Path of Exile News

It's been almost four weeks since Path of Exile: Delirium launched and so we wanted to take a look at some Delirium statistics. Today, we'll be giving you an inside look at just how players are faring with both Delirium Orbs and the Simulacrum!

First, let's take a look at how players are using their Delirium Orbs.



To date, there have been just under 6 million Delirium Orbs used on Maps! Fine Delirium Orbs are the most used Orb, which makes sense; currency is always useful and this is one of the most commonly-dropped Delirium Orbs. Skittering Delirium Orbs are the least frequently used, though this is absolutely related to their relative rarity.

Next, let's take a look at a breakdown of how many Delirium Orbs are being used on Maps.



As you can see, the most common case is that players use a single Delirium Orb on a map, with about 70% of all Delirium-Orbed maps having just 1 Orb applied. This makes sense as many players will cautiously dabble in Delirium Orbed maps to feel out their difficulty. My guess is that successful players are quick to ramp up the amount of orbs used on a single map. This is clear as the number of 5-orb maps run is higher than that of 3-orb or 4-orb maps. One of the possible explanations for 5-orb maps being as popular as they are is that once players are able to successfully complete 5-orb maps, they're unlikely to do anything other than 5-orb maps from then on.

With all of those maps being opened, just how many deaths are occurring in each? Let's take a look, shall we?



That's a lot of death! Leading the charge with most deaths is 1-orb maps, with just under 2.8 million deaths! Following that, we see that 5-orb maps have the next most deaths; just shy of a million.

Let's quickly take a look at the number of deaths relative to the number of maps opened.



This does a good job of showing a relatively linear increase in the number of deaths as the number of orbs applied to a map goes up. 5-orb maps are no joke!

Now that we have taken a good look at Delirium Orbs, let's switch it up and take a look at how players are faring in the Simulacrum. We're going to look at a breakdown of waves started by wave number, and will also look at completion rates for a given wave (as well as how many players are able to complete all 20 waves of the Simulacrum).



Right off the bat, we can see that 813,604 Simulacrum areas have been opened to date. We can see that there is a very high rate of completion for many of the early waves.

Completion rate does take a noticeable dip at wave 10 thanks to the fact that Omniphobia, Fear Manifest can start spawning, though the completion rate remains extremely high.

At wave 15, we see a big dip (relative to previous completion rates). This is likely related to the fact that wave 15 guarantees Omniphobia, Fear Manifest will spawn if they haven't already spawned and also introduces a chance for Kosis, The Revelation to spawn; Delirium bosses are quite difficult and present the first major challenge of the Simulacrum. That said, the majority of players are able to venture onwards after wave 15.

Things become much harder as players get to wave 18, where an increased chance for bosses to spawn, alongside increasing Deliriousness, becomes a major factor.

Wave 20 guarantees that Kosis, The Revelation will spawn if it hasn't already. As we can clearly see, this boss, combined with maximum Deliriousness, presents a significant challenge, where only 76% of players that attempt wave 20 successfully complete it.

If we compare the total number of successful wave 20 completions (463,491) to the number of Simulacrums started (813,604), we can see that 57% of Simulacrums that are started are successfully completed. While this seems like a low number, it's important to note that being unable to complete wave 20 just means that you miss out on rewards from that wave, rather than the entire area.

Finally, let's take a look at challenge completion rates in the Delirium league. The graph below shows what percentage of players have how many challenges and only includes accounts that have completed at least one challenge.

• 17.85% of players have completed 12 challenges and earned the Delirium Horns.
  
• 1.95% of players have completed 24 challenges and earned the Delirium Cloak.
  
• 0.32% of players have completed 36 challenges and earned the Delirium Wings.
  

It's important to note that these statistics were taken roughly four weeks into the Delirium league. Let's compare them to Metamorph challenge statistics, which were taken closer to five weeks into the Metamorph league.

We can see that challenge completion is lower at all significant points when compared to Metamorph league. Some of this can be attributed to the fact that these statistics are from slightly earlier in the league, but truthfully, we believe this set of challenges is more difficult than Metamorph's. After a similar amount of time during the Metamorph league, 24.14% of players had completed 12 challenges, 5.82% of players had completed 24 challenges and 1.32% of players had completed 36 challenges. Perhaps some of the lower completion rates are related to the rewards -- Metamorph offered a Portal Effect for those that completed 36 challenges. We're interested in hearing your thoughts about this! Do you find Delirium's set of challenges more difficult than Metamorph's? Are you less interested in these rewards? If so, is it affecting your motivation to complete challenges?

We hope that you've enjoyed this inside look at our Delirium statistics. As always, we know all your secrets. Nothing is hidden from our view. I mean, stay tuned for more Delirium news posts later this league!

While New Zealand remains in lockdown, our team continues to work from their homes. In this novel time, we thought it would be neat to take a look behind the scenes and see what particular setups our developers have managed to create at home!

Kane - Senior Audio Engineer

Dominic - Audio Engineer

Bex - Community Director

Chris - Managing Director

Alex D - Programmer

Jared - Rigger

Jessica - Customer Support Manager

Mandeep - Animator

Check out more photos here!

As with all league releases, in Path of Exile: Delirium we introduced a number of unique items. For this news post we asked our design team to share their thoughts and processes behind creating these unique items.

Our core goal for modern unique design is to create an item that you'd want to pick up and use, either by creating a new way of playing or enhancing a certain playstyle. For League uniques, many items are intended to be widely usable at a lower level of progression, while being greatly desirable for very specific builds late in progression. There are always exceptions to the rule though!

Keystone Jewels







The Keystone jewels were created from a long list of over 30 suggestions by designers, many of which weren't possible. More build-specific than normal keystones, these ones aimed to create or enhance niche interactions that could potentially promote new builds.

One with Nothing and its keystone Hollow Palm Technique were the special case; originally suggested by an effects artist, it underwent a variety of design iterations. We had to make sure we could allow it to co-exist with Facebreaker, so the original design disabled item slots and had specific restrictions on each of its stats. This was far too wordy, so to clean up the description and prevent potential problems with restricting item slots, the "Unencumbered" state was created. Unencumbered means that you currently have no weapon, gloves, quiver or shield equipped, a condition we could use again in future.

The goal was to create a monk or frenzied melee theme, and the Unencumbered state facilitated us doing this in a way that created an interesting restriction which let us give the Keystone a huge amount of power. Testing showed that it was very powerful for leveling, and we worked to lessen this somewhat during its development by lowering the attack speed multiplier and increasing the added damage to compensate, but we couldn't reduce it further without compromising the design.

Voices



Voices was one of the first Cluster Jewel designs we created, before even a single notable was formulated.

It was originally revealed with one blank passive and three jewel sockets. During the iteration of cluster jewels it became clear that it was a very powerful unique, especially with only one small passive. Because of this, we created versions of the unique that had more blank passives to have some versions of the item require more investment than others.

We avoid balancing entirely through rarity, but the nature of this jewel was so interesting that we didn't want to minimise what it could achieve. It became the rarest unique available from the Simulacrum rather than having its power changed. This was a special case for a unique that was only really acceptable because it could only reach its true power when using many other Cluster Jewels.

Split Personality



Originally designed as a Small Cluster Jewel, we quickly decided that the jewel was more interesting if it could go anywhere in the tree and would be best not to have the limitation of being socketed on the outermost part of the tree like Cluster Jewels. We started by adding every common flat benefit (attributes, defences, life, mana and accuracy) to the jewels to see if there was enough variety, and that was able to produce a number of interesting items for builds that focussed on stacking those bonuses while leaving space for similar unique designs in the future.

Megalomaniac



For a long time, this Medium Cluster Jewel was designed as a jewel that gave no direct bonuses, but buffed the strength of Small and Large Cluster Jewels attached to it. This turned into a nightmare to both describe and make work, so we brainstormed and immediately came up with the current design of having three random notables. At first, it had four random notables, but that was far too powerful for the point investment.

Algor Mortis



These gloves were designed with the goal of creating a new playstyle involving weaving a cold area skill between your lightning damage skills, with a powerful damage increase as a bonus reward. They're also special in that they're the first item to let you inflict the Sap Ailment without preventing Shock (A lightning based ailment that lowers enemy damage). The alternate ailments are special mechanics we usually only grant at the cost of a core elemental ailment, but the unique playstyle this item promotes made Algor Mortis a good place to grant Sap as a special reward for building around the item.

Assailum



The "Snipe" skill from the Assailum unique was designed in a way that could potentially allow it to become its own support gem, if it was popular enough. It was originally designed as a Support that turned any bow skill into a Channelled skill, but was changed to work as a Channelled Skill that could trigger Supported bow skills to prevent having to rebuild many bow skills to be able to be directly channelled.

During development the helmet had a damage multiplier to skills triggered by Snipe in addition to granting the Vicious Projectiles Support, but as the skill multiplier on Snipe would never be directly visible (since there was no gem!), we combined the two multipliers into one, giving the helmet the damage of a 6 link item in a more concise way.

Perfidy



This item was created to fill the role of a melee-focussed item, as it was designed after Algor Mortis (designed for a spellcaster build) and Assailum (designed for a ranged build). Perfidy was designed with the Champion in mind thanks to their affinity with Banners and their passive that removes their reservation cost. The Master of Command Cluster Jewel notable was designed to lower the cost of using two Banners with other ascendancies, giving it the potential to be more accessible to more builds.

Beacon of Madness



This item was designed early during Delirium's development, but was built around a mechanic that was later removed from the league as it added unnecessary complexity. It was then redesigned later in development to be three uniques based on the debuffs applied by Delirium monsters, providing potent bonuses that we usually wouldn't give away on a single item. However, these bonuses came at the cost of having to skillfully manage debuff uptime.

The three variations of Beacon of Madness received a supplemental effect after being revealed, as further discussion made it clear that the item should be a little more well-rounded. We gave each variation an extra stat that worked when Glorious Madness wasn't active.

Uniques will always be a core part of what makes Path of Exile so interesting. They give you something to strive for, something to inspire new builds, and something to add a little bit of flair and flavour to the game. As the game grows, new designs become possible and new ideas are formed. We hope you've enjoyed this glimpse into our development process, and perhaps this has given you a spark of an idea for what build you're going to try out next.

For today's news we're releasing a talk by our senior graphics programmer! In his presentation from ExileCon, Alex explains a process of creating rendering tech in Path of Exile and talks about various related topics, including lightning and upcoming grass technology from Path of Exile 2.

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The stylish microtransactions from our previous Polaris Mystery Box are now available in the store! It's also still possible to combine some of the individual Black and White pieces into the new 'Polaris' cosmetic effects. Watch the Polaris Mystery Box trailer below to see everything that's available or check out the new cosmetics in the store by pressing M.

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