8.5.3 changelog, filter update and world events.

I wanted to keep you guys updated on the upcoming patch, our current long-term work priorities and some thoughts regarding the current world events and their influence on us...

I initially planned to post it yesterday evening, but GGG's patch broke the filters so I was busy fixing those instead...

World Events:

I don't want to get political, but with the current world events, I've been pretty distracted from POE. I have relatives living in Ukraine and Russia both, there are tensions and problems. A cousin and his pregnant wife are currently fleeing from the bombarded cities, homes damaged and sanctions threaten to bankrupt companies.

I'm going to keep it brief. I wish the people of Ukraine safety and sovereignty. Tobnac and I have donated 500$ towards them (over Zizaran's Ukraine-Support stream) and we hope that this terror will be over soon.

If you want to read more of my thoughts, I've written a bit about my feelings and perception here.

I hope all of you are doing well. Stay safe.

Upcoming 8.5.3 changelog:

Last but not least, the upcoming update, likely to hit live today or tomorrow. This has several technical reworks included, largely on the filter generation side of things.

• Finetuned endgame flask highlight and strictness a little bit. It's a bit tricky to end up with a distribution that works well for most strictnesses and use cases here, but I think we're getting there. Added back quality requirements for high level life/mana flask to prevent them spamming lower strictnesses.
• Fragment splinters tiering have been entirely reworked. It now only has 2 tiers instead of 3 and these are economy tiered.
• Improved the calculations for the eco-tiering of stacked currency shards. Previously, the algorithm was using the baseprice of the orb, divided by 20 to get the shard price and added a very minor value (click value for saving time by clicking a stack instead of a single shard) per stack size to calculate the stacked currency price. This algorithm was working great for normal orbs, but for shards ironically some orbs have dropped so much in price, that the "time saving click value bonus" was exceeding the full orb price (looking at you orb of binding). This could cause 6 binding shards to be valued higher than a single orb of binding. This is now corrected.
• Adjusted the tiering algorithm for divination cards a bit
• Reduced highlight for T5 currency divination cards on strict
• Moved amethyst ring base from T2 rare to T1 rare
• ID Mod Section: Improved identified mod filtering sections for ES helmets and caster weapons
• ID Mod Section: Spellslinger Wands - increased tier requirements
• ID Mod Section: BodyArmour 2x Defense + 4x Aux - enforced "corrupted false" status
• ID Mod Section: Added new Body Armour Recipe: 2x Defense + 1x Life + 4x Aux
• Unique timeless and large cluster jewels (voices) have been moved from T1 to T2. They are still brightly notified on all strictnesses, but the majority of them are not too valuable
• Adjusted some edge cases where the unique tiering has been placing items into the "T3" tier instead of the "T4" tier (such as Bramblejack)
• Improved alt. quality gem tiering a bit
• Alchemy tier currencies lose their highlight (sound, icon, beam) on uber-strict, but are still visible. They're hidden on uber-plus strict, same as before.
• Hollowpoint Arrowhead is now correctly classified as the T2 heist tool, instead of Fragmenting Arrowhead
• Loreweave recipe now overrides T3 rings highlight.
• The internal structure of the filter is now correctly enumerated. Thanks to LordBlick for notifying me of that. This has no gameplay impact, but improves code readability

Long-term Filter Work Priorities:

• We are further improving and optimizing the auto-updater. We have deployed some new optimizations during the last days. We plan to introduce further improvements soonish.
• We're working towards improved basetype matrix features and enhanced custom rules
• We're working on a new major feature. It's too early to announce details, but if it works out, your filter might just adjust based on your stash tab content ;).
• More details to come soon. I'd rather underpromise and overdeliver than the reversed. There's a ton of further internal optimizations and improvements we're planning and these take their time.

Gaming and Streaming:

I reached level 100 recently for the first time! I stream quite frequently, though I want to focus a bit more on live development in the coming days and weeks.

Stay safe and thank you for your support!