After seeing so many awesome suggestions for the community designed novelty Cyclone microtransaction, we need your help to pick three more concepts for our final poll! In addition to two existing concepts we have (one of which includes the coveted Sharknado), the top three suggestions voted on from this poll will receive concept art for their ideas.

Once we have all five pieces of concept art, we'll share these with you for our final poll which decides the ultimate community-made cyclone skill effect! This is your chance to be a part of developing a truly unique cosmetic effect in Path of Exile so be sure to cast your vote!

Now that you've had a deeper look at Act 2 in Path of Exile 2, we wanted to share some awesome pieces from our concept artists that were brought to life in our recent gameplay showcase. Check them out below!

We're currently working on Patch 3.14.1 which we aim to deploy later this week or early next week. We're also preparing additional information about resource loading, invisible enemies/skills and various related issues. In the meantime, we have prepared a preview of Patch 3.14.1 for you. Please note that this is a preview only and some patch notes may be added or removed before it is deployed.

• Stand in the Stone Circle Ultimatum encounters now have larger circles.
  
• Monsters in the "Stand in the Stone Circle" Ultimatum encounters have had their experience and drops improved to bring them more into line with other Ultimatum encounters.
  
• Re-enabled the Razor Dance Ultimatum modifier.
  
• Improved various visual effects in The Trialmaster encounter.
  
• Fixed a bug where Monsters could sometimes fail to disappear after completing an Ultimatum encounter.

• The in-game Character Sheet now displays "Immune to Chaos Damage" if you have the Chaos Inoculation keystone passive skill allocated.
  
• Clarified that the Snow Cloak buff doesn't cause you to take less damage. This is purely a description change.
  
• Clarified that Fanaticism grants reduction of all costs (not only mana costs). This is purely a description change.
  
• Clarified that the "Luminous Trove" and "A Modest Request" divination cards reward corrupted items. This is purely a description change.
  
• Fixed a bug where the City Square, Factory and Ramparts maps were generating inaccessible areas.
  
• Fixed a bug where opening the Temple of Atzoatl or a Betrayal Safehouse in a map containing a Conqueror's Citadel could cause the Conqueror to fail to drop a watchstone.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Betrayal Investigation board could sometimes fail to show the correct Syndicate members and their relationships.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Duelist was unable to purchase Cruelty Support from Yeena after completing Sharp and Cruel.
  
• Fixed a bug where Corrupting Fever could cause you to apply Corrupted Blood to yourself through reflected or self-inflicted hits.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Rotblood Promise unique ring could allow curses to bypass curse immunity when activating a curse aura that affects you.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Fractal Titan boss in the Cortex map could use the incorrect skills if it absorbed too many Energy Volatiles.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Alternate Quality effect on Divergent Phase Run wasn't working correctly.
  
• Fixed a bug where unique Talismans could drop unidentified from the Temple of Atzoatl.
  
• Fixed a bug with the Atziri's Rule unique staff where the Queen's Demand skill could sometimes fail to trigger Flames of Judgement and Storm of Judgement.
  
• Fixed a bug where Tormented Spirits could use skills while possessing a defeated Betrayal target.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Hale Heart divination card wasn't counting towards the "Influenced Item" reward criteria in the "Turn in Divination Cards" challenge.
  
• Fixed a bug where Flameblast microtransactions could be applied to the Blood Sacrament skill granted by the Relic of the Pact unique wand.
  
• Fixed a bug in the Caldera map where items could drop in an inaccessible area.
  
• Fixed a bug in the Siege map where items could drop in an inaccessible area.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Sirus, Awakener of Worlds encounter was missing music. The track has also been re-added to the Hideout Music Player.
  
• Fixed a visual bug where certain item base types introduced in 3.13.0 weren't displaying correctly when used with Animate Guardian.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Blackflame unique ring wasn't applying the correct ignite visual.
  
• Fixed a clipping problem with the Deadly Renegade Cloak microtransaction.
  
• Fixed a clipping problem with the Orion Gloves microtransaction that affected the Duelist.

• Fixed a client crash that could occur when unveiling items.
  
• Fixed a client crash.
  
• Fixed an instance crash.

Ultimatum is in full swing now, so we'd like to highlight the reveals of some stunning cosplays and exciting moments in Path of Exile: Ultimatum. Check out some of the clips we've gathered during the Ultimatum League here!

Don't forget you can support your favourite content creators by purchasing an armour set from their Nexus store! Purchasing armour sets from Nexus supports creators as well as the development of Path of Exile.

Thanks for your support!

Late last year, we started a series of polls to design a microtransaction with the community. Before our artists finalise the concepts for a novelty themed Cyclone effect, we want to ask you for suggestions! If you are in need of inspiration, we are thinking along the lines of the Celestial Cat Soulrend or Summon Raging Bees Effects. Leave your ideas below and we will look through them all in and then put the best/most feasible ones together for you to vote on for the next poll!

Once the concepts are complete, we will open up the final poll with the artwork for you to choose the final design. We can't wait to see what you come up with!

In Path of Exile 2, much has changed in the world of Wraeclast, which means that the way we approach telling its story also needs to be different. In today's news post, Narrative Designer Matt Dymerski, shares some of the narrative design philosophies being adopted to craft a more immersive story and experience in Path of Exile 2.

The following is written from Matt's perspective.

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Newer players might not realize this, but Path of Exile was written in stages. When I started playing, the Lunaris Temple was the end of the game, and Piety was the final boss. Act 4 didn’t arrive until 2015, and Acts 5 through 10 followed in 2017. The years between saw significant upgrades in Grinding Gear Games’ capabilities and focus, but also held complications with the availability of voice actors and writers. Path of Exile 2 represents the company’s first opportunity to build a complete sequel story all at once. That means myself - your resident Narrative Designer - and a team of fantastic level designers, artists, and voice actors will be along for the entire ride. With that in mind, I’d like to share some narrative design philosophies about how we’re approaching the story and experience of Path of Exile 2.

First and foremost, we’re approaching Wraeclast as a living world. Allies and antagonists alike have their own goals and desires. They’re looting ancient artifacts, they’re out waging war, and sometimes, if you anger them enough, they might even come looking for you when you least expect it - because the malevolent forces at play in Path of Exile 2 are smart, capable, and dedicated to their cause. They’ll be making moves against you while you carve your way across the continent. Twenty years before, they saw what a talented Exile can do, so they’ll quickly realize what you represent. Take that as you will...

With enemies making more interesting choices, we want the player to be able to do so in kind, both to aid replayability and to improve immersion. Story-wise, we aim to give the player choices to make about how to proceed through an act. Wherever possible, these choices will also have consequences. Sometimes, you may not be able to achieve all of your objectives, and you’ll have to choose - and events will play out differently as a result. For another example, quests are being designed with all of our types of players in mind. Often, if you skip talking to an NPC, you’ll still be able to pick up a vague version of their quest from environmental clues along the way. If you manage to skip the clues as well and complete the quest completely blind, the NPCs will be grateful, but possibly bewildered. From their perspective, you’re a crazed antisocial barbarian who charged through their town, killed a bunch of monsters, then randomly brought them a highly personal item like a cat dropping off a dead bird. But thanks, I suppose?

Hopefully, these choices will help us minimize the classic RPG feeling of a ‘random walk.’ Every place we go should be intentional. We’ll hitch a ride on caravans. We’ll ride rhoas. Maybe we’ll take a boat. This expands the size of the world and lets us go to cooler destinations, because it’s not believable that multiple different wonders of the world are next to each other, but it is believable that we could travel weeks overland to reach each of them - in real time (just kidding, this isn’t Desert Bus).

This is all part of another intentional design philosophy: story through action. We’re well aware that Path of Exile hosts players of many types, many of which rarely listen to dialogue. For better immersion, we’re shifting what we can into actual events. While the ‘living world’ I’ve described is happening, the player gets to run and fight, and what they perceive about the story should be much more active. Don’t be surprised if you encounter NPCs out in the world having conversations before you arrive or already fighting the good fight. Figuring out who they are fighting and why will have to happen naturally in the course of battle!

All of this should hopefully combine to create a connected world that works so well that you can actually guess what NPCs might do based on their personality or history. The events of Path of Exile 1 certainly lend themselves to this, given that the characters involved have had twenty years to react. There’s a ton more I’d like to get into in the future, but for now I’ll leave off with an open-ended question: in terms of places and people, what would you most like to see again from Path of Exile 1?

While it's only been a few days since Ultimatum's launch, we wanted to provide the community with an overview of what we're currently working on. We don't feel that major changes to the league are required just yet, but this might change soon as it's still quite early.

Some Issues we're working on:

• We're keeping a close eye on the experience of Ultimatum encounters and their balance.
  
• The Razor Dance Ultimatum Modifier is not currently enabled. We are working on fixing up some issues found at the last minute prior to Ultimatum's launch that required us to temporarily disable this modifier. As it is required for Ultimatum challenges, we will enable this modifier as soon as it is fixed and tested.
  
• Some Ultimatum waves sometimes give no reward. This is a very rare issue but we are working on a fix as soon as possible.
  
• We're working on a solution to channeling abilities being released or stopped in-between Ultimatum waves.
  
• The Betrayal Syndicate board has graphical issues which were fixed as of 3.14.0c, though resetting your Betrayal board by defeating the Mastermind will fix up remaining cases.
  
• Bestiary's Blood Altar no longer filters the level of beasts for the first slot. A fix for this is being worked on. For now, manually select an appropriate level beast in the first slot, if available.
  
• The description for the Inquisitor's Fanaticism ascendancy passive will be correctly updated to specify that it reduces all costs and not just mana costs.
  
• We're currently looking into a bug where Quivers are dropping from some sources more often than intended.
  
• Fixed a bug where The Vaal Omnitect in Temple of Atzoatl could sometimes be unkillable.

Upcoming bug fixes that are ready and currently being tested for inclusion in future patches:

• Fixed a bug where Flameblast microtransactions could be applied to the Blood Sacrament skill granted by the Relic of the Pact unique wand.
  
• Added "Immunity to Chaos Damage" to the character sheet screen if the character has the Chaos Inoculation keystone passive skill allocated.
  
• Fixed a bug where items could sometimes drop in unreachable locations in Caldera Map.
  
• Fixed a bug where items could sometimes drop in unreachable locations in Siege Map.
  
• Fixed a bug where the "Elemental Aegis" buff from the Elementalist ascendancy passive "Bastion of Elements" would not re-apply in the same area if you died.
  
• Fixed a bug where Cruelty was not being offered for purchase from Yeena for the Duelist.
  
• Fixed a bug where Arc would still be out of range when you walk to a target to cast it.
  
• Fixed a bug where Tormented Spirits would use their skills when inside a defeated Betrayal target.
  
• Fixed a bug where Divergent Phase Run's quality stat succeeded less often than intended.
  
• Fixed a bug where The Vaal Omnitect in Temple of Atzoatl could sometimes be unkillable.

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

To download the Apollyon 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.

Ultimatum has been out for a few days now and while we're keeping an eye on feedback and reports regarding Ultimatum, we wanted to showcase some awesome Path of Exile-inspired creations from our community. Check them out!


















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.

Whether you side with the Light or the Dark, the Apollyon Mystery Box is now available! It contains 38 new ethereal cosmetic effects, some of which can be combined to create a stunning unique version for even deeper character customisation. Check out the full trailer to see what's available!

Click here to find out more about the Apollyon Mystery Box!