It’s been almost a week since the launch of Keepers of the Flame, and our team continues to monitor community feedback. Over the past few days, we’ve deployed several hotfixes and a patch to address some of the issues players have been experiencing. In this news post, we’d like to outline what we’re currently working on.

• We are re-assessing the rewards from Breach monsters in map areas with an eye towards making the league mechanic encounters more rewarding directly, and thus more worth the time to engage with.
• We’re aware of the feedback regarding Hive encounters, with players frustrated by having to spend too much time destroying walls before the encounter. We’re investigating an option to allow a large number of walls to be destroyed at the start of the encounter.
• We have another batch of Foulborn uniques which didn’t quite make it into launch and will be going in with the next restart patch.
• Outside of Breach-specific changes, we are aware of feedback from players that late endgame farming strategies are currently lacking in diversity and progression. We are putting together a list of adjustments to address this, with an emphasis on making currently underperforming strategies more competitive. We are targeting next week for the release of these changes. A larger amount of changes to this area are planned for 3.28.

We plan to deploy some of these changes, along with additional fixes and improvements, next week. Keep an eye out on the news for the full list of changes. Thank you for your continued feedback!

Earlier this week, we announced the winners of our Path of Exile 2 Fan Art Competition Winners.
Today, we'd like to announce and highlight the runners-up. Check them out below.
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Runners-Up

• 1 x Third Edict Mystery Box

Sekhema Asala by almllv

Count Geonor by enki1983

Ancestral Spirit Turtle by Orbitare

The King in the Mists by Roseface

Geonor, the Putrid Wolf by SKxviii (ver.1) SKxviii (ver.2)

Each one, a challenge. Together, a nightmare. by dinictator

Do you wanna go kill monsters? by Gardom

Welcome to the Abyss by Gitebee

Abyssal Lich Witch by Juusan

Zelina Blood Priestess by MaeloreweN

Go For It, Tujen! by quesoup

Diamora by rinnirn

Jamanra The Abomination Fight by snozer15

Embroidery of Zicoatl by Ubatitui

Spark Cast on Critical Blood Mage by UrMammy

Since its launch, Path of Exile: Keepers of the Flame has had a lot of exciting moments caught on camera, and we've gathered up some of the recent highlights to share with you. Check it out below.

Breach Encounters and Monsters in Maps

Over the past few days, we’ve seen a number of reports about Breaches preventing monsters from spawning.

We’ve been actively testing this issue, as this behaviour isn’t what we would expect. Our investigation has identified a problem with two specific methods of adding monsters to maps, Shrines and the Essence Scarab of Calcification.

For Shrines, packs of monsters were not spawning if the Shrine was located within a Breach Hive.

For Essence Scarab of Calcification we found that there were 30% less essences found in maps with Breach Hives than those with Unstable Breaches or on Standard.

We’re currently working on fixes for both of these cases.

Our testing with Divination Scarab of The Cloister and Ambush Scarab of Containment shows a consistent number of the monsters/strongboxes added by these scarabs whether a Hive spawns in a map affected by them or not.

It’s worth noting that monsters which would normally be placed within the area of a Hive encounter are not removed entirely. Instead, they’re compensated for by placing monsters elsewhere in the map. We’ll continue to monitor this situation closely and share updates if we discover anything further.