Path of Exile News

We've just deployed 3.19.0c which includes a few improvements and bug fixes. This addresses some of the issues mentioned in yesterday's post, as well as a few things we're continuing to work on.

3.19.0c Patch Notes

This patch contains changes to the life provided to monsters through Archnemesis modifiers and the number of modifiers that can be found on them. We have also made improvements to rewards in Lake of Kalandra, and Harvest Lifeforce and general item drops, alongside fixing a few bugs. Other changes mentioned in yesterday's news post are still in progress.

Archnemesis and Rare Monster Changes

• Lowered the incremental life bonus that Rare and Magic monsters receive from having additional Archnemesis modifiers, and increased the base life bonus that Rare and Magic monsters receive.
  
• The overall result of this change is that rare and magic monsters with one Archnemesis modifier have unchanged life on average. Rare monsters with two or three modifiers have 15% less life on average, and Rare monsters with four modifiers have unchanged life on average.
  
• Monsters can no longer be found with three Archnemesis modifiers during the campaign, and the likelihood of encountering a monster with two modifiers during the campaign has been reduced.
  
• Monsters can no longer be found with the Empowering Minions modifier during the campaign.
  
• Reduced the amount of extra life that Essences provide to monsters. Overall, a monster with a single Screaming/Shrieking Essence now has ~30% less life than before.
  
• Reduced the amount of life that Red Beasts have by ~12%.
  
• For Essence monsters and Red Beasts in Maps with two or three Archnemesis modifiers, the above changes are in addition to the 15% less life on average change.
  
• Betrayal Research encounters no longer spawn packs of Rare monsters, though Scientists in the encounter are still found as Rare monsters.
  
• Betrayal Intervention and Transportation encounters no longer spawn rare monsters during the encounter.

Lake of Kalandra Changes

• Increased the likelihood of being able to make multiple choices at a Mirrored Tablet in early yellow Maps.
  
• It is now possible to make three choices at a Mirrored Tablet in red Maps.
  
• Massively increased the chest rewards from non-league encounters throughout the Lake, particularly at higher map levels and difficulties.

Other Changes

• Increased the Lifeforce yield in Harvest encounters in lower Map tiers.
  
• Increased the likelihood of finding higher-level armour base types. This is quite impactful, resulting in around 25% more high armour base types dropping.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where first acquiring Voltaxic Sulphite in the Lake of Kalandra could cause you to be unable to access the Mine Encampment. Characters who encountered this issue before this patch should be able to access the Mine Encampment after acquiring more Voltaxic Sulphite.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Mirrored Tablet could spawn in doorways.
  
• Fixed a client crash related to Map item hovers.

We're also almost finished working on scaling rewards in the Lake of Kalandra for certain encounters, showing when areas are completed on the tablet and adjustments to Map boss item drops. These changes will hopefully be coming in another patch this week.

Despite the changes we discussed yesterday, we still don't feel that things are in the right place regarding many of the issues raised by the community. We will do a full review of these topics tomorrow and will let you know of any further changes we plan to make.

Over the weekend, we launched Path of Exile: Lake of Kalandra. The deployment was very smooth with no major technical issues and only some minor hotfixing required over the weekend. We reached a peak of 250k concurrent players. Today we have been processing feedback from the first two days of the league, and have a number of balance and content adjustments we plan to make to address much of this feedback. This post describes our current plan.

Archnemesis
There's quite a large jump in difficulty from the campaign to early maps as the number of archnemesis mods on monsters rises abruptly. This not only affects their average difficulty, but also how tanky they are. We are going to taper this up more smoothly so that it's a more gradual progression (and is unmodified in red maps). This will result in less difficulty and less life on average for rare monsters below red maps.
To prevent life values getting out of hand on special league monsters with archnemesis mods, we will also reduce the life bonus that each Essence grants a rare monster and reduce the bonus life that Red Beasts have. We will also review whether Betrayal content is spawning too many rare monsters.

Harvest
Players have commented that the quantity of Lifeforce (the new harvest crafting currency) yielded by Sacred Grove encounters is too low relative to how much the craft cost.
Harvest yield currently scales up (to around ten times higher) by the time you're in high maps with atlas tree specialisation, rewarding you for running higher maps, rolling your maps well and specialising in Harvest.
We will rebalance the Lifeforce yield at lower map tiers so that the league is more rewarding early on, without affecting its yield at higher tiers.

Players also notice that occasionally a Harvest encounter can no result in no Lifeforce dropping. This was because, in an effort to reduce the number of clicks after an encounter, the Lifeforce from beasts below Tier 3 had a non-guaranteed chance to drop (but was larger on average than it otherwise would be). This meant that you could occasionally get unlucky and receive none for an encounter. We are raising the chance of Lifeforce dropping so that it's less likely to receive none at all, while striving not to increase the average number of clicks needed by too much.

Lake of Kalandra
We are increasing the rewards from both league and non-league encounters throughout the Lake, particularly at higher map levels and higher difficulties.
We will raise the occurrence rate of (regular, not Ethereal) Reflecting Mist so that you get more choices of reflected rare jewellery as a reward for playing harder encounters in the Lake.
We're also investigating some Lake of Kalandra QoL like marking which rooms are completed on the Lake Map while you're exploring the Lake.

General Item Drops
Players report that general item drops feel a lot lower in this expansion. There are two changes we made in 3.19. The first is that the rate of encountering rare monsters from certain league content has been reduced, so you are fighting, killing, and receiving rewards from fewer monsters than before. This is partially offset by rare monsters in 3.19 now being more rewarding than they were before (the mods add more item quantity/rarity than before and there's the reward conversion system used for the more dangerous mods).
The second reason is that we removed a massive historic bonus to item quantity and/or rarity that applied to some league-specific monsters. We replaced it with a moderate (2-3x) increase to item quantity, to offset the fact that they often have more life than regular monsters and some cannot drop maps.
There have been no other reward-affecting changes that we are aware of, but we will investigate to see if there are any unanticipated consequences of some other change.
Our intention with these changes is to modify certain league content that was out-of-line with other content so that it has a similar reward profile. These changes are important, but we understand they have reduced overall rewards that players receive.

We are going to compensate elsewhere, but we don't want to just increase the raw number of items that are dropped. Most items are immediately filtered out. We want to increase the number of relevant items that drop.
Firstly, we are going to adjust the system that skews weapon/armour base types towards higher-level ones, so that players find items that are relevant for their level more often. This isn't an increase to overall item drops, it just means that you will find more appropriate rare items more often. Secondly, we are going to apply the same item consolidation approach we did to Act Bosses a few leagues ago to Map Bosses also. They will now drop fewer items, but of substantially better rarity. This will result in you finding more unique items from Map Bosses.
It's worth noting here that a widely-shared clip of a player opening an Arcanist's Strongbox and receiving no items has caused some of the concern about potentially bugged item drops. We believe this was caused by the change where common currency drop less frequently, but in larger stacks, which we made a number of leagues ago. We will fix this specific Arcanist's Strongbox issue.

These changes are not final, but we wanted to communicate our current thoughts immediately rather than wait until patch notes are ready later. The changes will be deployed separately, as they're ready, over the next few days. We will continue to monitor feedback and will investigate more areas for adjustment.

Yesterday we also launched the Kalandra Mystery Box, a new mystery box without duplicate microtransactions. Check out the contents in the trailer below or get yours here.

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The Kalandra edition of the Kirac's Vault Pass will be available for purchase in a few days.

Thanks so much to everyone for your support and feedback.

We've just released the Kalandra Mystery Box, a new mystery box without duplicate microtransactions! Each of the microtransactions in this mystery box has visual behaviour that interacts with your gameplay.

There are 14 microtransactions that you can find in the Kalandra Mystery Box. Each of these microtransactions has a varying number of thematic variations, and you'll never receive a duplicate copy of a variation that you have already opened. For example, if you open the Poisonous Torturer's Gloves variant of the Torturer's Gloves, you may later receive the Bloodsoaked variant, but you'll never get a duplicate Poisonous one. Check out the full details at pathofexile.com/mystery-box

Path of Exile: Lake of Kalandra launches soon! In this news post, we've gathered all the information you need to know about what happens on launch day and how to start downloading early.

The realm goes down and patching begins at: Aug 19, 2022 10:00AM (PDT)
The servers go live at: Aug 19, 2022 1:00PM (PDT)

The above times are displayed in your local time zone. You'll need to be logged into your account to see these. To change your local time, go to "My Account", "Manage Account" and "Edit Preferences".

If the timezone is displaying incorrectly for you, please disregard the above timer and refer to the countdown on the front page. Three hours before the end of the countdown, the realm will go down and patching will begin shortly after. When the countdown ends, the servers will be live and you'll be able to join the Kalandra League!

The patch size for the update will be around 4.7GB on the standalone client and 4.7GB on Steam.

Path of Exile: Lake of Kalandra will launch on consoles at Aug 24, 5:00PM (PDT). Downtime will begin for deployment at approximately Aug 24, 2:00PM (PDT)

If you're looking for some extra character slots for the launch, we're running a sale on these right now! This is also your last chance to get Sentinel Mystery Boxes! It will leave the store when our next Mystery Box becomes available! Keep in mind that if you haven't taken advantage of it yet, it's still possible to get one free Sentinel Mystery Box when you spend any amount of points in the store. NOTE: this is only possible once per account. Additional purchases do not grant additional mystery boxes. If you need some extra points, we recommend checking out the Kalandra and Core Supporter Packs.

In case you still haven't decided which build to play with, check out the Class subsections on the forum for suggestions from the community. Many of our community streamers are also providing build guides on YouTube!

For those of you wanting to compete in the upcoming expansion, we are holding a Boss Kill Event where players will race to be the first to kill all seven of the Uber pinnacle bosses available by allocating their respective Atlas keystones! We have exciting prizes lined up for the winners. Find out more in this news post.

If you want a new look to match your build, check out the Nexus stores of your favourite creators for their curated selection of Armour Sets to support them as well as the development of Path of Exile!

When the Lake of Kalandra expansion launches, both the Archnemesis and Sentinel Supporter Packs will leave the store forever, so this is your last chance to purchase them before they are gone! Check out our post here for more information about these packs, or find them in the shop here. The Sentinel and Archnemesis Supporter Packs will be leaving the store at: 19, Aug 1:00PM (PDT)

Don't forget to tune into your favourite Path of Exile stream during the launch of Lake of Kalandra to earn the Arcane Footprints and Arcane Throne Decoration Twitch drops! For more information about how to earn these rewards, check out our recent announcement about this here.

We can't wait to see your latest adventures through Wraeclast. We'll see you at launch!