Path of Exile 2 News

We discussed our plans for 0.2.0h last week but wanted to give a more complete breakdown of what you can expect in this update.

[h3]Private Leagues[/h3]

We plan to enable Private Leagues when 0.2.0h releases using the Path of Exile 1 website for now. There will be no extra mods available for these Private Leagues but we'll be expanding the functionality of them soon. We wanted to get the ability to create Private Leagues released sooner rather than later for those that want to start over in a fresh economy by themselves or with their friends.

[h3]Quick-Use Currency Buttons on Strongboxes and Essences[/h3]

We've added Quick-Use buttons that appear below the labels of Strongboxes and Essences. For Strongboxes, the currency displayed is dynamic based on the state of the Strongbox and is only displayed if that currency is in your inventory. As an example, if the Strongbox is unidentified it will only display a Wisdom Scroll.

If it is Normal Rarity it will display an Orb of Transmutation, if it has one magic modifier it will display an Orb of Augmentation. It will also be able to have buttons for Orbs of Alchemy, Exalted Orbs, and Regal Orbs. We have intentionally not included currency like Divine Orbs as that would be a mistake to use.

Essences have also received the same change but with Vaal Orbs for corrupting them into the Corrupted Essences.

[h3]Breach Improvements[/h3]

Breach had significant issues with spawning monsters in very narrow or tight areas. It was expected to be worse in those areas because you can only fit so many monsters in a given space. This made Breach encounters worse than we wanted and resulted in a very boring experience where you felt like you failed even though there was little you could do about it.

We've made a change to how monsters spawn in Breaches to be more reliable. This drastically raises the minimum experience of a Breach encounter.

Additionally we have changed the minimum time of a Breach, assuming no monsters are killed, to 20 seconds from 12 seconds. We have also made the time extension granted by killing monsters account for Monster Power. This means if you kill Magic or Rare enemies during the Breach it will extend the time more than killing Normal monsters.

Previously we spoke about dropping fewer stacks of Splinters in larger quantities, but instead of that we're making a more drastic improvement. We will now vacuum up all the Breach Splinters dropped during a Breach encounter and drop them at your location when the Breach concludes. If you are in a party it will drop multiple stacks that are randomly allocated.

[h3]Azmerian Wisp Improvements[/h3]

Azmerian Wisps have received two changes. The first is that when you activate a second Wisp, while pursuing one already, that Wisp will now always target the same Rare monster as the one you were already chasing. This was uncommon during the Campaign and mostly presented itself in Endgame especially with Atlas Tree investment but when it did happen, you would lose one of those Wisps commonly which felt purely negative.

The other change is that the Spirit of the Spring Hare and Spirit of the Fox were far too rare, we've made these three times more common. They can create some pretty hectic and rewarding outcomes and we wanted to give more opportunities to encounter these and their rewards.

[h3]Rogue Exile Visibility Improvements[/h3]

Rogue Exiles had one main issue. Often you would be clearing through a Map and all of a sudden have a large life bar on the top of your screen with no connection to a boss or monster. This was because the Rogue Exiles had a very large aggro range. We've reduced this aggro range so they are far more commonly on-screen before it appears, that way you see them before the life bar presents itself. If you were to hit them off-screen using projectiles or other skills, they'll still aggro immediately though.

The second issue is that even when you did find one and they were on-screen, you could barely see them especially in darker maps. In order to alleviate this we have both added Minimap Icons to them once they've engaged combat, and we've made the light on them far brighter to help them stand out and be more obvious when surrounded by other enemies.

[h3]Further Item Drop Improvements[/h3]

We did a major patch to update overall loot drops but there are still some outliers we're working on improving. In 0.2.0h we're going to be making Perfect Jeweller's Orbs and Level 20 Uncut Skill and Spirit Gems significantly more common. These will still be relatively rare but it was often the case people would get very far into their Endgame and character progression before even finding one.

[h3]Item Labels Additions to Important Items[/h3]

For those not using custom Item Filters and were in Endgame you might have observed some more important items not being obvious enough. We have added outlines to the labels for Precursor Tablets, Expedition Logbooks and Expedition Chests to help them stand out when you have many other items on the ground around them.

[h3]Shrine Improvements[/h3]
We've made a few changes to Shrines.

Firstly, we've disabled the Greed Shrine and the Corrupting Shrine. These were just bad and often you right-clicked off the buff because converting good items into Gold, or Corrupting equipment is rarely beneficial.

On top of that we've made some of the rarer Shrines such as the Diamond Shrine and Divine Shrine appear far more often, and we've extended the duration of almost all Shrines. Some of the Shrines will now last 90 seconds (from 45 seconds) and some 60 seconds (from 45 seconds).

[h3]New Stash Tabs[/h3]

We're adding the Ritual Stash Tab which will be able to store your Omens and Audience with the King Fragments.

We’re also adding the Socketable Stash Tab which will hold all your Runes, Talismans and Soul Cores. This tab comes with a button that allows you to upgrade your Runes from one tier to the next, instead of having to use the Reforging Bench.

These will be for sale in the Microtransaction store shortly after the patch is deployed.

[h3]Misc Other Improvements[/h3]

Here's a quick-fire list of other changes we're also making for this patch.

• We've updated the visibility of the 'Corridor' skill for the Arbiter of Ash to be far more clear very quickly.
  
• We've added bindable actions for being able to quickly allocate Strength, Dexterity or Intelligence on your passive tree. You can bind these to keys and then hold those keys down when selecting attribute nodes to quickly allocate them to your desired attribute.
  
• We've added a new batch of submissions to the Twilight Reliquary Key. Thank you for your Support.
  
• We'll be allowing Charms to go into the Flask Stash, or any stash with the Flask Affinity set.
  
• We're adding a quick-travel button for Town on the right hand side of the Waypoint screen.
  
• We're adding the shortcut for Ctrl+Right-Click to bulk move currency items of the same type between inventories. This is common mostly when doing larger trades of currency using the Currency Exchange.
  
• We're adding a Filter property to be able to Filter Unidentified Items by their Item Tier.
  
• We have fixed fifteen separate Client or Instance crashes.
  

[h3]Estimated Deployment Timeline[/h3]

We're hoping to deploy this by the end of the week. We have many more changes and improvements to make and we'll immediately start on our next update bringing even more improvements to gameplay and quality of life.

We’re currently planning the 0.2.0h update for Path of Exile 2 which contains several quality of life features and will address certain aspects of Endgame content. We’re planning to release this patch by the end of next week.

The main focus of the patch is to improve certain aspects of the Endgame. This includes the minimum experience of Breaches where far too few monsters spawn and the Breach doesn't last long enough. We will also reduce the number of small Breach splinter stacks dropping and instead have fewer, larger stacks dropping. We'll also be adding improvements to the visibility of Rogue Exiles, and will improve the behaviour of Azmerian Wisps when you activate two at once.

Another big focus is to add in some Quality of Life features. One example is that we'll be adding some UI Icons for Strongboxes and Essences that will let you quickly use currency from your inventory without needing to open it. This feature will also work with Vaal Orbs for Essences.

Here's a preview:



We've got a few other Quality of Life changes planned, which we'll talk about more next week.

A big request that we've had is to make Unidentified Item Tiers filterable. This change will be coming in 0.2.0h so you'll be able to filter by and change how your Unidentified Tier 1-5 Magic and Rare items look when the patch is released.

We also plan to add two new Stash Tabs: the Ritual Tab and Socketable Tab. The Ritual Tab holds your Omens and Audiences with the King, while the Socketable Tab will hold your Runes, Talismans and Soul Cores. You'll be able to upgrade your Runes from within the Socketable Tab.

Lastly, we plan to enable Private Leagues when 0.2.0h releases using the Path of Exile 1 website for now. There will be no extra mods available for these Private Leagues but we'll be expanding the functionality of them soon. We wanted to get the ability to create Private Leagues released sooner rather than later for those that want to start over in a fresh economy by themselves or with their friends.

We'll have more information on what's to come early next week, keep an eye on the news!

Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt has been out for a while now, and we've gathered up some statistics from the first three weeks since release to share with you. Check them out below!

• The Arbiter of Ash has been slain 355,877 times.
  
• 3,406,779 Unique Maps have been cleared.
  
• 3.27 trillion gold has been dropped, which equates to 6.48 billion gold dropped per hour.
  
• 1.44 billion instances have been exited.
  
• 185,961,090 player character deaths in standard leagues.
  
• 291,112 player character deaths in hardcore leagues.
  

And here's the breakdown of classes played since the launch of Dawn of the Hunt:

• 23.78% Amazon
  
• 12.27% Lich
  
• 10.12% Deadeye
  
• 8.15% Smith of Kitava
  
• 7.87% Invoker
  
• 0.74% Acolyte of Chayula
  
• 1.32% Chronomancer
  
• 1.77% Tactician
  
• 1.77% Warbringer
  
• 1.82% Pathfinder
  

Demon-swarmed fantasy ARPG Path Of Exile 2 got a patch today that should have, in theory, increased the rarity of loot dropped for players across all parts of the game. Instead, the game began deleting their Skill Gems - the extremely important stones that players use to perform all manner of attacks, spells, and defensive magicks. The developers quickly shut down the servers and rolled back the game, leading to a five-hour outage and a bunch of players who are now even more annoyed than they have been in recent weeks. And trust me, that is annoyed.

Read more

One of the things that we have had a lot of feedback about is item drops feeling unrewarding in various situations. Over the last two weeks we have done a major rework to item drops in order to try and address these issues. We are going to be deploying these changes in 0.2.0g later today.

[h3]Item Rarity[/h3]

In order to control the items that monsters drop, they primarily have two stats added to them. Monster Item Quantity is a stat that increases the number of items that are dropped. Monster Item Rarity on the other hand determines how good the items are that drop.

In order to prevent too much item spam, in Path of Exile 2 we want to rely on Item Rarity more, and Item Quantity less. This means that the effect that Monster Item Rarity has on your item needs to be powerful, and noticeable. Currently we believe that this stat is not affecting drops enough.

For example, when a Wisp has possessed a monster, it gives the monster +2 drops and 300% more Monster Item Rarity. The rarity is further increased by each monster that the wisp affected as you were chasing it. This should in theory result in noticeably better item drops, but in practice it doesn't feel meaningful enough.

This is just one example, but this problem affects drops game wide, from all monsters and chests.

We are making some very significant changes to the way that Item Rarity affects the items you get. Here are some of the highlights:

• We modified the rarity value at which Normal Items no longer drop. This means that Unique Bosses will never drop Normal items except for a select few early in the game.
  
• We have halved the amount of "Rare Gold" drops. This means that if you roll a Rare item you get more Rare Equipment or Rare currency instead of gold. Rare Gold piles are now twice as large so you still get the same amount of gold as before on average.
  
• Gold, Magic Currency, Quality Currency, Flasks, Charms, and Runes are now much less likely to drop from monsters with high Item Rarity. These three changes generally result in around 20-30% more Rare Currency (Exalt, Alch, Regal, etc).
  
• Tier 2 Rares now drop 4x more often. Tiers 3 to 5 now drop 30% more often. The mods of Tiered rares have also been improved by cutting out more low level mods making them better on average than before.
  
• Tier 2 and higher Magic items now drop around 5x more often. The low level mod culling of Tiered Magics has been significantly improved with Tier 2 now culling 50% of the mod range, and improving from there. Tier 5 magic items will usually only roll the highest mod available for a given type. This means that Tiered Magic items should be a much better starting point for crafting or Recombination.
  

These changes significantly improve the effect that Item Rarity has on the quality of the items you receive. Overall you should see significantly better items when killing more challenging content.

One side effect of this change would have been to make Player Item Rarity that you get on mods on your gear more valuable also, which is not our intention. In order to counter that, we have reduced the effect that these mods have.

We have also lowered the Map Item Rarity mods on Maps as these were having too large of an effect after these changes. The overall effect of these mods will still be similar to before, but the displayed number is lower.

[h3]Unique Boss Drop Protection[/h3]

Even if a monster has high Monster Item Rarity, sometimes you can still get a bad drop because you happened to get unlucky.

Drop protection involves adding an additional item in the case where you didn't get lucky with the items that naturally dropped. We already have some drop protection rules in place to prevent some of the worst cases, but we didn't think that they went far enough.

We have made the following change:

• Except for a few Unique Bosses at the start of Act 1, all Unique Bosses will always drop a Rare item.
  
• In the campaign, you only get the guaranteed Rare item the first time you kill the boss. In maps you always get it.
  

[h3]Azmerian Wisps[/h3]

Azmerian Wisps were a great example of content that wasn't feeling rewarding enough because Item Rarity was not having enough of an effect.


Wisps now feel much better from those changes alone, but we also made the following changes:

• Rare monsters possessed by Azmerian Wisps now always drop a Rare item.
  
• Fixed a bug where the first Wisp in the Grelwood didn't have its Item Rarity or Quantity stats.
  

[h3]Rare and Magic Chests[/h3]

We didn't feel that Rare and Magic chests were exciting enough to find. Ideally each time you see one, you feel excited to open it.

In order to fix this, we made the following changes:

• Magic chests have drastically increased Item Rarity and Quantity, and also guarantee at least a Magic item. They are approximately as rewarding as Rare chests were before.
  
• Rare chests also have drastically increased Item Rarity and Quantity, and guarantee at least a Rare item.
  
• In Cruel Difficulty chests get a further +50% more Item Quantity and Item Rarity, and +100% more in Endgame making them very powerful there.
  
• We have changed the Map mods that increased the chance of finding Magic and Rare chests to instead add a fixed number of Magic or Rare chests.
  

We did need to lower the chance of these spawning, but you will still get a lot better items overall. This is especially true in Endgame where the number of rare / magic chests was lowered substantially, but the major increases in results from these chests more than make up for that.

[h3]Strongboxes[/h3]

Strongboxes, as a baseline, have been increased to be equivalent to the new balance for Rare Chests. Specifically:

• Strongboxes have increased Item Quantity and Item Rarity, guarantee a Rare item as well as getting a further +50% more Item Quantity and Item Rarity in Cruel, and +100% more in Endgame.
  
• Researcher's Strongboxes will now have a much higher chance to drop Rare currency instead of Magic currency.
  
• Reduced the variance in the number of items Strongboxes dropped. They should more consistently drop a good number of items.
  

Of course strongboxes also have mods that allow for further increasing Item Rarity. These mods were adjusted down for the same reason as the Map Item Rarity mods, they were having too much of an effect relative to other mods after the changes to Item Rarity more generally. They have the same effect as before, but show a lower value.

[h3]Trial of the Sekhemas[/h3]

Sekhema Trial chests were very underwhelming considering the amount of work you need to do to earn them. We have made significant changes here:

• Regular Bronze chests now have the same base balance as Rare chests do in the Normal Difficulty campaign, including guaranteeing a Rare Item.
  
• Silver and Gold chests increase Item Rarity and Item Quantity by values significantly higher than before.
  
• Arcanist's Chests have had the same improvements to drop composition as Researcher's Strongboxes
  
• Arcanist's Chests (Currency) and Royal Chests (Jewels) are much more common
  
• The chance of getting Silver and Gold keys as room rewards instead of Bronze keys has been significantly increased.
  

[h3]Trial of Chaos[/h3]

In the Trial of Chaos, we were finding that Corrupted Item rewards were no longer valuable in Endgame.

In order to improve the rewards, we have made the following changes:

• As you continue to increase the level you play the Trial of Chaos, corrupted Rares are phased out from the rewards, and Rare Currency stacks are phased in.
  
• Items that drop from monsters in the Trial no longer have a chance to be Corrupted
  

[h3]Expedition[/h3]

Expeditions also received some improvements:

• Expedition Magic and Rare chests now have the same base balance as other endgame Magic and Rare chests.
  
• Normal expedition chests have also been improved.
  
• We also fixed a bug where Increased Chest Item Rarity from Expedition Remnants was not multiplying correctly with the Chest Item Rarity the chest already had. These Remnants will now have a greater effect.
  
• Buffed the rewards from most Expedition Remnant mods
  
• Doubled the number of Expedition Artifacts that drop
  
• Increased the amount of Exotic Coinage that drops by +50%
  

[h3]Delirium[/h3]

The rewards you were getting from Delirium for going deeper into the fog were not high enough. We also thought that the maximum difficulty of Delirium was a bit too high, limiting which builds were able to play this content.

We have made some changes here too:

• Increased the amount of Item Rarity per depth in Delirium encounters. It increases to approximately 2.5 times what it was before.
  
• Reduced the max difficulty of Delirium from being a 5x total increase to a 3x total increase.
  

[h3]Accessibility to Pinnacle Content[/h3]

In order to find loot more easily, it helps to be able to gain access to being able to fight Pinnacle Content more easily. We have made the following changes here:

• Breach splinter drop rates have been increased by +50%
  
• Delirium splinter drop rates have been increased by +80%
  
• The chance of finding Audiences with the King in Ritual is increased by +50%
  

[h3]Other Changes in 0.2.0G[/h3]

We also made some changes to Corrupted Nexus':

• Reduced the number of Corrupted Nexus' you need to complete your Atlas Passive Tree. Each Corrupted Nexus now grants 5 skill points allowing you to complete this task much faster.
  
• Increased the visibility of Corrupted Nexus' so that you can see them from further away.