Aug 5, 2021

Expedition League Lore: Creating the Kalguurans

Path of Exile - CommunityTeam_GGG

In Path of Exile: Expedition League, we introduced the Kalguurans, a group of hardy adventurers from a distant continent. Our narrative designer, Matt Dymerski, has written an overview of creating them from a lore perspective.

This League, I was presented with a unique challenge in terms of creating Path of Exile content. The premise was fairly simple, but it was something we've never done before: there would be four entirely new types of merchant. We started with a Gambler, a Dealer, a Haggler, and one wildcard who would serve as the leader of this merry band.

At that time, the design team had also determined these NPCs would be bombing the terrain to uncover items and monsters. The question became: why are a group of merchants risking themselves in this manner? These are not the typical divas that stand around in town posing while the Exile saves the world. These are men and women on a quest. They're battle-hardened true believers in a cause.

That also meant they couldn't be doing this for money, as one might otherwise expect from a merchant. The currency uncovered in this process had to mean something else to them. As it already had to have the qualities of being ancient, buried, and mysterious, their currencies became relics with cultural significance.

At that point, we had a group of dedicated warriors looking to explore the past for cultural reasons that were very important to them. For a brief time, this fit Ezomyte lore quite well, and we almost went a direction where these NPCs were Ezomytes looking to complete Sagas of their ancient heroes whose tales had been wiped away by the Eternals out of spite.

However, we soon realized that introducing an entirely new culture was more intriguing and had opportunities for new mysteries within the scope of what we were trying to do for this particular League. Sagas became Logbooks instead. It was decided that the NPCs would in fact come from a distant continent—one we've actually mentioned before in obscure ways. A bit of Norse flavor was injected into the process around this point, both from the initial Sagas idea and the concept of an incredibly long oceanic journey for a quest. That Norse flavor gave our NPCs a unique appearance, as well as a format for the stories they uncover over the course of the league.

I wrote those stories—which players uncover piece by piece when they find ancient texts—in a way that emulated the sometimes-odd manner of storytelling from real-world Norse sagas. There's an emphasis on heroic characters, martial and economic actions on an individual scale, and lineage. That quickly characterized the culture that was soon named 'the Kalguur.'

But here's where the league got really fun to work on: being from another continent and thus far from the Beast under Mount Veruso, the Kalguur could not have virtue gems. We asked ourselves: what else are they missing? No virtue gems meant no sockets on gear. No sockets meant their equipment was likely fundamentally different. No armour, no evasion, no energy shield... the designers came up with two new defense types, and one made the cut: Ward. Not only was it on found Kalguuran gear, but the monsters themselves would have it, too.

Equipment was just one piece of the puzzle. The Kalguur took a different path to civilization and conquest, so we touched on the Norse underpinnings again by emphasizing runes. The special factioned monsters became 'Runic,' and Kalguur lore expanded to include blacksmiths and artificers who specialized in using runes as a much different form of magic from the virtue gems we know. Astute players might have also noticed that the Kalguur have 'never heard of gods,' but they somehow still have priests. Rog obliquely mentions that Kalguuran priests are more like spiritual engineers than clergy, and thus we end up with a very different culture from any we've yet seen on Wraeclast. The exotic Kalguuran architecture in Olroth's arena and various revealed sub-areas at Expedition sites also hint that their continent is dramatically different from what we know at home.

It was about this time in development that the merchants' UIs were solidified, and I had to shift over to intensive mechanical work. We've never had any real interaction during trading with NPCs, so I had to go back and forth with the design team repeatedly to build a framework that would convey the personality of the trader through dialogue without being annoying. In the end, we over-recorded in some areas, so dataminers will have a field day extracting snippets for item filters from unused dialogue. Gwennen's dialogue was cut down quite a bit until she ended up only commenting on uniques, special rares, and failed attempts at buying a Headhunter. For Rog, I didn't do extra dialogue 'variations,' so that his deterministic single line per offer type can be used as an audio cue for players who are dealing with him regularly. Tujen lost a few tiers of dialogue as his mechanic was refined as well.

After that torrent of lore work and mechanical work, there was one crucial thing left: the bosses themselves. Olroth, Vorana, Medved, and Uhtred had much less dialogue than the modern-day Kalguurans, but they were tightly integrated into the underlying history of the League, so every line had to fit. In some cases, their attacks were actually written about in the found texts, so their 'callout lines' had to contain allusions as well. In the end, though we do discover the entirety of the tragic tale of the Kalguuran expedition to Wraeclast, there's a major ominous mystery left in the wake of those events. Listen carefully, because no words are wasted.

Aug 4, 2021

3.15.1 Patch Notes Preview

Path of Exile - CommunityTeam_GGG

Later on today, we plan to deploy Patch 3.15.1 which includes a variety of fixes. To give you an idea of what to expect, we have prepared a preview of the patch notes for you! We've also noted what we're working on beyond the patch.

Please note that the patch notes may be changed prior to their deployment.

3.15.1 Patch Notes:

Improvements

Added vendor recipes for converting Instilling Orbs to Enkindling Orbs and vice versa. You'll need to discover these recipes for yourself, but they're not hard to work out.
Quality on the Divergent Flamethrower Trap Skill Gem no longer grants 0-20% increased Cast Speed. It now grants 0-20% increased Trap Throwing Speed.
Quality on the Phantasmal Seismic Trap Skill Gem no longer grants 0-60% reduced Cast Speed. It now grants 0-60% reduced wave frequency.
Maven's Memory Game no longer restarts upon re-entering the area if you died and left the area during it.
Completing the Heart of the Grove Harvest encounter for the first time now unlocks 5 extra Horticrafting Station crafting slots for those in the area at both the start and end of the fight, instead of just the instance owner.
The “30% increased Stun and Block Recovery” upgraded Soul of the Brine King Pantheon Power is no longer obtained by capturing Otesha, one of the Iceberg Map bosses. It is now obtained by capturing Glace, the Beach Map boss.
Reduced the chance for Expeditions to spawn in the Quarry.
Added support for combining the Scavenger and Overseer Microtransaction Character Effects (from the recent Mystery Box) into the Midnight Pact Microtransaction Character Effect.
Improved the Stygian, Celestial, and Automaton Necrolord Boots and Gloves Microtransactions to make them more distinguishable.

Bug Fixes

Fixed a bug where Remnants were not affecting the chance to drop an additional Map from Runic Monsters or Excavated Chests.
Fixed a bug where Logbooks with the implicit “Area contains Vorana, Last to Fall” modifier could sometimes fail to spawn Vorana.
Fixed a bug where Medved, Feller of Heroes was classified as a Runic monster, and as a result, could be affected by Remnant modifiers that affect Runic monsters.
Fixed a bug where Expedition Logbook subarea minibosses would be affected by Remnant modifiers that apply to Runic monsters.
Fixed a bug with the seed generation of Expedition NPC shops.
Fixed a bug where some Ancient Kalguuran Text could be unreachable.
Fixed a bug where Shield Crush could fail to deal damage if your back was up against a wall.
Fixed a bug where you were able to use Explosive Concoction with an off-hand Weapon and a disabled main-hand Weapon.
Fixed a bug where Manabond could deal damage through walls.
Fixed a bug where Hexblast was missing some of its visual effects.
Fixed a bug where the Summoned Reaper could not destroy pots with some of their attacks.
Fixed a bug where the Summoned Reaper's two consume skills shared a cooldown.
Fixed a bug where the duration of Lightning Warp could only be affected by the Less Duration Support.
Fixed a bug where the Vaal Ice Nova skill gem stated it interacted with Frostbolt projectiles, it does not.
Fixed a bug where the Spellslinger and Arcanist Brand skill gems were missing the “Trigger” gem tag.
Fixed a bug where Smoke Mine was not triggering the “Used when you Use a Travel Skill” Flask Enchantment.
Fixed a bug where Mirage Warriors summoned with General's Cry would not be able to use Shield Crush with the Wolf Howl Warcry or Celestial Warcry Microtransaction effects equipped.
Fixed a bug where Chill and Shock reflected to you while using The Fulcrum could sometimes be removed when killing monsters.
Fixed a bug where the “Reused when you stop being affected by this Flask's effect” Enchantment was reusing the Coruscating Elixir Ruby Flask every 2 seconds.
Fixed a bug where the Victim Maker Cluster Jewel Notable Passive would apply Malediction to enemies Cursed by you when 66% of the Curse Duration expired, rather than 33% of the Curse Duration.
Fixed a bug where Unearthed Monsters summoned by a Priest of the Chalice Spectre would remain in the area they were summoned. They now despawn if they are left behind in the area they were summoned.
Fixed a bug where some monsters were not actually frozen when encased in an Essence Crystal.
Fixed a bug where Lures were failing to spawn the correct number of Red Beasts.
Fixed a bug where you could not complete Zana's “Slay the Invasion boss” mission in the Dry Sea Map.
Fixed a bug where the Thicket Map boss could stop moving and attacking.
Fixed a bug where the Glacier Map boss no longer used Leap Slam.
Fixed a bug where the Expedition Locker Affinity was not functioning properly if you tried to stash applicable items while viewing a Unique Stash Tab.
Fixed a bug where the Heist and Expedition Lockers did not warn you they were full on a particular item when you had an Affinity applied to them.
Fixed a bug where you were unable to purchase Whakano's items with Control-Click.
Fixed a bug where mini life bars were shown for friendly monsters on full health.
Fixed a bug where the description of Winged Bestiary Scarabs was incorrect.
Fixed a visual bug where active Flask Duration bars could extend past the Flask User Interface.
Fixed a bug where the Soulkeeper Demigod Weapon could not be applied to Thrusting One Hand Swords.
Fixed a bug where Totem Skin Microtransactions were using incorrect animations when applied to Ballista Totems supporting Storm Rain.
Fixed two client crashes.

Royale-Specific Changes: (only affects Royale, not regular gameplay!)

This week's changes focus on getting matches running faster, making it a bit easier to get your build going, and some additional numerical balance. Improving the possibility for players to catch up when they fall behind remains a focus for future Royale patches.

Royale Matchmaking Changes

Royale matches are now pooled per large geographic region. This will result in matches filling up much faster, though you may experience higher slightly latency than you did before when the matches were per-gateway. We will continue to balance this as the Royale player population fluctuates so that there's a good middle ground between games starting and average latency being low.

Royale Gameplay Changes

The number of ramps leading up the cliffs from the beach to subsequent areas has been approximately doubled, though ramps have been made slightly narrower on average.
A random level 1 Skill Gem now drops next to each player when the round begins. The availability of Skill Gems from other sources has not been adjusted for the time being.
The number of rare monsters spawning throughout the island has been approximately halved.
Damage dealt by all monsters other than those found on the beach has been adjusted to be more consistent, and a bit less lethal. Most monsters now deal less damage than they used to, but a few deal slightly more.

Royale Skill and Support Gem Changes

Whirling Blades and Leap Slam have been removed. Both skills have demonstrated they are very effective against other players and, unfortunately, there is no level of healthy balance between usability and strength for them (particularly when combined with other travel skills).
Creeping Frost's initial hit damage has been reduced by approximately 20% at all levels. Its damage over time has not been changed.
Cyclone's base attack speed multiplier has been reduced to 200% (previously 240%).
Divine Ire's base damage has been reduced by approximately 30% at all levels. Its damage penalty while channelling has been reduced to 40% (previously 50%).
Elemental Hit's base attack speed multiplier has been reduced to 90% (previously 100%).
Ground Slam's base attack speed multiplier has been increased to 85% (previously 70%).
Ice Crash's base attack speed multiplier has been increased to 80% (previously 70%).
Incinerate's final wave now deals 800% more damage with hits and ailments (previously 500%).
Lacerate's chance to cause bleeding in Blood Stance has been increased to 50% (previously 25%).
The number of projectiles created by Molten Strike has been reduced to 3 (previously 4).
Sunder's base attack speed multiplier has been increased to 90% (previously 75%).

Royale Passive Skill Tree Changes

The Well-Travelled Warrior and Personal Combat nodes have had their positions on the Passive Skill Tree swapped.

Royale Item Changes

The base attack speed of the Royale-specific version of the Crude Bow has been increased to 1.35 (previously 1.25).

Royale Bug Fixes

Fixed a client crash.

In addition to the above patch notes, below are a few things we're working on that couldn't make it into this patch.

Can Rog better communicate the effect of his upgrades? We are planning to add a feature to the UI which highlights which mods will be affected by certain crafting outcomes (such as removing the lowest-level mods). In the future, we will probably also apply this improvement to Harvest Crafting and other systems where appropriate.

Will you improve the UI for placing explosives in Expedition? We are reducing the amount of Expedition ground that cannot have explosives placed on it.

We also wanted to share a small PSA for those who may have missed it: it's possible to undo Explosive placement by using the UI or by pressing shift+V.

Instilling OrbsWe are planning to add Instilling Orb mods to the Crafting Bench so that players have the power to directly determine which modifier is applied to their flasks. This will cost multiple Instilling Orbs and Glassblower's Baubles. The reason why we are only doing this for Instilling Orbs is that they have far more modifiers and having the wrong Instilling trigger condition is often worse than not having one at all. Enkindling Orbs improve almost every flask in some way regardless of which modifier you currently have.

Monsters reapply Curses too rapidlyWe agree. The most notable cases of this are with Necromancers, Sea Witches and the Hexfont Nemesis Mod where monsters are able to rapidly reapply curses. We are removing the 'Silence' curse from Hexfont and making it so that packs of monsters that can apply curses will share a cooldown for curse application.

Is Boneshatter bugged? It looks like its shockwave doesn't trigger sometimes.The short answer is no. There are some mechanical shortfalls of the way Stun currently works. We have plans to improve how this works in the future but it most likely won't happen during 3.15's patch series. We've also seen reports that Boneshatter's weapon range isn't scaling correctly. We've investigated this and found that it is scaling correctly but the visual representation of it isn't clear enough.

Thanks so much for all of your feedback!

Jul 29, 2021

Patch 3.15.0e and Royale Balance

Path of Exile - CommunityTeam_GGG

Yesterday, we released Patch 3.15.0e which introduced several changes and bug fixes to Path of Exile alongside some balance changes for Royale ahead of our next Royale weekend. We are also working on a couple of other improvements we want to keep you in the loop about.

If you missed out on getting your Rhoa Dinners last time, this is your chance to get in on the action! If this is your first time playing Royale, you can find out more about the game mode here.

Matches start at Friday 30th July, 1:00PM PDT and will be open until Monday 2nd August, 12:00AM PDT.

3.15.0e Patch Notes

Bug Fixes

Fixed a bug where Logbook explicit modifiers were not applying to Expedition areas.
Fixed a bug where you were unable to complete the “Defeat these Unique Monsters” challenge if you killed Innocence before The Matriarch in Act 5. Killing The Risen Matriarch now gives credit towards this challenge if you have already killed Innocence.
Fixed a bug where Medved, Feller of Heroes was not affected by Remnant modifiers.
Fixed a bug where the Usurper’s Penance unique helmet could not drop.
Fixed two instance crashes.
Fixed a client crash.

In order for the Logbook fix to take effect (for those on while it was deployed) you'll have to create a new Hideout through Helena, or let your Hideout instance timeout.

Royale-Specific Changes: (Only affects Royale, not regular gameplay)

This week's changes are mostly focused on increasing the variety of viable build options, reducing the chance of feeling stuck at level 1, and fixing a few lingering issues.

Royale Gameplay Changes

Players who disconnect from a Royale match will now leave behind a corpse, allowing their items to be looted.
Killing another player now grants 500 experience plus 20% of the player's total experience (previously 200 experience plus 20%).
The penalty applied to experience gain for killing a lower level player has been increased. For example, killing a player 2 levels lower than you would previously reduce the experience gained from the kill by approximately 40%, it is now reduced by approximately 60%.
Night Adders and Serpentine Constructs no longer flee from players, and grant approximately 20% more experience when killed.
Equipment drops from monsters and chests are less likely to be magic (and therefore more likely to be either normal or rare).
Monsters now drop significantly higher numbers of Skill and Support Gems.
Items spawned on the ground are more likely to be Skill and Support Gems.

Royale Skill and Support Gem Changes

Ball Lightning now deals approximately 35% more damage to players. Its damage against monsters has not been changed.
Blight's base damage over time has been reduced by 30% at all gem levels. The base duration of its damage over time debuff has been reduced from 2.5 seconds to 1.5 seconds. Blight's mana cost has been increased, it now costs 3 mana at gem level 1, and 4 mana at gem level 3 (previously 2 mana at gem level 1, and 3 mana at gem level 8).
Burning Arrow now proliferates ignites inflicted, with a radius of 15. It now has 20-47% more damage with ignite at gem levels 1-10 (previously 0-18%).
Cobra Lash now chains an additional time at gem level 1. It now has a 60% chance to poison at all levels (previously 40%). Its mana cost has been reduced from 5 to 4.
The mana cost of Divine Ire has been increased to 3 (previously 1).
The flat damage component of Explosive Arrow's explosions has been reduced by 20% at all levels. Additionally, Explosive Arrow now deals approximately 24% less damage to players.
Fireball's base radius has been increased by 3, and it now gains 5-7 radius as the projectile travels further at gem levels 1-10 (previously 0-4). It now has a 50% chance to ignite at all gem levels (previously 20-29% at gem levels 1–10).
Firestorm's base damage has been increased by approximately 29% at all levels.
Heavy Strike now adds 4-6 melee strike range at gem levels 1-10 (previously 2-3).
Ice Spear's base damage has been increased by 100% at all levels. To compensate, it now deals 45% less damage to players.
Leap Slam now has +1.2 seconds to attack time (previously 0.85 seconds).
Lesser Multiple Projectiles Support now causes supported skills to deal 30-25% less damage at gem levels 1-10 (previously 15-10% less damage).
Rain of Arrows now deals 70% of base weapon damage at level 1 (previously 60%). Additionally, it now deals 20% more damage to players.
Whirling Blades now has +1.5 seconds to attack time (previously 0.5 seconds).

Royale Passive Skill Tree Changes

The Accelerated Volley notable passive now also causes projectiles to pierce an additional time.
The Spellmaster notable passive now grants 10% increased cast speed. It no longer grants 10% increased spell damage.
The amount of melee strike range granted by the Reigning Champion notable passive has been reduced from 5 to 3.
The Path to Power, Frenetic Fighter and Endless Endurance notable passives now grant 300% increased power/frenzy/endurance charge duration respectively (previously 50%).
The Veinslicer notable passive now grants 4 life for each enemy hit by your attacks (previously 12).

Royale Item Changes

The Fated End and Doedre's Damning unique rings can no longer drop.
The Cloak of Defiance unique body armour no longer grants 1% of mana regenerated per second.
The Dance of the Offered unique boots no longer grant +50–60 to maximum mana.
The Royale-exclusive version of the "of Ease" local attack speed modifier on weapons now has a range of 15-25% (previously 8-15%).

Royale Bug Fixes

Fixed a bug where unusable Quicksilver Flasks could occasionally drop. There are meant to be no Quicksilver Flasks in Royale.
Fixed a bug where Divine Ire was unable to hit players while channelling.
Fixed a visual bug where the "Damage with Hits is Lucky" stat on the Cruel Voltage notable passive was not being displayed.

You will need to restart your client to receive the client changes in this patch. It is important to do this before this weekends Path of Exile: Royale event, as otherwise your client will be out of sync.

In addition to the improvements listed in today's patch above, we also wanted to reassure you that we're also still working on the following improvements and will deploy them as soon as possible.

Vendor Reroll Adjustments

We're changing the drop rates for the various Expedition NPC's reroll currency. The plan is that they'll drop from Runic Monsters in stacks (rather than as single drops) that scale up in quantity based on monster level, making them more common. Note that this change will affect Runic Monsters only, and drops from Excavated Chests will remain unchanged. Artifacts will also scale up in the same way, providing more in the endgame.

While you'll ultimately get more reroll currency for Dannig, Rog and Tujen because of the increased stack sizes, the drop chance has remained unchanged with the exception of Astragali (Gwennen's reroll currency), which has had its drop rate slightly lowered in maps. It was already far more common than the other ones.

We also wanted to mention that the fix from 3.15.0d, "Fixed a bug where item quantity modifiers did not affect drops for some items such as Crescent Splinters, Sacred Blossoms, and Expedition Artifacts" should make Expedition currencies more common as drops and increase their stack size in general.

Curse Map Mods

As mentioned in our What We're Working On post earlier this week, we are changing the Curse map modifiers to not have increased effect. These two changes are next up on our list of fixes to deploy as soon as feasible.

We'll be continuing to monitor your feedback regarding Expedition and Royale! In the meantime, we'll see you on the island, Exiles!