Developer Grinding Gear Games has shared the patch notes for Path of Exile 2's patch 0.2.0g, which promises a massive overhaul to loot drops. After releasing into early access in December 2024, Path of Exile 2 has been making waves in the ARPG community by attempting to reinvent the genre. The ARPG space has been seeing a bit of a renaissance in recent years, and Path of Exile 2 is striving to beat out its competitors.
With the initial launch looking like a resounding success and seeing massive player numbers, some negativity has slowly begun to build in the community due to several issues. The sentiment surrounding the game wasn’t helped when Grinding Gear Games released the patch notes for Dawn of the Hunt, the latest major update, which saw most builds hit hard with nerfs. The introduction of these sweeping changes left many players feeling like the power fantasy inherent to an ARPG was being stripped away.
Path of Exile 2's Dawn of the Hunt Mechanic Needs One Big Change
Path of Exile 2 adds a new mechanic with Dawn of the Hunt, but it fails to stick the landing in terms of how it works.
After acknowledging that Path of Exile 2 loot needed some changes, the developer announced a massive overhaul to loot with patch 0.2.0g. Releasing on May 1, this latest patch sees an overall increase in Rare Items and Currency drops. Bosses are now guaranteed to drop a Rare Item, while the chance of dropping Normal Items is removed altogether. Azmerian Wisps have also seen a significant change that should now ensure much better item drops. The patch makes chests, Strongboxes, and loot from Trials significantly better as well, which should please much of the community.
All of these changes should have a massive impact on how the campaign feels, allowing players to continuously get the dopamine hit they desire from epic loot drops. But these changes also apply to the endgame, with many core events also seeing an upgrade. Expeditions and Delirium will be more rewarding in terms of loot and specific event currency drops. Pinnacle bosses should also be easier to access, now that the currency needed to attempt them has seen a massive increase in their drop rates. With Path of Exile 2 currently sitting at a “mostly negative” rating on Steam, it’s excellent to see Grinding Gear Games is willing to make significant changes.
After a bumpy road since the early access launch, it's clear Grinding Gear Games is listening to the players. The developer has seen a lot of negativity recently, not just regarding gameplay but also for disabling game sharing on Xbox for Path of Exile 2. Loot is at the core of any ARPG, and this new update seems to be a move in the right direction and should please many fans of the game. Hopefully, this patch will be a step forward and give fans the epic loot drops they have been asking for.
Path of Exile 2 Update 0.2.0g Patch Notes
Unique Boss Drop Protection
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.
Azmerian Wisps
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.
Rare and Magic Chests
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.
Strongboxes
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.
Trial of the Sekhemas
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.
Trial of Chaos
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
Expedition
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%
Delirium
The rewards you were getting from Delirium for going deeper into the fog were not high enough.
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.
Accessibility to Pinnacle Content
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%
Other Changes in 0.2.0g
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.
Path of Exile II
-
OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 88 /100 Critics Rec: 100%
- Released
- December 6, 2024
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Nudity, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Language, Users Interact, In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items)
- Developer(s)
- Grinding Gear Games
- Publisher(s)
- Grinding Gear Games
WHERE TO PLAY
- Engine
- Proprietary Engine
- Genre(s)
- Action RPG, Hack and Slash, MMORPG
