The Talent Competition has just begun, and we've already received a lot of good submissions. We'll be publishing the highlights of this competition over the coming weeks. Today we're showcasing some of the entries we've received in the Talent Competition so far.

The Lioneye's Theme by xTheCopperCatx


Fan Art by RaVirr17


Kitava by Bolaway


Kitava by PiikaLatvija


Celestial Cat Pet by Lin7in


Check out more submissions here!

Last year we released new annual Core Supporter Packs which have been received very well by our community. In addition to exclusive microtransactions and physical items, the highest tier of the current Core Supporter Packs includes a pack of signed concept art prints. Today we've gathered some of the pieces of the Core Supporter Packs concept art to give you an idea of what to expect from these prints.





Check out more images here.

It's been two months since ExileCon, which became one of the most memorable events of 2019 for us (hopefully for you too!). We've finally managed to go through a massive amount of footage recorded at the convention, and have montaged it into a short video with highlights from the ExileCon weekend. We hope you enjoy it!



Check out our ExileCon playlist if you're interested in watching presentations given by our developers at the convention. We'll release the rest of the talks over the coming weeks.

We're finishing the week with a talk by our senior visual effects artist, Ivan Leong. In his ExileCon presentation Ivan not only explained the role of VFX artists at GGG, but has also demonstrated creating an asset for the Crusader fight live on stage. If you're an aspiring VFX artist looking for inspiration or just want to learn something new today - check out the video below!

In addition to a big 3.9.2 patch, which was deployed last week, the team has been working on another update with many improvements and fixes. We're planning to release it by the end of this working week on PC, and as soon as possible on consoles (after its release on PC).

As usual, we have prepared a preview of its patch notes beforehand, so you can get an idea of what to expect. Please note that the patch notes listed below may be changed prior to the release of the 3.9.2b update.

• New instances of Tane's Laboratory can now be created by Ctrl + Clicking on the World Map Pin.
  
• Monsters killed in Tane's Laboratory are now removed after a short delay.
  
• Added additional quest information that displays when Watchstones drop.
  
• Reduced the area of effect and damage of The Purifier's Weapon Throw.
  
• Improved performance when using Arctic Breath supported by Traps, Mines or Totems against large groups of monsters.
  
• Improved performance related to trail effects.
  
• Added 3D art for the unique staff The Black Cane.
  
• The NPCs in Karui Shores have been moved around slightly to more convenient positions.
  
• Added a Noticeboard and Event Noticeboard to the Karui Shores.
  
• The Karui Shores and Oriath now use the same public party list.
  
• Skitterbots are no longer targetable in PvP.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Monster pack size from the Booming Populace unique Ivory Watchstone didn't apply to Maps.
  
• Fixed a bug where various Incursion resistance and energy shield modifiers were not affected by Catalysts.
  
• Fixed a bug where the "x% reduced Mana Reserved" Redeemer influence modifier was able to be on the same item as the same modifier from Shaper influence or Fossils.
  
• Fixed a bug where Terror of the Infinite Drifts' Burrow skill could cause her to get stuck in terrain or leave the encounter area in Tane's Laboratory.
  
• Fixed a bug where Chaos Golem monsters in Vaal Side Areas were dealing much higher damage than intended with some of their skills.
  
• Fixed a bug where Blight Portals could spawn behind the vault door in Vault Map, preventing the monsters from pathing to the Ichor Pump.
  
• Fixed a bug where various maps which contains Hideouts could sometimes get out of sync, preventing players from entering the map.
  
• Fixed a bug preventing players from entering areas near a Beyond encounter in the Azurite Mine.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented removing Shaped Maps from the Map Stash Tab.
  
• Fixed a client crash that could occur when using Perforate.
  
• Fixed a client crash that could occur when using Barrage supported by Blastchain Mine Support which had the Void Emperor Blastchain Mine Effect microtransaction applied to it.

The Awakener Kill event, arranged with the huge help and support of Zizaran, concluded yesterday. More than a hundred players have defeated Awakener in the hardest Path of Exile mode possible, as well as achieving the other goals of the event. Today we're ready to announce the winners!

• First Awakener Kill ($8000) - Darkee
  
• Second Place ($4000) - Havoc6
  
• Third Place ($2000) - Gofferi
  
• Fourth - Fifteenth Place ($500) - Steelmage, soerensko, guardianj11, rrrrath, Yukozo, Efriko, soul1027, Karvarousku, Oskarmln, Dsfarblarwaggle, takee, PoEDan79
  
• First Atziri Kill in the Apex of Sacrifice ($500) - FITEGARR
  
• First Uber Atziri Kill ($2000) - powershot615
  
• First Shaper Kill ($1000) - PoEDan79
  
• First Elder Kill ($500) - Mosh47
  
• First Uber Elder Kill ($2000) - Steelmage
  
• Deepest Delve (1085 depth, $4000) - PoEDan79

• Coolgav
  
• duabaji
  
• Efriko
  
• EndOfEnds
  
• fraggoman
  
• gal4214
  
• heliumfurz
  
• Jasnai
  
• Karvarousku
  
• kevnbo
  
• kriptog
  
• Oskarmln
  
• PoEDan79
  
• pvpnerd
  
• Realyn
  
• Robotmaxboy
  
• sss111
  
• willowbreaker
  
• XxMrFantomxX
  
• Zareuther

Congratulations to the winners! Microtransactions prizes will be distributed very soon. Zizaran will also contact winners to arrange their payments. Thank you to everyone who has challenged their skills by participating in this event. Thank you to Zizaran for providing the idea and amazing prize pool. We're very happy with how this event turned out and are keen to bring more similar events to the community in the future!

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.