As soon as game designers make a decision on concept and mechanics of an upcoming league, the art team starts working on its visuals, creating concept art and assets. We know that many players enjoy checking out Path of Exile concept art, so we've gathered some to share with you today, including the concept art of Legion generals, the Legion Monolith and a couple of Legion uniques

Since the release of Legion expansion, some of our community has been wondering who's the strongest among the Legion Generals. In order to know, we arranged a fight between all five of them!

The team is finishing work on the next patch with improvements to the Legion and bug fixes. We're planning to deploy the 3.7.3d update by the end of this working week on PC and as soon as possible on consoles. In the meantime, we wanted to share the full patch notes with you to keep you in the loop regarding what we're working on.

Please be mindful that these patch notes may not be final and are still subject to change before the patch.

Legion Improvements

• Added a visual effect and audio that plays when an Incubator's requirements are fulfilled.
  
• Added audio to the indicator that displays on a Legion monolith if a General has spawned.
  
• The modifiers granted by passive skills that are conquered by Timeless Jewels are now displayed underneath the native modifiers that it grants.
  
• Fixed a bug where an Eldritch Incubator could drop T16 Shaper Guardian maps, when it should only be able to drop maps that can have the Elder's Orb applied to them.
  
• Fixed a bug where non-Piercing projectiles could not hit Queen Hyrri Ngamaku.
  
• Fixed a bug where Queen Hyrri Ngamaku would not drop items if killed while Frozen.

Skill Improvements

• Some variants of the following monsters can once again be Spectred: Spectral Captain, Unstable Aberration, Pale Husk, Student of Pain, Student of Torture, Student of Brutality, Vassal of Inti, Raised Zombie, Shadow Minion, Unstable Devourer, Devourer, Plummeting Ursa, Slithering Servant, Frozen Supplicant, Storming Supplicant, Surging Adder, Mindless Scavenger, Fallen Horror, Impure Soldier, Impure Archer, Knitted Horror, Kiln Mother, Unholy Aberration, Wild Rhex, Farric Tiger, Craicic Sandspitter, Craicic Chimeral, Craicic Reaver and Starved Plague Rat.
  
• Fixed a bug where non-channelled movement skills that were used while channelling a skill would be used twice.
  
• Fixed a bug where you could sometimes continue channelling a skill even if you had released its keybind.
  
• Fixed a bug where, if you had used a skill while moving, objects would not be interactable nor display their labels until you stopped moving.
  
• Fixed a bug where Blink Arrow and Mirror Arrow sometimes failed to create a clone or teleport your character on Predictive networking mode.

Miscellaneous Improvements

• The additional map drop that Map bosses can drop will now correctly be Shaped if the map chosen is Shaped on your Atlas.
  
• Improved client performance while in the Azurite Mine.
  
• Gems that are ready to level up now display their current level in the chat box notification.
  
• Increased the volume of Volatile Flameblood and Lightning Mirage audio when being spawned.
  
• While wearing the Aukuna's Will unique gloves, Raise Zombie will no longer prioritise corpses when cast if your target location does not have nearby corpses.
  
• Fixed a bug where the "Nearby Enemies are Blinded" aura granted by the Eclipse Solaris unique wand was being disabled when changing areas.
  
• Fixed a bug where Aukuna's Will unique gloves allowed you to cast Raise Zombie without having line of sight to that location.
  
• Fixed a bug where chat was not defaulting to Local chat if you removed all symbols prior to your message.
  
• Fixed a bug where the entrance to the boss room in The Brine King's Reef was sometimes inaccessible.
  
• Fixed a bug where the entrance to the Overgrown Hideout (found in the Orchard Map) was sometimes inaccessible.
  
• Fixed a visual issue where the textures on the Darkprism Helmet Attachment did not display correctly if you were using the Illusionist Body Armour.
  
• Updated the visual effects of the Assassin Weapon Effect to more closely match its original look.

Crash Fixes

• Fixed a client crash that could occur when returning to an area that contained Tukohama's Vanguards after you had already engaged them.
  
• Fixed a client crash that occurred when changing your Graphics Adapter in the Options menu while in-game.
  
• Fixed an instance crash related to some monster skills.

We have been going through a lot of recent community feedback about topics such as lag spikes, client crashes, game performance, server issues and bugs related to things like animation cancelling. While many of the reports relate to localised problems like defective hardware and ISP routing issues, there are certainly real things to solve and general improvements that can be made. We will provide updates as soon as any are available. Thanks for your patience!

As part of our ongoing Streamer Interview news series, we spoke with Uberelite about his experiences with Path of Exile. He's been playing since 2012 and is a long time member of the racing community.

Thanks for having me! I’m theuberelite, also known as Uber. I'm 27 and have been a PC gamer for more than half my life at this point. Most people know me as someone that plays a lot of minion builds, though I'll play other things from time to time if they are interesting enough to me!

Back in Closed Beta... around 0.9.12 or so I believe. So around the time of Kripp playing Path of Exile for the first time. I had heard about the game before that from another friend but didn't try it as it was shortly after Diablo 3 came out and I was clinging to the hope that Diablo 3 would be good.

The customization available with the tree, gems, and builds... the racing was also something interesting back then for me as well. I distinctly remember seeing spreadsheets for racing from a person named NotThat, also known as PandaMajere, and it was something that after I had played a few builds decided to pursue.

Well, the game is much faster, that's for sure. The community difference that I notice is that there's a lot more people that speak from the softcore perspective, which is a good thing -- beats the hardcore elitism that plagued the forums and such for a long time. Though it bothers me a bit when I see people say things like “Pantheons are useless!” when they honestly aren’t.

The other thing with the game is the tools outside of the game have made it much easier to optimize builds and come up with new things -- in particular, Path of Building. Not necessarily a terrible thing either, as Path of Building is still not necessarily easy to use, and you find people that have too many things checked off that aren't reliable. Path of Building has also made the game much more accessible and without it, I doubt we would be as fast as we are at discovering builds.

Back in the day races happened at a lot of different times, and you'd have a lot of random people who worked for different goals, full clearing sidezones for rewards and such. It was interesting since it almost gave racers different "categories" in the same way as speedrunning does. It's kind of a shame that that's not really around much anymore.

If there's one thing from those days that I'd love to return, it's the races where you really couldn't practice for, nor can you play at all normally -- which made the experience fresh in a way. Things like Endless Ledge, and even more so, Descent. I really miss those races, but given how much the game has changed since they were last run, I'm sure it would take a lot of work to bring back something like Descent to even work properly. I'm having flashbacks to the time where Endless Ledge had no mobs and only bosses in the zones...

That said, I definitely like the races that are being held now, and the recent race held by Kammell was interesting to talk about with the other racers. The general consensus is that the results didn't show any clear "best build" which is a very good sign -- and there was a ton of skill variety in that race, which made it very fun to both participate in and watch.

I streamed from time to time in a few different gaming communities but never too much. Even back before twitch was a thing, in the own3d tv days. Even on Path of Exile, I streamed from time to time (especially during races when my internet wasn't being bad), but I didn't really start taking it seriously until during the Path of Exile 2.0 beta. Various real life things made me stop trying for a while -- until Essence league about 3 years ago, and I've been going strong ever since. As for how I got into it, I honestly can’t even remember other than doing a few things on Youtube leading to it.

Recently I've been streaming a LOT of summoner gameplay, though I'll also play more than just summoner when I find or come up with a build that interests me enough. Lately I've been trying to do a lot of different experimental minion builds to try some new things, such as champion dancing duo, though I've been a big fan of Zombies in the current patch. I try to stream starting from about noon EST every day, though it varies based off if I wake up early or late.

Finishing my CS degree, and for a short time I was actually working on trying to go pro in the FPS genre (before Path of Exile, even). I worked a couple online jobs here and there as well, though nothing that ever really stuck for more than a year.

Are there any highlights from your time playing Path of Exile that stand out in your memory?
In particular I really liked my runs of Summon Raging Spirits in the first Turmoil/Mayhem race, even though I finished second in both. That was a time where CI was considered the meta, and there I was somehow having 9k life with a rare astral plate. It's worth noting that I wasn't even initially planning on Baron in the Mayhem race, nor did I have a plan for it if it did drop. I made that build on the fly, so to get second in that race to 100 honestly felt great. Even if it started my string of 6 rank 2 overall finishes in a row.

Another one was the old Searing Bond build, TankyTotems, played in the 1 week Domination/Nemesis league. I think a lot of people don't know that was actually me as well. I remember by the time I logged out to get sleep, even though I had been playing solo almost the whole time (with the exception of carrying Helmannn for a bit through act 2 and 3 in merciless after I passed him), I was literally double the XP of rank 2. Although I didn't even finish top 20 in the end for a lot of reasons, the results showed in Invasion league with almost everyone leveling with Searing Bond.

Most of the time it comes from one idea, or a combination of ideas used to utilize a new mechanic. I have a thing with memorizing weird mechanics which generally aren’t useful at the time, but later on end up being useful. I usually get a sort of baseline for the build, and it takes me a few iterations before I really get something good. And not all of my builds are successful in the end, but it's nice to try them -- experience is important because what might be bad one league might be decent the next one due to changes, new items, and even just the way the league works.

It's also worth noting in this regard that a change that affects one build negatively might affect another positively. My thought process in coming up with Vaal Storm Call was "man it sucks that duration increases the cooldown on my Vaal Haste now... but wait... does it work in reverse? Would the Storm Call enchant work?" and then I remembered Soul Catcher existed because of reliquary keys, Bloodstained Fossils introduced with Delve, and immediately got to work.

Sometimes I'll get some ideas from others and try to improve upon them or build them a little differently, though. Insobyr is one person who I can say also makes a lot of great, interesting builds, and has inspired a few of the weirder ones such as Blink/Mirror Arrow Summoner. He also inspired me to try a Chaos Animate Weapon in Essence league.

Easily Animate Weapon. A lot of different ones, so it's a bit hard to narrow it down to one. The elemental one that I played in Invasion/Beyond was where things really got started and I doubled as both a support build and a single target carry -- since bosses usually took quite some time it was weird to see a build that would kill them in a matter of seconds, and Animate Weapon was one of those builds. The one from Beyond league also got Build of the Week, though it unfortunately died 30% away from 100 in Hardcore -- the same fate that the one I made during Darkshrine league had 30% away from 100 as well.



That build, I could really go on about for ages -- it was very hard to play effectively, but was top tier for the people that could play it well. This is sort of reflected by the popularity of it in the Breach league, where United in Dream was strong enough to the point that you could use spell totem or cast while channeling in order to deal with the clunkiness of self casting the skill which slowed it down.

Legion has honestly been very fun even though I've died a lot this league. We have way more defensive options available to us. Even though the league is fairly rippy, it's quite possible to get the defensives you need to survive some of the crazy things that are thrown at you in the league.

The clear side of things for the monoliths are a good example of why aggressive minion AI isn’t always a good thing, since aggressive minions generally won’t stick to a rare monster that you want to break out. Well, unless you have amazing damage on said minion.

The multiway fights are fun, although it kind of is unfortunate Headhunter dominates it so much. I just run them anyways because it's a great way to put your character to the test -- still working on a high end character for trying some 5 way battles, though. I like to look at it similarly to Delve, but in a much more offensive oriented manner. In Delve, you tend to want more defensives in order to survive the crazy damage scaling, whereas in the Legion multiway fights you tend to want more damage in order to kill bosses faster.

And the jewels... they're actually really interesting. I really enjoy them -- they have a lot of interesting side effects and they're quite hard to build around sometimes, and finding good ones feels great. Even reworking your tree to fit in a jewel and taking clusters you wouldn't normally take is really interesting to me. I spent a few hours a while ago just optimizing my tree for a jewel that I had because it caused me to take nodes in a spot that I normally wouldn’t.

Support for animate weapon in endgame encounters? :^)

On a serious answer, in terms of league mechanics I think something that's a little more boss killing focused and less clear speed oriented is good. The boss design in the last few leagues has been amazing. Kurgal, in particular, is one that still sticks in my mind to this day as one of my favourite boss fight experiences.

One thing that I wanted to see a little more of is collaborations between streamers to, say, min-max a build. It's an idea that I actually had a while back, as usually it ends up being the works of more than 1 person. It's also interesting to see how different people approach builds and what they would change, and this is even more the case before the league starts, especially in this one where the tree changed so drastically that everyone had different opinions on pathing.

Do you have any advice for people who are looking to make their own career out of streaming?
Social media stuff is good. Youtube content is good. Just make sure you take care of yourself and stay hydrated. But keep doing what you enjoy!

I watch anime from time to time, though I've been giving myself less time to do that recently because I usually just end up posting memes while I'm offstream, whether it be on reddit or another streamer's chat.

The biggest thing that I've noticed is that I have a lot more motivation to do things, and I've been able to give myself a much better schedule -- even if it's not exact every single day, I've stayed fairly close to it. Turns out enjoying what you do is a great thing to have!

PLEASE report your bugs in the bug report forums! If the devs don't know that a bug exists, how can they fix it? Providing them with any details, character names, what skills you're using, what’s happening around the time a crash happens, any information can help them. Also using /bug for layout generation stuff is very useful.

Also don't use cast on damage molten shell if you're using vaal molten shell. It's not fun to have an 8,000 absorption shield that lasts 10 seconds only to have it be overwritten by a 2,000 absorption shield, causing you to die… Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything...

I'm currently working on reviving my Youtube with a bunch of summoner information, part of the reason I'm playing so many different summoners this league. I feel that part of the issue with summoners right now isn't as much that I feel they are underpowered, but that people do not understand how they work, and aren't aware of the various tricks you can utilize to almost abuse their AI in a way.
______

Thank you so much for participating in the interview! If you'd like to see more from Uber, check him out on Twitter, YouTube or Twitch.

On July 27th at 1pm (PDT), we will be supporting Zizaran in hosting the third of our ExileCon qualifying events. Players will compete in a Hardcore Solo-Self Found environment to be the first to kill Atziri, Queen of the Vaal in The Apex of Sacrifice. The winner will receive a VIP ExileCon prize package and entry into our ExileCon race finale! Zizaran's sponsor, Method, will be providing an additional ExileCon prize package to the second place winner!

The event begins at 1pm on July 27th (PDT) and will open for 12 hours although it's likely that the top ten places will be filled within a few hours.

The event is open to all who would like to participate and takes place in a separate event league so that there are no limits to the number of participants who may join. You'll be able to join the event under the character selection screen when it becomes available.

1st Place

• VIP ExileCon Ticket (Access to the convention and VIP dinner).
  
• Flights to New Zealand.
  
• Accommodation for the convention weekend.
  
• Entrance into the ExileCon race event finale.

2nd Place - Provided by Method

• Regular ExileCon convention ticket.
  
• Flights to New Zealand.
  
• Accommodation for the convention weekend.

3rd - 10th Place
Method will also be providing prizes to the rest of the top ten players who kill Atziri first. These are yet to be announced. Keep an eye out for Zizaran's announcement!

If you'd like to watch the action unfold live, you can watch a broadcast of the event over at https://twitch.tv/method

It's been exactly four years since we ran our first Path of Exile video-making competition! Our community has grown significantly over these years, so we thought it might be fun to host a similar competition again. The winners will be rewarded with microtransactions, some awesome physical items including an Art Book and T-shirts, as well as the opportunity to design a Rogue Exile that will stay in the game forever!
Top Three Winners

• The top three submissions will receive the opportunity to design a Rogue Exile that will be immortalised in Path of Exile. You'll get to choose the look and direct the name of the exile. (Note that GGG reserves the right to ask you to change your design if it is inappropriate for the game.)
  
• Your choice of two Path of Exile T-shirts - (Chaos Orb, Shaper or Untainted Paradise). Please note that size availability for these shirts may be limited.
  
• Signed Path of Exile Art Book
  
• Chaos Orb Key Chain
  
• Brutus Art Print
  
• Your choice of Armour Set
  
• 250 points

4th - 10th Place

• Your choice of one Path of Exile T-shirt - (Chaos Orb, Shaper or Untainted Paradise). Please note that size availability for these shirts may be limited.
  
• Brutus Art Print
  
• Your choice of Armour Set
  
• 250 points

Runner Ups

• 250 points

The number of runner up prizes awarded will depend on how many entries to the competition there are.
Create a short video related to Path of Exile content. Your video can contain anything, from awesome gameplay moments or builds showcase, to skits and even cartoons. It's ideal if your content is easy to consume and takes no longer than three minutes to watch. Then upload your video to YouTube or any other video hosting service and submit the link in the comments to this thread.

The winning submissions will be selected based on the following criteria:

• How clearly your video refers to Path of Exile.
  
• How compelling or entertaining the video is.

• The competition will run from the time of this post until Monday the 5th of August at 5pm (NZT). Submissions made after this time will not be counted. We'll post the winners sometime in the following days.
  
• Any video that is submitted must be your own and must be created after the launch of this competition.
  
• Multiple submissions are welcome.
  
• If you want to create a montage of other creators' videos, this is permitted as long as it follows all legal guidelines of fair use standards.

We always enjoy watching Path of Exile videos created by the members of our community, and we're very excited to see the videos you create for this competition! Good luck everyone!

We're finishing this week by showcasing the concept art of the microtransactions introduced in the recently released Frontier Mystery Box. As usual, our artists have done an amazing job of bringing our idea of this Mystery Box to life, and we're happy to give you a little insight into its development process today.

If you're interested to know how we design our Mystery Boxes and microtransactions, check out our posts about the creation of the Fire and Ice Mystery Box and the Ultimate Armour Set.

In a few hours we'll be deploying the 3.7.3b patch with server performance improvements as well as several bug fixes and crash fixes. While you're waiting for this update, why not check out its patch notes?

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

• Fixed a bug that caused monster AI to consume too many server resources. This also fixes many cases where monsters were using their skills more often than intended (such as The Shaper in the Uber Elder encounter teleporting around too often and The Brine King using his Bubble Shield too often).
  
• Fixed a bug where the Master of Metal ascendancy passive could cause server performance issues.
  
• Fixed various cases where monster skills would not display correctly if you had left the area and returned while they were using the skill (for example, the Blood Meteors in the Ahuatotli, the Blind encounter).
  
• Fixed a bug where a single skill could sometimes be used multiple times in succession if another skill was used while you were holding down the original skills keybind.
  
• Fixed a bug where channelled skills could cause you to be kicked for performing too many actions.
  
• Fixed a bug where Legion Generals would not drop items if you were not in the area when they escaped.
  
• Fixed a bug introduced in patch 3.7.2 where the corpse of Aukuna, the Black Sekhema's rhex could be destroyed, preventing her safe landing.
  
• Fixed a bug where Harbingers spawned from the "Unique Boss is accompanied by a mysterious Harbinger" sextant modifier would spawn in inaccessible locations in Belfry Map, Lava Lake Map, Sunken City Map and Tower Map.
  
• Fixed a bug where you were unable to enter The Menagerie through Einhar's portal until you had spoken to him in The Forest Encampment.
  
• Fixed a bug where some parts of the Shipyard Map could become inaccessible if a Betrayal Fortification encounter was present.
  
• Fixed a bug where Herald of Purity was using the wrong visual effects when either the Blood Guard or Faith Guard Herald Effects were applied to it.
  
• Fixed a bug where /dance would not work on Predictive networking mode.
  
• Fixed a client crash that could occur while Piety was using her beam skill on Malachai.
  
• Fixed four instance crashes.

Thank you for all your feedback and support!

We're happy to announce that the huge Pet sale which started yesterday, will run for all week! More than 80 pets are available at discounted prices, including the community popular Celestial Cat Pet and the Gothic Horror Ghost Child! Aside from being fun travel companions, pets also work well in hideouts, so don't miss the chance to breathe life into your hideouts by letting some adorable dwellers in!

Please note that this sale excludes new pets which were introduced last month, as well as some old ones. They will be included into other sales.

The sale runs all week alongside other daily deals, and ends at Jul 08, 2019 9:00 PM (PDT). Press M in game to view the full list of discounts.

The Legion League has been live for almost a month which means it's time to gather some statistics! Last week we talked about the class and Ascendancy breakdown in this league, and today we'll have a look at the number of challenges players have completed as well as the number of times people have opened the Domain of Timeless Conflict.

This graph shows what percentage of players have how many challenges and only includes accounts that have completed at least one challenge.

Challenge Progress (of Players With >=1)

• 18.15% of players have completed 12 challenges and earned the Monolith Helmet.
  
• 2.65% of players have completed 24 challenges and earned the Monolith Aura.
  
• 0.31% of players have completed 36 challenges and earned the Monolith Wings.

Below we listed the statistics of how many times players have opened the Domain of Timeless Conflict with various combinations of the Legion factions.

Two Factions:

• Eternal, Karui: 89440
  
• Eternal, Maraketh: 445
  
• Eternal, Templar: 2413
  
• Eternal, Vaal: 19800
  
• Karui, Maraketh: 616
  
• Karui, Templar: 2683
  
• Karui, Vaal: 42538
  
• Maraketh, Templar: 276
  
• Maraketh, Vaal: 394
  
• Templar, Vaal: 2144

Three Factions:

• Eternal, Karui, Templar: 3532
  
• Eternal, Karui, Maraketh: 841
  
• Eternal, Karui, Vaal: 101737
  
• Eternal, Maraketh, Templar: 141
  
• Eternal, Maraketh, Vaal: 291
  
• Eternal, Templar, Vaal: 1352
  
• Karui, Maraketh, Templar: 211
  
• Karui, Maraketh, Vaal: 507
  
• Karui, Templar, Vaal: 2523
  
• Maraketh, Templar, Vaal: 111

Four Factions:

• Karui, Maraketh, Templar, Vaal: 651
  
• Eternal, Karui, Maraketh, Vaal: 5564
  
• Eternal, Karui, Maraketh, Templar: 770
  
• Eternal, Karui, Templar, Vaal: 85309
  
• Eternal, Maraketh, Templar, Vaal: 419

All Five Factions:

• Eternal, Karui, Maraketh, Templar, Vaal: 57256