A new development year has begun, the holidays are over and our team is back at full capacity. With a busy year ahead, we wanted to give you an update on what the plan is for Path of Exile's development in 2020.

This year we will release four expansions (3.10.0 - 3.13.0) on our usual quarterly schedule. The first of these, 3.10.0, will probably be announced in late February. The timing of the expansions may vary by a week or two from last year's ones, as we work around various holidays/events and make sure that the bigger ones have enough time to be fully tested.

Development on 4.0.0 continues, with the team hard at work on content that wasn't shown in the ExileCon Act One Demo. We expect that the next time we'll show significantly new content and features will probably be in the middle of this year. Maybe around E3? We'll let you know once we have a firm plan locked in. We mentioned at ExileCon that the earliest we could run a public beta would be late 2020, and don't have a more accurate date than that yet. It depends a lot on how much we're able to scale up the team this year to finish the remaining acts and new systems.

We are also working on expanding our console team in 2020 so that we can more quickly develop the features the console users are looking forward to.

Finally, the Path of Exile Mobile project continues to be developed based on feedback from ExileCon. Our Mobile team are working on adding Android support and expanding the vertical slice that people played in the ExileCon demo into a complete game.

It's going to be a busy year! Thanks for your ongoing support and feedback. Together we'll make sure that Path of Exile remains the best Hardcore Action RPG.

Exile, do you have a hidden talent? Can you make Path of Exile-themed content with this talent? Now is your time to shine! We're launching a big all-inclusive Path of Exile Talent Competition! Your talent could be anything from fan art, videos, music, fan fiction, cosplay, baking, crafts, gifs, screenshots, comics, interpretive dance or anything else you can think of! Anything you can create that's Path of Exile-themed is welcome.

• Signed Path of Exile Art Book
  
• Signed Path of Exile Print
  
• Signed Path of Exile Comic
  
• Cloth Map of Wraeclast
  
• Solaris and Lunaris T-Shirt
  
• Foam Exalted Orb
  
• Your choice of an Armour Set (any Armour Set from the store)
  
• Your choice of a Weapon Effect (any Weapon Effect from the store)
  
• Your choice of Helmet Effect (any Helmet Effect from the store)

• Signed Path of Exile Art Book
  
• Solaris and Lunaris T-Shirt
  
• Foam Exalted Orb
  
• Your choice of an Armour Set (any Armour Set from the store)
  
• Your choice of a Weapon Effect (any Weapon Effect from the store)
  
• Your choice of Helmet Effect (any Helmet Effect from the store)

• Solaris and Lunaris T-Shirt
  
• Foam Exalted Orb
  
• Your choice of a Weapon Effect (any Weapon Effect from the store)
  
• Your choice of Helmet Effect (any Helmet Effect from the store)

• Solaris and Lunaris T-Shirt
  
• Your choice of a Weapon Effect (any Weapon Effect from the store)
  
• Your choice of Helmet Effect (any Helmet Effect from the store)

• Your choice of Helmet Effect (any Helmet Effect from the store)

Just post your entry to this forum thread to be entered into the competition. It's ideal if your content is easy to consume. A general guide for this is that your submission should take no longer than five minutes to read, listen to or view. It's permitted to post content that is longer than five minutes but in some cases it may put your submission at a disadvantage if it's significantly difficult to engage with your content.

The winning submissions will be selected based the following criteria:

• How skillfully your talent has been executed
  
• How true it remains to the theme of Path of Exile
  
• How compelling or entertaining the submission is

• The competition will run from the time of this post until Monday the 10th of February at 5pm NZT (9th of February at 8pm PST). Submissions made after this time will not be counted. We'll post the winners sometime in the following days.
  
• Any work 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 or mash-up of other artists' work or videos, this is permitted as long as it follows all legal guidelines of fair use standards.

Best of luck to everyone who is participating in this competition! We have always loved seeing the Path of Exile-related content that you create and once again are eager to see what you'll come up with this time.

It's time for another Hideout Showcase! For today's news post we've selected several interesting hideouts created by our players over the past couple of months. We were very pleased to see that many hideout creators have drawn inspiration from the endless cosmic space introduced in the Celestial Nebula Hideout. Check out a selection of the hideouts by watching the video below!



We are always looking for interesting and unique hideouts, so make sure to submit yours to the Hideouts forum section!

Here are the hideouts featured in the video:

• Arcane Sanctuary by tenroseUK
  
• Emerald Celestial Wells by Path_of_DerroK
  
• Toxic Laboratory by Arthur_von_Schreyer
  
• Celestial Nebula Pirate Island by TallBird
  
• Izaro's Domain and Moon by Synopsis
  
• Cathedral Town by DrCola
  
• Mount Hikari by Panumbral

While we have your attention, we'd like to mention that we've seen the feedback from the hideout creators regarding the changes to some in-game assets (including lighting) made in 3.9.0, which resulted in the corresponding hideout doodads being changed as well. We'll have our art team revisit some of the changes to check that assets look as intended. Our devs will also have a look at the issue with decorations from 3.8 hideouts being unable to load in 3.9 hideouts. While we understand it can be upsetting for some of you, visual changes are an inevitable part of improvements we've planned to the game. We'll keep an eye on further changes to the assets to make sure the hideouts will only benefit from them.

Later this week we're planning to release our first big patch this year. The 3.9.2 update includes various improvements and fixes to some of the known issues. In addition, the patch introduces several changes to the Awakener fight.

While you're waiting, check out the patch notes of this update. Please note that these patch notes are not final and are still subject to change before the patch.

Metamorph improvements:

• Added a new vendor recipe for Metamorph organs. Three of any organs can be given to receive a random organ differing from those offered, with random rewards.
  
• Fixed a bug which caused Metamorph bosses to become unfreezable. They can once again be frozen, however they have a higher ailment threshold relative to map bosses with similar amounts of Life.
  
• Adjusted a number of Metamorph skills, including the Reliquarian's Firestorm, the Shavronne & Brutus Hover Slam, Tentacle Miscreation projectile skills, the tracking Mortar skills (including those used by Oriath zombies and Kitava's Heralds), Burning and Caustic Ground-creating skills and several others. In general, these will now either deal less damage or be easier to avoid.
  
• Increased the timeout for the Tane's Laboratory area closing when empty.
  
• Fixed an uncommon case where Metamorph organs were missing when the area had been cleared.
  
• Fixed a bug where players could sometimes get trapped in the vat in Tane's Laboratory.
  
• Fixed some of Tane's talk options being available at the wrong time.
  
• Visual effects from monsters that give organs dying now correctly remain rather than being removed shortly after.

Atlas improvements:

• Fixed the incorrect Atlas quest information being shown after migrating a character.
  
• Fixed a bug where Citadels were still being hidden when the boss encounter was not available.
  
• Fixed a bug where Influence items were not dropping from monsters in maps influenced by Conquerors of the Atlas (they could drop from chests).
  
• Fixed a bug where the "Defeat Conquerors Conditionally" challenge conditions were sometimes not completing correctly.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Conquerors of the Atlas bosses would retarget when taunted.

The Awakener fight:

• The Awakener has been decreased to level 81 from 84 at Awakening levels 1 to 5, increasing by one for each additional Awakening level. He is still level 84 at Awakening level 8, and this only affects the item levels of his drops.
  
• Specifically reduced the damage on a majority of The Awakener's skills at everything below Awakening level 8.
  
• Prevented the storms in The Awakener fight from being able to occupy the space near the arena entrance, so you no longer can enter and be inside a storm.
  
• Changed the behaviour of the storms so they no longer pursue the player or their minions. Instead they more organically maneuvere the arena in a way that should cause more openings to travel around freely while still applying some limitation.
  
• Adjusted The Awakener Storm and Desolation skills to do less damage to minions.
  
• Increased the damage of The Awakener's Multiclone Beam skill.
  
• Fixed a bug which could result in the Awakener fight not progressing if he traveled too far in a single Throne Phase.
  
• Fixed issues when playing in a party where the effects from the Meteor skills could be invisible.
  
• Improved the visibility of the The Awakener's Desolation ground effects.

Other fixes and improvements:

• Added 3D art for The Ivory Tower unique body armour.
  
• Fixed DirectX 11 implementation that would use too much memory. Affecting mainly Windows 7 users, and Windows 10 users with old GPUs.
  
• Fixed a bug where Awakened Cast on Crit was adding a cooldown to supported skills.
  
• Fixed the new influence gem level mods incorrectly snapshotting.
  
• Fixed a bug in some cases where the Volatile Dead limit was not being enforced.
  
• Fixed more cases where multiple Vaal Side areas could spawn attached to an area.
  
• Fixed a bug where Sulphite could not be gathered in areas above level 83.
  
• Fixed the item filter settings not saving when using languages other than English.
  
• Fixed a bug where updating an item filter on the website would de-select it in-game.
  
• Fixed item names displaying incorrectly on rare items when using the Russian language.
  
• Re-straightened the curved paths on the world map.

We've just begun our second month of teaming up with Twitch Prime to bring you the Purple Smoking Hood and Purple Eyes free when you sign up to Twitch Prime. Until the 6th of February you'll be able to redeem these free cosmetic effects by starting a free one-month trial with Twitch Prime and linking your Path of Exile account to Twitch.

What are the benefits of Twitch Prime?

• Claim monthly free games and in-game loot
  
• Exclusive in-game loot for some of your favorite games
  
• Free games included with Twitch Prime
  
• Limited time promotions you won’t want to miss

Get special Twitch perks

• Free Twitch channel subscription ($5 value) every month
  
• Reign supreme with a Prime members-only chat badge
  
• Exclusive Twitch chat colors and emotes

Twitch Prime is part of Amazon Prime

• Shopping on Amazon.com is fast and convenient with free two-day shipping.
  
• Watch your favorite movies and TV shows including award-winning Amazon Originals.
  
• Listen to over 2+ million songs, ad-free on any device.

How do I redeem these microtransactions?
Once you have an Amazon Prime or Prime Video account, you link it to your Twitch account and start taking advantage of all the amazing perks Twitch Prime offers. To get started with Twitch Prime sign up for a https://twitch.amazon.com/tp?ref_=SM_CM_POE_ROWBP.

In most countries, you get Twitch Prime by being an Amazon Prime member and then linking your Amazon and Twitch Prime account. You can do all of this at twitchprime.com.

• Step 1 Sign up for a free trial of Twitch Prime.
  
• Step 2 Create or log in to your Path of Exile account.
  
• Step 3 Visit this page to link your account to Twitch or update your permissions if you've linked your account in the past.
  
• Step 4 Sign in to your Twitch account on twitch.tv and click the crown in the top right corner then claim the offer.
  
• Step 5 That's it! Fulfilling this process should automatically grant the microtransactions to your account.

Who can Redeem this Offer?
This promotion is available to Path of Exile account holders only on our main international server and only in countries where Amazon Prime is available.

Path of Exile on Twitch
Path of Exile has an active base of community streamers. With your Twitch Prime subscription you'll be granted a free subscription to your favourite streamer! Be sure to check out our community streamers over on Twitch.

We're now in the fourth week of the Metamorph league! Most of our devs are back from their holidays, well-rested and ready for another busy year of development. This week we're planning to deploy a big 3.9.2 patch. Its patch notes will likely be released tomorrow. In the meantime, we have prepared a small list of additional issues which have been resolved and will be fixed live in a hotfix very soon (before the main patch).

• Specific Atlas Regions can end up in an incorrect state after migrating from SSF.
  
• Releasing Legion Generals during Legion encounters can cause a client crash.
  
• Instance crash in Mao Kun unique map.
  
• Instance crashes when interacting with the Betrayal content.

We'll continue to monitor your feedback and develop patches with fixes and improvements. Thank you for your feedback!

The colourful Carnival microtransactions from our previous Mystery Box are now available for purchase! It's also still possible to combine some of the individual Ringmaster and Harlequin pieces into the corresponding alternate colour version of these designs. Please note that the Jovial Ringmaster and Dismal Harlequin cosmetic effects are only available by combining the original sets and can't be purchased directly.

Watch the Carnival Mystery Box trailer below to see everything that's available or check them out in the store by pressing M in game.



In case you're looking for something more gloomy, we have also brought back the Gore Fireworks for a limited time until January 15th (NZT). The Gore Fireworks come in stacks of 10 and cost 15 points per stack. These are only available around the New Year holiday period and don't necessarily come every year!



Thank you for your support!

We're continuing to publish developer presentations from ExileCon with a very interesting talk about storytelling in Path of Exile, given by Matt Dymerski, one of our narrative designers. If you're interested in lore and our approach to storytelling in Path of Exile, this video is a must-watch for you. Enjoy!

It's already 2020 in New Zealand! We want to wish our community a Happy New Year and also to take a moment to look back on the year that has just concluded. As is tradition, today we're posting our annual retrospective.

In 2019:

• We launched four expansions: Synthesis, Legion, Blight and Conquerors of the Atlas (with the Metamorph challenge league).
  
• We hosted ExileCon, our very first Path of Exile convention with more than 1400 attendees from around the world, including special guests from Blizzard North, community streamers and content creators, and very real Eihnar Frey and Zana.
  
• We announced Path of Exile 2 and the Path of Exile Mobile project!
  
• We partnered with Kakao to launch Path of Exile in South Korea.
  
• We released Path of Exile on PlayStation 4.
  
• We set a record number of players online (224,000 on our server alone).
  
• There were 30% more hours played of Path of Exile on our international realm in 2019 than 2018.
  
• Around 8.7 million players played Path of Exile on our international realm this year.
  
• We expanded from 122 to 147 in-house staff members.
  
• We deployed more than 45 updates/patches to our realm.
  
• We posted 382 news articles - an average of 7.3 posts per week.
  
• We remastered the existing Path of Exile soundtrack and updated it with new music.
  
• We hit a new record in viewer numbers on Twitch.
  
• We introduced a new system that allows you to manage your Master missions.
  
• We praised amazing talents of our players by hosting four community competitions.
  
• We revamped spellcasters, melee combat, Necromancers and dozens of skills.
  
• We reworked the entire Atlas system.
  
• We updated the look of the Lioneye's Watch.

Thank you to everyone who has joined us in 2019, who has returned and who has been with us throughout the year. Thank you to all of you who has travelled all the way to New Zealand to attend ExileCon in November. Path of Exile wouldn't evolve that significantly without your generous support and continued feedback. We love you all! Here's to another big year in Wraeclast!

The holiday period continues, so we don't have any development news to share today (though we're keen to give you an update regarding our current work and to deploy a major patch as soon as possible!). It's also the end of a year and we're preparing a traditional summary of our annual achievements which we'll publish tomorrow. While you're getting ready to celebrate New Year's Eve, why not take a moment to remember 2019 in Path of Exile with us by watching the video below?


Thank you for being part of this amazing year with us! See you next year, Exiles!