Grinding Gear Games has big news as it details Path of Exile 2 patch 0.2.1, the next update for the early-access ARPG. With the current seasons for Last Epoch and Diablo 4 now in the rear-view mirror, GGG is ready to entice us back to the continuing Dawn of the Hunt by "significantly improving" the drop rates on a lot of items and crafting currencies that it has deemed too rare. It's also aiming to make sure the endgame feels a lot more interesting, without constantly forcing you back into Hidden Grotto.
"In 0.2.0g we improved the baseline experience of getting rewards from monsters and chests but we still feel you don't get enough of those exciting spike moments," the games like Diablo, your gear progression stagnating is one of the fastest routes to losing interest. The central focus of PoE 2 0.2.1, then, is making those 'chase' items easier to encounter, while also adding more of them to watch out for.
GGG promises a significant improvement to the drop rates of its rarest unique items, along with the introduction of "a bunch of new exciting and chase uniques that will take your builds to new heights." It's going to buff some uniques that were designed to be considered 'chase' standard "but didn't live up to that." When encountering Rogue Exiles, you'll find they're equipped with (and therefore will drop) "approximately three times" as many unique items as before.
That's just the beginning; in Ritual, you'll see a far higher frequency of "rarer, more exciting" Omens. Using Vaal Orbs to enhance monsters trapped in Essences will result in Corrupted Essences around six times more frequently. To improve the variety of endgame crafting, GGG is introducing 22 Runes, 14 Soul Cores, and seven Talismans, which it teases will be rarer drops but that "you will certainly want to use over the normal base set of socketables."
While the boss of the Twisted Domain can be valuable, GGG its that the rest of the area is "pretty underwhelming" as an endgame activity: "Pinnacle content shouldn't be giving less rewards than the dozens of maps required to gain access to it." You'll now see far more rare monsters there, and with a buff to both their drop quantity and rarity. There's also a guarantee of some rare Breach rings from your visit, should it prove a success.
Also considered far too unrewarding are Expedition Logbooks. To help correct this, expect bigger explosives, more monsters spawning, and improvements to each of the individual areas that will increase both the number and rarity of creatures you face. Look forward to more gold, a lot more strongboxes, and a greater quantity of Ezomyte Rune drops. The new special features in each region will be visible on the minimap, helping you plan out your path for maximum profit.
Drops aren't PoE 2's only problem right now, however; the endgame itself desperately needs more variety. "Did you know that if you were to generate 400,000 maps that 150,000 of them would be Hidden Grotto," GGG jokes. The frequency of maps has been adjusted to normalize how often each of them appear, with the goal of making your endgame grind "far less repetitive." Citadel spawns have been reworked to ensure you'll always see all three types in relatively close proximity, although the developer notes you'll need to explore into new areas of the Atlas to see these changes take effect.
The most frustrating Ritual variants are being toned down slightly, along with improved telegraphing for Volatile Plants explosions. Several of the deadliest map modifiers, such as Elemental Penetration, have been nerfed a little to bring them "more in line with others." The frequency of boons and afflictions in the Trial of the Sekhemas has been adjusted to offer more variety, and the particular affliction that removed your entire Energy Shield now halves it instead, preventing it from being a run-ender for Chaos Inoculation builds.
Rounding out the plans for 0.2.1 are several welcome quality-of-life updates. When searching for nodes on the PoE 2 ive skill tree, you can now hit the enter key to automatically focus on matches, pressing it again to cycle through each of the results. The way that tiers are shown with the 'advanced item display' setting enabled has been reverted back to work the way it does in PoE 1, making it easier for knowledgable players to quickly ascertain if a given modifier is as good as it can be.
Hovering maps on the Atlas screen will now separate out the various categories of modifiers, making it easier to tell which come from corruption, cleansing, or nearby towers. Finally, GGG rounds out its news with the promise of a performance improvement that it says "will cause less U-bound bottlenecks," a problem that was affecting some players in areas such as the Faridun in act two and Freythorn in act one.
As for when we can expect Path of Exile 2 patch 0.2.1 to release, Grinding Gear Games says, "we're hoping to deploy at the end of next week, but are keeping flexible as it might fall into the week afterwards." In the meantime, it promises some more specific teases for the new and improved unique items and socketables we can look forward to.
For now, take a look through our tier list of the best Path of Exile 2 builds to get you started.
You can follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides. We've also got a vibrant community Discord server, where you can chat about this story with of the team and fellow readers.