Path of Exile: Expedition introduced new skills and bosses, as well as reimagining the Act 1 Brutus fight. In today’s news, our talented sound design team wanted to share some of the thoughts and processes that helped bring the expansion to life. You can read the full write-up and check out example videos here.

If you like to make your hideouts stand out, be sure to participate in our new Hideout Competition! We have an exciting mix of prizes available for the winners including t-shirts, art books and microtransactions!

Top Three Winners

• Custom forum avatar of a portion of your hideout
• Hideout Competition Winner Forum Badge
• Signed Path of Exile Art Book
• Your choice of two Path of Exile T-shirts - (Chaos Orb, Shaper or Untainted Paradise)*
• Chaos Orb Keychain
• Brutus Art Print
• Your choice of an Armour Set (any Armour Set from the store)
• Your choice of a Weapon Effect (a Weapon Effect from the list here)
• Your choice of Helmet Effect (a Helmet Effect from the list here)

4-5th Place

• Signed Path of Exile Art Book
• Your choice of one Path of Exile T-shirt - (Chaos Orb, Shaper or Untainted Paradise)*
• Your choice of an Armour Set (any Armour Set from the store)
• Your choice of a Weapon Effect (a Weapon Effect from the list here)
• Your choice of Helmet Effect (a Helmet Effect from the list here)

6-10th Place

• Your choice of one Path of Exile T-shirts - (Chaos Orb, Shaper or Untainted Paradise)*
• Your choice of a Weapon Effect (a Weapon Effect from the list here)
• Your choice of Helmet Effect (a Helmet Effect from the list here)

11-20th Place

• Your choice of a Weapon Effect (a Weapon Effect from the list here)
• Your choice of Helmet Effect (a Helmet Effect from the list here)

*Please note that T-shirt style is subject to size availability and may be substituted for a T-shirt in another style. In this scenario, we will work with you to meet your preferences.

Pick a clear theme and create a hideout that visually communicates it. Then, submit your entry as a reply in this thread.

• Your hideout must be created after the release of the Expedition expansion.
• Hideouts that have previously been featured in the Hideout Showcase news series or submitted to the Hideout Showcase forum are not eligible for entry.
• Your hideout must be your own work.
• Your hideout must be safe to showcase (nothing lewd or offensive).
• Submit your hideout from the account that the hideout is on. Please leave the hideout intact until the judging is complete, so that we can check it.
• Multiple submissions are welcome and encouraged!

The competition starts at the time of this post and will end on Sunday the 12th of September at 10pm PDT. Submissions made after this time will not be counted.

We'll announce the winners sometime in the days following this date. Winners will be chosen based on creativity and how well they've represented their chosen theme. To keep it fair, we will be selecting a mixture of hideouts with hideout decoration microtransactions and those without. To help you prepare, we're also running a week-long sale on Hideout Decorations!

Best of luck to everyone participating! We can't wait to see what you come up with!

Last month, GGG co-founder Jonathan Rogers talked about the Path of Exile game engine at a local gamedev meetup hosted by The University of Auckland Game Developer Guild! If you missed it or are keen for more insight into the engine's development, check out the video below!

Later this week, Lead Developer Chris Wilson will appear on a livestream with community streamers Zizaran and Mathil to discuss Path of Exile. Tune in on Wednesday 18th at 1PM (PDT) at http://twitch.tv/zizaran.

We covered a lot in last week's Baeclast Podcast, so be sure to check that out if you haven't already. We hope to see you there!

We're planning to deploy Patch 3.15.2 sometime tomorrow or later this week. In the meantime, we've prepared a preview of its patch notes for you to check out.

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

3.15.2 Patch Notes:

Expedition Improvements
Please note, in order for the Expedition vendor changes listed below to take effect, you will need to refresh the specific Vendor's shop.

• Expedition Vendors can now offer item level 86 items in their shops.
• When offered an option to remove Modifiers with the lowest Modifier level when dealing with Rog, the item popup will now display the Modifier which will be removed, or the possible Modifiers which will be removed (if there are multiple).
• When skipping a crafting offer from Rog, the next craft he offers will no longer be the exact same craft you skipped, or a craft of the same type.
• Rog’s offer to apply a random Quality type to an item will now apply 10-20% Quality (previously 1-20%). This option is no longer offered for items that already have Quality.
• Rog now has a chance to offer to corrupt your item, with a high chance of corruption Implicits on the final deal.
• Rog now only offers the following options for Jewel deals: Reroll Prefixes, Reroll Suffixes, Reroll Modifier Values of Prefixes, Reroll Modifier Values of Suffixes, Add a Prefix Modifier, Add a Suffix Modifier, and Corrupt the item, with a high chance of receiving a Corrupted Implicit.
• Rog’s offers to apply random Incubators, Quality types or Anointments to items are now cheaper.
• Rog’s offers now cost slightly more Lesser and Common Artifacts, and slightly fewer Greater and Grand Artifacts.
• The chance to obtain Corrupted or Influenced rare items from Gwennen has been increased. Note, this change does not affect the chances of obtaining Unique items from Gwennen.
• The average stack size of Dannig’s exchange deals for Lesser, Common, and Greater Artifacts has been increased.
• The minimum discount for Dannig’s exchange deals has been increased.
• Tujen now offers more items priced in Common and Greater Artifacts, compared to Lesser Artifacts.
• The price of some items offered by Tujen has been reduced (mainly those that were priced in the thousands).
• The Remnant modifier that grants chests more Rarity no longer rolls in Logbook areas. The reason behind this change is that chests in Logbook areas drop extremely few regular items, so this modifier was not very beneficial here.
• Expedition bosses now drop more loot per Remnant affecting them.
• Expedition bosses now drop more currency and vendor reroll currency the higher the area level.
• Reduced the area of which you cannot place explosives around the camp in Logbook areas.
• Added a visual indicator to display the area of which you are unable to place explosives in around the camp in Logbook areas.

General Improvements

• Reduced the maximum cast range for long-distance skills on the following monsters: Baranite Thaumaturge, Unearthed Runecaster, Unearthed Urchin, Black Scythe Arbalist, Detonation Totem, Carnage Pillar, Stygian Revenant, Escaped Revenant, Mortality Experimenter, Flesh Sculptor, Hunting Party, Primal Chimeral, Primal Scrabbler, and Primal Rhex.
• Added crafting bench recipes for adding a specific Enchantment to a Flask. There are recipes for all of the possible Enchantments obtained through Instilling Orbs. These recipes are unlocked alongside the Rank 3 Movement Speed crafting option in Oriath (and will already be unlocked for you if you have obtained the Rank 3 Movement Speed crafting option in that league).
• Added a crafting bench recipe to remove Enchantments from an item. This recipe does not need to be unlocked and is always available.
• Monsters with the Hexfont Nemesis Modifier no longer inflict Silence.
• Monsters that cast Curses now have global cooldowns to prevent multiple of the same monster repeatedly cursing players.
• Updated the description for The Traitor keystone passive skill to properly reflect its functionality.
• Tweaked the visual effects of Storm Rain based on community feedback. Please let us know if you still have any issues!
• Improved the visuals effects of the Transcendence Exsanguinate Microtransaction Effect to more accurately reflect the preview video for this Microtransaction.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug where Medved, Feller of Heroes could deal damage after death, for real this time.
• Fixed a bug where skills triggered by Mjölner or Cast on Death, and items that trigger a skill when equipped, could have a mana cost if used with items such as Voidbringers or Apep’s Rage.
• Fixed a bug where spikes created by Earthshatter did not gain increased Area of Effect when shattered with Seismic Cry.
• Fixed a bug where rats summoned by a Druidic Dire Familiar raised as a Spectre did not die when the Spectre died.
• Fixed a bug where Implicit attribute modifiers would block Explicit attribute modifiers from rolling on specific basetypes.
• Fixed a bug where patrolling Heist monsters could sometimes move faster than intended.
• Fixed a bug where Jonah Unchained could sometimes deal double damage.
• Fixed a bug where defeating Stone of the Currents, while Voltage Surge is active and while at least 15 Flood Orbs are alive, would not give credit towards the Complete Encounters III Challenge if the Flood Orbs were some distance away from the boss.
• Fixed a bug where storing items in the Expedition or Heist Lockers using Affinities would sometimes tell you it failed as the Locker did not have enough space for the item, even though storing them was successful.
• Fixed a bug where you could not purchase partial stacks of currency from vendors with Control-Shift-Click.
• Fixed a bug where filtering items in the Unique Stash Tab and Map Stash Tab could sometimes not work.
• Fixed a bug where the 3D art for Cherrubim’s Maleficence had lost some of its colour.
• Fixed a bug where characters with the Eldritch Battery Keystone Passive allocated would sometimes play their out of mana voiceline when using a skill, despite having enough Energy Shield to use the skill.
• Fixed a bug where the audio for Lancing Steel could stutter and cause the client to freeze.
• Fixed a bug where the audio for exploding enemies on kill with Voltaxic Burst was too loud.
• Fixed two instance crashes.
• Fixed two client crashes.

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

• The size of the Royale Island has been increased by 50%.
• Disconnecting from an in-progress match now grants experience from your death to the players who most recently attacked you within the last 5 seconds.
• The out-of-bounds debuff now stacks for every 10 seconds you stay outside of the play area.

Note that if you were waiting for the Baeclast summary post today, we're still working through this but it's taking some time. Our apologies for the delay there.

We have a Rhoa Dinner waiting for you in Wraeclast because Path of Exile: Royale is back this weekend! There are no patch notes this week but we are continuing to monitor feedback so be sure to let us know your thoughts as we prepare for upcoming Royale weekends. If you are looking for some tips and tricks to secure those wins, you can catch some highlights from the Twitch Rivals event here.

We also wanted to let you know that we are still working on a written summary of yesterday's Baeclast Podcast which contained a lot of information about our plans for 3.16 and beyond. You can expect to see this as our Monday news post.

In case you missed out or were interested in purchasing another, we still have ExileCon Mystery Bags available. You can find out more about the bags and how to purchase one here.

Path of Exile: Expedition introduced the locals of Wraeclast to the secrets of the Kalguur. In today's news post, we've gathered concept art of the Kalguuran traders as well as some of the bosses and monsters you'll unearth during your expeditions. Check them out below!

There's a lot to talk about at the moment and we want to take the opportunity to have that conversation. Later this week, Lead Developer Chris Wilson will appear on the Baeclast podcast to have an open discussion about the current state of Path of Exile. Tune in on Wednesday 11th at midday (PDT) at http://twitch.tv/tarkecat.

We've asked the Baeclast team to pull no punches when bringing up topics for this discussion. The intent is to have a very candid chat about Path of Exile's past, present and future and to answer any big picture questions about the current state of Path of Exile. We won't be going into fine detail about balance/mechanics but we do intend to speak on a variety of broad topics. It's also highly likely that we'll be disclosing some of our 3.16 plans ahead of our official announcement in a couple of months. Don't miss it!

Today we wanted to share some concept art from the Expedition Supporter Packs with you! Check them out below, or purchase yours here.

















The Expedition Supporter Packs will be available until the announcement of our 3.17 expansion.

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.

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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.