Path of Exile News

There have been a lot of questions about the upcoming new system for monster mods that was announced in yesterday's balance manifesto. In today's post, we're providing answers to some of the most frequently asked questions.

[h3]Since the mods are simplified and separated, does that mean rare monsters will now have more mods on average to compensate? How many mods can a rare monster have now?[/h3]
We're currently playtesting the new monster mod system to determine this. At the moment it's 2-4, but this may change as we continue to iterate.

[h3]Will the modifiers' effects be made more intense to compensate for their simplification?[/h3]
These are new mods that have similar themes to old ones, but have new balance values. In many cases these are the same as before, but we're evaluating on a case by case basis. It's mostly the weaker secondary mods that need to be juiced up so that they make sense as a standalone mod.

[h3]Are rare monsters still getting increased damage/hp/defenses per mod or only whatever the individual mods on the rare roll?[/h3]
Rare monsters never received additional damage per incremental mod, and the only defenses they received was a life bonus (on top of whatever the mod actually did of course). Under the new system, they will get life, experience, item rarity and quantity bonuses per additional mod.

[h3]Will the changes made to reduce the number of rare monsters spawned in various mechanics be undone now that each individual rare encounter is less likely to be a major burden to the player?[/h3]
No.

[h3]Will Pantheon mods still exist with simplified lines such as ''Uses Kitava's Skills'' or something like that?[/h3]
Pantheon mods still exist but are very rare.

[h3]Will stealing ''Ignites'' make all our hits ignite?[/h3]
This makes all monster fire damage ignite, so it makes all your fire damage ignite if you steal it.

[h3]Is this a nerf to Headhunter? Will mods be able to stack like they could before Archnemesis?[/h3]
Mods will not be able to stack (as many can't function when stacked). There are more mods to steal, which is a buff to the upper end of Headhunter gameplay.

[h3]Can we have examples of some of the new reward types being introduced?[/h3]
Not yet.

[h3]Does this mean I'm forced to play Magic Find all the time now?[/h3]
If you're able to sacrifice character power for magic find then, you'll find more and better items. That was true before 3.19 and is the nature of magic find in Action RPGs. Note that magic find has diminishing returns, so a small investment can go a long way.

[h3]How have reward conversions changed?[/h3]
We're still working on this, but we can confirm:

• Only some of the new rewards are conversion ones
  
• We are removing the undesirable ones like conversion to flasks
  
• We are trying to make the rewards from rare monsters not so all-or-nothing
  

[h3]Does Magic Find still massively affect the reward conversions?[/h3]
We are still iterating on these systems and don't want to set expectations around this in either direction just yet.

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Path of Exile 3.20 Expansion Livestream

The details of our fourth expansion of this year will be revealed at 11AM December 1st (PST) at twitch.tv/pathofexile!

In the livestream you'll learn all about the new challenge league and other content of the expansion. As usual, after the livestream, Chris Wilson will answer your burning questions live in a Q&A session with ZiggyD.

Twitch Drops will be enabled for the livestream. We'll announce the reward in a few days. Co-streaming is welcomed!

Path of Exile's Expansion Launch Date

You'll be able to play The Forbidden Sanctum expansion for free on December 9th (PST) on PC and Mac and on December 14th (PST) on Xbox and PlayStation.

We are very excited to show you what we've been working on!

In our upcoming 3.20 expansion, Archnemesis will be replaced with a system that is more similar to the way monster mods worked in the past.

The issues that players often had with Archnemesis were:

• The keyworded mod names were not fully descriptive of what they did
  
• The mods often had multiple effects bundled which made them harder to understand
  
• Due to how many effects were included in a single mod, it made too many encounters too complex
  
• The way Archnemesis rewards were set up meant that many players felt like they couldn't just kill a monster, they had to consider if they wanted to bring a magic find character in to maximise rewards
  

The goals of the new system are:

• Mods do one specific thing
  
• Mods say what they do rather than having a thematic name you must learn and remember
  
• Encounters are simplified on average while retaining interesting fights
  
• Players are no longer required to do annoying actions to maximise rewards
  

Let's examine those goals individually:

[h3]Mods do one specific thing[/h3]
Here's an example: The Magma Barrier Archnemesis mod did a whole lot of stuff. It started by putting a magma barrier around the monster, but it didn't stop there. It converted some of the monster's physical damage to fire damage, it added some extra fire damage on top, it granted fire resistance to the monster and it gave some physical damage reduction for good measure. It also spawned volatile flamebloods to follow you. The new equivalent modifier just puts a magma barrier around the monster and does nothing else.

[h3]Mods say what they do rather than having a thematic name you must learn and remember[/h3]
For example, rather than "Incendiary", which broke down into six properties, you'd now see monsters with either "Ignites" or "Fire and Ignite Resistant". Instead of "Deadeye", which did five separate things, you'd now see "Applies Random Mark", "Extra Crits" or "Accurate" as separate unrelated mods.

[h3]Encounters are simplified on average while retaining interesting fights[/h3]
The pool of mods that involve complex interaction (like spawning volatiles or ground effects on death) have been heavily diluted by the presence of the simpler mods. This means that you encounter more complex fights less frequently. But interesting and challenging emergent behaviour from overlapping mods can still happen, just less often.

[h3]Players are no longer required to do annoying actions to maximise rewards[/h3]
In Archnemesis, rewards were associated with individual mods. This meant that you could tell what kind of rewards you would get in advance. In some cases, you were then effectively required to fetch a magic-find culling character to make sure that you maximised the value of the monster mod that you had found. In other cases, you would ignore a monster completely if you knew that it would only drop rewards that were of no value to you. In the new system, we have added a significant pool of new rewards to rares, but the reward that is on the monster is hidden (and not associated with a specific mod), so you don't know what kind of rewards you will get until you kill the monster. Rare monsters with more mods are more likely to have these special hidden reward mods. This new reward system smooths out the spikiness that the Archnemesis reward system had.

[h3]Conclusion[/h3]
The original motivation for developing Archnemesis was that the previous monster mod system was very out of date. Many of the mods didn't have any appreciable effect under modern balance and there wasn't a lot of interesting gameplay possible. In our opinion, Archnemesis did succeed at adding a lot of interesting new mechanics to rares, but introduced the problems described above. While creating the new monster mods described in this article, we were careful to retain most of the interesting mechanics that Archnemesis introduced, but in a way that doesn't include a grab-bag of other effects and is diluted by many other simpler mods.

The result is a system that is very similar to what monster mods used to be like, but with much more up-to-date content and balance. Mods are simpler and say exactly what they do. While you can certainly still rarely encounter scary combinations of mods that really wake you up, it's a lot rarer than it was under the Archnemesis system. We feel that the new system is more modern and interesting than the old monster mod/nemesis system and is clearer and easier to understand in the heat of combat than Archnemesis was.

Yesterday, we shared our plans regarding upcoming changes to Jewels which prompted some questions. In today's post, we've collected some of these questions and their answers.

[h3]Can you give us some examples of the numbers on the ailment mitigation modifiers on Jewels?[/h3]
Regular Jewels can roll up to 35% Reduced Duration or Reduced Effect. Abyss Jewels can roll up to 50% Ailment Avoidance.

[h3]Will the new Jewel modifiers or existing Jewel modifiers have modifier tiers?[/h3]
No, regular Jewel modifiers do not have tiers. Abyss Jewel modifiers already had tiers, we've just buffed the modifier values on them that benefit ailment mitigation.

[h3]Are you removing any corrupted implicit modifiers on Jewels?[/h3]
No

[h3]Is the corrupted mod pool getting a weighting change?[/h3]
No

[h3]Which unique jewels are being removed?[/h3]
We aren't ready to share the full list of unique Jewels being removed as we are still discussing some of them. A few examples of unique Jewels that are definitely being removed are Malicious Intent, Brittle Barrier and Unstable Payload. Two examples of jewels that aren't being removed are Lioneye's Fall and Inspired Learning. We'll share the full list of removed Jewels in the patch notes.

[h3]Isn't diluting the mod pool a nerf?[/h3]
If you're looking for a very specific outcome on your Jewel and have no use for ailment mitigation modifiers, it may be marginally more difficult to roll your Jewels. However, the average outcome for Jewels should be better.

[h3]Which of the removed unique Jewels from quest rewards are going into the global drop pool?[/h3]
Some specific stats from some of these Jewels are being added to the regular Jewel mod pool, such as mana reservation efficiency.

[h3]Are the Divination Cards that grant unique Jewels changing? [/h3]
The drop rates for Divination Cards that grant unique Jewels that are now rarer will be adjusted to align with the unique Jewel's rarity.

[h3]Are unique Jewels that are already rare, like Unnatural Instinct, going to be even rarer?[/h3]
We haven't changed the rarity of Jewels like this.

[h3]Will Jewels that are being removed still have Replica versions from Heist?[/h3]
No, if the base Jewel has been removed, its Replica version will also be removed.

[h3]What's happening to these Jewels?[/h3]

• Conqueror's Efficiency: its mana reservation stat has been moved to the regular Jewel mod pool.
  
• Survival Secrets: its stats may show up in a different form like a unique item but we can't confirm this yet.
  
• Poacher's Aim: this has been removed entirely.
  
• Golem Jewels: These are more deterministically available and aren't relying on random drops anymore. The intention is that they should be relatively accessible.
  
• To Dust: this will be available as a corruption-only Jewel.
  

[h3]Are Primordial Jewels changing?[/h3]
We have no plans to change Primordial Jewels.

[h3]Are other forms of ailment mitigation being nerfed to offset the buff to Jewels?[/h3]
No

It's worth noting that things may change before launch after further testing and feedback.

In our upcoming 3.20 expansion, we're making a number of balance changes that we'll present over several balance manifestos that each cover an individual topic. In today's manifesto, we're discussing changes to Jewels, most notably increasing their potential for ailment mitigation.

Problem:
Jewels have modifiers that provide various forms of ailment avoidance or protection. However, because their current values are moderately low, you often need to stack several Jewels in order to have adequate levels of protection. We feel that this is an excessive amount of investment for how necessary ailment mitigation is to a character's build. This issue has been exacerbated by some of these mods being gated behind corruption, making them more expensive and difficult to acquire.

Solution:
We're expanding the pool of mods available on magic and rare Jewels and are making their modifier values more generous so that players have better access to sources of ailment mitigation, with less investment.

Regular Jewels (i.e. Jewels that are not Abyss or Cluster Jewels) now have mods that provide Reduced Duration or Reduced Effect for a wider variety of ailments than before. Abyss Jewels now have mods that provide avoidance of various ailments.

Summary:
This means that Jewels should be a more reliable and less expensive source of ailment mitigation through their higher mod values and better variety of mods.

Problem:
Many unique Jewels are not exciting to find. There are a few reasons for this. In most cases they are simply underpowered, or apply to a too-narrow window of usage, or both. There are also many corruption-only Jewels that don't fulfill a good purpose.

Previously, we were hesitant to revisit unique Jewels and improve them beyond their initial designs because many of their themes are somewhat rigid in nature, meaning there is little room to improve them without completely remaking them.

An example of this is the Fireborn Crimson Jewel. It has no values that we could increase to make it more useful; it simply changes the damage type within a radius which has very limited opportunities for use. Any improvements we could make to this Jewel would have to fundamentally change its identity and would therefore essentially remove the Jewel in its current form from Path of Exile.

Solution:
We're making it so that every unique jewel that drops is very rare and highly desirable. This means that many existing unique Jewels have been removed from the drop pool. The intention is that now when you find a unique Jewel, it should almost always be a very positive experience.

To help make jewel drops special, we've designed a new set of unique Jewels that are powerful chase items. These can drop from the core pool. You can learn more about these Jewels in our upcoming announcement livestream for the 3.20 expansion.

With that said, there were some unique Jewels that were still useful for a subset of players because they had build-enabling modifiers or other very niche uses (like the Brute Force Solution or other attribute-transformation Jewels). Instead of getting rid of these, we've made them corruption-only unique Jewels. We feel this has benefits for both players who want them and players who don't, as generally players who don't want them won't come across them as core drops and players who do want them can still actively pursue them.

Some build-enabling unique Jewels can now be found from more deterministic sources throughout Path of Exile. One example is Combat Focus which can now be obtained through a vendor recipe.

Some other build-enabling Jewels that affect Golems can no longer drop but can be found from another more deterministic source. While we want you to discover this new source on your own during gameplay, we will say for clarity that these Jewels do not come from vendor recipes.

Summary:
Our goal is that finding a unique Jewel is an exciting experience. The unique Jewels that drop naturally should be those that are very valuable with broad appeal to the average player, either to use in your own build or trade to someone else. We've worked towards this goal by removing uninteresting unique Jewels, adding more chase unique Jewels, and moving Jewels that do appeal to a smaller subset of players to other places so that they can be pursued by choice.

Problem:
Many of the unique Jewels that are currently granted through quest rewards are not very desirable. Additionally, because they're offered to all players who make their way through the campaign, they're extremely common, which inhibits them from having value or being meaningful items to find. We have also come to feel that it's thematically incorrect to offer unique items as quest rewards, as it undermines their feeling of uniqueness and prestige.

Solution:
Unique Jewels will no longer be offered as quest rewards. Most of the Jewels that were previously offered have been removed entirely, though some important ones have had their effects preserved in the form of new unique items or by being added to the pool of rollable Jewel modifiers.

These quest rewards now offer a random Rare Jewel. Because the rewards are not static like the unique Jewels were, they may have a better chance of being useful to the receiver or something that may be valuable to trade to others. At the very least, they should be less predictable.

Summary:
Players should no longer be burdened with predictable unique Jewel quest rewards but will not entirely miss out on some of the valuable aspects they did have.

Conclusion:
Jewels should be more exciting than before and provide a better source of ailment mitigation than they were in 3.19. Jewels with effects that are useful only to a subset of players should still be attainable while moving them out of the way of players who aren't interested in them. You can find out more information in the patch notes for the 3.20 expansion and in our announcement livestream.

As we mentioned, we have several other balance manifestos coming out. These will cover topics such as Curses, Archnemesis and Eldritch Altars, among other things.