We're happy to finally release the long-awaited interview with the founders of Blizzard North hosted by Rhykker at ExileCon. In this video our special guests, David Brevik, Max Schaefer, and Erich Schaefer discuss Action-RPGs and answer various questions from ExileCon attendees. Check it out below!

As you know, the Metamorph Supporter Packs end on PC next week when our 3.10 announcement goes live, so you still have several days left to consider whether to purchase one of those. It's also still possible to set up a payment plan to reserve a desirable pack for you. Find out more about your options here. In the meantime, have a look at the concept art of these Supporter Packs we've gathered for today.

While you're counting the days until our upcoming 3.10 announcement and building theories about its theme, why not let your mind rest a bit by watching our next ExileCon video? The Grinding Gear Games founders, Chris, Jonathan and Erik gathered together on ExileCon's stage to remember the old days and answer questions from the audience and our game designer Nick. Enjoy!

Last week we announced the winners of our recent Talent Competition. Due to a huge amount of excellent entries, we're happy to reward more runners up with a helmet effect of their choice.

Nytemairqt


KungFuPanda2


stephor


Doranex


Check out more entries here!

We've just begun the press tour for our March expansion. Astute Path of Exile fans know that this means our official announcement is just around the corner! In fact, the announcement is currently planned for noon February 25 PST (9am February 26, NZ time) so just over one week away.

At this time, we're planning to release a new set of league supporter packs for PC users which means our current league supporter packs should end then too. For console players this changeover will happen alongside league launch as per usual.

This also means that we are aiming to launch this expansion on March 13 PST (March 14 NZ time) although this is not completely locked in. We will confirm its launch date with our announcement next week.

With the above schedule, Path of Exile: Metamorph will be ending on March 9 PST for PC players and about a week later for console players. If you're eager to hear what's happening with Metamorph in the future, we have a Development Manifesto planned for late next week to explain our thoughts.

We can't wait to share what we've been working on with you!

Within the next few days we're planning to deploy the 3.9.2f update that includes changes to Item Filters that we talked about recently as well as some small performance improvements and various bug fixes. We're aiming to deploy this patch on console as soon as possible after its release on PC. In the meantime, we've prepared its patch notes for you to check out.

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

• Added new functionality and made improvements to Item Filters. You can read more about them here.
  
• Improved performance related to monster and minion pathfinding.
  
• The following items now allocate to the Map Maker when they drop: Timeless Jewels, Ivory Watchstones, Awakened Gems, Awakener's Orbs, Conquerors Exalted Orbs and Uniques from Legion, Blight, Metamorph and Conquerors of the Atlas bosses.
  
• Reduced the damage of the Storm Call skill that Baran-influence monsters used. They will now only use the skill if they have line of sight to you.
  
• You can now use /hideout to return to your Hideout while in Tane's Laboratory.
  
• Improved the performance of Acid Magma Orb Effect and Harbinger Magma Orb Effect.
  
• Improved the visibility of various weapon effect microtransactions when applied to the Colossus Sword.
  
• Restored the skull to the top of the Syndicate Flag Hideout Decoration.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Power Siphon on-death effect could be played multiple times on a single monster. This fix also improves the performance of Power Siphon in general.
  
• Fixed a rare bug where Malachai in The Harvest and Core Map could sometimes fail to transition to his second arena.
  
• Fixed a client crash that could occur when using Leap Slam while it had the Harlequin Leap Slam Effect applied to it.

This Monday we concluded our comprehensive Talent Competition where we encouraged our community to show off their talents by making Path of Exile-inspired submissions. Needless to say, we were completely blown away by the entries made by our players, yet again! Today we're excited to announce the winners!

We'd like to thank our community for all the submissions created for this competition. You never cease to impress us with your talents! Congratulations to all the winners! We'll be contacting you soon to arrange your prizes. We'll also award more Runner Ups in a follow-up post at the beginning of next week.

Path of Exile - The Fall of Oriath Cello by Deosain


'The Path of the Exiled' by Drakartwow


Path of Exile in Minecraft | 2 by xevoken


Path of Exile - Blight Theme Guitar Cover by caladriel


Check out more winners in this thread!

We've put together a small tidbit of information about Sirus encounters for you to peruse at your leisure. These statistics include how many times Sirus has been killed since the beginning of the Conquerors of the Atlas expansion as well as how many times characters have died during the encounter!

First, we'll look at how many times characters have died while fighting Sirus:

Metamorph | 4408603
Metamorph HC | 1014
Metamorph SSF | 159115
Metamorph HC SSF | 769

Leading the way is the Metamorph league with just over 4.4 million total deaths to Sirus! In Metamorph HC, 1,014 characters lost their fight against Sirus and were sent to Standard league. Looking at Metamorph SSF, we can see that just under 160,000 characters died to Sirus compared to 769 characters in Metamorph HC SSF.

Next, let's take a look at the total amount of times that Sirus has been killed in each league:

Metamorph | 1028060
Metamorph HC | 7871
Metamorph SSF | 32053
Metamorph HC SSF | 3636

Sirus has died just over a million times in Metamorph league and just over 7,800 times in Metamorph HC. We see that the number of Sirus kills in Metamorph SSF is almost ten times that of Metamorph SSF HC (32,053 compared to the 3,636 respectively).

If we then look at the number of character deaths compared to the number of Sirus deaths, we can see that, in Metamorph league, for every time that Sirus died, just less than 4.3 character deaths occurred:

League Sirus K/D
Metamorph | 4.3
Hardcore Metamorph | 0.13
SSF Metamorph | 4.9
SSF Metamorph HC | 0.2

In Metamorph SSF, it's even greater, coming in at just shy of 5 character deaths per Sirus kill. In Metamorph HC, for every Sirus kill, just fewer than 0.13 characters died, or in other words, approximately 1 in 8 characters that attempted Sirus died. This number is significantly lower than that of the non-HC leagues due to the fact that you can only die a single time to Sirus in HC. One would also expect that characters attempting Sirus in HC leagues would be much more prepared and thus more likely to succeed. Similarly, in Metamorph HC SSF, for every Sirus kill, just more than 0.2 characters died, or, approximately 1 in 5 characters that attempted Sirus died. The power offered by having the ability to trade nearly doubled the success rate of HC characters.

Hopefully you've enjoyed this brief look at how characters have been faring with the Sirus encounter. How have you personally managed with Sirus this league?

Alongside working on our upcoming 3.10.0 expansion, our team has been working on various improvements to Path of Exile, such as new features for Item Filters. We've prepared a preview today to give you an idea of what to expect.

Improved socket matching

• SocketGroup "X": Groups of linked sockets on an item, for example "RGB". Can have multiple SocketGroup requirements within one filter, for example 'SocketGroup "RGB" "BB"' would filter for any option in that line rather than all options in that line.
  
• "SocketGroup" now supports the letter A for Abyss sockets, and D for Delve sockets.
  
• Abyss (A) and Delve (D) sockets should not be grouped in multiples (for example 'SocketGroup "RGBA"' or 'SocketGroup "DD"', as Abyss and Delve sockets are never linked).
  
• Socket types: R: Red, G: Green, B: Blue, A: Abyss, D: Delve, W: White.
  
• "SocketGroup" now supports a number to specify the number of sockets in a link. By default (operator =) the number requires an exact match.
  
• "SocketGroup" allows combining a number and colours, e.g. "5GGG" will show 5-links with at least 3 green sockets.
  
• "SocketGroup" now supports relational operators (>, <, >=, <=) in addition to exact equal (==), e.g. " >= 5GGG" shows items with 5 or more linked sockets with at least 3 of them being green sockets. "== 5GGG" shows items with a 5-link that has exactly 3 green sockets, but won't show 6-links.
  
• "Sockets" now supports everything "SocketGroup" does, except it applies to all sockets on the item and doesn't care about links. E.g. "5GGG" will show items with exactly 5 total sockets, if at least three of them are green.
  
• "Sockets" previously only supported a number of sockets, but these changes are fully backwards-compatible. So "Sockets 4" will still match any item with exactly 4 sockets, same as before. Similarly "Sockets >= 5" etc.
  
• Abyss and Delve sockets are not linked, so "SocketGroup DDDD" will not show any 4-socket resonators. You need to use "Sockets DDDD" instead.

Improvements to "HasInfluence" for map items
'HasInfluence' parameter is now usable with 'Shaper' and 'Elder' for map items.

Added "AreaLevel" condition
AreaLevel

• Filters for items dropped in a particular level area/range; useable with existing operators (<, >, =, ==, etc.)
  
• Primarily helps with leveling sections of item filters. This allows disabling leveling sections on high level characters, or showing wisdom scrolls and gems on stricter filters while leveling.

Added condition for number of corrupted implicit mods
CorruptedMods

• Usable with 0, 1, 2
  
• Filters by number of corrupted mods

Added "Mirrored" condition
Mirrored

• Usable with True/False
  
• Filters for mirrored or non-mirrored items

Added "Continue" command
A "Show" or "Hide" block may now use "Continue" to indicate that filter rule matching should not stop when an item matches this block. This can be used to easily apply visuals in a generic way, e.g.

Hide
ItemLevel < 70
Continue<br/>
Show Rarity >= Rare
ItemLevel >= 70
SetFontSize 40
Continue

Show
Sockets 6
PlayEffect Blue
Continue

This will hide all items dropped below level 70, unless they have 6 sockets, in which case the blue effect plays. Items at level 70 or higher will all show, and also play the blue effect if they have 6 sockets. In addition, level 70+ rares and uniques will have a larger font, regardless of sockets.

Note that if an item matches a Hide block that Continues, then later matches a Show block, it will use the most recently matched Show or Hide flag, and thus show. If an item matches and Continues and then never matches any further blocks, it will also show or hide based on the most recently matched block.

If you set a minimap icon, sound, or effect then use Continue, you can disable it in a later block using:

MinimapIcon -1
CustomAlertSound None
PlayAlertSound None
PlayAlertSoundPositional None
PlayEffect None

"AnyEnchantment" now only recognises Labyrinth enchantments

We're planning to deploy these changes as soon as possible so you can update your filters in order to prepare for the expansion release in March.