Path of Exile 3.30 Launches November 13: What's Confirmed, What Isn't, and What to Do Before Then
Path of Exile 1 Patch 3.30 Launches November 13: What's Confirmed, What Isn't, and What to Do Before Then
GGG put the date in writing on October 12: 3.30 goes live on November 13 (PST). For anyone playing on Beijing time that reads November 14, which is where the "14th" chatter comes from.
The information that actually matters doesn't arrive until the ExileCon keynote on November 6. League name, league mechanic, Atlas changes, balance pass — all of it lands in one two-hour block. So right now there are exactly two things you can plan around: the change directions GGG has said out loud, and the chores you should have finished before the servers reset.
Everything else on your feed is a guess wearing a headline.
1. Get the timeline straight
|
PST |
CET |
Beijing |
What happens |
|
Nov 6, 12:30 PM |
Nov 6, 9:30 PM |
Nov 7, 4:30 AM |
ExileCon preshow, hosted by ZiggyD, Mathil, RaizQT and DarthMicrotransaction |
|
Nov 6, 1:00 PM |
Nov 6, 10:00 PM |
Nov 7, 5:00 AM |
Keynote begins, roughly two hours: full 3.30 reveal plus PoE2 1.0 news |
|
Nov 9, 1:00 PM |
Nov 9, 10:00 PM |
Nov 10, 5:00 AM |
3.29 Curse of the Allflame ends |
|
Nov 13 |
Nov 14 |
Nov 14 |
3.30 goes live — launch hour not yet announced |
|
Dec 11 |
Dec 11 |
Dec 11 |
Path of Exile 2 leaves early access |
ExileCon 2026 runs November 7–8 NZDT at the Aotea Centre in Auckland, timed to GGG's 20th anniversary. Both days stream free on Twitch and YouTube, no ticket needed, and there are Twitch Drops — link your Twitch and Path of Exile accounts beforehand, because drops you didn't claim don't exist.
The finals of both tournaments also run during the show. The PoE 1 side is down to allexpleblord, imexile, MOSTPOSITIVEMAN and Ben_.
2. Seven changes that are actually confirmed
These aren't leaks. They're directions developers stated on the record in interviews and streams across the last few weeks. One caveat that matters more than any of them: a confirmed direction is not a confirmed number. Wait for the patch notes before you rebuild anything.
2.1 The endgame gets rebuilt, and nearly every existing mechanic gets something new
Developer Octavian was blunt about the reasoning at the end of October: 3.30 will try to touch every league mechanic currently in the game and give each one something new and worth doing, because the endgame's real problem is that it's repetitive.
Read that as: this is not "one new mechanic bolted on." It's a reshuffle of the farming loops you currently know by muscle memory. Good news for veterans, with an obvious catch — the route you've been running for three leagues may simply not exist in December.
2.2 Mechanic drops get cut, monster drops get raised
The complaint is easy to state. Too much of the income sits in "click the chest, pop the scarab" style mechanic output, and killing genuinely difficult monsters pays badly. Cranking map difficulty barely moves the needle, which was one of the loudest 3.29 complaints once the league settled.
3.30 aims to move that weight back: mechanic drops get trimmed as a floor, and ground loot from monsters gets increased.
What that means at the mapping level: routes built on opening things fast lose value. Routes built on monster density and monster rarity gain it. Rare and unique monsters may be worth killing for the first time in a while instead of walking past them.
2.3 The core drop pool gets stronger
The last few patches pushed rewards back to their "original" sources — fossils to Delve, abyss items to Abyss — and the side effect was a weaker core drop pool overall. Finding something good while mapping stopped feeling like anything.
3.30 plans to strengthen that pool. GGG floated one example and explicitly flagged it as not final: certain build-enabling bases entering the core pool, on the logic that a naturally dropped base can't currently compete with mechanic output.
2.4 Mercenary support gems get re-evaluated
3.29 mercenaries carry supports with downsides. Some of those are a fair trade on a player character and pure self-sabotage on a hireling — Brutality's "cannot deal non-physical damage" deletes half a mercenary's damage outright.
3.30 will re-review how those supports behave on mercenaries specifically. If you're planning a mercenary build next league, this is your section.
2.5 More interplay between mechanics
GGG wants mechanics to feed each other, without every solution running through scarabs. The example given in interviews was mercenaries and rogues — two systems that support each other instead of running in parallel lanes.
2.6 Looser support gem access at league start
Every league start runs into the same wall: the support gem your build needs sits behind a library trip, so your starter is compromised from hour one.
The planned fix resembles the guided tutorial already in the Chinese client — new players tick an option and quests hand over preset skills and supports; everyone else opts out and picks freely. It has a technical dependency and may land later than the build planner work, so whether it makes 3.30 is an open question until the keynote.
2.7 Buff bar UI rework
Both games share the same UI layer, so both get it. Quality of life, no power implications.
3. What we don't know — and why "leaks" are worthless right now
GGG's position on 3.30 has been "you'll hear it at the show." When asked a month ago whether a teaser was coming, the answer was one word: Soon.
So until the keynote, all of this is blank:
- League name and core mechanic — nothing official.
- Atlas passive tree changes — an endgame overhaul drags the Atlas with it, but the shape hasn't been described.
- Balance numbers and patch notes — the actual skill, gem and item changes.
- Concrete Twitch Drop rewards — promised around the show.
The test is simple: before November 6, anything claiming to know the 3.30 league name is guessing. That includes posts with "leak" and "internal source" in the title.
4. Finish 3.29 before November 9, 1 PM PST
3.29 has 40 challenges with free cosmetic tiers at 12 / 24 / 32 / 36. If you're pushing 36/40, you're on the clock.
Order of operations for the remaining days:
- Challenges that depend on the league mechanic first. Anything built on Allflame Embers becomes impossible the moment the league closes.
- Then the slowest, most conditional ones. Discovering on the final evening that a challenge can't be finished is the classic way to lose a 36/40.
- Audit your stash. Label and sort whatever you're carrying into Standard now, not an hour before the realm goes down.
- Don't sit on currency. League-end buying power decays every day. Whatever you meant to convert, convert it.
5. Prep work that survives the patch
The "3.30 starter build" posts are already circulating. With no mechanic and no numbers, their shelf life ends November 6.
What holds up is preparation that doesn't depend on the reveal:
5.1 Split your build into "required" and "substitutable"
Take a note and draw a line. Left side: the gear and gems without which the build doesn't function. Right side: everything you can fudge.
- If the left column is one specific unique or one specific transfigured gem, you're exposed — 3.30 has said unique power and transfigured gem availability are both in scope.
- The fatter the right column, the cheaper it is to adapt once patch notes land.
5.2 Carry two starters, and make one of them boring
One build you want to play, one fallback that needs no new mechanic and no specific drop. 3.30 changes the endgame, but league-start feel usually shifts through support gems and skill tuning, and that's exactly where plans break.
5.3 Wait for two checkpoints
- The November 6 keynote decides which mechanic you farm and how.
- The patch notes, usually two or three days before launch, decide which skills and which gear.
Rebuilding before those two dates means rebuilding around somebody else's speculation.
5.4 Mechanical prep for launch day
- Patch the client early. Don't start a multi-gigabyte download at launch minute.
- Confirm your own timezone against the official countdown, not against a table in an article (including this one).
- Expect a queue. Decide in advance what you'll do in it — reviewing your tree in the planner beats refreshing the login screen.
5.5 Don't stockpile against predictions
First-week prices have nothing to do with predictions and everything to do with several hundred thousand people entering the same map pool on the same afternoon. Anything you stockpiled on a prediction is probably clearing someone else's inventory.
If your time is genuinely short and you want to be mapping on day one rather than farming your way in, currency can be topped up externally — with a real account risk attached, covered in the next section:
6. Currency buying, and the risk in plain terms
GGG's terms of service prohibit real-money trading, and enforcement has been consistent. What gets banned is the account, not the transaction.
- Small amounts, split across orders. No single large delivery.
- Use normal in-game trade flow. Nothing exotic.
- Never hand over account credentials. Anyone asking to log in for you is not a vendor.
- Don't go large in launch week. That's the window where risk systems watch hardest.
Saving time is a legitimate goal. Price the risk honestly before you do it.
7. The argument everyone's having: is 3.30 a "short league"?
It's the most debated question in the community right now, and both sides have a real case.
The worried side: 3.30 lands November 13, PoE2 1.0 lands December 11, and there are four weeks between them. GGG's resources are visibly on PoE2, so 3.30 might be a small league that exists to keep a yearly-update promise — play it for a few days, then move on. Some are already saying the new content and 36 challenges take three days.
The optimistic side: GGG positioned this one as a systemic endgame adjustment, not a mechanic slapped on top. They've also said that once PoE2 leaves early access, part of the development capacity returns to endgame work across both games and the PoE 1 team grows. If 3.30 genuinely rebalances where income comes from, that's the better outcome long term.
The one fact that's certain: GGG scheduled 3.30 ahead of PoE2 1.0 specifically so the two products don't compete for the same attention. Whether it's a short league gets answered on November 6 — by whether we get a full league mechanic, how far the Atlas moves, and how thick the patch notes are.
8. Three things to do next
- November 6, 1 PM PST — watch the keynote (Twitch account linked first). Decide farming strategy and build direction after, not before.
- Before November 9, 1 PM PST — close out 3.29: challenges, stash, leftover currency.
- After the patch notes — then touch your build. On launch day, do only the mechanical things: patch, queue, review the plan.
The most expensive thing in a new league isn't currency. It's the two days you spend league-starting with last league's assumptions.
Building a currency base before launch? PVPBank — PoE Currency.
This article contains paid product links. Items listed are sold by PVPBank, an independent third party, not by Grinding Gear Games. Path of Exile and all in-game content are property of their respective owners. Launch timing, league content and challenge rewards are subject to GGG's official announcements and the live game.
