Version 0.9.5d
Notes:

We've reset your passive skills because of changes to the passive skill tree. Please take care when reallocating them.



Balance:

Improved the damage of all spells.
Improved the Multiple Projectiles Support Gem by decreasing the penalty to critical strikes for each additional projectile.
Improved the "Seething" flask prefix by reducing its penalty.
Reduced the drop rate of "Orb of Regret".
Reduced the price of flasks at vendors.
Improved the sell value of many mods on identified items
Doubled the yield of the vendor recipe that gives you Scrolls of Wisdom for low currency.
Added the ability to trade one Portal Scroll to receive one Scroll of Wisdom.



Passive Skill Balance:

Added occasional named notable passives which support core builds. Less popular passive tree areas have been reduced in number, consolidated and improved. Specific changes include:
Improved the Strength/Dexterity/Intelligence nodes in the centre of the tree to provide a much larger increase.
Added "Master of Wands" - provides a 50% physical damage increase for Wands.
The mana section of the Witch section has been modified to make progress quicker. Intelligence rewards above Flask and Energy Shield passives have been improved.
Elemental damage increases for the Witch have been reduced in number to allow quicker progress, but "Attunement" passives have been added with more damage and built in resistances to compensate.
Slight pathing changes have been made to the casting area of the Witch section and the Intelligence node north of it has been improved.
The Templar area has two new passives: "Esoteric Wisdom" with Cast Speed and Mana Regeneration, and "Holy Defence", which provides a significant boost to Intelligence and Strength armour.
Life regeneration has been changed to a percentage of life.
The All Elemental Resistances passive has been improved.
The Fire Damage passives in the Marauder section have been consolidated into a single node.
The Dual Wield group between the Duelist and Ranger has a "Dual Wield Mastery" passive added with significant bonuses.
Shield Mastery passives have been added to both the Duelist and Ranger sections.
The third Projectile Damage passive has been significantly improved to smooth the experience of early level bow rangers.
Several other minor changes have also been made to the tree.



Bug Fixes:

Fixed a bug that would allow people to have too much control over the quality and socket links of items generated by the vendors.



EDIT: The "100% critical strike damage multiplier" on the poison-on-crit dagger passive is going to be changed to only apply to dagger attacks. Currently it applies to spells. We may not do a tree reset when this change occurs, so be careful when planning whether to pick that one.

Version 0.9.5e
Added five new monster mods.
Added the new Waterfall Cave monsters to the Maelstrom of Chaos.
Fixed the Critical Strike damage multiplier granted by the "Dagger Poison on Critical Strike" passive skill so that it only affects daggers.
Changed the life regeneration passive rates. The Two Marauder points now total 2.5% per second (from 3.5%) and the outer group now totals 4% (mostly in the final passive).
The "Life Regeneration per Endurance Charge" passive skill has been increased to 0.5% of Life regenerated per second per charge.

Hi guys. What do you think about POE so far? Is it worth paying 300-400 fg for a beta key? I dont want to shell out the fg if it aint really worth it. You think its better to wait for the launch?

Totally worth it in my opinion. You can play through two acts in four difficulties with five character classes. This is a lot of playtime you can get of a closed beta.
Also, open beta is about three months away, why not try it out now?

Yea good point. So anyone selling reasonably priced beta keys?

Version 0.9.5f
Kraityn can now use Flicker Strike.
Fixed a server crash that would occur when certain skeletons in the Maelstrom of Chaos attempted to attack.
Changed the armour increase mods on hybrid armours so that they increase both of the relevant armour types. For example, a templar armour will now have an equal increase to both Armour and Energy Shield. Old items are unmodified.
Fixed a bug where the description of the "of Wealth" mod would show on certain Unique monsters.
Further increased the drop rate of monsters with the "of Wealth" mod.
Corrected a Two Handed Accuracy passive skill to 12% (instead of 6%).
Increased the world level of The Cave (in the Old Fields).
Fixed a bug that caused attribute mods to not spawn on the appropriate armour pieces correctly. Strength can now spawn on general strength armour pieces, for example.
Added another Rocky Climb topology.
Changed the Silverbranch unique bow so that all new instances of it that drop require character level 1 rather than 7.
Fixed the entrance to the Tidal Island so that it highlights and shows up on the map.
Fixed other minor terrain bugs.
Fixed a problem with item mod generation that could cause the wrong mods to be generated.

Official dev post:

I really like this game but I can't play it on my laptop. It's more of a web browsing laptop then gaming. I kept freezing up and took 2+ mins to load between each map. I can tell you it is a fun game from what I played. (Only about 3 hours total then sold my account)

Version 0.9.5g:

Features:

Zoomed the view out. Later we'll probably add controls for this.
Improved the patcher so that it will use compression when downloading future updates. This should make it approximately 33% faster.
Added a new keystone passive - Necromantic Aegis: Applies all properties of your Shield (defences, block, implicit mods and explicit mods) to your minions instead of to you. Thanks to Skivverus for the suggestion that we based it on!



Balance:

Changed all Maelstrom of Chaos levels to be level 58.
Removed the Critical Strike penalty from the Multiple Projectiles support gem.
Hex Master now grants "+1 curse on targets" in addition to its existing effects.
Avatar of Fire now has "Cannot Resist Cold Damage". Rather than reducing its fire damage, we felt it more appropriate to accentuate the glass-cannon aspects of builds based around this keystone.
Rain of Arrows is now affected by increased arrow/projectile speed. This reduces the delay before the arrows land.
Made the Faster Projectiles support gem work with Rain of Arrows.
Moved the first Marauder life regeneration passive to the second position of their core life chain.
Changed the first life passive near the Duelist (on the path between the Marauder and the Duelist) to being life regeneration instead of life.
Added a new life regeneration passive to the Templar part of the tree
Increased the critical strike chance on Fireball and Shock Nova.
Reduced the critical strike chance on Detonate Dead, Discharge and Ice Spear.



Bug Fixes:

Fixed a bug where maximum distance of various skills (such as Cold Snap) could be bypassed with shift-casts.
Fixed a bug where chaos degeneration would prevent energy shield regeneration even if the chaos damage was completely resisted.
Fixed a bug with the calculation of how much life recovery from flasks to apply to minions.
Fixed Vulnerability not being affected by the Hex Master keystone passive.
Made changing the sound effects volume affect looping sounds from game world entities.
Fixed a bug where the Poison Arrow cloud would appear where you clicked even if the arrow was stopped before then by a wall.
Fixed Spark not being affected by increased duration.
Corrected the sell price for the "Increased Armour and Evasion" mod.
Fixed a bug where "+1 to Bow skills socketed into this item" would spawn on the wrong items.

Brand new interview:



Open beta is a few months from now, maybe march or april.