If there's one point of feedback I've heard most from the roughly 300,000 people who, at any given moment, have been playing Path of Exile 2 since its early access launch, it's that we simply need more drops. That sprawling passive skill tree is only so satisfying to meddle with if you aren't getting the gear to make your build sing, and meager loot has left some PoE 2 players swinging the same sad club for upwards of a dozen levels. Luckily, Grinding Gear Games says it'll be loosening the loot tap, promising increased drops in an upcoming patch alongside tweaks to dodging and map checkpoints.
In a post on the PoE forums addressing feedback from the PoE 2 launch, GGG acknowledged that "one of the major problems that players have been experiencing is feeling that the game is not rewarding enough." To address the problem, the studio's making adjustments in "a few key areas."
First up, starting with a patch that was deployed earlier today, GGG said that it's increasing the drop quantity and rarity of loot from Rare monsters—the ones with the procedurally generated names like Stinkfist the Awoken in yellow font, who might suddenly knock half your health bar off if you hadn't noticed it saunter into the melee. Monster loot will now get a bonus in loot rarity and quantity for each mod affecting the monster, and rare monsters will have progressively more modifiers as players advance through the game.
"These changes will cause rare monster rewards to naturally scale up as you get to higher levels because the number of mods a monster can have increases throughout the campaign and into endgame," GGG said. "In addition, many other forms of map juicing will indirectly cause rare monsters to have more mods as well, increasing the rewards of these other mechanics too."
Next in GGG's multi-pronged loot stimulus program: increased currency drops. Thanks to today's patch, many currencies have gotten hefty droprate buffs.
Regal orbs, which upgrade magic items to rares, will be dropping 40% more often, while disenchanting rare items with six mods will give more regal shards. Lesser jewellers orbs, which can be turned into support gems for skills, got a 33% droprate buff. Gemcutter's prisms, which increase gem quality, got the heftiest increase, now dropping five times as often as they had before—and each one now increases gem quality by 5% instead of 1%. Your skills will thank you.
To spare players the experience of bashing their heads against a tough boss only to get a bunch of junk loot, bosses will now always drop at least 1 rare. Endgame maps have gotten increases to rarity and quality mods as well, and in an upcoming patch, players will encounter additional rare monster spawns in maps.
Elsewhere on the PoE 2 update agenda, GGG is working to remove frustrations around getting mobbed by monsters and being forced to walk all the way across the map after death. In upcoming patches, the player will be able to dodge roll through smaller spaces between monsters and shove small monsters aside while rolling. "This should result in getting trapped less often," GGG said.
All zone entrances and exits will now have an accompanying checkpoint, and we'll be able to click on them to teleport between activated checkpoints. Mercifully, we'll also be getting a checkpoint added to the Dreadnaught, an act 2 mission that's proven to be a bit of a slog for a lot of players.
To stay abreast of when these changes and others arrive, be sure to keep an eye on the PoE 2 early access patch note forum. In the meantime, I'll be on my sorceress, where I'll be harvesting my own fresh bounty of currency orbs.
