Over the weekend, we launched Path of Exile 1: Curse of the Allflame, and it's been fantastic to see so many of you plunging in to explore everything the expansion has to offer.
As with any major launch, we've been closely monitoring your feedback and the game's performance. We'd like to take a moment to provide an update on how the launch has progressed so far, outline the issues we've already addressed, and share what the team is currently focused on resolving.
Charts and Voyages
We will be deploying balance changes to Charts and Voyages to make them more enticing and rewarding. These changes include:
- You will no longer need to collect upgrade pieces for Vesper to enable Diviner, Arcanist or Operative strongboxes spawning in Charts and Voyages; they will now appear by default above area level 67.
- Various lower value objects will no longer be pointed to by Allflame Lantern indicators, such as soothing coral and crab nests.
- Crab nests will be made far less common.
- Currency, Scarab, Stacked Deck and Map chests will be made much more common as scattered objects in Charts and Voyages, more so than just the comparative gain in occurrence rate from lowering that of Crab Nests.
- Golden Lanterns will also grant increased Quantity of items dropped by slain monsters.
- Dead End and Straight Line charts will be made less common than other types, to make Voyages easier to construct.
- There will be between 20 and 40% more scattered lootable objects for Lanterns to point to in Charts and Voyages, depending on the specific Charts used.
- Quantity and Rarity values granted by Chart Modifiers will all be raised by 20-40%.
- We will be adding a new chest which can appear in Charts and Voyages, Sunken Opulence. This one will be coming in our next restart patch, as it cannot be deployed as part of a hotfix.
- Ducat crafting will be unlocked much earlier in the meta-progression for Curse of the Allflame, only requiring three upgrades turned into Vesper, rather than five.
- We will be enabling some missing currencies to be used with Allflame crafting, such as Ancient Orbs and Orbs of Chance.
- We will be adding the ability to open the Voyage board for your currently ongoing Voyage, to see where you are in the Voyage and what modifiers are affecting it, so you can plan your movement through it accordingly.
- We've also seen requests to allow Charts to be launched directly from the Bathysphere rather than requiring players to speak to Valerie every time. We will be adjusting this so that you can begin a chart from the Bathysphere directly, and only Voyages will require speaking to Val.
- Finally, we've received feedback regarding the Allflame Lantern placement. While manually placing lanterns generally produces good results, automatic placement can occasionally position the lanterns in awkward terrain, making encounters more frustrating than intended. We will be releasing a fix that addresses this issue.
Other improvements are ongoing, we will get as much into this patch as possible while also releasing it as quickly as possible to players, so there may be more than is listed here.
Abyss
Abyss encounters didn't land in terms of reward, and in some cases combat and density, so there will be iteration coming over the next few days to improve Abysses significantly.
Luminary and Mercenaries of Trarthus
We've seen significant discussion around the new Luminary Ascendancy. Many players feel that permanent Mercenaries aren't contributing enough power compared to the investment required, particularly when entering higher tier maps for the first time.
Due to it being difficult to specialise into a specific Mercenary during the campaign, the less Damage penalty permanent Mercenaries have compared to temporary Mercenaries now tapers in throughout out the game, with no penalty before level 45, with the maximum penalty being reached at level 83.
Secondly, we have adjusted the damage scaling of attack damage dealing hired Mercenaries, so they are more effective in the endgame.
To help players find more powerful Mercenaries, Infamous Mercenaries now spawn more commonly. This also increases the rewardness of Mercenaries for all players that are dueling Mercenaries in maps.
Mercenary skills now more frequently have more support gems in Maps.
To aid in obtaining a stronger Mercenary, while you have a weaker one, we have added a new notable to the Atlas Passive Tree that causes all allied Mercenaries to deal more damage to other Mercenaries and Rogue Exiles.
We're also reviewing how Mercenary deaths interact with mapping. Currently, if a Mercenary dies during a map, players can't simply re-enter to revive them, which can make losing a map feel unnecessarily punishing.
Bugs
Alongside gameplay feedback, we're actively working through a number of bugs reported since launch. The following below is not a comprehensive list, but some of the critical issues under investigation:
- We're aware of reports of Deadlock crashes and are actively investigating them. We'll deploy fixes as soon as they're ready.
- Caster Mastery opening league mechanic chests without granting the intended buffs.
- Allflame guidance arrows continue to point towards chests that have already been opened automatically.
- Chart storage not behaving consistently with the Map Stash Tab.
- Reports that Mana Infused Staff isn't interacting correctly with Ignite.
- Mercenary minimap icons not being removed.
- Reports of Legion's breaking out early without all the monsters or chests with reward icons having been tagged.
As always, we're also fixing many other issues as they're identified.
We'll continue monitoring your feedback, making balance adjustments where appropriate, and releasing hotfixes as soon as they're ready.
Thank you for all of your bug reports, videos, feedback and patience while we continue improving Curse of the Allflame. We'll have more updates to share soon!