(Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)Ruthless
There Sanctum league put another gift under our Christmas trees this year. The Ruthless difficulty is a new way to play PoE, and it's not for the faint of heart.

Ruthless raises the difficulty way up in a number of ways. Loot in general and skill gems specifically are virtually nonexistent, with almost all items being normal and a rare item cause for much rejoicing. Movement skills are disabled, compounding XP penalties begin as you get to maps, the crafting bench has been removed, bosses regain health if they kill you. In short, the name applies.

Personally, I think Ruthless is awesome. It's diametrically opposite to how most folks enjoy playing PoE—there's no zooming through maps, blowing up screens of monsters before you see them, scooping up fountains of loot. It's a slog, diabolically difficult and totally addictive. You can't even buy skill gems from merchants, so there's a real feeling of making do POE currency trade  with what you find lying around. Every step of progress feels earned, and every monster feels dangerous.

(Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)Are the players happy?
Mostly. There have been posts and tweets about balance issues for the Sanctum, but the clarion calls of complaints from keyboard warriors on Reddit have been conspicuously less present this time round. Everyone seems to be broadly satisfied and having a good time, and the league hit a concurrent user spike of 213,480 players.

The jury's still out on a number of things. Will the changes to eldritch altars make it so I don't have to run to the boss, kill it, then go back and clear the map? Will the jewel changes make ailment immunity easier to obtain? Will the Elder actually drop Watcher's Eyes for me now that the bonus drop rate is baked-in instead of on the atlas tree? Will Mathil ever find a build he likes? We don't know yet, but I'm looking forward to finding out cheap POE currency .