Path of Exile 2 First Update brings much needed loot and QOL changes

After a successful Early Access launch weekend, Path of Exile 2 developer Grinding Gear Games has on the ARPG’s official forums highlighting an imminent update aimed at fixing a lot of the early frustrations players are having. As part of the update, the of loot drops and plenty of QOL changes will be implemented.

A successful Early Access launch

Despite a rocky launch day where the servers for Path of Exile 2 where the servers struggled to handle the hundreds of thousands of players all trying to login at once, the rest of the launch weekend has gone rather smoothly for the Early Access launch of the highly anticipated ARPG. However, as players put some serious time into their characters over the weekend and completed the two campaign playthroughs required to unlock the ARPG’s endgame, some started to see some potential issues.

The major point of contention I’ve seen from players has been about the amount of loot—or rather, the lack of it—throughout the campaign and even into the endgame. For comparison, reaching the endgame in PoE෴ features simple rare monster kills resulting in literal loot explosions that require l♊oot filters to hide a majority of the useless loot.

As it stands in Path of Exile 2 at the moment, that’s far from what players can expect. In fact, many players have reported going through an entire map, the endgame form of content, and only receiving a couple of Currency drops and worthwhile items to even bother picking up. That being said, Path of Exile 2 as a whole is a much more methodical and tactful version of its predecessor, which has caused a debate about whether loot drops really are too low or if that’s simply how this new version of Path of Exile is intended to be played.

It’s all about the Loot

With the upcoming changes in the first update, it looks as though the truth is somewhere in the middle. According to Grinding Gear Games, players currently feel as though the game is simply not rewarding enough. The team was quick to point out that overall it’s an area in which they have to be very careful when adjusting as it’s very hard to in turn reduce drop rates after they’ve been increased as once players feel a certain level of increase, they never want to go back from it. This is an issue that over the years has really ballooned the current Path of Exile into the state﷽ its in now after a decade of ෴updates.

Here are the major loot changes GGG is planning with the updat🦋e:

• Rare and Unique Monsters will drop more and better loot based on difficulty.
  • Rarity bonus per rare mod has been doubled
  • +10% Quantity bonus per rare mod
  • Increased the chance of rare monsters inherently having more modifiers as you progress through endgame
• Currency will drop more
  • Regal orb drop rates increased around 40%
  • Disenchanting of six mod rares to give two regal shards instead of one.
  • Lesser Jewellers orbs drop rates increased around 33%
  • Reduced the drop rate of Chaos Orbs slightly as they are less valued and so that it doesn’t consume so much of the “rare currency” drop pool. This causes currency such as Exalted Orbs to increase somewhat.
  • Gemcutter’s Prism drop rates increased by 500%
  • Gemcutter’s Prisms now increase quality on gems by 5% instead of 1%
• Higher Map Difficulty will lead to more drops
  • Rarity mods have been increased by 2.5x
  • Quantity mods have had extra rarity added to them (This is now in a later patch)
  • We removed the bottom tier of some mods
  • You are much more likely to roll modifiers that affect drops or pack size rather than less useful mods
• Unlucky Drop Protection added
  • No more than 50% of an Unique monsters drops can be gold
  • Act Bosses and Map Bosses will always drop at least 1 rare

Overall, these seem like very simple yet effective ways to increase the overall rewards players are receiving. As a longtime player of PoE, I can appreciate the limited loot drops in PoE2. But at the moment, it certainly does feel too reserved. I recently reached the end game and through my first 10 maps, I only received a few pieces of lower currency items and not a single item drop that was an upgrade, and only a few even worth bringing back to sell or disenchant. It felt like I didn’t progress at all after those 10 maps and was rather just doing them to do them. These changes will certainly help that.

Putting Quality in Quality of Life

While the loot changes are the biggest part of the update, there are some big quality-of-life changes coming as well. For starters, the dodge roll is being changed slightly. Player sizes will now be zero instead of one while dodging, meaning that while players can still get trapped, it shouldn’t happen often. And smaller monsters can now be pushed out of the way when dodge rolling instead of acting like an impenetrable barrier.

Another big quality-of-life update is to how Checkpoints work. At the moment, they only exist as a respawn point for the most recently reached Checkpoint. With the update, you will now be able to click a checkpoint you’ve already visited to teleport to that Checkpoint. Furthermore, Checkpoints have been added to all entrances and exits of ones, as well as to the midway point of the long and arduous Dreadnought area. This will allow players to more easily maneuver the game as they progress.

As a whole, these are promising early updates to Path of Exile 2. Grinding Gear Games has always been quick to respond to player feedback, and I’m happy to see that process continue right out of the gate for the new ARPG.