For our Lake of Kalandra expansion, we released the Knight and Rogue series of supporter packs that feature microtransactions with unique features. If you're interested in the process that goes through designing these, be sure to check out today's news post!

In the Path of Exile: Lake of Kalandra expansion, we introduced 15 new divination cards designed by our supporters! For today's post, we asked Kezlyr to share their story about their card "Doryani's Epiphany". Check it out below!



Like many of the supporters, I've been playing Path of Exile for a number of years. I played off and on before finally settling in and really exploring what PoE had to offer in Bestiary League (3.2). This was the first league I watched the reveal, read up on all the patch notes beforehand, and discovered that other people had created build guides, which opened up so many new options and ideas. At this point, I was hooked.

However, despite PoE being an incredibly deep game, it's far less fun experiencing it on your own. My brothers and I had played games together most of our lives, but fell out of touch for a few years as we all moved out and did some growing up. We talked occasionally and played some games together once in a while, but that was really it. But then we all started playing Path of Exile together, as we all enjoyed action RPGs and deep customization games. We made a guild in game so we could quickly chat with each other instead of having to rely on whispers back and forth. That worked fine for a league or two, but is ultimately inefficient. We then made a Discord server that's just us so we could communicate outside the game, share build ideas, show off drops and victories, etc. And once we had an easy mode of communication, we began talking almost daily. It's not at all an exaggeration to say that my family is only as close as it is because of Path of Exile.

Consequently, I knew I wanted to have something in the game that I could always look to as a reminder, even if we all eventually move on to another game. The card that was added to the game was the last iteration (obviously), but the first version was actually intended to be built off of this concept. I had wanted a 6L white socket Death's Oath because I loved the build, and I wanted the art and flavor text to reflect the three of us struggling to achieve even a minute victory (we did an SSF run one league and my entire league plan was to find/chance a Death's Oath, get it to 6S, then temple slam it to white sockets; I did this in 4 days in Synthesis and actually chanced it in the middle of a fight, and very few experiences top it).

Since such a reward goes against Divination policy (and for good reason), I turned to heist which is one of my favorite league mechanics (don't tell anyone, but I even loved the version where killing monsters increased the alert level). I wanted to do a card for a replica unique, but by the time I had submitted that version, someone had beaten me to it. My next favorite heist mechanic was the alternate gems, but since I mostly play SSF, it felt kind of bad to just reward an alt quality gem (no offense to that card/supporter as it is still super handy to have in the game). I wanted people to have the chance to reroll their own gems, and try to get the version that they really wanted to enhance their build or to roll the next one, which is a lot easier with a bit of agency involved over pure luck (but still some rng).

Coincidentally, I had been checking for teasers for the upcoming league right after my card was revealed. I was so proud that I wrote up a quick post on reddit and showed the card to my son (8) and had him play through the Twilight Strand before introducing him to div cards and trying to explain that I designed the one in the picture.

I know this game means a lot to a lot of people, and to me it's been a way to connect with my family. I'm honored to have a small part in the game's legacy and hope it imparts some lasting, positive effect for others, as well. Thanks for all the hard work, GGG.

We're currently running a sale on a massive amount of Skill Effects! With over 400 effects on sale, there's sure to be something that will catch your eye, so check out the full range of discounted microtransactions in-game by pressing the 'M' key to open the shop and navigating to the Specials tab. The sale ends at 6pm on September 5th PDT.

If you'd like to free up some of your mana pool from aura reservations, perhaps consider letting spell totems cast the auras for you! In the picture below we have the Darkshard Totem Skin, the Pylon of Pain Totem Skin, and the Ziggurat Totem Skin casting auras using the Darkshard Aura Effect, Demonic Aura Effect, and the Soul Nexus Aura Effect respectively.



Thank you for your support!

A couple of days ago we shared an overview of upcoming changes which prompted additional helpful feedback from the community. We also mentioned in that post that we were monitoring and discussing some things internally but didn't have a follow-up yet. We're covering both of these things in today's post.

In Delve, Archnemesis monsters with the Heralding Minions mod are too punishing. We've fixed this internally so that the Heralding Minion Mod will no longer appear on monsters in Delve. We will deploy this change in an upcoming patch.

Community feedback reports that Archnemesis Modifiers that convert rewards to quality currency and flasks feel bad. We are discussing this internally but don't have an outcome to report just yet. However, initial discussions suggest there is a fair bit of team agreement around it feeling bad.

As we mentioned in our last post, some players have noted that they'd prefer item drops to have lower variance - i.e. fewer big spikes of valuable rewards with the rewards averaged out across more encounters. This is something we're still discussing.

Also mentioned in our last post was that monsters that can't drop items shouldn't have large numbers of Archnemesis mods and will be capped at two mods. This change has happened internally and will be deployed in an upcoming patch.

We are also aware of feedback around monsters applying permanent Marks feeling frustrating, particularly in the context of Archnemesis mods and Delve but also in other areas of the game. This issue has some technical complications around it that make it tricky to improve but this is something we'll be working on.

In the Lake of Kalandra, rock formations don't allow you to hide from enemy attacks. This has been fixed internally and will be deployed in a coming patch.

Players have mentioned that when Beyond appears in the Lake of Kalandra, its difficulty to reward ratio doesn't feel right. We're investigating this.

Much of the community's feedback this league has focused on the rewards coming from the Lake of Kalandra. We're making the Reflecting Mist 50% more common while also assessing other item drops. Currently we feel that general drops from the lake are okay but that past league content that appears in the lake may not be rewarding enough. We are keen for specific feedback around which past league encounters in the lake don't feel quite right in terms of rewards. Please include as much detail as possible around your experiences.

We're making it so that you can see how much Lifeforce of each type you have available at the Horticrafting Station.

We are also aware that there is a lot of disappointment around certain Harvest Crafts being removed. Previously, Harvest Crafting was balanced by how difficult it was to get the crafts that you want. Now that crafts are tradeable, Harvest's power was reduced to be more in line with other crafting methods. We understand that there is a call for us to bring those crafts back but it isn't really possible while allowing Harvest to remain tradeable.

While this isn't exactly what you want to hear, I can say that this issue was pushed very hard during discussions to see if any compromise could be made. Harvest's crafting potential without being gated by rarity is just too high.

We are making it so that Eldritch Exalted Orbs, Eldritch Chaos Orbs and Eldritch Orbs of Annulment will drop in lower area levels. We are also buffing their drop rate.

These currency items are intended to fulfil similar functions to some of the removed Harvest crafts while continuing to be gated by rarity, though we're aware that they can only be applied to certain items and are still discussing whether similar solutions for other gear slots are appropriate. We understand that this isn't a full remedy for Harvest withdrawals but it should slightly improve the availability of powerful crafting tools.

Thanks again for all of your feedback. Please continue to let us know about your experiences - particularly, as we mentioned earlier, feedback around past league content rewards inside the lake.

Our Kalandra Mystery Box is a Mystery Box with non-repeating rewards that features microtransactions that have different levels of effects based on gameplay elements! They were a lot of fun to design, so we thought you'd like to take a peek at the process through its concept art! Check it out below.

If you want to find out more about the Kalandra Mystery Box, check out the Mystery Box page here!



















If you want to find out more about the Kalandra Mystery Box, check out the Mystery Box page here!

We're currently working on a number of further improvements and wanted to give you an overview of what's coming.

We are planning to limit the number of Archnemesis mods that can spawn on certain rare monsters. For example, those that spawn additional monsters in boss fights and those that can't drop items.

We are monitoring the current situation where players feel forced to swap items or hire a magic find culler against specific four-mod Archnemesis monsters. We don't have an immediate solution for this but we are actively looking at it.

We're making some improvements to the Kalandra League, including a change that allows you to see which rooms have already been completed as well as making the Reflecting Mist more common.

We are planning to buff Tainted Currency.

We are aware of feedback around Harvest crafts but don't have any commentary on this yet.

We are aware of feedback around Minion survivability and are making it so that certain monster auras and debuffs, such as the Rejuvenating and Executioner mods, do not apply to minions.

We are also doing an audit of all league monster skills and endgame map boss skills to check that their damage against minions is appropriate. We will lower the damage they deal against minions where we find that it is too high.

We're making improvements to how Lightning Mirages from the Storm Strider modifier spawn by increasing their cooldown and making them spawn close to the player but not right on top, so that builds that hit multiple times in quick succession are not swarmed by Lightning Mirages.

We're reducing the terrain collision size of Spark and Lightning Strike projectiles, which fixes the issue where the projectiles aren't created when casting into a wall and in some Lake of Kalandra tiles.

We are also aware of the feedback around loot in Path of Exile overall and will continue to discuss and monitor this situation.

There are other changes coming which you can see in the upcoming patch notes. This does not signal the end of all changes to come, merely the areas we have decided on at time of writing. We will let you know as more things come down the pipeline. Thanks for your continued feedback.

We're constantly astounded by the creativity and talent of our community, and today we'd like to share some of their amazing Kalandra themed creations with you. Check them out!















For clips of cosplays from Mathil1, SuitSizeSmall, and DinoRuinoTV via Twitch, check out our forum post here.

We're in the process of deploying the 3.19.0f update which introduces reductions to defensive Archnemesis modifiers, and also includes a few improvements to the Kalandra League. Check out the full patch notes below:

Archnemesis Modifier Changes

• Toxic: Now has +25% to Chaos Resistance against Damage over Time (previously 40%).
  
• Chaosweaver: No longer has +10% to maximum Chaos Resistance, or Immune to Wither. Instead, it now has 60% reduced Wither Duration on Self.
  
• Flameweaver: No longer has +10% to maximum Fire Resistance, and now has 50% reduced effect of Scorch (previously 80%).
  
• Frostweaver: No longer has +10% to maximum Cold Resistance, and now has 50% reduced effect of Cold Ailments (previously 80%).
  
• Stormweaver: No longer has +10% to maximum Lightning Resistance, and now has 50% reduced effect of Lightning Ailments (previously 80%).
  
• Assassin: Now has 50% reduced Extra Damage from Critical Strikes (previously 70%).
  
• Deadeye: No longer has 60% less Damage taken if you have not been Hit Recently, or 200% increased Evasion Rating if you have been Hit Recently.
  
• Incendiary: No longer has +50% to Fire Resistance, or 60% less Duration of Ignites on Self. Instead, it now has +30% to Fire Resistance against Damage over Time.
  
• Sentinel: No longer has +10% to maximum Chance to Block Attack Damage, or +10% to maximum Chance to Block Spell Damage.
  
• Juggernaut: No longer has +2 to Maximum Endurance Charges.
  
• Steel-infused: Now has 30% additional Physical Damage Reduction (previously 50%).
  
• Overcharged: No longer has +1 to Maximum Frenzy, Power and Endurance Charges.
  
• Consecrator: No longer has take 30% reduced Elemental Damage while on Consecrated Ground.
  
• Flame Strider: Now has 50% reduced effect of Scorch (previously 80%).
  
• Frost Strider: Now has 50% reduced effect of Cold Ailments (previously 80%).
  
• Storm Strider: Now has 50% reduced effect of Lightning Ailments (previously 80%).
  
• Ice Prison: Now has 20% additional Physical Damage Reduction (previously 25%).
  
• Storm Herald: Now has +40% to Lightning Resistance (previously 60%).
  
• Splinterer: Now has 30% chance to Avoid Projectiles (previously 50%).
  
• Crystal-skinned: Now has +40% to all Elemental Resistances (previously 50%). The crystal explosions now deal damage of equal parts Fire, Cold and Lightning damage, instead of just Cold, though the damage of the skill is unchanged.
  
• Entangler: Now has +25% to Chaos Resistance (previously 30%).
  
• Vampiric: No longer has Enemies Cannot Leech Mana from you.
  
• Lunaris-touched, Solaris-touched, Arakaali-touched, Brine King-touched, Tukohama-touched, Abberath-touched and Shakari-touched no longer grant large individual bonuses to a specific damage type. They instead all now grant +30% to all Elemental Resistances, +20% to Chaos Resistance and 10% additional Physical Damage Reduction. Innocence-touched and Kitava-touched grant +40% to all Elemental Resistances, +25% to Chaos Resistance and 15% additional Physical Damage Reduction.

Lake of Kalandra Changes

• The chance for Rewards from Metamorphs to be doubled in Metamorph Reflections has been increased at all difficulties.
  
• Metamorphs in Reflection of Metamorph now have 3 additional rewards.
  
• Halved the amount of increased life provided to Metamorphs in Reflection of Catalysis. Metamorphs from this Reflection now have 8 additional rewards, though Catalysts dropped by Metamorphs are no longer Duplicated.
  
• Metamorphs in Reflection of Experimentation now have 8 additional rewards, and Catalysts dropped by Metamorphs are now Duplicated.
  
• Legion Encounters found in Legion Reflections now have 100% increased Duration.
  
• Reduced the damage of Effigy of Virulent Undeath's Rain of Arrows Skill.
  
• Reduced the damage of Effigy of Wintry Undeath's Spectral Shield Throw Skill.

Fixes and Improvements

• The A Trip Down Memory Lane Challenge no longer requires you to complete Atlas Memories that do not exist, and the number of completed Atlas Memories required has been reduced to four. Using the /recheck_achievements command will complete this challenge if you have already completed four or five Atlas Memories.
  
• Fixed a bug where you were unable to move when entering the Karui Shores for the first time with one of the Arachnomorph Pet microtransactions equipped.
  
• Fixed a client crash with the Arachnomorph Pet microtransactions.
  
• Fixed an instance crash in The Tower of Ordeals.

Please let us know about your experiences following this patch. Thanks for your continuous feedback, we appreciate it and will continue monitoring it.

Lake of Kalandra saw a number of balance changes that were not properly communicated before release. After a week of addressing feedback with hotfixes, we have written this post to explain what our intention was, what went wrong, how we have fixed it, and to reassure you about the direction we intend to go in the future.

There's a bit of backstory to explain. I want to start by describing three philosophies that have been guiding our decisions recently:


For the last few years, we have been using what we internally call item templates to control what drops from league content. This is where a monster (often with a reward symbol over its head) drops a specific type of item when it is killed.

But Path of Exile is a game about opting-in to more difficulty in exchange for more rewards. You can roll your maps to be harder or add sextants to them. You can play with additional party members. You can trigger additional stacking league content like Delirium. All of these things make the game harder in exchange for more and better rewards. The way we achieve more and better is through item quantity and item rarity bonuses. Item quantity means you directly find more stuff, and item rarity means that it has a higher chance of upgrading to magic, rare or unique. Item templates ignored quantity and rarity bonuses. A template of "drop four rare jewels" just did exactly that, regardless of how much extra difficulty you had stacked.

From the 3.19 expansion onwards, we are trying to make sure that reward systems scale with player item quantity and rarity bonuses. That's why the reward conversion system that higher-tier Archnemesis monsters have is so powerful. Any bonuses you have from additional difficulty will affect the rewards that the rare monster drops. Additional item quantity causes them to drop more items that are converted, and additional item rarity causes those items to upgrade, which also affects the converted one. For example if you upgrade a rare item to a unique item and it's then converted to a currency item, it'll drop as a Divine Orb, Exalted Orb or Orb of Annulment.

Going forward, we are trying to make sure that as much as possible, reward systems scale with the reward bonuses you get for playing difficult content.


In fights with a lot of Rare monsters on screen, you can't follow what modifiers they have, what skills they're using, and sometimes not even what type of monster they are. There's too much to pay attention to, with too much noise and screen pollution. You cannot use appropriate combat tactics, and instead have to just stutter step or be so powerful that it's inconsequential.

Fewer, more difficult rare monsters help you pay attention to what is happening, assess it, and act accordingly. It gives you an opportunity to employ counterplay and for your playskill to actually matter (rather than relying on pure character power). It is also a lot cleaner and far better for performance.

Rewards should be set appropriately for the increased difficulty of these rare monsters.


Monsters added in leagues are more difficult to kill and drop better items than regular ones encountered in the base game. When those leagues become core, these properties carry across, creating two tiers of content, with one far more rewarding than the other.

We feel it's good for league content to be harder than the base game, and therefore more rewarding. But the difference should be approximately 2-3x. If the gap were any larger, then it would be less efficient to kill regular monsters and a player should spend all of their time focusing on repeating a small subset of content.

With those philosophies established, let's have a look at some changes we made in 3.19, and then examine what went wrong and what we're doing to address it in the future.


A lot of league content was spawning way too many rare monsters compared to the rest of the game. In line with Philosophy Two, and general player concerns about being overwhelmed by too many hard Archnemesis monsters in some encounters, we reviewed most league content in Path of Exile with a goal of making the rate of encountering rare monsters consistent.

There are three changes that needed to happen at the same time as this:
1. The addition of interesting rewards to some Archnemesis Mods that scale with both Item Rarity/Quantity (Philosophy One) and yield very valuable outcomes if combined in the right combinations to create moments of excitement as valuable rewards drop.
2. An adjustment to the average number of Archnemesis Modifiers on rare monsters to increase difficulty, justify the higher rewards and create more random interesting encounters that add variance to gameplay.
3. A rebalance of Archnemesis Modifiers to account for the fact that rare monsters now have multiple modifiers more frequently. This step was not performed until after release feedback came in. It was not deemed necessary at the time, and required extensive community feedback before we did it. This was a mistake and we should not have been so stubborn about it.


As described above, various valuable Archnemesis modifiers convert drops in a way that directly benefits from item rarity and item quantity bonuses. When we were balancing and testing this, we wondered why certain league monsters were dropping significantly more items than regular monsters. It turned out that this was due to item rarity or quantity bonuses that were historically applied to monsters to make leagues feel rewarding. When combined with the new drop conversion system, these bonuses stacked exponentially and caused far too many rewards.

In line with Philosophy Three, we rebalanced league monsters so that they were 2-3x as rewarding as regular monsters and didn't have these existing bonuses. To be clear, the bonuses were inconsistent and arbitrary. For example, Yellow beasts dropped more items than Red beasts. Incursion monsters didn't have any Increased Quantity, just increased Rarity, but Harvest monsters had both. This change was not mentioned in the patch notes.

Now we get to Beyond. This was beyond broken for map juicing, sometimes spawning over 200 unique monsters in a map. The amount of items that came from Beyond was just ridiculous. It is not okay for fifteen thousand unique items to drop in the same map. The new version is more reasonable (allowing up to one unique beyond boss per map), which is honestly a gigantic nerf. But it was intentional, and we mentioned in the livestream it was reworked, with more details in the patch notes. While we took away the extreme juice opportunity, we added a dedicated reward for Beyond: Tainted Currency Items.


We didn't patch note the item rarity/quantity rebalance for league monsters. This was an oversight due to human error, but that's why I proofread the patch notes. Unfortunately, due to the next point, this wasn't caught during my proofread.

I… didn't actually understand the impact of the change. It was mentioned to me in passing (that we were removing the league monster bonuses and replacing with just quantity), and I didn't ask any more questions. I was busy, distracted, and should have sought more information. Had I understood the consequences, we likely would have still gone ahead with the change, but hopefully with better communication and maybe some pre- rather than post-release counterbalance elsewhere. This is a massive internal communication fuckup and I take full responsibility for it.

There was not sufficient time to playtest the change properly for feeling. It is unacceptable that I allowed a change like that to make it into the patch without a big chunk of time allocated to making sure the game still feels great afterwards.

I also overstated the impact of the change when communicating about it in this post. I said "we removed a massive historic bonus", and this caused the community to think the impact was larger than it was. The reason why I used the word "massive" was that the numbers sound big when viewed in isolation, but are less impactful when viewed in context. For example, the rarity bonus that was removed from a Red Beast was 750%. This sounds big, but a four-mod Archnemesis rare has a 41000% bonus. Players have been saying we reduced drops by 90% but in reality, that type of difference could only be true in the most extreme situations involving Beyond, Delirium and Incursion stacked with party quantity, rarity, sextants and scarabs and a dedicated MF culler (peak efficiency of every juice mechanism that exists). Every other player is unaffected on average. For example when playing Breach, the reduction in currency items found is around 7% (when comparing 3.19.0d to 3.18.1f). In 100% Delirium maps, the difference hits 17%. In Incursion and regular non-league content, you'll find 25% more.

The next mistake we made was related to item culling. I am pretty sure I spoke about this on a podcast at some stage, but a while ago we introduced a system that culls some percentage of irrelevant normal and magic items before the items drop, in higher-level areas. These are items that would almost certainly be filtered out by almost any item filter, and are almost never picked up. The intention is to reduce clutter substantially without actually affecting any items a player would pick up. We have been gradually raising this culling value over time as we try to find a sweet spot that has the best performance impact with no gameplay impact. To be clear, this system doesn't affect things like rare items, currency, maps, etc. A few weeks before Lake of Kalandra launched, we raised the rate again. This means that if you're counting the raw number of irrelevant equipment items on the ground, some of the reduction is due to this harmless culling system rather than actual drop nerfs.

In addition, Lake of Kalandra is an out-of-area league. Its rewards entirely come from the Lake itself, rather than from your maps. This is in stark contrast to Sentinel, our last league, which not only dropped rewards in your maps, but was honestly tuned higher than average in terms of league rewards. Players went from receiving masses of league rewards as they clear maps to receiving absolutely nothing from the league until they travel to the Lake. This is unfortunate timing and exacerbated the perception of drop reduction.

The Lake itself was also relatively unrewarding on release and this has since been massively increased since then.

The remaining things that went wrong pertain to post-release communication. It took us several days to hotfix many of the changes in, and while we have posted about it each day, this full explanation took almost a week. I wish we could have done it faster, but we have tried to prioritise working on the actual fixes as quickly as we can. As the confusion about our motivations has raised a lot of concern with the community, I should have found a way to prioritise writing this post.


There's a lot to unpack from the above pile of mistakes. I believe that the intention was good, but there were significant deficiencies in testing and communication. I take personal responsibility for those areas, because they happened on my watch. I'm the Game Director for Path of Exile 1, and it is absolutely unacceptable that I can miss a change that has the consequences that the league monster one did. Changes like that need to be very, very carefully tested, have their consequences fully understood, and then be communicated clearly. I have let you down and I will not allow it to happen again.

I want to emphasise that our Quality Assurance team are not to blame for the issues that were not discovered before release. They work really hard and have a lot of limitations that are outside of their control. For the next upcoming release, I am specifically trying to integrate them more into development so that we get their feedback earlier during the development of features.


So where does this leave us?

For players who are juicing their content to extreme levels with six-person parties, dedicated MF cullers and stacked league mechanics, they no longer have Beyond to push things over the edge. But they still find ridiculous amounts of stuff. I have seen parties in this league get multiple mirrors per day, or find over 50 Divine Orbs from a single monster.

For regular players who are just alching their maps and adding difficulty where they feel they can handle it, we think that drops are in a pretty good place after this week's changes. They should have been like this at release, and I am deeply sorry that they were not.

Our plan is not to gut the rewards out from Path of Exile. We play the game too and enjoy finding heaps of valuable items. Our "could an alternate version of the game with extreme item scarcity also be fun?" experiment, currently internally called Hard Mode, is an entirely separate thing and its changes have not been folded into regular Path of Exile.

Please keep the feedback coming. We are reading, discussing, and continuing to make changes. I'm very sorry for the rough start, but I hope you continue to enjoy the Lake of Kalandra, Atlas Memories, and other new content released in this expansion.

We have released a new version of Kirac's Vault Pass that contains unique item skin rewards that are exclusive to this league! Each of these rewards visually interacts with gameplay in some way and will leave the store forever when the Kalandra League ends. After purchasing the pass, you can earn its rewards in the Atlas endgame by completing map objectives.



Find out more here!