Players who owned the Heart of Thorns expansion were also provided with access to a set of six living world patches released between July 2016 to July 2017, referred to as Season 3 of the Living World. The size of Living World patches grew with this season, as each patch introduced a large new explorable map, new masteries, and repeatable story instances. Season 3 aimed to deliver patches of the same size every 2–3 months by using three rotating teams of developers, each given six to nine months to create each release. It also included some smaller patches with minor changes and events in the spirit of Season 1, which were handled by a separate "current events" team.