We're on day five since the launch of Echoes of the Atlas and it's time to give you an update on how this week has gone and discuss some key talking points. We're really pleased with the feedback we've seen so far! As we mentioned a few days ago, the Echoes of the Atlas launch hit a new peak concurrency of 265,250 which is up 11% on our previous record of 237,160!

3.13 Patches

We've already deployed 6 hotfixes to the PC realm. You can view a summary of their collective patch notes below. Later this week, we'll deploy a patch that requires a realm restart and includes various fixes and improvements that can't be deployed in a hotfix. We'll outline what to expect further into this post.

Hotfix Patch Notes

• Fixed several instance crashes.
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to see hidden Ritual rewards (the ones that unlock as you complete more Rituals in an area).
• Fixed several client crashes.
• Players with 3000mb of Video RAM or less are now capped at Medium texture quality with the Vulkan client, which prevents crashes. We will undo this change when we make some other Vulkan improvements within a few weeks.
• Fixed a bug where party member names would not appear on the minimap.
• Fixed a bug where quest Watchstones could be seen and picked up by party members.
• Fixed a bug where Heist NPCs were not being introduced.
• Fixed a bug where Sirus the Awakener wasn't dropping any Unique Items if your Awakening Level was between 1 and 7.
• The number of Rituals remaining is now shown near the Ritual Button.
• The special Vaal Rituals used to offer items with a high variance of Tribute costs (from very low to very high). This has now been capped to never be higher than other rituals.
• Fixed a bug where Betrayal doors and Legion chests could be respawned in Ritual encounters.
• Fixed a bug where players could sometimes not progress if a Ritual spawned in a pit fight in Daresso's Dream.
• Substantially reduced the damage of rare monsters dominated by Sirus.
• Reduced the damage done by The Maven's volatile orb explosions.
• Increased the number of nearby enemies required for Sirus to spawn and attack the player during Sirus influence takeovers from 1 to 10.
• The 'Contract: Trial Run' Heist quest contract now contains less valuable rewards.
• Fixed a bug introduced in 3.13.0 where Increases and Reductions to Spell Damage weren't applying to Kinetic Bolt's Attack Damage.
• Fixed a bug where 'More Spell Damage' modifiers from support gems weren't applying to Damage over Time skills unless they had hit an enemy.
• Fixed a bug where unique maps could drop from story bosses.
• Fixed a bug with the Corruption Altar not producing white sockets.
• Fixed a bug with the Domain of Timeless Conflict not scaling with additional emblems in the Map Device.
• Fixed a bug where the Maven Map Device button could be enabled but would not display.
• Fixed a bug with the positioning of party members' names on the minimap.
• Fixed a bug with the Nightfall Flame Dash Microtransaction effect sometimes showing a black box.
• Fixed two instance crashes.
• Fixed a client crash related to Harvest objects.
• Fixed a common client crash.

The above fixes are already live.

Server and Database Issues

The day after the launch of Echoes of the Atlas we outlined some server and database issues that we were experiencing. You can check out the full details of this here.

We have made some big improvements so far and the problems are almost entirely fixed. We're still investigating a few cases of users being occasionally disconnected, and are working on improving our capacity for future launches.

As a consequence of our changes, it now takes five minutes (rather than two) for a player's online status to change on the trade site.

Console Launch

On January 20th at Noon (PST), we'll launch the Echoes of the Atlas expansion Xbox One and Playstation. This will include various hotfixes that have been deployed to the PC realm and also enable the Core Supporter Packs, Ritual Supporter Packs* and Warlord Mystery Box.

*Note that the Ritual Supporter Packs will appear five days later on PlayStation.

Ritual Feedback

The feedback to the Ritual Challenge League has been largely very positive and we're extremely pleased to see the community diving deep into its mechanics. We've noted some common feedback and will outline our responses below.

Add the ability to track which items have been deferred
We considered this but decided against it. It is too complicated and we feel it is not worth the significant development effort.

Don't show me items I can't afford to defer
The way that Ritual works is that you have a random number of monsters per Ritual per area and a randomly drawn pool of rewards with a floating Tribute rate. Because of this, in a few cases you might get a situation where the area spawned an expensive reward alongside a number of monsters that mean you can't generate enough tribute to defer that particular item. This is fortunately not too common but unfortunately there's no way to easily fix this without making Rituals more static and predictable.

In some rare cases, this may be caused by players only getting one Ritual site in an area. We haven't been able to reproduce this as a cause. If you find this happens for you, please report it by typing /bug when you experience the issue and taking a screenshot to share on the bug report forum. (Note that typing /bug automatically reports the issue to us but posting the screenshot with additional information is very helpful.)

We have modified the special Vaal Rituals that used to have a chance to make items very expensive. They only make them cheaper now.

Add a visual indicator to lead you to each Ritual site
At the moment, Rituals already appear on your minimap once you're a certain distance away from them. Generally speaking, our philosophy is that you should explore and discover the mechanics within an area as part of the gameplay experience. This also becomes less of a problem once you're playing Ritual in maps as most players aim to full-clear map zones to maximise their rewards.

In some areas, Ritual monsters get stuck behind walls making it hard to complete them
In a small number of cases, there are monsters that can teleport to inaccessible locations. We're planning to add a system that periodically checks that remaining monsters have the ability to walk to the centre of the Ritual. If it finds some that can't, it'll pull them into the middle. This would most likely be deployed some time next week.

Can we have a reminder to spend our Tribute before we leave an area?
We've discussed this as an option but there's no elegant and time-efficient way to do this, unfortunately.

Ritual FAQ

Can I lose my deferred item if I skip interacting with Ritual for a few areas?
If you don't re-defer an item, it will gradually become more expensive until it is back at its original price, and then it'll stop showing up any more. This process only happens if you interact with at least one Ritual in the area (so that if you briefly duck into the area, you don't risk affecting any deferred items).

Have I lost my deferred item?
Probably not, unless you've forgotten to spend your Tribute at the end of an area. When you defer an item, it will return in a random later area. Sometimes this is shortly after and sometimes it can take many areas before you'll see it again (depending on its value). This is an intended part of the design.

Are deferred items per-account or per-character?
They are per-character.

Miscellaneous

Some Harvest crafts can't be used in your hideout
This is an unfortunate technical limitation for a small number of crafts which require the results to be dropped on the ground. The current workaround is to take advantage of these crafts within the Sacred Grove itself, either immediately or from the horticrafting station available within the grove. Longer term, we’re looking at a solution involving these items being placed in your inventory instead of dropped on the ground.

Can we get a guaranteed invite for 10-boss fights?
We're changing this so that if you haven't completed a 10-boss fight in a region yet you'll automatically get a key for that fight when you capture your 10th boss in that region.

Can we have the option to disable the effect of Atlas Passives per map?
We are discussing this as an option but don't have any updates to report yet.

I don't like that I can't see my microtransactions when I have permanent phasing
We will disable the phasing visual effect when you have this skill allocated. Its primary purpose is seeing when you have phasing, but because it is permanent with this skill, it isn't really necessary.

Bugs and Technical Issues

Texture streaming
In 3.13.0 we improved how texture streaming works. This system uses low-resolution textures temporarily until the full textures are loaded, which helps with performance for people who have lower-end computers. Some players are reporting that this is causing performance issues for them. While we are working to further improve how texture streaming works, this shouldn't be the cause of any added performance issues.

If you're experiencing issues loading into particular areas, this is likely due to a memory leak issue that we are also currently investigating or perhaps another issue that we are unaware of.

Please report your experiences on the bug report forum with as many details about your computer specs as possible.

Why is the Trade website slow?
The site is under an extremely heavy load due to the high population and number of requests being made. Additionally, we periodically run a process that backs up the trade site and recently this process has temporarily pushed the trade site past its capacity. We have improved the back-up process so that this is smoother. You'll also note that it now takes around 5 minutes to appear online or offline on the trade site. This is currently in place to help mitigate the database issues we had earlier this week.

Crashes
We've resolved many of the most common crashes players have experienced since launch. We are continuing to investigate and resolve any others that persist.
When I use a portal microtransaction, a different one than expected appears
This is happening with a small number of microtransactions. We expect this to be resolved in our next restart patch.

I can't open the Ritual Reward Screen with V if Alva is in my instance
This should be resolved in our next restart patch.

I can't start a Ritual if there is a Legion Monolith nearby
We have a fix for this internally but are still testing it so we don't have a timeline just yet.

The Silo map boss is invulnerable after being healed by the Maven
This should be resolved in our next restart patch.

Vaal Arc is not chaining correctly
This should be resolved in our next restart patch.