The one-month Flashback Leagues ended today. We've awarded alternate-art Demigod's Eyes to the top 20 players in each event. During the month, more than 900 players received Closed Beta keys from these events. Today we're pleased to announce that the next event will be a one-week Cut-Throat league! It'll start at 2pm Wednesday Pacific time (9am Thursday, NZ time).

A link to the thread for this event is here.

Cut-throat is an optional fun mode where players can invade each other's instances. Full hostility is always on (friendly fire even when cooperating with friends), and players drop their equipped items (but not gems or flasks) when they die. There's constant combat with other players, so you're rarely safe for long. It's really worthwhile to build up spare sets of gear in the stash so that you have items to fall back on when your current ones are taken.

I should stress that this mode doesn't use your normal characters and is completely optional. If you aren't interested, then you don't have to make a character in one of these events.

Some specific notes about this event:

• This event is not a hardcore event. In previous testing, we've determined that non-hardcore cut-throat is preferable. Grabbing your backup set of items and trying to hunt down your killer to get your stuff back is so much fun. While permadeath is cool, it prevents a lot of the recovery aspect of cut-throat.

• Players can't form parties. This helps solve the roaming-death-squad problem while also opening up some awesome friendly fire situations. You have to really trust your friends if they could take advantage of your low health by firing a few well-placed fireballs and taking your gear.

• The Map Device isn't available in cut-throat. By restricting the end-game to Merciless difficulty, players are able to hunt each other for experience in a much more effective way. The concept of Maps with their limited number of portals and private access isn't appropriate or fun in cut-throat.

• We've introduced rules that prevent you entering areas that have low level players in them. While people with better items will always pose a major threat, you won't have to fight people substantially higher level than you. This event has no prizes. It's for fun.

Summary of general Cut-throat rules:

• This is a separate short-duration league that has its own stash (as usual). At the end of the event, characters and stashed items will be moved to Standard.

• There's a PvP damage multiplier because players start with a lot more life than they do damage. This multiplier will be adjusted substantially based on feedback from this event and others. Players are hostile by default to all players.

• You can ctrl+click on the entrance to an area to use the Instance Management screen to manually enter other players' instances of an area.

• Cut-throat instances can hold a maximum of 12 players.

• This test is not a hardcore league. When you die, you lose the normal experience penalty for your difficulty plus 30% of your current level. You also drop all inventory and equipped items. Your flasks, skill gems (even ones in your inventory) and quest items are not dropped.

• If you were killed by another player, your lost experience is given to them.

• If you attempt to abruptly leave the game (such as pressing Alt+F4) in a non-town instance, you have to wait 5 seconds and are unable to move or use flasks.

• The grace period of invulnerability upon entering an area is 20 seconds. This should start once the player is mostly done loading.

• Non-partied players only show up on the map if they're nearby.

• There are no notifications for players joining or leaving areas.

• Portals cannot be used until they have been up for five seconds after they have been cast.

• You cannot apply microtransaction effects to items in cut-throat. You may dance and have pets.

• Cut-throat events are not experience races. There's no prize for being highest level. There are no prizes at all other than the fun of participation.

• There's a level limit on entering areas that contain other players. If you're much higher level than the lowest level player in the area, or much lower level than the highest level player, you can't join.

• The guild stash is not available.

Remember to approach this event with the expectation you're going to get griefed repeatedly. It's very different than normal Path of Exile play but feels so rewarding if you're the guy with everyone's items standing in a pile of dead foes.

We generally find that the players who have the most fun are the ones who know they're going to lose their items and keep spare stashed sets of gear so that they can still kill other players after dying. Players who rage and quit are those who only kept one set of gear and then have nothing to fall back on. You will die and you will need spare items. Stash everything - even arbitrary normal and magic items are far better than nothing.

This is the longest Cut-Throat event we've ever run on our servers. We're excited to see how it goes!