Path of Exile Team Shares Designing Delirium's Unique Items

The Path of Exile team has shared some additional information on how they designed some of Delirium’s unique items.

Specifically, the article touches on keystone jewels, voices, Split Personality, Megalomaniac, Algor Mortis, Assailum, Perfidy, and Beacon of Madness.

For example, Keystone Jewels were a creation from a list of over 30 suggestions. The team discusses,

“One with Nothing and its keystone Hollow Palm Technique were the special case; originally suggested by an effects artist, it underwent a variety of design iterations. We had to make sure we could allow it to co-exist with Facebreaker, so the original design disabled item slots and had specific restrictions on each of its stats. This was far too wordy, so to clean up the description and prevent potential problems with restricting item slots, the "Unencumbered" state was created. Unencumbered means that you currently have no weapon, gloves, quiver or shield equipped, a condition we could use again in future.”

This is one such example of insight provided by this blog as the team looks to provide a “behind the scenes” view in game design. The team expanded on another item, the gloves Algor Mortis thusly,

“These gloves were designed with the goal of creating a new playstyle involving weaving a cold area skill between your lightning damage skills, with a powerful damage increase as a bonus reward. They're also special in that they're the first item to let you inflict the Sap Ailment without preventing Shock (A lightning based ailment that lowers enemy damage).”

You can check out the full post here.