled for this week, we're still planning to fix some of the remaining issues by deploying client-side hotfixes.

The following crash fixes are ready and will be deployed as soon as possible:

• Fixed a client crash that could occur when using Shield Charge if you leveled the gem up while it was being used.
  
• Fixed a client crash that could occur when using Leap Slam with the Harlequin Leap Slam Effect on Predictive Networking Mode.
  
• Fixed an instance crash that could occur when using Mines.
  
• Fixed an instance crash that could occur in the Act 6 and Tower Map Brutus and Shavronne encounters.

The common crash with Vorici Betrayal encounters is still being worked on, as well as the cases when the Blight portals spawn too close to the Ichor Pump.

Last Friday we talked about the current performance situation in Blight. The team has been actively investigating the high priority issues we listed in that news article. We'll give you more details about the changes we're planning to make in order to improve the performance by the end of this week.

Game performance and stability have been hot topics in the community recently, so we wanted to give an update about our understanding of the current status of several of the important issues, and to reassure you that we are working on them. For many of the issues, we haven't yet identified their causes, and we'll update with more information as soon as we have. We felt it was important to post this before the weekend so that you know that the concern has been heard.

Blighted Map Instance Server Performance
When we talk about instance server performance, we're referring to the performance of the game server software that is running on one of our server machines. Normally we can fit dozens of instances per CPU core, and they take a fraction of a millisecond to process your actions for the frame. Under extreme gameplay circumstances though, the instance server can slow down due to the calculations taking a full CPU core more than 33ms (the serverside frame time).

In Blight, there are a lot of monsters and they have a lot of life. What normally happens when you engage a pack of monsters is that your attacks quickly cull out the weak ones, leaving just a few strong targets. In Blight, however, the weak ones last for much longer. As you know, Path of Exile has a very complicated stat system with tens of thousands of different values that your character can have. Many of these are used in combat calculations and dozens of small buffs, debuffs and ailments are applied to monsters as you attack them. The more monsters there are, and the longer they survive your attacks for, the longer these calculations take. Blight combat is an order of magnitude more strenuous on our servers than regular map content.

Once we knew that we had serverside performance issues with Blighted Maps, we wanted to check whether we could improve this issue by adding more servers. We observed that on physical game servers with different numbers of game instances, the number of dropped frames per instance was not higher on more heavily-loaded servers. This showed that the problem is related to specific instances utilising an entire CPU core for more than 33ms, rather than the server itself having too many instances on it. Throwing more money/servers at the problem would not solve it.

We are working on this problem and trying to find a solution that will reduce the calculation complexity without compromising gameplay.

Minion Performance
We believe that the popularity of minion builds with 3.8.0 have caused a lot of the performance problems that players are encountering.

Minions are monsters, so all of the problems mentioned above apply to them. They tend to last a long time and there are a lot of them on the screen, all of which are getting all the various buffs and graphical effects that would normally apply to players.

Alongside the release of legion, we made many changes to how melee combat works in Path of Exile. Our changes intended to tighten up attack distances and to get stuff to feel right had the side effect of slowing down pathfinding and causing a few other small performance regressions. We didn't notice at the time how much extra cost these added to minions.

With the 3.8.0 release making minion builds very popular, all of these performance problems have become a large issue for anyone playing minions, or in a party with minions.

These issues are a high priority for us.

Graphics Driver Crashes
While playing certain content (e.g., Betrayal missions), some users experience a graphics driver crash where the screen goes black for a while, and then comes back with a Path of Exile "Map" error. Recent versions of the Nvidia driver including the most recent, 436.30, have this issue. We can't reproduce the problem on Nvidia driver version 419.17. We don't yet know what Path of Exile is doing to cause the crash, but the graphics driver should never crash regardless of what the game does. We have contacted Nvidia to bring it to their attention.

(A few AMD users have reported similar problems but we haven't been able to reproduce this and it doesn't appear to be on the same scale).

Instance Crashes
Instance crashes are when the game instance server crashes while you're playing, disconnecting you back to the login screen. Since Blight's release, we have deployed many hotfixes that address various instance crashes and the number of crashes is dropping by the day. Today we have deployed a hotfix that resolves more than half of the remaining instance crashes. We are still working on the remaining ones, focusing attention on the most-frequent first.

Client Memory Usage
We have noticed unusually high memory usage, likely due to loading too many game assets. We believe this may be causing performance issues and we are investigating.

Engine vs Gameplay Performance
Recently there have been a lot of community posts criticising Path of Exile's engine for being slow or not optimised enough. We have spent several years improving the engine and have deployed these updates as soon as they have become ready. Path of Exile's engine is currently modern, lean and fast. But yet, in many situations, the game does not perform well at all.

Almost all of the performance problems that Path of Exile suffers from are related to gameplay systems and decisions we have made there. For the reasons described above, Blight is a league with performance problems. We made a conscious decision to try this type of league, and it's entirely appropriate to blame us and this decision for the poor performance that you may encounter while playing this content. We weren't expecting it to be this bad, and are working on fixing it.

No matter what engine we are using, Path of Exile would be slow in its current state due to the gameplay decisions we have made: calculating too many things on the server and rendering too many things on the client.

It may seem arbitrary and defensive for us to point out the difference between the engine and the gameplay systems, but the reason is that the engine is going to be part of Path of Exile forever, but the gameplay code comes and goes as things are added and removed. We don't want leagues to have performance issues, and this informs the decisions we make about future content development.

We're sorry that this post doesn't contain more definitive steps about exactly how and when we will solve these issues, but we wanted to communicate the status of these issues before the weekend. We are treating them as high priorities and are hoping to find and deliver solutions to many of them next week.

We're in the process of deploying the 3.8.1 update that contains a large amount of improvements and fixes to the Blight League. You can find its full patch notes below. While this patch should address the majority of recent community feedback, we'll continue to keep an eye on reports and make further improvements to Blight if possible.

• Increased the amount of reward chests from each lane in Blighted Maps.
  
• The rewards from Blighted Maps can now include Oils.
  
• Reduced the amount of monsters that spawn during Blighted Maps. The intention is to reduce the impact on performance while still retaining difficulty.
  
• Reduced the chance that Blighted Monsters will create Beyond Portals on death.
  
• Blighted monsters can no longer have the Cannot Die, Shroud Walker, Soul Conduit, Fractured or Group Frenzy on Death modifiers.
  
• Blighted monsters that cast Proximity Shield can no longer cast the skill if they are already inside of a Proximity Shield. Blighted monsters that have active Proximity Shields will now disable them if they become affected by another shield. This should result in far less overlap.
  
• Reduced the Life of Minions spawned by Summoning Towers. Increased the amount of delay before new minions are summoned after an existing set of minions has died.
  
• Increased the life of Minions spawned by Sentinel Towers but added a short delay before they are summoned again after dying.
  
• Substantially increased the damage of minions summoned by a Scout Tower.
  
• Added telegraphing effects to Knucklegnaw's Slam skill.
  
• The split-versions of Sporeplume now deal less damage, take more damage, and have a shorter attack range.
  
• Prophecies can no longer trigger when entering Blighted Maps.
  
• You can no longer use a Blighted Map as part of an Atlas Mission, as they do not work. They did not previously consume Atlas Missions because of this.
  
• Hovering over a tower-building UI element now indicates that it is less effective against Blighted enemies of the same type (as shown on the Blight Portal UI)."
  
• Updated the names of some ring enchantments so that their name matches their effect. This doesn't affect the functionality of existing items at all.
  
• The Ball Lightning skill used by Ephrexis, Blight Strider now releases additional smaller Ball Lightning projectiles as it travels.
  
• Ystral, Winter Stalker now uses a more dangerous version of his Sunder skill.
  
• Fixed a bug where Blight Portals could spawn too close to the Ichor Pump.
  
• Fixed a bug where Rattleback, Hollow Matriarch could become immune to damage if it died while Petrified.
  
• Fixed a bug which prevented Banisher of the Cleansed from spawning.
  
• Fixed a bug where Blight Towers and Minions summoned by Blight Towers were benefiting from Map Modifiers.
  
• Fixed a bug where an open tower building UI element would close if you had gained enough resources to upgrade a different tower.
  
• Fixed a bug where Blight monsters spawned by a Minion Portal did not ignore minions spawned a Summoning Tower.
  
• Fixed a bug where Blighted Frozen Titans were not removed when failing a Blight Encounter.
  
• Fixed a bug where, in Blighted Maps, Cassia did not warn you that monsters were close to the pump.
  
• Fixed a bug where Blighted Maps would begin spawning monsters immediately after you had built your first tower if you had not yet completed the "Strange Growths" Blight quest.
  
• Fixed a bug where the "Start Blight Encounter" button lingered for a short duration after being clicked.
  
• Fixed a bug where transforming an Amulet into a Talisman removed its Anointed Notable passive.
  
• Fixed a bug where casting Vaal Breach counted as opening a Breach for the sake of the "Open Breaches" challenge.

• Updated the Atlas Missions information panel to correctly refer to the fact that five Atlas Missions will accumulate daily, rather than two at random.
  
• Updated the description text underneath Vagan, Victory's Herald on the Betrayal Board to match his new rewards.
  
• Smoke Mine can no longer be re-armed.
  
• Smoke Mine now has a 0.15 second delay before it can be thrown again to prevent accidentally throwing multiple in a row when you have very high mine throwing speed.
  
• Burning Damage Support and Elemental Focus Support can now support Summon Skitterbots while it is also supported by Infernal Legion.
  
• Improved performance when large amounts of corpses are nearby when using the Essence Glutton ascendancy passive.
  
• Improved the performance of spell projectiles cast by Skeleton Mages.
  
• Fixed a bug where some Atlas Missions were sometimes generated based on the percentage of monsters slain in a map, rather than when the map boss was slain. Daily missions are not affected by this fix.
  
• Fixed a bug where Jun's missions granted less Favour than intended.
  
• Fixed a rare bug where The Elder was sometimes able to move despite being chained up during his Unstable phase.
  
• Fixed a bug where, when you had a Safehouse and Mastermind encounter ready to run, if you ran the Mastermind encounter first, your Safehouse area level would be reset. Safehouse area level is now maintained when your Betrayal board is reset.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Cursed Concoction passive skill would cause Blasphemied Curses to be removed from yourself after using a Mana Flask.
  
• Fixed a bug where monsters would try to attack your Mines or Traps, even though they were not able to hit them.
  
• Fixed a bug where Mine Auras, Plaguebearer, Infernal Legion and the Corpse Pact "Chilled and Shocked" Auras were unable to damage Totems.
  
• Fixed a bug introduced in 3.8.0 where the Primordial Might unique jewel did not make Golems Aggressive.
  
• Fixed a bug where the "+X to Level of all Minion Skill Gems" modifier did not apply to Minion Attack skills.
  
• Fixed a bug where projectiles that killed or destroyed a target would continue travelling (without having any behaviour modifiers that would allow them to do so).
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed crafting the "Minions have x% increased Movement Speed" modifier onto an item that already had a non-crafted version of that modifier.
  
• Fixed a bug where Banner Skills were not granting their associated buffs when placed.
  
• Fixed a bug where ground effects and some Auras were not being applied immediately, but after a short delay.
  
• Fixed a bug where, when a Minion was both Aggressive and Defensive, it was Defensive. The correct behaviour should be that the minion has default behaviour.
  
• Fixed a bug introduced in 3.8.0 where Volatile Dead's targeting was very indecisive.
  
• Fixed a bug where Cobra Lash could be supported by Mirage Archer Support. This change does not affect functionality as this interaction did not actually work.
  
• Fixed a bug where the "Steelskin Buff can take x% increased amount of Damage" enchantment modifier also applied to Bone Armour.
  
• Fixed a bug where Blink and Mirror Arrow clones could only hit a single enemy per attack, even when firing multiple projectiles.
  
• Fixed a bug where Double Strike supported by Melee Splash did not play visual effects on hit.
  
• Fixed a bug introduced in 3.8.0 where some monsters that used Suicide skills did not play an effect.
  
• Fixed a bug introduced in 3.8.0 where the "Your Chaos Damage has 60% chance to Poison Enemies" modifier on The Consuming Dark unique Fiend Dagger did not work.
  
• Fixed a rare bug where Legion Generals could sometimes be invisible.
  
• Fixed a bug where Piety could create Burning or Chilling Portals in unwalkable locations.
  
• Fixed a bug where The Cursed King in the Dark Forest Map could sometimes cast his Wolf Transform skill immediately after finishing his Wolf Barrage skill.
  
• Fixed a bug where Plague Bearer's visual effect covered up the effects of Ringmaster Aura Effect.
  
• Fixed a bug where Celestial Raised Zombies did not submerge after dying.
  
• Fixed an instance crash that could occur when using Wave of Conviction supported by Unleash Support.
  
• Fixed a client crash that could occur with the "Exception Present" error message.
  
• Fixed a buffer overflow disconnect that could occur at deep Delve depths.
  

As is tradition, at the beginning of a new league we showcase its concept art. For this news post we've prepared the concept art of Sister Cassia and also included several work-in-progress images to give you a little insight into the development process of the Blight League.

ExileCon, the first official Path of Exile convention, is now just two months away! Today's news post includes information about a lot of different topics, from the prizes of the race finals and a list of planned developer presentations to a preview of some ExileCon merchandise!

If you're not able to attend ExileCon in Auckland, New Zealand on November 16-17, then it's possible to still experience the expansion announcements by watching our livestreamed keynote presentation. This is being held on the Saturday morning in New Zealand, so that'll be Friday afternoon in America, or Friday evening in Europe. We'll post more information about exact times and how to view this closer to the event.

Four talented racers (tie23he, dsfarblarwaggle, Leaf and Havoc) have been earned their place in the Race Finale through a series of community- and GGG-run race events and have been awarded flights, accommodation and tickets to attend ExileCon. They will participate in a race event on the Sunday for the following additional prizes:

• First Place: US$10,000
  
• Second Place: US$5,000
  
• Third Place: US$2,500

We will also livestream the race event with commentary for everyone to watch from home.
Every hour during the event, there will be a presentation or panel with Grinding Gear Games developers discussing various aspects of the development of Path of Exile. We'll record these presentations and will release in the news when appropriate after the event.

Some of the planned topics include:

• A livestreamed keynote presentation announcing multiple Path of Exile expansions
  
• World design in Path of Exile
  
• A deep dive into the 3.9.0 expansion and its league
  
• Several 4.0.0-specific talks about currently-unannounced content
  
• Random level generation
  
• A GGG Founders panel, with Chris/Jonathan/Erik
  
• A Designers Panel where you can ask obscure game mechanic questions

In preparation for ExileCon, we have been developing a variety of awesome merchandise. Today we are proud to preview the Sand Spitter Plush:



Some players have asked whether the merchandise is exclusive to ExileCon or whether it'll be possible to buy some online after the event. We have ordered enough stock to cover a bit more than what we expect to sell at the event, and attendees will have first dibs on getting to buy whatever they want. If we do have any leftover stock, we'll find a way to make it available to people online (either for sale or as prizes).

In summary, the merchandise is not strictly exclusive to the event, but attending ExileCon is certainly going to be the easiest way to be able to purchase the specific merchandise that you want.

New Zealand has just introduced a system where you must apply for an "NZeTA" online before arriving in the country. As far as we can see, almost all ExileCon visitors from overseas must apply for one. We recommend doing this as soon as possible. Thankfully, the process does not look difficult. Full details and the application form are on this page.

There are still a few hundred tickets to ExileCon available if you're keen to join us. Check out the ExileCon site here to find out more information about the event and to purchase your tickets.