Archnemesis Changes in 3.19
Chris starts off by talking about Archnemesis. He notes that there’s a big difficulty spike in Archnemesis mods from the end of the campaign to the beginning of maps, and he notes that Essence monsters are, in some cases, too powerful, and he promises to investigate possible similar problems with Beyond monsters. Even this section has many issues, according to players. The problem is that most of the problems with monsters becoming too strong lies in maps, particularly the red and yellow tier maps. For Chris to focus in on the jump from the campaign to the beginning of mapping sort of neglects the larger problem: Archnemesis mobs are, in general, too strong and don’t provide enough of a reward. For many players, this felt like a dismissal of the larger problems going on in the game at the moment.
Harvest Changes in 3.19 Path of Exile
Then, Chris went on to discuss Harvest. To set the scene, Harvest changes were sort of mentioned in a sidelined capacity, with people not expecting much in the way of changes, and what changes were expected were supposed to make Harvest crafting a bit less tedious and a bit more intuitive. What 3.19 brought was a huge overhaul of the Harvest crafting system, greatly reducing the number of crafts you can use as well as making crafts much more expensive. After all this, Chris acknowledged that, in early maps, Harvest wasn’t providing enough currency, so he promises to improve the situation. Lower tier Harvest will provide more currency, while drop rates for currency will be improved. Unfortunately, these changes, for many players, were something of a slap in the face. See, even at the highest tier, Harvest is dropping significantly less currency than it needs to for it to be useful. All across the board, prices for crafts need to be greatly reduced, while much more currency also needs to be earned. Chris’ response, in many ways, sweeps this problem under the rug, signaling to many that crafting in Path of Exile is destined for nerf after nerf until it’s not worth doing at all.
Lake of Kalandra Changes in 3.19
Perhaps the best-received portion of the post is the Lake of Kalandra section where Chris details that rewards from Lakes will be upped across the board, while and further quality of life like marking completed rooms on your map is also being discussed behind-the-scenes. This is great news, as most agree that while the Lakes are a reasonably good mechanic, the rewards from them are just nowhere near substantial enough, most especially at higher tiers where good rewards would be expected. While disappointing the Lakes launched in this state, fixes for their major problems seem to be incoming, if GGG can deliver on what is promised in this post.
General Item Drops: The Most Controversial Section
Chris notes that players feel like item drops in general are significantly lower in 3.19, which is true. He first goes on to describe the announced change coming to 3.19 that has contributed to this: reducing rare monster spawns while increasing rewards. Some tweaks to rare monster rewards may be incoming, but Chris’ point is that fewer spawns means fewer items, but ultimately, you’ll be getting better items. Many players are not reporting getting better items, though, and Chris’ suggestion solution to the problem has not been well-received either. Changes that make higher level base items drop as well as fewer-but-better items dropping from act bosses don’t feel like much of a fix for, in general, items not dropping for players and rewards feeling lackluster. However, the most controversial aspect of the post is the other reason Chris discusses why players are having problems. According to Chris, not announced in the balance manifesto or in the 3.19 livestream or even included in the patch notes, there was a “massive historic bonus to item quantity and/or rarity that applied to some league-specific monsters” that was removed and replaced with a “moderate” increase to only item quantity. It’s unclear why this change was made, and since it wasn’t announced in any capacity until players were noticing the game feeling less rewarding and became upset, it felt like a cheap change meant to flatly decrease how good the loot from a given monster was and make the game slower and more challenging. Nobody asked for such a change, and nobody wanted it, and since GGG opted to not talk about it until they had, it seems reasonable that GGG knew the change wouldn’t be popular so rather than announce it they opted to enjoy the success of a new League launch and let players find out for themselves. This portion of the post in particular is what has upset players more than anything else, earning this post the most downvotes in the PoE sub’s history.
