Detailed replicas of waypoints, beautiful re-imaginings of the Maven and even kitchen knives made of felt! These are just a few examples of the incredible creations our community regularly post in our forums. We’ve gathered these artworks and more in today’s news post to share with you all. Check them out below!





























We love seeing your creativity in action so if you’d like to share any artwork or fan art with us and your fellow Exiles, please post your submissions on the Community Showcase forum or our subreddit.

Our recently released Core Supporter Packs were inspired by popular Path of Exile leagues from the past, with the highest tier supporter pack celebrating the introduction of the Envoy from the most recent Echoes of the Atlas expansion. Today, we have gathered concept art of these packs to give you a glimpse into how some of your favourite past leagues were reimagined.



































The Atlas Supporter Pack includes a signed print art pack featuring concept art like you have seen above for each of the five Core Supporter Packs. To purchase or upgrade your supporter pack, click here. Thank you so much for your continued support!

We’ve been preparing an update with a number of bug fixes and improvements to the Ritual league and Echoes of the Atlas expansion. We’re planning to deploy it by the end of this working week or early next week. In the meantime, you can check out a preview of the patch notes below.

Please note that the patch notes below may be changed prior to the release of the 3.13.1 update.

Ritual Improvements

• The Ritual Tribute counter will now be displayed at a greater radius around Ritual Altars.
  
• The Ritual Favours screen now displays a more appropriate message if a party member who is not the instance owner attempts to purchase Favours.
  
• Legion monsters are no longer revived in Ritual encounters.
  
• Monsters that spawn from Bitter and Glacial Rituals will now be further spread out.
  
• Fixed a bug where the fourth Ritual in a zone would sometimes provide less Tribute than intended.
• Fixed a bug which required nearby Legion encounters to be completed before a Ritual encounter could be interacted with.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Ritual Tribute screen could not be opened via the 'V' shortcut key if Alva was present in the instance.
  
• Fixed a visual bug where Ritual candles would sometimes appear to be floating.
  
• Fixed a bug where the boss arena in Lookout Map would not re-open after completing a Ritual encounter in the arena.
  
• Fixed a bug where an incorrect amount of Rituals remaining would be displayed if re-entering an instance.
  
• Fixed a bug where monsters could become inaccessible behind terrain during Ritual encounters.

Echoes of the Atlas Improvements

• Improved performance during The Maven boss encounter.
  
• Fixed a bug where Maven's Beacon could be obtained earlier than intended when playing in a party.
  
• Maven's Invitations are now a guaranteed drop upon capturing the 10th boss in an Atlas region for the first time.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Silo Map boss could become invulnerable while the player is being witnessed by The Maven.
  
• Fixed a bug where The Maven's Quick Guard skill was not working as intended in areas which were level 84 or higher.
  
• Fixed a bug where The Maven would sometimes fail to use her skills correctly when witnessing a map boss encounter.

General Improvements

• Items with anointed notable passive skills now show their passive skill information when hovered.
  
• Improved readability when hovering over a map on the Atlas which has a large amount of modifiers.
  
• Re-entering the Crimson Township Map boss arena after leaving or dying is now less punishing.
  
• Animate Weapon microtransactions can now be applied to weapons animated via the Chains of Command unique body armour.
  
• Aura microtransactions can now be applied to Aura effects granted by unique items that do not have a skill gem.
  
• Fixed a bug where Sirus' beam skills were not being oriented correctly.
  
• Fixed a bug where certain doors in Heists could not be walked through after the doors were opened.
  
• Fixed a bug where Vaal Arc was not chaining correctly.
  
• Fixed a bug where the "Attack Skills deal x% increased Damage while Dual Wielding" modifier was not working correctly.
  
• Fixed a bug where the quality effect on Divergent Withering Touch Support didn't work correctly.
  
• Fixed a bug where the boss arena in Cold River Map would remain closed after completing a Conqueror encounter.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Primeval Hideout could sometimes not be fully cleared.
  
• Fixed a bug where a minion that died to Minion Instability would sometimes count as two deaths.
  
• Fixed a source of desync when using Chain Hook.
  
• Fixed a bug where Silver Coins were not dropping as Contraband in Heists.
  
• Fixed a bug where Syndicate Operatives would incorrectly run into melee range before throwing their daggers.
  
• Fixed a bug where certain Aura microtransactions were not using the correct surge.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Manticore Shield was missing visual effects.
  
• Fixed a visual bug in Peninsula Map where certain tiles could become invisible.

Texture Streaming Improvements

• Texture streaming has been updated to lessen CPU usage and improve overall performance on weaker systems.
  
• The High texture quality option has been re-enabled for players on the Vulkan client with 3000mb of Video RAM or less (this is not recommended, however).

Crash Fixes

• Fixed a common client crash.
  
• Fixed two instance crashes.

In Echoes of the Atlas we introduced a character called the Envoy, a cryptic character of unknown but distant origin. Today, Senior Narrative Designer, Nick Kolan is going to explore what went into creating the Envoy.

---

I have talked previously (albeit in vague terms) about our narrative plans for the Atlas, and trying to reestablish a sense of eldritch, unknown horror in Path of Exile's endgame. The Envoy, one of two new characters introduced in Echoes of the Atlas (the other being the Maven), is one of the ways we are injecting some of that horror.

The Envoy's role in Echoes of the Atlas is to initially foreshadow the arrival of the Maven, and specifically warn you of your first upcoming boss encounter where she's present. From both a mechanical and narrative standpoint, it is important that players don't find themselves surprisingly overwhelmed by what the Maven adds to the boss fight. Narratively, however, the Envoy serves a larger purpose of beginning to illustrate, in florid and opaque language, the broader unknown and dangerous universe the Atlas seems to reside in.

We made a few decisions to make the Envoy stand out a little bit when compared to, say, the journals left by the Conquerors. First, his appearances are unpredictable and infrequent. You don't know when he will show up, nor where in a map he may be. He's not an enemy, either -- merely a messenger.

The things he says are also randomised, and are spoken based on proximity rather than player input. When he does show up, unlike nearly every other NPC in Path of Exile, the Envoy's voice plays at a level volume regardless of your distance from him. This was an intentional decision to set him apart, both from other NPCs and the land surrounding him.

The broad intent was to provide interesting, flavourful glimpses of what may lurk beyond the borders of the Atlas. Though these little lore chunks are told nonlinearly, there are actually a few little cohesive stories he is telling, about his own origin and history, that of the Maven, and of several other entities.

But, we also didn't want you to necessarily be hit by a bunch of incomprehensible lore as soon as you meet the Envoy, and wanted to ensure that the sense of discovery and pulling back the veil could be sustained for long enough that you'd be surprised when, a few hundred hours in, you may still find yourself hearing new lore tidbits. So the Envoy's lore is divided into five tiers, with new dialogue added to the pool based on the number of Atlas passives you've unlocked.

An NPC is often made or broken by its voice actor, and in the Envoy's case, Matt Sunderland knocked it out of the park. He struck a balance between distant neutrality and haunting foreshadowing that, when combined with the lovely echoes of certain words layered into the dialogue, really gives the Envoy a tone unlike any other.

The lore the Envoy touches upon hopefully paints a vicious and vengeful universe beginning to bear down upon the visitors to the Atlas -- themes I am sure we will explore more in the future.

If you are looking to add some dramatic flair to your playlists, then we have the perfect track for you! The Warlord Mystery Box soundtrack is now available as a free download. You can find the links below.

To download the Warlord Mystery Box soundtrack, click (or Right-click, “Save link as”) on the file type you prefer: .flac or .mp3.

We know how much you love our composer Kamil’s music, so if you can’t get enough, check out his Soundcloud here or YouTube channel.

We cannot believe how creative our community is! For today’s news post, we wanted to share amazing pieces of Path of Exile-inspired fan art created by our community. Check them out below.
















We can’t wait to see what else our players come up with next. If you’d like to share any artwork or fan art with us and your fellow Exiles, please post your submissions on the Community Showcase forum or our subreddit.

We're on day five since the launch of Echoes of the Atlas and it's time to give you an update on how this week has gone and discuss some key talking points. We're really pleased with the feedback we've seen so far! As we mentioned a few days ago, the Echoes of the Atlas launch hit a new peak concurrency of 265,250 which is up 11% on our previous record of 237,160!

We've already deployed 6 hotfixes to the PC realm. You can view a summary of their collective patch notes below. Later this week, we'll deploy a patch that requires a realm restart and includes various fixes and improvements that can't be deployed in a hotfix. We'll outline what to expect further into this post.

Hotfix Patch Notes

• Fixed several instance crashes.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to see hidden Ritual rewards (the ones that unlock as you complete more Rituals in an area).
  
• Fixed several client crashes.
  
• Players with 3000mb of Video RAM or less are now capped at Medium texture quality with the Vulkan client, which prevents crashes. We will undo this change when we make some other Vulkan improvements within a few weeks.
  
• Fixed a bug where party member names would not appear on the minimap.
  
• Fixed a bug where quest Watchstones could be seen and picked up by party members.
  
• Fixed a bug where Heist NPCs were not being introduced.
  
• Fixed a bug where Sirus the Awakener wasn't dropping any Unique Items if your Awakening Level was between 1 and 7.
  
• The number of Rituals remaining is now shown near the Ritual Button.
  
• The special Vaal Rituals used to offer items with a high variance of Tribute costs (from very low to very high). This has now been capped to never be higher than other rituals.
  
• Fixed a bug where Betrayal doors and Legion chests could be respawned in Ritual encounters.
  
• Fixed a bug where players could sometimes not progress if a Ritual spawned in a pit fight in Daresso's Dream.
  
• Substantially reduced the damage of rare monsters dominated by Sirus.
  
• Reduced the damage done by The Maven's volatile orb explosions.
  
• Increased the number of nearby enemies required for Sirus to spawn and attack the player during Sirus influence takeovers from 1 to 10.
  
• The 'Contract: Trial Run' Heist quest contract now contains less valuable rewards.
  
• Fixed a bug introduced in 3.13.0 where Increases and Reductions to Spell Damage weren't applying to Kinetic Bolt's Attack Damage.
  
• Fixed a bug where 'More Spell Damage' modifiers from support gems weren't applying to Damage over Time skills unless they had hit an enemy.
  
• Fixed a bug where unique maps could drop from story bosses.
  
• Fixed a bug with the Corruption Altar not producing white sockets.
  
• Fixed a bug with the Domain of Timeless Conflict not scaling with additional emblems in the Map Device.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Maven Map Device button could be enabled but would not display.
  
• Fixed a bug with the positioning of party members' names on the minimap.
  
• Fixed a bug with the Nightfall Flame Dash Microtransaction effect sometimes showing a black box.
  
• Fixed two instance crashes.
  
• Fixed a client crash related to Harvest objects.
  
• Fixed a common client crash.

The above fixes are already live.

The day after the launch of Echoes of the Atlas we outlined some server and database issues that we were experiencing. You can check out the full details of this here.

We have made some big improvements so far and the problems are almost entirely fixed. We're still investigating a few cases of users being occasionally disconnected, and are working on improving our capacity for future launches.

As a consequence of our changes, it now takes five minutes (rather than two) for a player's online status to change on the trade site API.

The feedback to the Ritual Challenge League has been largely very positive and we're extremely pleased to see the community diving deep into its mechanics. We've noted some common feedback and will outline our responses below.

Add the ability to track which items have been deferred

We considered this but decided against it. It is too complicated and we feel it is not worth the significant development effort.

Don't show me items I can't afford to defer

The way that Ritual works is that you have a random number of monsters per Ritual per area and a randomly drawn pool of rewards with a floating Tribute rate. Because of this, in a few cases you might get a situation where the area spawned an expensive reward alongside a number of monsters that mean you can't generate enough tribute to defer that particular item. This is fortunately not too common but unfortunately there's no way to easily fix this without making Rituals more static and predictable.

In some rare cases, this may be caused by players only getting one Ritual site in an area. We haven't been able to reproduce this as a cause. If you find this happens for you, please report it by typing /bug when you experience the issue and taking a screenshot to share on the bug report forum. (Note that typing /bug automatically reports the issue to us but posting the screenshot with additional information is very helpful.)

We have modified the special Vaal Rituals that used to have a chance to make items very expensive. They only make them cheaper now.

Add a visual indicator to lead you to each Ritual site

At the moment, Rituals already appear on your minimap once you're a certain distance away from them. Generally speaking, our philosophy is that you should explore and discover the mechanics within an area as part of the gameplay experience. This also becomes less of a problem once you're playing Ritual in maps as most players aim to full-clear map zones to maximise their rewards.

In some areas, Ritual monsters get stuck behind walls making it hard to complete them

In a small number of cases, there are monsters that can teleport to inaccessible locations. We're planning to add a system that periodically checks that remaining monsters have the ability to walk to the centre of the Ritual. If it finds some that can't, it'll pull them into the middle. This would most likely be deployed some time next week.

Can we have a reminder to spend our Tribute before we leave an area?

We've discussed this as an option but there's no elegant and time-efficient way to do this, unfortunately.

Can I lose my deferred item if I skip interacting with Ritual for a few areas?

If you don't re-defer an item, it will gradually become more expensive until it is back at its original price, and then it'll stop showing up any more. This process only happens if you interact with at least one Ritual in the area (so that if you briefly duck into the area, you don't risk affecting any deferred items).

Have I lost my deferred item?

Probably not, unless you've forgotten to spend your Tribute at the end of an area. When you defer an item, it will return in a random later area. Sometimes this is shortly after and sometimes it can take many areas before you'll see it again (depending on its value). This is an intended part of the design.

Are deferred items per-account or per-character?

They are per-character.

Some Harvest crafts can't be used in your hideout

This is an unfortunate technical limitation for a small number of crafts which require the results to be dropped on the ground. The current workaround is to take advantage of these crafts within the Sacred Grove itself, either immediately or from the horticrafting station available within the grove. Longer term, we’re looking at a solution involving these items being placed in your inventory instead of dropped on the ground.

Can we get a guaranteed invite for 10-boss fights?

We're changing this so that if you haven't completed a 10-boss fight in a region yet you'll automatically get a key for that fight when you capture your 10th boss in that region.

Can we have the option to disable the effect of Atlas Passives per map?

We are discussing this as an option but don't have any updates to report yet.

I don't like that I can't see my microtransactions when I have permanent phasing

We will disable the phasing visual effect when you have this skill allocated. Its primary purpose is seeing when you have phasing, but because it is permanent with this skill, it isn't really necessary.

Texture streaming

In 3.13.0 we improved how texture streaming works. This system uses low-resolution textures temporarily until the full textures are loaded, which helps with performance for people who have lower-end computers. Some players are reporting that this is causing performance issues for them. While we are working to further improve how texture streaming works, this shouldn't be the cause of any added performance issues.

If you're experiencing issues loading into particular areas, this is likely due to a memory leak issue that we are also currently investigating or perhaps another issue that we are unaware of.

Please report your experiences on the bug report forum with as many details about your computer specs as possible.

Why is the Trade website slow?

The site is under an extremely heavy load due to the high population and number of requests being made. Additionally, we periodically run a process that backs up the trade site and recently this process has temporarily pushed the trade site past its capacity. We have improved the back-up process so that this is smoother. You'll also note that it now takes around 5 minutes to appear online or offline on the trade site. This is currently in place to help mitigate the database issues we had earlier this week.

Crashes

We've resolved many of the most common crashes players have experienced since launch. We are continuing to investigate and resolve any others that persist. If you are experiencing this, please email customer support with your dxdiag file.

To generate a DXDiag report, please follow these steps:

• 1) Press the windows key + R on your keyboard to bring up the Run dialogue box
  
• 2) Type dxdiag into the Run dialogue box and press enter
  
• 3) When the DXDiag application starts up, press the Save All Information button in the bottom right and save the report to your desktop to email through to us at support@grindingear.com

When I use a portal microtransaction, a different one than expected appears

This is happening with a small number of microtransactions. We expect this to be resolved in our next restart patch.

I can't open the Ritual Reward Screen with V if Alva is in my instance

This should be resolved in our next restart patch.

I can't start a Ritual if there is a Legion Monolith nearby

We have a fix for this internally but are still testing it so we don't have a timeline just yet.

The Silo map boss is invulnerable after being healed by the Maven

This should be resolved in our next restart patch.

Vaal Arc is not chaining correctly

This should be resolved in our next restart patch.

Over the weekend, we launched the Echoes of the Atlas endgame expansion and Ritual Challenge League with a record-number of exiles returning to Wraeclast in hopes of appeasing the Maven. Our community has already captured so many exciting and interesting moments that we wanted to share some with you today. You can check them out here!

Thanks so much for your ongoing feedback and support!

The Warlord Mystery Box is now available! It contains 38 new brutal-looking cosmetic effects, many of which can be combined to create an epic blended version of the two designs for even deeper character customisation. Check out the to see what's available!

Our 3.13.0 expansion, the Echoes of the Atlas, launches in less than a day! We're excited to see you completing Rituals in order to receive valuable rewards and challenging yourselves in dangerous endgame encounters with The Maven. In this news post we've gathered all the information you'll need to know about what happens on launch day .

The realm goes down and patching begins at 8am 15 January PST
The servers go live at 11am 15 January PST

The patch size for the update will be around 13GB on the Steam client.

If you're looking for some extra character slots for the launch, we're running a sale on these right now! This is also your last chance to get Twilight Mystery Boxes! It will leave the store when our next mystery box becomes available! Keep in mind that if you haven't taken advantage of it yet, it's still possible to get a free Twilight Mystery Box when you spend any amount of points in the store. NOTE: this is only possible once per account. Additional purchases do not grant additional mystery boxes. If you need some extra points, we recommend checking out the Ritual supporter packs.

By the way, we've added the full list of Atlas passives including small nodes in this news post so you can have it handy in one place.

In case you still haven't decided which build to play with, check out the Class subsections on the forum for suggestions from the community. Many of our community streamers are also providing build guides on YouTube.

For those of you who want to compete with other players in the upcoming expansion, Zizaran has organised the HC SSF Maven Kill Event which starts alongside the release of the expansion! The prize pool includes $40,000USD cash as well as microtransaction prizes. Find out more in this news post. We will update the post with an additional prize pool for console players next week.

If you're not able to play the game on launch day, be sure to check out our community streamers on Twitch! See you at launch!