Path of Exile 2 Dev Admits the Game Doesn’t Feel Rewarding Enough, Outlines Plans to Increase Loot Drops

Changes are coming to action role-playing game Path of Exile 2 thick and fast following its huge Early Access launch, with a new hotfix out now.

In a post on the Path of Exile forum, developer Grinding Gear Games published a list of issues it felt needed to be “urgently addressed,” with other less urgent issues to be tackled later on. Chief among them is the feeling that Path of Exile 2 isn’t rewarding enough, something GGG acknowledged is a problem.

“One of the major problems that players have been experiencing is feeling that the game is not rewarding enough,” it said. “This is an area that we have to be very careful when adjusting because it’s very hard to reduce drops if we increase them by too much.”

Specifically, GGG felt that rare monsters were not rewarding enough, especially in the endgame where unique monsters are less common. GGG also saw that the reward players received for the increased difficulty of rares wasn’t lining up.

So, it’s doubling the rarity bonus per rare mod, increasing the quantity bonus per rare mod by 10%, and increasing the chance of rare monsters inherently having more modifiers as players progress through endgame.

“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 explained.

“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.”

Meanwhile, GGG is changing the game to make sure each map has a minimum number of rares, which will also increase the average number of rare mods and thus increase drops further.

Another major issue GGG has identified is outlier “unlucky” drops. “A single unique boss dropping badly, especially early on can significantly affect your character,” GGG admitted. Changes here include no more than 50% of a unique monster’s drops can be gold, and act bosses and map bosses will now always drop at least one rare.

Elsewhere, GGG is making dodge roll changes after players complained about being trapped in by monsters. “While it is intended that monsters are able to trap and kill you, we felt that the frequency of this was a little too high,” GGG explained.

GGG has posted the first set of patch notes for these changes, with more to come as they’re rolled out. Check out the patch notes for 0.1.0c below (you will need to restart your client to receive the client changes in this patch).

GGG is already nerfing a number of Path of Exile 2 skills it’s deemed to have “unacceptable balance.” And in a fresh tweet, the developer said it plans to nerf Raging Spirits so it can only summon five Raging Spirits per cast at all levels. They will also no longer be able to be spawned from triggered Fire Skills. Players are already calling on GGG to give all a full character respec opportunity as a result.

In an upcoming hotfix, we’ll be making it so that Raging Spirits can only summon 5 Raging Spirits per cast at all levels. They will also no longer be able to be spawned from triggered Fire Skills.

After this hotfix, we will be making adjustments to other Trigger Meta-Gems. In…

— Path of Exile (@pathofexile) December 10, 2024

Here’s which class to pick in PoE 2 Early Access, plus an early Mercenary build guide and Sorceress build guide to help you get started. Beyond that, if you’re wondering how to get more Spirit, how to trade, and how to ascend, we’ve got you covered.

Path of Exile 2 update 0.1.0c Patch Notes

• Campaign bosses killed after the first kill will now drop less currency items, replacing them with other items.
• Increased the drop rate of Regal Orbs.
• Significantly increased the drop rate of Gemcutter’s Prisms.
• A single Gemcutter’s Prism also improves the Quality of a Skill Gem by +5% (previously +1%).
• Lowered the drop rate of Chaos Orbs and distributed it amongst the other more valued Currency Items (Like Regal Orbs, Exalted Orbs).
• Lowered the drop rate of Artificer’s Orbs and distributed it to Lesser Jeweller’s Orbs.
• Disenchanting Rare Items with 6 Modifiers now provides 2 Regal Shards (previously 1). The value displayed will still show as 1 until a later patch.
• Increased the values of all Prefix Modifiers that can roll on Waystones. We’ve also adjusted the chances of getting the more commonly powerful Modifiers such as increases to Rarity and Pack Size.
• Monster Modifiers now grant higher amounts of Item Rarity and Item Quantity. This is most common on Magic and Rare enemies, but also affects Unique Enemies if applied through various Endgame Mechanics like the Deadly Evolution Keystone.
• Increased the chance for Rare Monsters in Maps to have 3 or 4 modifiers.
• Rare Monsters in Map areas are now revealed on the minimap when there are 200 Monsters remaining (previously 50).
• Fixed a bug where some Persistent Buff Skills, such as Raging Spirits and Mana Remnants, were not working for the Infernalist when in Demon Form.
• Fixed a bug where you could sometimes be unable to interact with the Map Device in The Ziggurat Refuge.
• Fixed a bug where Monsters Shattered in a Blood Circle Ultimatum Encounter were not contributing blood.
• Fixed a bug that could cause the instance to permanently stop time (freeze) when trying to revive a Chronomancer.
• Fixed a bug where Rare Monsters could not be found within the Chimeral Wetlands.
• Fixed a bug where “Move only” was name-locking.
• Fixed three instance crashes.
• Fixed a client crash.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.