In the second entry to our series revealing the backstories of supporter's Divination Card designs, we asked Jmatt to talk about the friendly rivalry that culminated in his Divination Card - The Fool.

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Let me start off by saying that it’s nice to see that a lot of Divination Cards created by the community represent something that is very meaningful and emotional to the creators of those cards. This, however, is definitely not one of those.

My journey into Path of Exile started near the end of the Alpha back in 2011. After finally getting a key from the randomized lottery on the main site me and a few buddies started playing the game on and off throughout the phases of the Beta until we finally started taking the game a bit more seriously in Nemesis League. This was the first time playing an ARPG in hardcore and there was something strangely addictive about losing your character over and over while slowly learning more about the game in the most brutal way possible. Something from there clicked and we would find ourselves putting way too many hours into the leagues over the years from then on.

One of these buddies, let’s call him Tom, took the game quite seriously. Even though we were playing the game cooperatively he would always somehow manage to sneakily push the game into a bit of a competition. We found ourselves racing for higher levels, pushing for more challenges, and seeing who could do more content than the other. We would never actually address this competition directly, but it was definitely implied through back-handed comments and subtle bragging league after league after league.

Although I trusted my superior Path of Exile ability, I needed a way to one-up Tom permanently so that this madness could finally be put to an end so I decided to go with the most obvious thing I could think of. That of course was spending a bunch of money to put him into a Divination Card that makes fun of him.

The title of the card is a homage to Tom that I think captures his personality quite accurately. I think most people that know him would describe him in a similar fashion. The artwork of the card is based off of a real picture of him I submitted. Although I never got a chance to thank them, GGG’s artists did a wonderful job converting it into Divination Card art. I was quite impressed seeing the finished product.

The card reward is a combination of two things. It is leftover from a different idea I originally had for a card where you would get a random amount of Chance Orbs (between 1 and 40) by turning in the set but this wasn’t feasible at the time. I stuck with Chance Orbs because I just really like Chance Orbs as I am somewhat of a gambling man. Also, there were no other Divination Cards at the time that solely gave Chance Orbs so I thought it would be a nice fit for the game. I considered thinking of some kind of item or currency that fits the joke better but I still wanted to make a Divination Card that is at least somewhat useful.

The flavor-text of the card is self-referential as it is describing Tom's downfall of being put into his own Divination Card. The “Learned Man” part is questionable but apparently Tom actually has a PhD in real life. I myself question the authenticity of it, to be honest.

The specifics of who ended up winning more of those competitions we had in Path of Exile over the years are irrelevant to the story. Please stop asking. The only thing that truly matters is that I came out ahead by cementing him into an embarrassing Divination Card. This was worth every penny.

Friendly competition aside, I still occasionally play Path of Exile with Tom and we actually flew to New Zealand last year and explored ExileCon together. There will probably be more back-handed comments and subtle bragging for a long time to come. Even though it was somewhat of a joke Divination Card it was quite an enjoyable experience creating it with GGG’s help and it was very fun to leave my small mark on the game.

We have even more highlights from our ongoing Hideout Competition to share with you! If you're working on a hideout for this competition, you only have one week left to finish and submit your entry! Check out the video below:

Here are hideouts featured in this video:

• Venice by Kehrweek
  
• Skygate by Ydoum
  
• Nebulis Shrine of Gods by jaka1988
  
• Pirate Ship by HipPoEpotamus
  
• Godly Sanctuary by Max34
  
• Repurposed Old Citadel by henjoi
  
• Shattered Sanctuary by bidogo
  
• Hexadomia by Fireflyxx

This November, community streamer Zizaran is organising a 10-day Racing Gauntlet Event. Racers will compete and earn points by levelling their characters, killing bosses and exploring the depths of the Azurite Mine. This will take place in a Private HCSSF League with all damage mods and increased monster life active. The prize pool is funded by the community and sponsors who teamed up with Zizaran to support this event.



The event will have all Damage Mods enabled as well as Increased Monster Life via the Private League System. Players will receive points based on levels and specific boss kills.

Start time: November 14th at 3:00 PM GMT (countdown available here). The event will last for 10 days.

Players will be able to join the event on November 10th at 3:00 PM GMT (countdown is here), first come first serve until the Private League is full (there are 10,000 slots). The invite link will be available in the join-here section of the Racing Discord here.

The prize pool is crowdfunded by sponsors and community streamers such as Steelmage, Alkaizerx, Octavian0 , Datmodz, Baker, DS_Lily, Zizaran and more! Streamers and their communities will be able to create a bounty with the money they fundraise for the event. Bounties are custom rewards that the community will create together to reward players. Pay attention to their social media for more announcements regarding when and what their fundraisers will be!

Zizaran's sponsors will be matching all donations to the prize pool (up to $25,000). The total prize pool will be split as follows:

• Development Cost: 5% - To be distributed amongst Community Developers who help the event.
  
• Minus bounties placed by streamers and their communities during the fundraisers.
  
• 1st: 35%
  
• 2nd: 20%
  
• 3rd: 10%
  
• 4th: 8%
  
• 5th: 7%
  
• 6th: 6%
  
• 7th: 5%
  
• 8th: 4%
  
• 9th: 3%
  
• 10th: 2%
  
• 11th-15th: Arcane Seraph Wings + Dusk Weapon Effect
  
• 16th-20th: Hydra Wings + Kraken Portal

Leveling your characters and reaching certain Delve depths can put you in random microtransaction and physical prize draws (provided by sponsors)! For example, if you reach level 90 and Delve Depth 200 with one character you would be in the draw to win any of the prizes below! You can gain more than 1 ticket per account for the microtransaction/physical prizes, however you cannot win more than one prize per category below:



If you would like to keep an eye on exciting moments of the race, be sure to check out Zizaran's Youtube Channel where Skryah and OMGItsJousis will be cooking up highlights!


Special thank you to community members Faderon, MrMadakey, ManWithHat, OMGItsJousis, Skryah and Vauche for their contributions to the event as well as Viyro for organising.

Good luck to everyone who's participating!

We're in the process of deploying the 3.12.4d update that introduces the Stash Tab folders and affinities system, as well as a number of improvements and bug fixes. Check out the full patch notes below:

• Added support for Stash Tab Folders and Stash Tab Affinities. Stash Tab Folders can have stash tabs placed in them, allowing you to organise your stash tabs however you'd like. Additionally, stash tabs can now have Affinities applied to them. The Stash Tab Affinity system allows you to designate a stash tab to store selected specialised item types in. Ctrl+clicking an applicable item from your inventory into your stash will always send it directly to the stash tab with an affinity set for that item, regardless of which stash tab you currently have open. Affinities are available for the following item types: Currency, Map, Essence, Divination Card, Fragment, Unique, Delve, Blight, Metamorph and Delirium.
  
• Perception doors in Repository Heists can now be walked through as soon as the door is visibly opened.
  
• The quality effect granted by Anomalous Lesser Poison now grants "chance to gain a Frenzy Charge on Killing Blow against Enemies with at least 5 Poisons" as the previous quality effect did not work.
  
• The Azurite Mine is now capped at Depth Level 65,535.
  
• Spectred They of Tul no longer use abilities when not in combat.
  
• Improved the variability of ground textures in the Glacial Expanse Hideout.
  
• Updated the Towering Hideout features to more closely match its preview video.
  
• Fixed an issue where Gianna could fail to open a Heist door when in a Grand Heist Wing which also contained Nenet.
  
• Fixed an issue which could cause Agility Jobs to not be completable if the Job was aborted after the lever had been pulled.
  
• Fixed an issue introduced in 3.12.4b which could cause "increased Job Speed" modifiers to instead reduce Job Speed.
  
• Fixed an issue where Engineering and Agility traps could get into a state of being unable to be deactivated during Lockdown if you had previously deactivated them during the Imminent Lockdown period.
  
• Fixed an issue where stacks of currency that were converted to a different currency type as a result of a Heist Trinket modifier didn't retain the correct stack size. This affects Chromatic Orbs and Jewellers Orbs.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Jeweller's Touch prophecy didn't respect Heist enchantments which restrict the colour of sockets to a specific colour.
  
• Fixed an issue which could cause distant Delve areas to not be clickable, preventing you from travelling to it.
  
• Fixed an issue where The Purifier's weapons were unable to perform any attacks.
  
• Fixed an issue which prevented the quality effects on Anomalous Caustic Arrow, Anomalous Onslaught Support and Divergent Nightblade Support from working.
  
• Fixed an issue where Shift-Attacking an enemy with Flicker Strike could bypass Flicker Strike's maximum range.
  
• Fixed an issue which could prevent throwing Mines after using Shield Charge.
  
• Fixed a rare issue where the order, names and colours of Stash Tabs were not correctly inherited from those in the parent league.
  
• Fixed an issue on Mac where enabling Antialiasing Quality caused the game to only display Bloom effects.
  
• Fixed an instance crash that could occur during the Arakaali, Spinner of Shadows encounter.
  
• Fixed a client crash that could occur when exiting Path of Exile.
  
• Fixed a client crash that could occur on Mac when opening the Map Device.

We are currently in the final phase of testing the new Stash Tab Folders and Stash Tab Affinities systems. If we find no issues during testing, they'll be deployed tomorrow! In the meantime, we wanted to share more information on exactly how they'll work.

Stash Tab Folders allow you to sort your stash tabs into categories. This allows you better options for organising your stash tabs in order to save space and make it easier to navigate between your tabs. Any stash tab (other than league-specific race reward tabs) can be put into a stash tab folder.



To create a new stash tab folder, navigate to the tab you'd like to put in the folder then click the 'folder' icon. This will automatically put that tab into a new folder and lets you give the folder a name. To add more stash tabs to an existing folder, simply click the tab you'd like to add and drag it in. To remove them, you can simply drag them out again.

There's no limit to the number of folders you can make. You can also access your folders via the dropdown menu.

The Stash Tab Affinity system allows you to designate a stash tab to store selected specialised item types in. Ctrl+clicking an applicable item from your inventory into your stash will always send it directly to the stash tab with an affinity set for that item, regardless of which stash tab you currently have open.

Any stash tab (including free ones!) can have affinities set on it. Specialised tabs can only have the relevant item type set as an affinity - for example, you can't send your maps to your currency tab. You can set affinities for the following item types: Currency, Map, Essence, Divination Cards, Fragment, Unique, Delve, Blight, Metamorph and Delirium. While you can set an affinity on any stash tab type, only items that have designated spaces in the aforementioned specialised tabs work with the affinity system.



To set an affinity, right click your preferred tab as if you were going to rename it and select which items you'd like to have sent to that tab. Once the affinities are set, there will be an icon on the stash tab that indicates that it's an affinity tab so that you can easily find it again later.

You can set the affinity on your specialised tabs. For example, if you set the Currency affinity on the Currency tab, your currency items will automatically be placed in the currency tab when you ctrl+click into your stash tab. However, if you have a Currency tab and set the Currency affinity on another tab, it'll prioritise the other tab. In this instance, you would need to open the Currency tab in order to ctrl+click your currency into it, as you have always done.

You can only set an affinity type to one tab at a time but you can have multiple affinities set on a single tab. For example, you can only have a single tab with the 'Currency' affinity set but you could have a tab that had both 'Maps' and 'Currency' set. If you choose to add an existing affinity to another tab, it will automatically be removed from the first one.



There's an option at the top right to enable or disable all stash affinities. You can also toggle it so that when you ctrl+click an affinity item into your stash tab it will automatically navigate to your designated stash tab.



Stash Tab Folders need some further work to be compatible with console platforms. The affinity system should also be possible but will need some extra implementation work in order to make it work with the console's trade market system. We are still working out the exact details here and will share them once we have more information.

Our players never cease to amaze us not only with their builds but also with the Path of Exile inspired fan art they create. We've selected several entries recently submitted to our forum and social media as well as some Twitch clips that we found entertaining to share with the wider community.

Witch Cosplay by envatilea


Sirus Fan Art by SMOKOwita


'Hey Rookie!' by timqq


Click here to watch Twitch clips.

Last week we started our Hideout Competition and have already received dozens of awesome submissions! To give you some inspiration, we'll be showcasing some of the entries in the coming weeks. For today's news post we recorded a video with several hideouts submitted by our players since the start of the competition.


Here is a list of hideouts featured in this video:

• Luxurious Forest by TeIvanni
  
• Core of the Atlas by NinetailClover
  
• Murder House - A Place for Everyone by AzazeIIe
  
• Inferno Gate and Outer Gods Feast by SoLPoe
  
• Snowy Celestial Hideout by samuraijkeee
  
• Untainted Paradise by lexblack
  
• Exalted Space Station by Qxid
  
• Divided Hideout by unoF
  
• Garden by Elpenor

We were previously targeting a launch date of December 11 for our 3.13 end-game expansion. As we discussed last week, our new development methodology gives us confidence that we'd be able to hit this date with a high quality expansion. Yesterday, CD Projekt Red announced that Cyberpunk 2077 will now be released on December 10. We do not want to put our players in a position of having to choose between these two games, so we have decided to step out of the way and delay the release of Path of Exile 3.13 until January.

We still expect to finish 3.13 by early/mid-December. The scope of this expansion will remain unchanged. During the month of delay before release, we will start work on the 3.14 expansion.

So that you still have some interesting Path of Exile stuff to play over the Christmas/New Year break, we're planning to run at least one multi-week event (for example, Flashback). We'll confirm details of these event(s) once we have put together a plan.

While this delay will hopefully not affect our development schedule, it will probably cause our release schedule to change a little bit during 2021. We'll post details about this as soon as we have more information about these dates and when we'll be announcing 3.13.

In the meantime, let's all get out our Albino Rhoa Feathers and pray to Kuduku that they don't delay again.

We've prepared several pieces of concept art of the cosmetic effects released since the launch Heist. If you liked the Glimmerwood, Temple and Darkwood microtransaction series or if you're interested in seeing the work of our art team, check out the concept art below.

We're continuing to ask our community's opinion on a new microtransaction design. Last week we determined a Skill Gem that would receive a new effect - the majority of the players voted for Cyclone. We're getting really close to finding out the end result! Today we're opening a new poll in order to know a theme of the upcoming Cyclone effect.

Cast your votes in this thread!