Developer Grinding Gear Games has shared the patch notes forPath of Exile 2’s patch 0.2.0g, which promises a massive overhaul to loot drops. After releasing into early access in December 2024,Path of Exile 2has been making waves in the ARPG community by attempting to reinvent the genre. The ARPG space has been seeing a bit of a renaissance in recent years, andPath of Exile 2is striving to beat out its competitors.
With the initial launch looking like a resounding success and seeing massive player numbers, some negativity has slowly begun to build in the community due to several issues. The sentiment surrounding the game wasn’t helped when Grinding Gear Games released thepatch notes forDawn of the Hunt, the latest major update, which saw most builds hit hard with nerfs. The introduction of these sweeping changes left many players feeling like the power fantasy inherent to an ARPG was being stripped away.
After acknowledging thatPath of Exile 2loot needed some changes, the developer announced a massive overhaul to loot with patch 0.2.0g. Releasing on May 1, this latest patch sees an overall increase in Rare Items and Currency drops. Bosses are now guaranteed to drop a Rare Item, while the chance of dropping Normal Items is removed altogether. Azmerian Wisps have also seen a significant change that should now ensure much better item drops. The patch makes chests, Strongboxes, and loot from Trials significantly better as well, which should please much of the community.
All of these changes should have a massive impact on how the campaign feels, allowing players to continuously get the dopamine hit they desire from epic loot drops. But these changes also apply to the endgame, with many core events also seeing an upgrade. Expeditions and Delirium will be more rewarding in terms of loot and specific event currency drops. Pinnacle bosses should also be easier to access, now that the currency needed to attempt them has seen a massive increase in their drop rates. WithPath of Exile 2currently sitting at a “mostly negative” rating on Steam, it’s excellent to see Grinding Gear Games is willing to make significant changes.
After a bumpy road since the early access launch, it’s clear Grinding Gear Games is listening to the players. The developer has seen a lot of negativity recently, not just regarding gameplay but also fordisabling game sharing on Xbox forPath of Exile 2. Loot is at the core of any ARPG, and this new update seems to be a move in the right direction and should please many fans of the game. Hopefully, this patch will be a step forward and give fans the epic loot drops they have been asking for.
Path of Exile 2 Update 0.2.0g Patch Notes
Unique Boss Drop Protection
Even if a monster has high Monster Item Rarity, sometimes you can still get a bad drop because you happened to get unlucky.
Drop protection involves adding an additional item in the case where you didn’t get lucky with the items that naturally dropped. We already have some drop protection rules in place to prevent some of the worst cases, but we didn’t think that they went far enough.
We have made the following change:
Azmerian Wisps
Azmerian Wisps were a great example of content that wasn’t feeling rewarding enough because Item Rarity was not having enough of an effect.
Wisps now feel much better from those changes alone, but we also made the following changes:
Rare and Magic Chests
We didn’t feel that Rare and Magic chests were exciting enough to find. Ideally each time you see one, you feel excited to open it.
In order to fix this, we made the following changes:
We did need to lower the chance of these spawning, but you will still get a lot better items overall. This is especially true in Endgame where the number of rare / magic chests was lowered substantially, but the major increases in results from these chests more than make up for that.
Strongboxes
Strongboxes, as a baseline, have been increased to be equivalent to the new balance for Rare Chests. Specifically:
Of course strongboxes also have mods that allow for further increasing Item Rarity. These mods were adjusted down for the same reason as the Map Item Rarity mods, they were having too much of an effect relative to other mods after the changes to Item Rarity more generally. They have the same effect as before, but show a lower value.
Trial of the Sekhemas
Sekhema Trial chests were very underwhelming considering the amount of work you need to do to earn them. We have made significant changes here:
Trial of Chaos
In the Trial of Chaos, we were finding that Corrupted Item rewards were no longer valuable in Endgame.
In order to improve the rewards, we have made the following changes:
Expeditions also received some improvements:
Delirium
The rewards you were getting from Delirium for going deeper into the fog were not high enough.
We have made some changes here too:
Accessibility to Pinnacle Content
In order to find loot more easily, it helps to be able to gain access to being able to fight Pinnacle Content more easily. We have made the following changes here:
