General Patch 3.18 Availability Prior To League Start Time

I started playing PoE about two weeks prior to 3.17 start date, and when it came to starting the new league, the new update patch took almost an hour to download before the game could be played.

Are new league patches available for download / update prior to the league start date / time, so people with undeveloped national Internet infrastructure are not disadvantaged at league start?

They do usually put a torrent out but it might be during same day as league starts

They (almost) always put out a Torrent about 8 hours before launch.

The drawback of the torrent is that it isn't a patch. It's a download of the entire game. Depending on how bad your connection/download speed is, and how early or late they link the torrent, you could be better off just patching when the update goes live.

I played another gaming franchise before swapping over to PoE, and they released their league / season updates about 3 days early, however you couldn't create new characters or play the in-game content until the new season officially kicked off at the set start time.

This was a really good experience... update early, set your alarm for official start time, create a new character in new season, and play... so easy.