It’s only been four days since Path of Exile 2 launched in early access, but developer Grinding Gear Games is already hard at work addressing player feedback. First on the agenda: Making the free-to-play game feel more rewarding.
“One of the major problems that players have been experiencing is feeling that the game is not rewarding enough,” the Dec. 9 patch notes read. “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. We have identified a few key areas that we believe will significantly improve the experience that players are having.”
One of the biggest changes includes doubling the rarity bonus per modifier on rare monsters, which, when combined with the increased chance for rare monsters to have more modifiers in the endgame, is sure to improve item drops. To protect players from unlucky drops, no more than 50% of a unique monster’s drops will be gold and certain bosses will always drop at least one rare item.
Path of Exile 2’s early success led to some instability and long log-in queues when servers opened on Dec. 6, forcing the developers to “restart the realm” several times. Grinding Gear Games director Jonathan Rogers was open about these potential issues shortly before the game went live and admitted the studio was surprised to surpass 1 million users.
“There are still a lot more changes to come, these are just some of the changes that are fast for us to make,” Grinding Gear Games wrote in a feedback forum. “We will be continuing to monitor feedback and adjusting things as we go.”
Here are the patch notes in full:
- 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.
