Path of Exile Patch v3.2.0b Released

The folks at Grinding Gear Games have released a new patch for Path of Exile’s Bestiary League update. Apart from fixings a few bugs and tweaking some minor things, the patch introduces the Necromancy nets that can revive beasts before capturing them and enables four new Beastcrafting recipes. Here are the patch notes:

• Added “Necromancy Nets”, a relatively rare net that can revive beasts, capturing them in the process. This is useful for characters that have difficulty capturing beasts before they die, but its rarity means that it can’t be relied upon as the sole method of capture for these characters. (This patch doesn’t include support for reviving monsters that have been shattered, exploded or otherwise had their corpse removed. We’re working on this.)
• Beastcrafting recipes that make an unidentified rare item or a rare item with a specific mod now require one fewer rare beast.
• Fixed four high-end Beastcrafting recipes that were previously unobtainable.
• Flasks now refill after a Beastcrafting fight ends.
• Summon Phantasm on Kill Support no longer supports Manifest Dancing Dervish.
• Strong Rope Nets and Simple Iron Nets now cost Portal Scrolls rather than Orbs of Transmutation.
• Reinforced Iron Nets and Strong Iron Nets now cost Orbs of Transmutation, rather than Orbs of Alteration.
• Monsters with the Putrid Flight Bestiary mod now use their Vulture Bombing skill more frequently.
• Fixed a bug where unlocking additional Cartographer’s Sextants on your Atlas required unique Maps to be completed.
• Fixed a bug where Scorching Ray totems did not stack their damage correctly with other Scorching Ray totems.
• Fixed a bug where Bestiary Aspect skills could be crafted onto Flasks and Jewels.
• Fixed a bug where some areas were unable to spawn Legendary Beasts.
• Fixed a bug where Stairs to the next area would not open if a beast was captured in the Oba’s Cursed Trove unique map.
• Fixed a bug where Maker of Mires in the Hallowed Ground unique map would not lose his immunity buff if Balah, Duke was captured.
• Fixed a bug where statues were unable to come to life if the Basilisk was captured.
• Fixed a bug where Vilenta was able to escape her arena. Stay Vilenta, stay.
• Fixed a bug where the “x% more Spell Fire Damage” from Herald of Ash was not applying to Damage over Time effects applied by skills such as Scorching Ray.
• Fixed a bug where some Prophecies did not complete if you captured, rather than killed, the target.
• Fixed a bug where scroll speed in the Social Panel was slower than intended.
• Fixed a bug where the weapon swap buttons would not visually change when swapping between weapons.
• Fixed a client crash that could occur while Summon Phantasm on Kill was socketed in The Dancing Dervish.
• Fixed a rare client crash that could occur when the final boss of Act 10 and its Endgame Map counterpart used its Flame Breath skill. This skill had been disabled in a previous patch to prevent this from happening. It will be re-enabled in this patch.
• Fixed various instance crashes.

Keep in mind that the new recipes have proven to be highly unbalanced and as a result were promptly nerfed by a hotfix. Here’s the official statement on this issue:

In 3.2.0b earlier today, we enabled four Beastcrafting recipes that were previously not possible. It’s clear that one of these recipes is pitched in the wrong place and needs further work to make sure it’s appropriately rare for the rewards it gives. This recipe has been disabled temporarily until we can rebalance it, test the solution and release a patch (hopefully later today).

As some background to this:

We wanted Beastcrafting to be valuable, and came up with some strong outcomes (such as this ability to split items in two). While the ability for this recipe to work on Shaper and Elder base types is a bug, it’s intended that it can copy six-link items and other valuable base properties.

We priced the recipe as best we could using the simulations we had available before getting data from millions of players on the live realm. Our intention was to keep an eye on how people used them, and react quickly to change the recipe pricing if there were problems.

Unfortunately due to an oversight, the recipe was not possible until today. When we fixed and released it, it was with the same rough balance values that we set during development, which were unrealistic given the actual rate that people found beasts on the live realm. Also, players had saved up almost a week worth of Beasts, so once they found that the recipe was a bit too cheap, they could hit it quite a few times.

It’s intended to be powerful, and intended to be accessible, but not quite to the extent that we’re seeing tonight. We have disabled it and will review and re-release it as soon as possible (with a bug fix to the Shaper and Elder items issue also).

(Note that two other recipes introduced at the same time have also been disabled for safety, though will likely be turned back on later today once they’re given the all clear. “Disabled” means changed so that they require four Albino Rhoas, so I guess you can still do these recipes if you haven’t left the Mud Flats all week).

We’ll have an update for you later on today in NZ work hours as we fix the recipes and turn them back on. I’m very sorry about this. It’s clear the recipe didn’t receive sufficient testing and that’s on us. We’re making some pretty big changes to how we develop content so that the important aspects of the league have a safety buffer of several weeks of dedicated testing in the future.