Lake of Kalandra: What is and what is new?

Path of Exile's newest and current League, Lake of Kalandra, started on August 19, 2022, and will end on December 6, 2022. The game uses this League mechanism as a way to maintain the game always up to date, since its release in 2013. We are currently in the 38th League of Path of Exile.

Leagues play a big role in Path of Exile as they regulate the game’s content. Buff or nerf an item, a class, or a build, in addition, they modify game mechanics and place new event missions. Finally, the use of Leagues in Path of Exile acts also as a way to fix any problems that exist in the game.

What is the Lake of Kalandra?

As previously mentioned, the game survives using the league's tool to stay alive. The Path of Exile Lake of Kalandra league is the 38th and current league. It had a release date of August 19, 2022, and an end date of December 6, 2022.

With the update, the traditional challenges were added, in which all players can fight their way to get amazing and exclusive cosmetics as rewards. Those who complete all the 40 Challenges can use those cosmetics to display such a hard achievement.

The new League was revealed on August 11, 2022, via the official Path of Exile Twitch channel. If you want to review the reveal video of the new League, you can access it through this link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxFQ4kRej7k), on the official channel.

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When Path of Exile Lake of Kalandra 3.19 was launched?

Path of Exile Lake of Kalandra is the 38th League and was released shortly after the end of the Sentinel League.

It had its release date on August 19, 2022, and the end date will be December 6, 2022, and will be succeeded by Path of Exile 3.20 The Forbidden Sanctum.

The number following the League title is the current update number. The current League is 3.19 and the next one is 3.20, simple as that.

Who was Kalandra?

Each League features a name, theme, and background story. Always taking into account the Path of Exile universe itself. The previous League of the game was called Path of Exile: Sentinel and had a release date of May 13th for computers and Mac, May 18th for Xbox and Playstation, and an end date of August 9th, with approximately 3 months of gameplay.

The League that followed, Path of Exile Lake of Kalandra was inspired by an iconic character from the game, the owner of the rarest item that exist inside Poe, the infamous Mirror of Kalandra (an item that creates a copy of any item that you want).This League explores this iconic character and allows you to tap into some of the power of this enigmatic character.

At the beginning of the League, players expected to find out more information about what or who Kalandra would be, as we only knew about the item's existence, but we didn't have a background about Kalandra.

Unfortunately, the Path of Exile community was a little disappointed with the company Grinding Gear Games' explanations about the enigmatic Kalandra.

The New League, Lake of Kalandra reveal who was Kalandra. When you found the Lake of Kalandra (which we will explain later) you find a bird that talks to you and discover that that being is Kalandra, and period.

This lack of Lore, of an in-depth look at one of the most iconic characters in the game, which gives its name to the most valuable item of all time, can be considered the first of the disappointing points of this League of Path of Exile (we will also talk more about this in the course text).

What is new in Lake of Kalandra?

The new Path of Exile League introduced a lot of new content, new mechanics, and a little lore about a familiar character Kalandra. However, they mainly added a new place that bears the name of the League, Lake of Kalandra, where you perform most of the new game mechanics.

It is important to mention that this new place will not remain in the core game after the end of this League. So if you search all the news, you can find the Lake of Kalandra patch notes being them:

Lake of Kalandra.

It's a brand new area that you can find in the new League, more precisely while you're in Wraeclast. You can find a Mirrored Table that needs to be rebuilt by clicking on it, and putting “reflections of dangerous encounters”.

It's kind of a Puzzle that you can build in your own way, but if you know how to do it, it grants a lot more Rewards.

Reflections of Wraeclast.

As you play through Kalandra's League, you will find Mirrored Table needed to enter the Mirrored Lake responsible for the character's duplication powers. You can only access the Lake of Kalandra after filling every block in the Mirrored Table. Facing this place you always get Rewards, sometimes good rewards, sometimes irrelevant rewards, but sometimes the rewards of a lifetime.

The Exclusive Unique Ring called Kaladra’s Touch is the best example; it’s being sold today for the amount of 1018 Divine Orbs, or 155.754 Chaos Orbs. For some perspective, you can build a really strong character with 10 Divine Orbs.

New items.

League Lake of Kalandra also brought new items to Path of Exile, such as basic rings that give items with elemental damage attributes (Dusk Ring, Shadowed Ring, Tenebrous Ring) and, as mentioned before, a unique ring called Kalandra's Touch that reflects some other ring.

Lake of Kalandra also added 14 new Unique Items from Jewels to Body Armours. Above all it remade over 100 of previous low popular items, making them a lot more interesting for many PoE Builds.

Reflect Rare Jewellery

In addition to the rewards of each Lake challenge, you can find new ways to create rare items such as Reflective Mist. It gives you the ability to create rare items like a pair of rings or amulets and with Reflective Mist create exact reflections of each other. But you will have to choose what you want, because each one will have a quality that benefits you and another that brings harm, so you need to choose what interests you.

Another interesting point is about Jewellery Reflection is that in the Endgame you can bring your rings and amulets to the Mist and it will modify these items generating a whole new power.

Experience Atlas Memories

You can find memories of the Masters in the maps you run, using those memories will trigger a chain of quests related to that specific Master on connected maps. This mechanic is a way to explore the End Game and earn valuable rewards without too much difficulty.

Harness New Gems

Lake of Kalandra introduced three new skill gems that feature lightning damage and shock damage and a new support gem.

How to enter the Lake of Kalandra?

This brand new area was included in the new League Lake of Kalandra where you need to interact with the Mirrored Table to rebuild them by placing the “reflections” you find during your gameplay. To enter the Lake of Kalandra you need to do this task.

This mechanic is considered quite complex and slow, as you need to assemble several Mirrored Tables across the maps and only then build your Lake of Kalandra. It's exhausting work because you manage to place 1 to 2 Reflections in the Tablet per Map and Endgame Tablets can have over 20 slots to be filled.

When you complete a Mirrored Tablet, an option to open the Portal will appear. An important point is the size that the lake will present, for example, a Lake Map in Act 1 will be small, much smaller than one from Act 5 and even smaller than on from the Endgame.

In each event you will find several groups of monsters and a Unique (monster "leader") with the name "Effigy of X". These monsters found inside the Lake of Kalandra are based on monsters referring to the Act or Tier you completed the Mirrored Table.

To get the random rewards, you need to defeat almost the entire horde of Lake of Kalandra monsters you are facing, about 95%, to generate Sunken Chests with random rewards that scale according to the difficulty of the event itself. And the rewards include weapons, armor, jewelry, coins, maps, and equipment.

Another important point is the different monsters that each Reflection generates and what you will gain by invoking these specific monsters, so each different way of playing will imply its benefits and obstacles.

Is Lake of Kalandra difficult?

The new mechanics of the current League Lake of Kalandra are considered more complex and boring than difficult. This was considered by several players on online forums as one of the most “disappointing and discouraging” points of the new League.

As described earlier, the way to complete the Tables is to go through several points in a different places to get items that the community wasn't that interested in. As will be described further on, this complex new mechanic could be another reason why this League is not doing so well among the public.

How do you increase difficulty in Lake of Kalandra?

Increasing the difficulty of Lake of Kalandra is just one more point in the complex mechanics specific to the current Path of Exile League.

You need to keep an eye on the Reflections items as they indicate how difficult your challenge will be within the Lake. The notches found in each Reflection will determine the difficulty and consequently the rewards you will receive.

Another point, which was mentioned earlier, each Reflection summons a monster that will provide you with specific rewards and optimized difficulties according to your game will.

So, like everything else in Path of Exile, you need to understand the way you want to play. If you want higher difficulties or have an eye on the items that will drop at the end of the event, you can just use the high level notches, but otherwise, you can take it slow and just watch how the event works and have a little fun.

Issues that the League Lake of Kalandra presented

In addition to the reasons that were previously presented, such as the complexity of the new mechanisms, and being boring to farm and play, the community also did not like other points such as the drastic reduction of the item drops and changes on the Harvest Crafting system.

In addition, the excess of Archnemesis monsters that made the mapping experience much harder and frustrating, and above all the lack of communication on the part of Grinding Gears Gaming.

This all resulted in one of the worst rates in the game since the beginning, almost an abandonment of the entire community.

For example, the League started very well, largely due to the novelty of a new league, with a lot of new content and for exploring a rather mysterious character, but as the League progressed, a sharp drop in online players was observed.

As we can see on Steam's website, it reached a peak of 151,145 simultaneous players, a very expressive number, since it was only 7 thousand players less than the historic Record of the game.

However, the first month of the League showed a very high drop, with a low average of just 28,000 players. This low number yielded an uncomfortable mark, being the lowest average of the first month of a League, a number that had not been seen since the Blight league, on September 2019.

So, the League of Lake of Kalandra explained leaves a little to be desired, as its complexity and lack of greater rewards did not please the community.

What were the most used classes in the Lake of Kalandra League?

We can highlight some of the most used classes on this League. Using the website that aggregates Path of Exile data we managed to see the top 5 most played, classes:

First: the Inquisitor (17%)

An ascendancy of the Templar class, most used as a powerful and resistant Mage that can ignore Elemental Resistances on Critical Strikes. It’s also the most used Ascendancy when playing the Popular PoE Build called Righteous Fire.

Second: Occultist (14%)

Occultist is an ascendancy of the Witch class. This one is focused on Chaos and Cold Damage. It can reach high amounts of Energy Shield and take the best out of Curses.

Third: Ascendant (12%)

Ascendant is the only Scion-class ascendancy. It is a unique, very generic class. She has no main attributes and the three attributes, strength, dexterity, and intelligence are similar. Remembering that this class is only available after a certain point in the game.

Fourth: Deadeye (11%)

This ascendancy belongs to Ranger, the archer in the game. Most used on Bow Builds, but can also be interesting on every Build that uses Projectiles.

And in fifth: Champion (8%)

This is one of the Duelist's ascendancies. Strong Melee Character that can deal a lot of Damage with Impale Stacks. It is also the perfect Ascendancy for Armour Stacking.

What are the most used builds in the Lake of Kalandra League?

During League Path of Exile Lake of Kalandra, some builds stood out more than others. This is almost exclusively due to the buffs and nerfs that items receive during each new League.

For example, in this current League, we can highlight some builds that were heavily used, with many players developing them throughout the League, such as Lightning Strike, Righteous Fire, CoC Ice Spear, Tornado Shot, Spark, Freezing Pulse, and Forbidden Rite builds. Most importantly, you can find them all by visiting the Path of Exile Builds YouTube channel.

Talking a little about the most famous build within Lake of Kalandra, the build based on Skill Lightning Strike. It is a melee ability that converts physical damage to electrical damage. Simple isn't it? But the secondary effect of causing damage in the form of projectiles according to the character's weapon damage is the real bonus of this build because with each hit a new projectile is released.

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What is the best place to see more Path of Exilebuild guides?

Again, to find these builds and more, information about updates, Lake of Kalandra guide, new Leagues, and much more about the Path of Exile universe, visit the Path of Exile Builds YouTube channel through the link.

FAQs

Is Lake of Kalandra free?

Yes, like all main game content, stories, characters, items, classes, and expansions are completely free.

How long does Lake of Kalandra last?

The current League of Path of Exile started on August 19, 2022, and The Lake of Kalandra’s end date is December 6, 2022, totaling 109 days of the League.

What are the chances of getting a mirror of Kalandra?

Mirror of Kalandra is the rarest item in the game, with the highest drop rate, with approximately 0.0000001%, unfortunately, you will hardly see one and if you see it, keep it with great affection.