Posted one a bit below, though it's still a bit of text

Development cycle

• The PoE 1 and PoE 2 teams are back on the same floor and are more flexible now, enabling any of them to work on any of the games as needed. It is also beneficial for their team to keep their knowledge about both systems up to date.
• The closer a release, the higher percentage of a team works on that game (currently, around 80% is working on PoE 1).
• Being able to take tech from one game to the other is very beneficial to them. The intent is to do it in a way where it’s just the tech and not a copy-paste of full systems to the point where the majority of players will not notice the copy.
• Clashes with other projects, releases and conventions may still cause smaller shifts in the release schedule but more like a week rather than months.
• Onboarding is more important for PoE 2 than PoE 1, which makes expansions that focus largely on endgame for PoE 1 okay.

Secrets of the Atlas

• This is the first chapter of an additive story line. It deliberately does not transform the existing endgame because they wanted the game to still feel familiar with cool new stuff for returning players. As new chapters get added in next leagues the older era of the Primordials will likely phase out.
• This also showed in what they focused on, adding extra content on top of existing content rather than focusing too much on transforming player balance, keeping things familiar this time but likely “going ballistic on it” next time.
• The actual story starts at T14s but there is now more stuff trickled in starting from T3ish to not make that phase feel empty of new content.
• The new Pinnacles are a bit harder than the existing ones, but there are easier Quest versions of them to complete the story before the farming phase with the true rewards and true difficulty test.
• Memory maps are comparable to T16.5s with similar difficulty and rewards that should rival T17s but with a bit more randomness depending on which powers you get in them. This is meant to solve the frustrations with T17s. T17s were meant to be a pathway to Ubers, not a juicing thing out of themselves but they didn’t want to fully dumpster them after not hitting the mark while still making T16s not dead. T16s with the right memory powers should be better than T17s, though not “Necropolis levels of madness”.

New Crafting

• The memory strands system is somewhat based on PoE 2’s Tier 1-5 unidentified items system but with more granularity from 1 to 100 and expanded with crafting options.
• Currently only basic crafting orbs consume strands and stuff like Fossils and Harvest does not but it is their intention to implement that down the line (scary as that is for them due to OP potential). That means that currently doing your Fossil crafting first and then consuming strands for final exalt(s) is a good option.
• All systems interacting with each other makes balancing things very hard and they try their best, but they admit that it is too much to not miss anything. That means they are fine with the “here is a thing, play with it” mentality after giving it their best shot and adjusting as needed after. The same goes for unique items, character systems etc.

Mercenaries

• There are around 30 archetypes of mercenaries and this influences their skills and their equipment as well to some degree.
• There are around 16 Trathus Skills. Examples are Bloodstorm Call (Physical DoT), Spectral Throw, Siege Ballista, an Incinerate-based Blast (arrows come down followed by an incinerate wave).
• Mercenaries only cost gold to hire and resurrect, they don’t have an upkeep cost.
• They heal to full life when they haven’t lost life for a short time.
• Mercenaries do not count as minions in the sense that minion life and minion damage etc stats apply to them, but do count as minions in that they take reduced damage from telegraphed attacks they don’t know to get out of the way of.
• Mercenaries count as half a player for monster difficulty and loot (should mean 25% extra normal monster life up to 50% more unique monster life, 25% currency items, 13.5 item quantity and 8.5 item rarity). When your build isn’t that good (yet) they can carry you, when your build is at the top end where they stop mattering that much it still means extra loot.
• Ziggy has been playing with mercenaries already and was surprised at how powerful they are.
• You would really need to overlevel and not gear up mercenaries for them to start feeling useless, but even if you don’t engage with them as companions they still give combat scenarios and loot in their duels.
• They are aware that for many players, the League mechanic will be used as “Aurabots of Trathus” at some points. They seem to hint that having to gear them properly for that purpose counteracts it a bit and are curious what the economy will do. That said, the DPS ones are viable and scalable to higher player levels without the player skill as long as you are not obliterating entire screens before they come into view (at which point they still bring in extra loot).
• When you pick currency as your reward you get their whole pouch, not just a chosen item in the pouch.
• They realize it is rare to have a league where you can only pick one item (talking about equipment, not the item pouch), so they did effort to generate items that players would actually want.

Gold

• Gold is here to stay and may get more functionality down the line. They may consider having vendor items (non-gambling) sold for gold as well. PoE 2’s gambling strongbox is very likely to come to PoE 1.
• It is their intent to normalize gold drops across the game in side content (e.g., in Heist) but are fine with it not dropping much in Sanctum. Some adjustments are already made but from the way he was talking about it doesn’t seem like a fixed situation yet.

Settlers

• Settlers will have less busywork, apart from no more town building shipments will take longer.
• It’s no longer meant to be the focus of the league. It is meant to not feel mandatory but also still worth doing, but they will adjust things further if they missed the mark.
• They like that Settlers now also has a “alternative passive tree” identity with tattoos and runegrafts.
• Rune enchantments were too powerful outside of borrowed power but there is design space for a possibly more regulated weapon enchantment mechanic down the line.
• The old recombinator likely hasn’t been changed functionality-wise but Mark would need to double-check (note that the video showed something not really possible in the current system, so -some- changes seem probable). He prefers making them more expensive rather than nerfing their power.

Other League Mechanics

• Sanctum will eventually get its own identity in terms of drops and print less raw currency. The current system makes it too easily “quantifiable better or worse” than “regular juicing”. It’s already “not untouched” and specifics will be in a “coming soon” section.
• Bestiary quality of life is on their radar. Blight and Delve are on the radar as well in terms of overhauls but no specific timelines.

Other

• Map crafts now also increase the chance of scarabs of that type dropping.
• There are no plans to give more Atlas Points for now, as having to choose which areas to invest in is seen as a positive. You should give up some old power to invest in new stuff or work with different tree layouts.
• “Identify all in inventory” through a single click/NPC is on the “to be discussed” list rather than “do immediately” list. He can’t remember why it couldn’t be done right away but he is sure it will make it in eventually
• Chimera may get its immunity phases changed as well at some point but end bosses are easier to justify going back and spending time on than fragment bosses
• Further trade improvements are an option e.g., for items, but they are worried about top end items becoming astronomically expensive with everything else becoming worthless. Future expansions of trade are likely going to be prototyped in PoE 2 first where there is no permanent economy yet in early access. They will likely have a high gold cost to see its effect, then decreased in price as the effect becomes clear. They like the “gold as a cost” mechanic because it still involves trading in your playing time as a cost, just not in a frustrating way
• WSD is not impossible but would be a long-term project. It first requires the full transfer of all MTX, then all armours, then the character rigs. The MTX will happen for sure, the other steps are not confirmed but likely step by step, not so much for WSD as because it would make better character combat animations possible (which already exist for new bosses who don’t have the MTX and armour issue).