In Path of Exile: Heist we introduced 13 new Rogues which assist you in Heists. We are very happy to see that a lot of players are enjoying the personalities of these NPCs and their interactions with each other. We'll talk about the process behind creating their lore and dialogue in the coming weeks. In the meantime check out the pieces of concept art of the Rogues created by our art team.

















We'd also like to take a moment to mention that we're going through all the Heist feedback now and are keen to address the issues in a news post later this week (potentially tomorrow). In the meantime the devs are continuing working on improvements and fixes to the Heist and will be releasing them as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.

Prior to Heist's launch, we revealed the Cursed Words divination card which redeems for the Maw of Mischief Unique Item. I was generously given the opportunity to design this card by one of our players and was also able to design a unique item that the card redeems for. In case you missed it, check out the Cursed Words card below!



We have so far kept the Maw of Mischief item secret but it's coming out soon so it's time to finally reveal it!



Death Wish is a channelled skill with thirteen stages that selects one of your minions per channeling stage. While channelling, the selected minions have immense Attack, Cast and Movement Speed and have the ability to pass through enemies. When the channelling is released, these minions will explode.

Each explosion deals a flat amount of fire spell damage in an area. It also deals 13% of the minion's maximum life as fire damage in the same area. The life-scaling portion of the damage does not scale with spell damage. Each explosion will deal more damage the more stages you built up.

In addition to the benefits of the skill, wearing the helmet makes your minions aggressive which means they'll target enemies from further away and find their way to enemies for maximum pay-off when the explosion occurs.

Here's a video of the Maw of Mischief in action!



When I started to think about what I wanted to design for a Divination Card, it felt very appropriate for it to have some sort of representation for what my role within the Path of Exile community has been for the last 7 years. I wanted something that spoke about the relationship I have with the community and tied to various elements related to that.

Initially, as many of you speculated, I wanted to create an item that was mostly a joke that did mysterious things that would cause players to scratch their heads. We discussed various things like creating an 'Orb of Confusion' as a throwback to one of our past Halloween Boards. We talked about the possibility of adding it into the map device alongside maps and it spitting out patch notes that were both real and fake.

Ultimately, we worried about unfairness to other Divination Card creators who wouldn't have the same opportunity to create such things as well as the novelty wearing off after a while. Also, most players play the game without interacting with the forums or other community areas and would likely not be 'in' on the joke and simply find it strange.

I returned to the drawing board of creating something more serious. After thinking about it for some time, I realised I wanted to theme both the card and unique item around the feeling of anticipation. As a community manager, a lot of what you're working with boils down to managing people waiting - either with excitement or sometimes with a sense of dread (in the case of fixes or nerfs). This manifests both as teasing new content and communicating fixes and potential balance changes. Two sides of the same mindstate - anticipation.

We nailed down the basic function of the unique item first. I wanted to create something that works with allies, essentially groups of people as a representation of the community. I also wanted something that included a sense of anticipation which resulted in the channelling function creating a delay and then a payoff. I also wanted something that generated explosions because explosions are neat.

In terms of name and flavour, we were working from the idea of words having the ability to bring both joy and despair. I feel that the flavour summarises this perfectly.

The line that divides hope and fear,
Life and death, crowd and mob
Is as thin as a whisper.

It refers to both the power of words and the place that community managers occupy in the scheme of things. 'The line that divides' talks about the space between these two worlds of the community and the development team. 'As thin as a whisper' brings it back to being about communication. We followed a similar train of thought in naming the skill, 'Death Wish' as a sort of play on words about whispers that cause people to frenzy in anticipation, in this case culminating in deadly explosions.

The 'Maw of Mischief' name sort of came about quite naturally in talking about my role as a speaker. It's a bit obvious really - words come from the mouth and they're sort of cheeky sometimes. I also liked that the idea of a 'maw' sort of inherently called for creepy art for the helmet's look which was something I was hoping for.

After nailing down much of the unique item, the Divination Card came about sort of easily. While I wanted the unique item to stand alone as a contribution separate to my identity, I felt I could have a little fun with the Divination Card. We stuck with the theme of anticipation and words. The anticipation coming from the card being the only way to gain the unique item and the pursuit of its hidden meanings.

I chose the number 13 for the channelled stages and divination card stack size because it is a sp00ky number and because I joined GGG in 2013.

'Cursed Words' is sort of a cheeky play on 'curse-words' as well as referring to the words you might speak to cause someone to pursue their hidden meaning, perhaps for fun or perhaps to their detriment. I chose the art because it was a wonderful opportunity to put my own personal stamp on Path of Exile, it happened to work well with the themes of the card and item and being in line with the style Divination Card art is usually done in. Plus for many of you, it is instantly recognisable.

I feel incredibly humbled to have been given this opportunity to contribute to Path of Exile in this way. Working with the Grinding Gear Games team and alongside the Path of Exile community for so many years has brought so much joy to my life and created amazing memories that I'll hold onto forever. Being able to create the Maw of Mischief puts this time into the legacy of Path of Exile and I'm beyond grateful for that. As my role in the company continues to mature over time, I am sure I'll always look back on this period with fond memories.

I wanted to say a special thank you to James and Nick for helping me work my ideas into these formats as well as to Aneruok for gifting me the Divination Card design. I also want to thank you, the community, for joining me in so many wonderful moments and for supporting Path of Exile so that we can continue to create these moments. I hope you enjoy the unique!

Thank you.

The team is currently finishing testing the 3.12.2 update with a fair amount of improvements to the Heist league. We're planning to deploy this patch by the end of this working week (or early next week).

Please note that the patch notes listed below may be changed prior to the release of the 3.12.2 update.

• Rebalanced the amount of Alert Level that Reward Room and Main Path Chests generate when opened.
  
• Many existing Contract and Blueprint modifiers which didn't already do so now grant Alert Level Reduction, Time Before Lockdown and Maximum Alive Reinforcements bonuses.
  
• Added additional Reward Types to various Heist Jobs.
  
• Breach, Harbinger, Delirium and Legion rewards now require level 68 or higher before they can be found as Chest Rewards.
  
• After completing The Rogue Harbour quest, you will be placed at the top of the stairs when arriving in The Rogue Harbour.
  
• Many Heist monsters can now be Spectred!
  
• Alert Level reduction modifiers from different sources are now multiplicative with one another.
  
• You will now be placed slightly further away from the portal when entering a Heist.
  
• Attempting to leave a Heist area before entering a Heist Wing will now request confirmation.
  
• Grand Heist rewards which contain Enchanted Body Armours or Weapons are now more likely to contain higher-tier Base Types.
  
• Monsters in formations during Heists now stagger the timing of their attacks, such that they're not all using their attacks at the same time.
  
• Reduced the damage that Thaumaturgy Officers and Security Conjurors deal.
  
• Reduced the damage that Labra-tomaton, Labora-dor and Clockwork Sentries deal with their on-death explosions.
  
• Clockwork Sentries now have a 20% chance to explode on death (down from 100%).
  
• Improved the telegraphing effects and audio of Clockwork Sentries.
  
• It is now more clear when a Rogue has reached the maximum level for a given Heist Job.
  
• Improved various Heist quest text notifications.
  
• Heist Quest Items will now be removed from your inventory if you fail the Quest Contract. You will be able to get a new item when you re-obtain the appropriate Quest Contract.
  
• You can now search by Job name in your Heist Locker.
  
• Fixed a bug where some Grand Heists could not be completed.
  
• Fixed a rare bug that could prevent completion of a Heist in Smuggler's Den.
  
• Fixed a bug where Gianna, Master of Disguise could sometimes fail to complete a Job.
  
• Fixed a bug preventing Quantity and Rarity implicit modifiers on Heist Brooches from displaying.
  
• Fixed a bug which could cause Resonators to drop with linked sockets.
  
• Fixed a bug which could sometimes cause players to get stuck in a Vault door.
  
• Fixed a bug where, when returning to The Rogue Harbour from a Heist area, you could be placed in a Rogue Harbour instance that did not contain the portal to your Heist area.
  
• Fixed a bug where Rogues would sometimes dance in place after placing a bomb near a Demolition job if you were standing too close to the door.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Primary Objective chest in Contracts could not be opened in party play if the player who created the Heist was not present.

• Marked for Death, Mark the Prey and Malicious Intent can now be anointed.
  
• Updated the description of the "Inflicts a random Hex on you when your Totems die, with 80% increased Effect" modifier on the Soul Mantle unique body armour to be 80% more Effect. This does not impact the already-hotfixed functionality of Soul Mantle.
  
• Fixed a bug where shield modifiers were still applying to you while you had the Necromatic Aegis keystone passive allocated.
  
• Fixed a bug where modifiers that you could not apply to a given item were not visibly disabled in the Crafting Bench UI.
  
• Fixed a bug which caused Beastcrafting to ignore metamods.
  
• Fixed a bug where you could have more than 100 Poisons on you when using The Golden Rule unique jewel in combination with the Maw of Conquest unique helmet.
  
• Fixed a bug which caused monster versions of Cremation to fire projectiles more frequently than intended.
  
• Fixed a bug where Consecrated Ground from the Sanctuary ascendancy passive could be placed at the destination location after using Frostblink while holding down Move.
  
• Fixed a visual issue where Discharge effects were rendered on top of your character, rather than at your target location, when using the Astral Projector unique ring.
  
• Fixed a bug causing the mana cost of Discharge to be significantly lower than the listed value on the skill gem.
  
• Fixed a bug where some new Flame Wall and Frost Shield enchantments were missing descriptions.
  
• Fixed a bug where Flame Wall didn't display the amount of damage that it added to projectiles in its tooltip.
  
• Fixed a bug where Explosive Arrow fuses were not always visually removed after exploding.

• Fixed an instance crash that could occur during Metamorph encounters.
  
• Fixed 3 instance crashes.
  
• Fixed a client crash.

Last weekend, we launched Path of Exile: Heist. Since its launch, we've received lots of feedback about various aspects of the new content and we wanted to give you some insights about what to expect. We are preparing various server side fixes that we'll deploy as quickly as possible. Since these don't require realm restarts they are fairly easy for us to push through with fast turnarounds.

We are also planning a restart patch for later this week. This patch ideally includes things like some bonus Heist bosses and quests and the ability to use Heist monsters as spectres.

Before we proceed in this post, please understand that we are working on much more than this post covers. In order to document every small fix or improvement that we're working on, we would have needed to slow down the development of these in order to communicate these changes (essentially taking key developers away from their duties to help put information into a post).

However, we do want to communicate at least some of what's happening so you have an idea of what to expect.

We are reducing the number of rare guards that can gather behind Heist doors. Some monsters will release their skills in a staggered way so that you are not being hit by many skills simultaneously. Fewer monsters in these choke points will have their abilities ready to go as soon as the door opens. This should make these encounters more manageable and less about being blasted in the face with damage.

We killed this. It's not a thing anymore.

We are planning to rebalance opening chests in Heists and how they affect alert level. Opening chests in reward rooms will raise the alert level by a lot less and the chests on the main path will raise it slightly more. This both normalises the results and achieves a lower average level of alert generated by chests. This is likely to happen alongside a more broad rebalance of these chests, the alert level and their rewards.

Totally. You're supposed to be able to portal out of them before the alarm goes off but right now there's an issue which means you can portal back to town into the wrong instance and lose your portal and therefore lose access to your Heist. We're fixing this.

We hear you. We'll find a way to make this more efficient but don't know exactly what it looks like yet.

There are various issues with the way that NPCs behave during Heists. There's one issue in particular where Rogues are not prioritising their specialist skills when ordered to do so and can sometimes be distracted by other issues. We are working to refine how they behave which should resolve a few other Heist issues (like being locked out of Grand Heists).

We've seen various bits and pieces of feedback about the new skills but we would like to get even more. If you have feedback about the new skills, please reply to this post so we can review it. Including specifics is great.

Yes, there will be a prompt if you attempt to portal out of the Heist before you enter the combat zone. This along with fixing the issue where you can portal back to the wrong town instance should help a lot.

We have a fix for this.

We have a fix for this too.

As per usual, we are monitoring these closely and fixing issues as quickly as we can.

Two Heist monsters explode on death. The more problematic one deals too much damage which has, and is again being, reduced, made conditional and will have its visual telegraphing examined.

This is a great meme but we acknowledge that there were issues with the launch. It wasn't perfect by any means. We're sorry about the issues that have prevented people playing the content smoothly and we are working to fix them as quickly as we can.

Basically ASAP for everything but we will keep you updated by previewing the patch notes for any of the upcoming patches as quickly as we can. We'll also tweet about the restartless patches so that you are aware of them as they come out.

If you have any reports, please share them on the bug report forum. We check every report we receive but aren't able to reply to them. Thanks for all of your support and feedback. We really appreciate it.

We're always happy to see fan art submissions created by our talented community. For this news post we've gathered several pieces of recent artwork, inspired by the Heist league content. Enjoy!

Tibbs by Kardalak


Just Chilling Before Heist Comes by boldoser


Zana's Ultimate Form by QueenNie


Heist Fan Art by yy6242


Hana by Ailuart


While we have your attention, we wanted to mention that we're still assessing reports and working on fixes and will share more information as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience!

This weekend we launched Path of Exile: Heist! The launch day went quite well with just a few small hotfixes to address minor problems, you can view their patch notes here. Later today, we're planning to deploy a restart patch that includes various other fixes from the weekend. Today's news also outlines a few other details about the weekend and what to expect this week.

Later this week, on September 23 (PDT), we'll be launching Heist on our console platforms. We also hope to formally release our experimental macOS version within the next week as well. Thanks to everyone who has been testing it so far and giving us feedback.

The restart patch which is scheduled for later today includes quite a few more fixes for things like stash blocking in the Rogue Harbour. Later this week we'll prepare a post about what we're working on so that you have a better idea of what to expect from upcoming patches. In the meantime, check out the Patch Notes for 3.12.1 below.

• Players no longer block other players in The Rogue Harbour.
  
• Reward Chests in Unique Contracts no longer become locked when Lockdown occurs.
  
• Reduced the damage that Clockwork Sentries deal with their on-death explosions.
  
• Reduced the damage of Automaton Lightning Beam's impact area of effect hit.
  
• Increased the damage of Automaton Lightning Beam's beam as well as its on-death explosion.
  
• Escape Route minimap icons are now always visible to players in the same Wing.
  
• Fixed a bug where Replica Quill Rain's "Socketed Gems are Supported by Level 1 Arrow Nova" did not work.
  
• Fixed a bug where an Agility Laser hazard could generate with the disabling mechanism in an unreachable location.
  
• Fixed a bug in Grand Heists where multiple Rogues with the same Job could attempt to do a single job, resulting in multiple job progress bars being visible.
  
• Fixed a bug where various Heist Unique Items did not have a slot in the Unique Collection Tab.
  
  
  Skill Improvements
• Fixed a bug where Flame Wall required more experience than intended to level up.
  
• Fixed a bug where Splitting Steel and Blazing Salvo weren't counted as projectiles for the sake of projectile-specific modifiers.
  
• Fixed a bug where Splitting Steel and Blazing Salvo weren't affected by Area modifiers.
  
• Fixed a bug where Cobra Lash didn't chain as many times as it should have.
  
• Fixed a bug where the tooltip of Enduring Cry incorrectly displayed a higher value of "Regenerate x% of Life over 1 second" than it actually granted.
  
• Fixed a bug where multiple copies of Shattering Steel were offered by a vendor.
  
  
  Miscellaneous Improvements
• Fixed a bug introduced in 3.12.0 which prevented players from changing their God Powers in their hideouts.
  
• Fixed a bug introduced in 3.12.0 where Coward's Legacy unique belt didn't count you as being on Low Life when you were cursed with Vulnerability.
  
  
  Crash Fixes
  Fixed an instance crash that could occur after leaving a Heist area.
  
  If you've encountered any bugs, please report them in the bug reports forum. Our QA team monitors this forum closely and while they can't reply to everything, they do read everything and process it. We also recommend keeping an eye on our known issues list which we update frequently.
  
  We also released the Twilight Mystery Box which contains 38 new microtransactions, some of which can be combined to create the epic Twilight Set. Check out the trailer below or read more about the mystery box here.
  
  
  
  
  
  Don't forget that we're in the middle of Zizaran's Awakener Kill Event! Congratulations to Darkee for being the first on to kill The Awakener in Hardcore Heist SSF and for winning the $11,000USD cash prize. Follow Zizaran to keep up to date on the latest.
  
  We've also seen a lot of people enjoying the new voice acting and dialogue. Here are the acting credits for the new characters.
  
  
• Nenet - Georgie Oulton
  
• Gianna and Adiyah - Elle Wooton
  
• Kurai - Miriama Smith
  
• Isla - Juliet Prew
  
• Faustus - Peter Baker
  
• Karst - Aaron Ward
  
• Tibbs - Andy Grainger
  
• Vinderi - Paul Glover
  
• Huck - Blair Annison Chisholm
  
  

Do you burn with the desire to look spectacular? Well thank your lucky stars! The Twilight Mystery Box contains 38 brand new Lunaris- and Solaris-themed cosmetic effects. It's clear as day that these stellar outfits are the perfect addition to your cosmetic collection.

Each Mystery Box costs 30 points and guarantees one microtransaction with value equal to or greater than that of the box. Many of these mystery box cosmetics can be combined to create a blended version of the two designs for even deeper character customisation. The possible outcomes from your mystery box range in value from 30 points all the way up to 320 points!

The average reward is worth 110 points, which is more than three times the cost of the box. Check out the full trailer to see what's available!



Click here to read the full announcement

Our intention was to release an experimental copy of the macOS Path of Exile client around a week ago, so that community members could test it before its official release tomorrow alongside Heist. A series of last-minute unexpected technical problems meant that we only had this client distributable today. Our new plan is to release this experimental client immediately for feedback from adventurous macOS users, and to officially release on Mac in around a week.

We have put together a macOS version of 3.11.2 (which does not include any Heist content) we have released an installer .dmg file here for Mac users to test. This version will update to and work with Heist tomorrow.

To install it, download and open the .dmg file. Drag the Path of Exile folder into your Applications folder, then launch Path of Exile from within there. It will patch in a full download of the game. Note that you can't copy your Content.ggpk file from a PC to speed it up, and you shouldn't try to use the Content.ggpk from the PC torrent that we'll be releasing today.

This version may be buggy and still has a few things we want to fix, so we recommend not playing it with your hardcore characters!

The macOS version plays on the same servers as the PC version and uses the same accounts/characters/microtransactions/etc. There's no problem switching back and forth between mac and PC as you wish. This experimental 3.11.2 version will patch itself to Heist tomorrow.

We are maintaining a Known Issues list for the macOS version here.

Please post any issues you encounter in the bug reports forum (preferably with "Mac" in the subject).

The Heist expansion launches in just two days! To help you plan your builds even further, we've prepared gem data at level 20 with 20% quality for all the new and changed gems in 3.12.0.

Check them out in this news post!

Shortly after we launched Harvest, we released a set of league stash tabs that, in spite of selling really well, caused some community members to express concern. Path of Exile has dozens of league launches ahead of it and naturally these will continue to introduce new items. Therefore, we needed a policy around item storage that's future-proofed. We've discussed it and want to share this policy with you.

Stash Tabs are one of the keystones to funding for development and we will continue to develop them in future. However, with league content our policy is now that any items that are essential for progression in the league (e.g. Seeds from Harvest, Azurite from Delve or Contracts from Heist) will have their own dedicated storage system in that league. Any rewards from a league (e.g. Blight Oils and Delve Fossils) can be put into their own purchasable Stash Tab or any regular Stash Tab you already own.

We feel that this policy creates a reasonable compromise in providing free storage for mandatory progression items while allowing us to continue to fund the game with optional stash tabs for the long-term storage of optional reward items.

In Heist, you'll find a storage device in The Rogue Harbour that will allow you to store Contracts, Blueprints and Markers.

We're also making progress on the Stash Tab Folders and Stash Tab Affinity systems we described previously and hope to launch these during the Heist league. Sorry for being slow getting them finished, we have to be very careful when implementing features like these