Tackling a variety of issues still present following the launch of the Dawn of the Hunt update, PoE2’s patch 0.2.1 leads with a series of changes to endgame rewards. The developer’s own playtesting revealed that it “overshot” the number of maps players need to complete when chasing certain rewards “pretty substantially.”
Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.2.1
To rein that in, Path of Exile 2’s update 0.2.1 is “significantly improving both the drop rates of the incredibly rare unique items we already have as well as adding a bunch of new exciting and chase uniques that will take your builds to new heights.” Rare unique items that proved less appealing than expected are also getting buffed.
22 new Runes, 14 new Soul Cores, and 7 new Talismans are also on the way, aiming to make item sockets more interesting, while the rarer Omens from Ritual encounters will become more common.
Expedition logbooks are another major point of focus for Path of Exile 2’s patch 0.2.1. The developer admits that they are currently “unrewarding,” partly due to the fact that “at very high levels they have so few monsters spawning that they often end up yielding significantly less items than just a regular Endgame Map.”
To address that, it is “increasing the distance between explosives and the radius of explosives” which should make uncovering more monsters and rewards easier. The number of foes spawned will also be increased to reach a point where it is “reflective of what an Endgame map has in it.”
More targeted Expedition changes increase the number of Remnants in the Lush Isle area, which is also getting more fenced-off sections and pustules that, when destroyed, “cause all monsters unearthed afterwards to spawn Corruption monsters on death, similar to those in the Corrupted areas on the Atlas.”
Several other areas are also receiving similar tweaks, as detailed in this dedicated forum post.
PoE2’s patch 0.2.1 also improves the variety of endgame maps that spawn on the Atlas. According to the developer, generating 400,000 Maps now leads to 150,000 of them being Hidden Grotto, which can feel quite repetitive.
Whenever a Citadel spawns after PoE2’s update 0.2.1 goes live, it “will ensure that it generates the other two types of Citadels near it.” These changes will, however, only apply to unexplored areas of the Atlas during the current leagues.
A number of quality of life updates are also planned, including swapping back item tiers to work similarly to how they do in Path of Exile 1, separating the modifier categories displayed when hovering over maps, and improvements to searching the passive tree using the keyboard and mouse.
“Now when you search for passives by typing in the text field, you can press Enter to automatically find and go to that passive, if there are multiple passives found in your search then continuing to press enter will cycle through them. It also darkens the rest of the passive tree to help bring the searched nodes to the foreground making them much easier to see.”
The article linked above goes into further detail on these changes and more. Path of Exile 2’s patch 0.2.1 is aiming to launch at the end of next week, but the developer is “keeping flexible as it might fall into the week afterwards.”
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