Good Morning Folks. It is a bit of a rough day for the Path of Exile community. More specifically it is a rough time for the folks who were Path of Exile 1 players looking forward to the 3.26 League. While there were not hard dates surrounding it, comments made by the development team around the launch of Path of Exile II Early Access indicated that we could expect the next league to land late January or Early February. We are now in that window and there has been a growing unrest among the player base hungry for information about the next league. The new trials for Path of Exile II are almost universally loathed by the community, causing an surge of Izaro memes. One of the biggest is a thread that has been doubling the number of images of Izaro every single day until we get news regarding the launch date of 3.26.
We can’t really work on POE1 3.26 until 0.2.0 has shipped. And being honest, we probably need to support that for a couple of weeks as well.Jonathan Rogers
We got that news… and it was not good. It turns out that Path of Exile 3.26 is not coming anytime soon. Effectively the entire Path of Exile team has been pulled to help resolve the massive issues with Path of Exile II. I think a lot of my poor sentiment over this is being influenced right now by the fact that I am reading Play Nice, the book about the downfall of Blizzard by Jason Schreier. I just finished the passage last night where they talked about how World of Warcraft effectively consumed every available resource from every other team in the company. It certainly feels like we are seeing something similar playing out with Path of Exile II as it is consuming all available attention as the game that put Grinding Gear Games on the map suffers.
During the 2019 Exile Con presentation about Path of Exile II, Chris Wilson talked about how they were concerned about splitting the player base, and why they were planning on making Path of Exile II as a content expansion to the original game. Over the years of pandemic era silence this scope was changed, but effectively Chris Wilson’s prophecy has played out. There are a lot of players that did not really enjoy Path of Exile II, a largely group that I am part of that did not like it as much, and then a whole slew of players who were brand new to the franchise and have no clue what they are missing. The choice to focus on a game that is in Early Access, is a purely financial choice. Path of Exile II sold better than they expected and still has peak concurrency higher than some Path of Exile leagues. However for many it also feels like a Betrayal of the promises that Path of Exile was not going to get lost in the hype.
It is inexcusable for a player to be able to leave your game without knowing the date they are returning to it.
Chris Wilson
As a result… players on the subreddit are taking to using the company’s own words against them. It does in many ways feel like in the push to get Path of Exile II out the door, they have backpedaled on a number of the core tenants that they talked about in this widely viewed 2019 GDC talk. For the outsiders who were never part of this community prior to the launch of the early access, this probably seems odd. The thing that you need to understand is that we were effectively promised that the development of Path of Exile II would not cause the development of Path of Exile 1 to slip.
The release cadence that made Path of Exile the game that it is today is essentially built around the concept of four releases per year. Two would be larger releases, two would be smaller releases, but effectively every three to four months the player base had another league to engage with. The entire flow of Path of Exile centers around the league launch, and then also the fall off of the game after a month or two depending on how successful that league was. At the time of writing this the current league, Settlers of Kalguur launched on July 26th, 2024 and is 188 days old. Prior to this the longest league was Crucible, another league that was pushed out due to work on Path of Exile II at 130 days. They have not been able to hit the target cadence since 2021 with the Sentinel league, which I can only assume also has been impacted by the development of Path of Exile II.
Back in October, I gave Jonathan Rogers a good deal of credit for the communications and transparency when they had to push back the launch of Path of Exile II Early Access. The thing is… this video format of him sitting in the interview suite delivering a fireside chat, only really works so often. This is the fourth of these that I can personally remember, talking about unfortunate events and delivering a public address over whatever issue happens to be going on. What we need is better communication before the train derails. Even in this video he as much indicates that he knew that they were not going to hit the target for 3.26 before they left on holiday break. That is the point where you should have opened up to the community. Many of us were excited to have a new Path of Exile League on the near horizon, and as such it didn’t quite matter so much that the current state of Path of Exile II was pretty shitty. It was “early access” after all, and we had a better game to get excited for soon.
The other thing that really hurts is the loss of Bex, the long time community manager for Grinding Gear Games. She’s been gone since August of 2023, but has never really been replaced in the types of interactions that she had with the community, nor the regularity of communications. We’ve also had the inexplicable loss of Chris Wilson, the previous figurehead of Grinding Gear Games and to the best of my knowledge the last time we heard from him was at the release of the Necropolis league. I get that Mark Roberts and Jonathan Rogers have stepped up into their roles as leads of Path of Exile I and Path of Exile II respectively… but it still feels weird to not hear the iconic and much memed line anymore: “Hi, I’m Chris Wilson from Grinding Gear Games”.
So what do we know? We know that the teams are actively working on Path of Exile II 0.2.0 and we do not have a release date for that, but it will be a massive balance patch that comes with a league reset. Since no timing has been announced yet, I figure that is probably at least a month if not two out. We also know that they will not begin work in earnest on Path of Exile 3.26 until that has launched and that it has been given a few weeks of burn in. So I figure at this point the earliest we will see a new Path of Exile league is April potentially May. In April, the Settlers league will be over 260 days old at that point… so they need to at least throw us some sort of bone. Now is the time for them to dust off some major event like Endless Delve to give players something to focus on while they wait. The NecroSettlers Event was not terribly well received, and that league is effectively dead. I looked to see if I could find a pseudo-six-link helm yesterday and there was exactly one for sale… and it was 260 Divines.
In a perfect world, Eleventh Hour Games would use this opportunity and timeline slippage to slide in and launch Season 2 of Last Epoch. I do not think that is likely, but unfortunately that also means that 3.26 and Season 2 are likely going to be landing around the same time. If I have to choose between the two games I am going to be playing Last Epoch. I don’t want to have to make that choice, but I feel like I am way more excited about the endgame changes coming to the monolith, even though we don’t exactly know what they are. No matter what GGG rolls out with 3.26, it will not be anywhere near enough to make up for the year long Settlers league. This whole sequence has been a real hit to my faith in Grinding Gear Games as a whole. Again… like I said at the top I am reading Play Nice the book about the downfall of Blizzard, and I am honestly seeing some themes playing out here as well. I hope they can pull out of this, but they are essentially spending the goodwill of the player base right now.
Anyways… are you impacted by this announcement? Do you even care about Path of Exile 1? Drop me a line below.
The post Performative Transparency appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks! Over the last week, I have felt like Gold Five telling my friends to “stay on target” any time they have been tempted to buy stash tabs. I knew this day was coming soonish because there is always another stash tab sale around the corner and it is never a good idea to buy them at any other time. So now is the time for you all to spend those cash shop coins that have been burning a hole in your pocket, and get some additional stash tab storage space. However, this has been way less of a thing with Path of Exile II because so much less loot is actually dropping. Additionally, prior to the launch of the game, I took a wild guess at which tabs would be valuable but had the fatal flaw that the Map tab currently does not exist in any form in the second game. I figure at some point this will change but for the time being… I gave you incorrect data as to which tabs would be valuable. This morning I hope to remedy that.
Essentially in Path of Exile 1 and 2, there are two types of stash tabs. There are those designed to store a specific type of item and have the ability to set affinity so loot automagically goes into those tabs. Then there are just bulk storage tabs that you have to organize manually. In the first category, after some 50 hours of playing Path of Exile II, there are only two that I find actually useful. That is the Currency Stash Tab and the Gem Stash Tab. We don’t necessarily get massive quantities of currency, but I value the ability to rapidly dump it into my stash and have it sorted into the correct bins. This is a tab that becomes more useful the longer you play. Gem Stash Tab is mostly because I get a ton of uncut gems and I prefer to have some magical bin to dump them into that sorts them based on various parameters. This is only really going to be a useful tab if you are going to spend a lot of time on alts like I often do.
In the other category, you have Normal, Premium, and Quad Stash Tabs. Normal and Premium are both 12×12 grids and the key difference is that Premium allows you to engage with the trade system and list items. Quad tabs are literally just 4 times the size of a normal tab and are trade-enabled by default. This honestly really is a matter of player preference. You can see individual items easier in the more “zoomed in” nature of the normal tab, but you can store a heck of a lot more items in a Quad tab but they also cost considerably more. In Path of Exile 1 the only real choice is to go to Quad tabs for everything because a lot of semi-useful loot is dropping. In Path of Exile 2 however… there really is not much that you would want to keep so could probably get along just fine with normal tabs.
I guess while I am talking about stash tabs, I will discuss the other four types that have a POE2 equivalent. The Unique Stash tab allows you to store a single copy of every unique item in the game. This is useful in POE1 where they drop like candy, but less so in POE2 where I have seen seven… and I am well ahead of most of my friends in that count. Flasks were way more important in POE1, and as a result this tab is like a vestigial appendage that no longer makes a ton of sense. You are not really going to be storing a ton of these so no point in buying a custom tab for it. Essences similarly in POE1 were a lot more common and had a lot more varieties. I have seen six total essences since starting the Early Access, and while I already owned a tab… there is no way this is worth purchasing now. Lastly, there is Delirium, which is a mechanic you will not even encounter until you have completed acts 1-3 and cruel 1-3 and start doing the endgame content. Definitely not worth having until you have a specific need for it.
The other thing that I have had friends ask me is how to donate points to your guild. Since guilds did not copy over from the first game, it also means that we did not get to keep our cache of stash tabs. I bought a single Quad tab just so that we would have some swap space for trading items between players, but was holding off on buying more until the sale weekend. Essentially this is way easier to do in POE2 and you open the Shop interface and then in the upper corner there is a button highlighted with a green arrow that allows you to donate points to the guild. This will then open an interface in the center of your screen with a slider and a donate points button also marked with green arrows. Essentially set the slider to the number of points you want to donate, and then hit donate and the guild leader will get a message indicating that you have donated points, and once accepted those points become available for them to purchase things for the guild with it. This is a oneway transfer and there is no way once accepted to transfer points back out of the guild bank.
As far as the game goes, I am nearing the end of Act III on my Titan, but last night I decided to have a bit more chill gameplay and spent time on my baby Witch. I’ve essentially gotten to the end of Act 1 and just need to storm the manor and kill angry dogboy. Summon Raging Spirits is such a massive improvement when that unlocks, and I went from sluggish clear to pretty much being able to move at full speed and decimate everything in my way. Bossing is a bit awkward, but hopefully, that will improve over time. I am essentially just cursing things and then spamming Fire Wall, with a bit of Unearth whenever there is a wave of adds to get extra explosive minions. Since we are in a time of Guides, I am loosely following the Infernalist Minion Army build.
I hope this weekend I will wrap up Act III when I am feeling up to a bit more stressful gameplay and move into Cruel difficulty. I am still enjoying Path of Exile II, but it is the sort of game that I can’t really see playing in a league scenario without at least a lot of watering down of difficulty. Everything is a bit too slow and sluggish for my tastes, and for the moment it feels like a “one and done” type experience.
The post Stash Tab Sale Weekend appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks! I’ve had a bunch of friends asks me assorted questions about Path of Exile II, the supporter pack tiers, and what they should spend their cash shop points on. So I am doing what I do almost every time a bunch of people ask me the same question… create a blog post that will hopefully help many players. So the first question is whether or not the $30 supporter pack is “good enough” or if they really need something in the higher tier packs. Path of Exile does this weird thing where they sell supporter packs for the same face value as they sell shop currency. The cosmetics that are included in the various packs are just that, pretty things you can equip but have no real bearing on the game itself.
There are a few examples of cosmetics that grant you some nice-to-have ability. For example, I have a ring that keeps track of all of the currency items that have dropped on the ground since I equipped the cosmetic on that character. I have a map device in my hideout that I just swapped to recently, that keeps track of the number of White, Yellow, Red, and Purple rarity maps that I have run during that League. These do somewhat improve my enjoyment of the game, but they are not required to have by any means. The supporter packs have cosmetics in them that will go away at the end of the year when they roll out the next version of supporter packs. Similarly, the league-specific supporter packs go away when the next league starts. So if there is something that you absolutely feel like you have to have, there is a bit of time-limited FOMO surrounding it but it is not game-changing.
What is however fairly game-changing is the ability to purchase additional stash tabs. Once purchased these tabs carry forward for each league that you play, and when you start a brand new league you get an empty set to populate with items that drop during that event. When a league ends you get remove-only versions of these tabs in the Standard league so that you can retrieve your items. I have a lot of them, but I am also a massive packrat when it comes to gaming. I am one of those folks who install a mod to disable encumbrance in pretty much every game that has that concept. This is what I have spent the vast majority of my supporter pack currency on over the years and I have every specialty tab, as well as a number of quad tabs for storing things during the league. I recorded a video yesterday talking through my feelings regarding various stash tabs you can purchase, but I will dive into it in written form this morning.
If you bought the basic $30 supporter pack, that means you have 300 points to spend. First I would absolutely wait until there is a Stash Tab sale going on. In theory, these should occur every 3 weeks or have traditionally… which means if that schedule holds on Friday just as the POE2 Early Access is beginning there should be a Stash Tab sale going through that weekend. The three tabs that I would focus on as a brand-new player are the Currency Tab, Map Tab, and Premium Quad Tab. Currency essentially allows you to store 5000 of every individual currency type in Path of Exile/Path of Exile II meaning there is a heck of a lot of value in that one tab. Map Stash tabs are the second most valuable tab specifically in the endgame and I feel like similarly, the Tablet drops which replace Maps in Path of Exile II will likely fit into this tab. Premium Quad stash tabs are four times as big as normal tabs and also have the ability to sell items from them on the Trade website, which gives you the option to become a market baron later on.
Like I said you want to wait until these go on sale because you cannot buy all three for your initial 300 Currency at the normal prices. However, if you wait… you absolutely can. Generally speaking, the sale price is 20% off.
Stash Tab
Normal Price
Sale Price
Currency Tab
75
60
Map Tab
150
120
Premium Quad Tab
150
120
375
300
So off sale you are 75 points shy of being able to get the three tabs with your 300 points, however, while the tabs are on sale it works out to be exactly 300 points pending the sale is the standard 20% off.
So say you had bought the second tier of supporter packs and had 600 points to play with, here are the other tabs that I would suggest as useful. Essentially my methodology here is to choose the tabs that give you a lot of storage for things that are otherwise annoying to store in a bulk tab. Divination Cards are sets of cards that you can turn in for items, and this tab stores 5000 of each individual card type which is way more than you can stack in a single tab of any other type. Essences are going to be really critical for crafting in POE2 and again these store large quantities of each individual type of essence so well worth having. Fragments are similar in that most of these don’t stack in your inventory but will stack to large quantities in the specialty tab. Lastly, the Unique tab is something you are probably going to want at some point, especially if you are the type to hold onto uniques just in case you might have a build that needs one later.
Stash Tab
Normal Price
Sale Price
Divination Tab
50
40
Fragment Tab
75
60
Essence Tab
40
32
Unique Tab
140
112
305
244
So again if you wait for these tabs to be on sale, you can pick up all of this for that extra 300 points and then have some left over to play with. Essentially always wait to buy stash tabs until they are on sale because the sales happen on a fairly reliable basis. Again if the pattern holds, the next time they should be available is starting this coming weekend.
The cool thing about Stash tabs and cosmetics in general is that within reason, they apply to both Path of Exile 1 and Path of Exile 2. I got some bad news yesterday that apparently guilds do not transfer between the games, so I will have to create a new copy of our guild in Path of Exile II, and similarly will need to rebuy the guild stash tabs. However like I said above… I am going to wait until the Stash tab sale before doing this so that I can stretch my points as much as possible. If you can wait, I would say a general rule of thumb is to never pay full price of any cosmetics because there are other reoccurring sale types that cover hideout decorations and skill effects as well.
The last bit of advice I would give you is to avoid the cash shop traps. Firstly they have blind loot boxes that you can purchase that give you a random cosmetic from a unique set of cosmetics for that league. They have built-in duplicate protection so that is at least nice, but if you are patient enough all of the cosmetics from these loot boxes go on sale as individual microtransactions during the next league, so roughly three to four months down the line. So if there is something specific that you want you can just pick that up rather than wasting your money trying to pull it. Lastly, the Stash Tab bundles are only a trap because once you get used to using Quad Tabs, you will wish that you had never purchased anything but those. The bundles are normal tabs, and there is no way to upgrade 4 normal tabs to a single quad tab at least not as of yet. The difference between Standard and Premium is that Premium tabs give you the ability to list items on the trade site from them. Essentially you are paying for the privilege of having that tab indexed by GGG so that you can list items from it.
I am hoping that this has helped someone out there because admittedly everything about Path of Exile and Path of Exile II… is a lot. The thing is that Grinding Gear Games is one of the few studios that I actively want to give more money. I feel like the Microtransactions really do get funneled right back into game content, because so many of the leagues are outrageously detailed. Even the loot boxes have some really interesting stuff in them, but like I said you should really focus on building out stash tabs for your account because those are things that are always going to be useful for the life of your account. Given that I exclusively play league content, and never play standard… having a fresh set of tabs each time a brand new event rolls around is super nice. You can also keep those remove-only tabs pretty much indefinitely so at the end of a league I just dump them in a folder named after the league that just finished and ignore them unless I specifically need something from them.
The post Path of Exile Stash Tabs appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
