The past week of Zizaran's Iolite Class Gauntlet has been filled with unbelievable luck and nail-biting encounters! Check out some of these exciting and heartbreaking moments on our forum post here. Congratulations as well to SteelMage for winning the Gauntlet!

Best of luck for those participating!

Continuing our series of interviews with community streamers, we took some time to chat with Velyna, giving us some insight into what streaming life is like and other behind the scenes info!

Hey I'm Velyna or Vel, a big time gamer from Ontario Canada.

It was 9 years ago now. I was looking for a new ARPG to play and it was either PoE's closed beta or continue with Diablo 3, I chose the former and have been firmly indoctrinated ever since.

The skill tree. I have never seen anything like it and it makes me feel like the build possibilities are endless.

You know there are so many things that stick out in my mind, like I'll never forget the first thing I 6L'd. It was back when people used to do 6L lotteries in global chat. The old "5000 fusings currently used if your donated fusings 6L <insert item here> I'll give 30ex." I was just going for a 5L on a triple ele dmg thicket bow for elemental hit and I actually hit the 6. I couldn't believe my eyes. I still have the bow and wow it's stats are so bad but at the time it was amazing. Also this is going to sound wild but I always enjoyed the community around master rota's. You often saw the same people and they're working towards the same goals. Everyone knew the etiquette and there was a real sense of community there in global 820.

I know this sounds so generic but Cyclone. I've always been a huge fan of it even in the days before lockstep when you were doing /oos every 2 seconds. With the change to it in Legion it made it the most fluid skill to play in Path of Exile. Also with CoC and CwC cyclone can just become more of a support/move skill than the main skill making feel better than other CoC and CwC skills (plz don't use this as a reason to nerf cyclone). What can I say? I'm a Slayer main.

Somehow this is the hardest question to answer, my first thought was Breach because that was my first time experiencing major map density extravaganza which started the map density addiction but Delirium could really take it to another level even with the backtracking.

Your builds might fail and that's ok, not all builds are meant to succeed. Like you can make them but they might just feel bad. Also don't be afraid to ask for some build advice or go to https://poe.ninja/ to see how other people are building a certain skill to give you good ideas. In Path of Exile, often 3+ brains looking at a build is better than just 1.

I started streaming almost 3 years ago this October. It's actually surprising how long I've been doing it for now. You know it was always a dream of mine to play video games as a career but other than being in the industry itself I never thought I'd have the opportunity to do it. I had always been interested in the idea of streaming but never really thought I had that thing that good streamers have that keeps you engaged and I always get very immersed in the game I'm playing, so when I started having health issues a few people close to me said I should give it a shot and eventually they convinced me with a, "What's the worst that can happen?"

They can expect to always have a good time, a lot of laughs, some quality game play and sometimes you learn some things too. I'm usually working on some build to see if it's not just good on paper since I like to create builds that feel good for people that are maybe new to the game, or haven't been able to progress much yet, so you will often find me working on that. I stream Monday to Friday from 11am to let's say 6pm EST.

Well I used to work at a bank just climbing my way up the corporate ladder and then I started to get a lot of health issues both with mental health and chronic pain so I had to leave my bank job and ended up a hermit who played games to pass the time.

Well I still love to game off-stream but I'm also a huge nerd for scifi and fantasy books and other media. I also love history, and trash tv shows (one uses my brain the other shuts it off lol).

Animals are also a huge part of my life. You will often see my cats on stream and I more recently have been getting more into fitness and biking and my city has some really killer bike and hiking trails so I try to get out when I'm not working on stream stuff and while the weather is still good.

The stream went better than I could have even imagined, my community is the best and we ended up raising $1,640 for SickKids! They've been on my radar for a long time since my best friend who's like a sister to me has some serious health issues of her own and SickKids has been her primary care so I know the kind of work they do and I've always wanted to support them and now I had the opportunity and the platform to do so.

SickKids is a pediatric hospital and one of the top 5 research hospitals in Canada. They use innovative medicines and techniques to treat children and help families. We had donation goals for face painting me as a Vaal Orb, breaking eggs on my head and deleting a ton of expensive legacy items which I think people really enjoyed and it was 100% worth it!

My life is so immensely different from before. Before I went from just keeping to myself in my house, hermitting to sharing a part of my life and my gaming experiences with people. I've made friends from streaming, I was able to spotlight a charity that means a lot to me, to take care of my 13 yr old senior kitten who got old age diabetes and adopt a junkyard cat to be friends or frenemies with him and bring some joy to people's lives even if it's just a couple of laughs 5 days a week. It's been a lot of self-inflicted stress and has turned me from a lurking wallflower to someone who is more open to show who I am and live in the moment, however ridiculous sometimes.

I guess I would like to see less analytics, more fun. A lot of times people might choose a build based on a streamer saying it's 5% better than some other build but numbers aren't everything, like just have fun with it.

It is really difficult to get into streaming as a career, a lot of it is long hours, being able to criticize your own work and making sure you get your content out there. You have to know your audience or know what they're looking for, and trying to figure out what people are looking for is maddening. You can't half ass it, you have to give it your full ass and still there's an amount of luck involved.

I definitely want to shout out my boy Arkaynan and AphelionPOE.

Next month, I'll be doing something special for my stream anniversary! I'm not sure what I'm doing yet. Last year we had a lot of fun doing twitch karaoke and it was utterly absurd and I definitely full assed it with my terrible voice. Who knows what this year might bring. Hope to see you there!

Thank you so much for participating in the interview! If you'd like to follow Velyna, you can do so on Twitter, YouTube, and Twitch. Also, don't forget that you can support both Velyna and the development of Path of Exile by buying microtransactions from her Nexus page!

Our Expedition expansion introduced the mysteries of the Kalguuran people. Community streamer KittenCatNoodle, has created a video that pieces together the Kalguuran lore you may have uncovered throughout your expeditions. While this is an unofficial video, there are certainly plenty of interesting things to uncover about the Kalguur…

Check out the video below!


If you are interested in checking out more of KittenCatNoodle's lore videos, check out her YouTube channel or follow her on Twitch or Twitter for updates about the series.

A while ago, we hosted a series of polls for the community to collectively design a new microtransaction! This process produced great results and so we're doing it again! For today's poll, you'll decide which microtransaction type we should create! In future polls, we'll narrow down themes and various other options until we get to the final design.

We want to keep things fresh, so because we designed a skill effect last time we've removed it from the options this time around. Use the poll options above to select which type of microtransaction you'd like to see the community design: Helmet, Cloak, Wings, Weapon Effect, Weapon Skin, Shield, Character Effect or Pet.

This poll is available from this time of this post until Tuesday September 20th (PDT) next week. Note that there are several polls running across our other language news posts and we'll tally the results together to determine the outcome.

To vote, head over to the poll on our forum here.

We look forward to seeing the results!

From clenching close calls to bursts of incredible luck, the opening weekend of Zizaran's Iolite Class Gauntlet has been a ball! Check out some of these amazing highlights which we've condensed for you on our forum here.

We've pulled together some concept art from a variety of popular new microtransactions to give you a glimpse into our creative process! Be sure to check them out below!

Recently, Twitch streamer Preach joined community streamers TarkeCat, RaizQT and Nugiyen on Baeclast to talk about his blind Path of Exile experience as a new player. We've really enjoyed watching his playthrough and wanted to highlight the podcast to the community in case you've missed it! Check it out below.



Also, don't forget about Royale which starts up again this weekend! Our Hideout Competition will also end soon, and you have until Sunday the 12th of September at 10pm PDT to get your entries in.

To add a bit more flair to our forums, we've added X new avatars featuring various NPCs you would have crossed paths with in Wraeclast. Check them out below!



To change your forum avatar, visit the website and go to your User Profile located in the top left corner by clicking your username, then click "Change avatar" in the panel on the right.

Later this week we are planning to deploy Patch 3.15.3b which contains a variety of bug fixes and other improvements. To give you an idea of what to expect, we've prepared a preview of the patch notes for you!

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

3.15.3b Patch Notes

• Improved the visuals of Vorana, Last to Fall’s storm skill to make the outer ring more discernible.
• Improved the description of the Twice Tempted Atlas Passive to more accurately reflect its functionality.
• Fixed a bug where the Flask Enchantment to reuse a Flask at the end of its effect could reuse a Flask multiple times.
• Fixed a bug where additional Physical Damage reduction could cause Armour to provide Physical Damage reduction even if you had the Transcendence Keystone Passive allocated.
• Fixed a bug where Zana would not offer you another mission in a Map if portals to the previously selected mission failed to open.
• Fixed a bug where adding an Itemised Beast to your Bestiary would not unlock relevant Beast Recipes.
• Fixed a bug where Catarina, Master of Undeath could become stuck and fail to perform any actions.
• Fixed a bug where Syndicate Safehouse portals could open around the player instead of Jun in Map areas.
• Fixed a bug where some sound effects, such as the gong in Oba’s Cursed Trove, were not playing.
• Fixed a bug where filtering the Map Stash Tab with a quoted search term was not working properly.
• Fixed a bug where some modifier value ranges would sometimes not show on the Forbidden Taste and Doedre’s Elixir Unique Flasks.
• Fixed a bug where the 3D Art for Kaom’s Heart had lost some of its glow.
• Fixed an instance crash.

Just under a week remains for our Hideout Competition! We've loved looking through your entries and have selected a few more to show off in today's news post. Check them out in the video below!


We hope these highlights have inspired you! For more information on the Hideout Competition, you can find the original thread here. Entries close Sunday the 12th of September at 10pm PDT, so you have about one week left to get your entries in!

Best of luck to all entrants!