Upcoming Race Season Information

Path of Exile's fourteenth race season is likely going to be called "Soulthirst", after the name of the Unique belt that is being created for it. This name may change before the final announcement.

The signature race will also be themed around the Soulthirst theme, in a similar way to the Emberwake and Bloodgrip events.

We are probably introducing a "Headhunter" race type for this season.

Dead characters are fully eligible for prize points in this and future race seasons. This means you can push ahead without having to worry about losing your standing if you die. In higher difficulty levels, you still lose experience when you die.

We're planning to remove some of the variance in the Ship Graveyard, so that the playthrough duration of that area doesn't vary so wildly from one person to the next.

The points awarded for hitting certain levels in the races have been tweaked. They're now also balanced around the least performant of the classes, so good players can hit the top level trophy regardless of their class choice. Points are now awarded in a way that is more proportional to the length of the race.

While the special races in this season are mostly Descent races, there are some Endless Ledge (including some Burst races) and Descent: Champions races, due to popular demand.

There have been many changes to the Descent races:

• The levels of many areas have been adjusted.
• The life of bosses in the first eleven areas have been reduced and normalised.
• The chests for every class have been redone in most areas. Skill gems are present in both chests, rather than being a choice.
• The Capricious Tomb has been replaced by the Mortal Tomb. This area is now filled with living humanoids rather than Goatmen.
• The Spinner of False Hope in Descent no longer hides at 50% life.
• The statues in the Tomb of Statues use ice shot far less frequently
• Necromancers in the third area do not use enfeeble any more.
• There are no longer full packs of Undying Grapplers. They now spawn alongside other monsters.
• The weapons in the starter chests now all have three linked sockets.

In the Endless Ledge, the second and third areas now also use a restricted set of monsters that don't include Act Four monsters. There's now a ramp up towards dangerous monsters by the time you hit the fourth area.

Boss races are now fixed seed (the same for everyone racing it) but without the revealed map. The seed is different for each boss race.

BLAMT races have returned this season. We are considering running a 24 hour BLAMT boss-kill race with high point rewards for bosses that are unreasonable to kill with those mods ;)

In addition to not having Rogue Exiles or Masters, Signature races no longer have Strongboxes, Tormented Spirits, Bloodlines Mods or Nemesis Mods. Signature races no longer give points for side objectives, like full-clearing zones or being the first to complete quest objectives. They're entirely about racing.

Due to the additional race points and above changes, it is now easier to achieve alternate art unique item rewards than it ever has been before.

As discussed on the State of Exile podcast a few weeks ago, there are some other changes that we'll be making in later seasons. The changes in this season just represent the changes we could easily make while also working on larger system changes for the future. I should stress that these changes may not necessarily be in for Season 15 (December 2015).

In future seasons, we will be moving towards an asynchronous race-of-the-day system where solo non-signature races can be played at any time of the day.

We are discussing extending Descent and Descent: Champions to add Act Four areas and monsters to them.

Further improvements to Endless Ledge are being considered such as party support and additional chests with support gems. The Aqueduct tileset would make a great Endless Ledge candidate.

We will also continue to add new race types over time. The team have some awesome ideas.

We're looking at changing the levels of resistance rings in the game in general so that the Sapphire Ring is more easily obtainable before Merveil. Early game bows are also being worked on.

In addition to the changes in this season, we have plans to continue to improve race rewards over time. We are considering selling a microtransaction that would make a permanent cross-league skin transfer of an item. This would allow you to remove your race reward in a challenge league, use it for that league, then make a skin transfer of it for future seasons.

Feedback is appreciated, as always!

(Also, if you missed it, please check out the Halloween Microtransactions we released yesterday!)