Path of Exile 2 Devs Say the Game Isn’t Rewarding | Will the New Patch Fix It?

Path of Exile 2 might be the biggest game news of the year, boasting record-breaking numbers for the ARPG genre. However, everything isn’t always good. Even when Path of Exile 2’s concurrent players are still erupting, players have been complaining about both the difficulty and the sheer scarcity of rewards in the game. While both problems have merits, the lack of loot wasn’t their intention, and they fixed it immediately with a patch.

Path of Exile 2 Devs Own Up to Their Mistake of the Game Being Not Rewarding Enough

Grinding Gear Games has a history of transparency with its community, and this might be a refreshing sight for most gamers. A few days after launch, they quickly addressed some of the main issues, including broken skill gems. However, one of the biggest issues for both beginner and veteran players is the lack of loot in the game.

Since most Path of Exile 2 players are also Path of Exile players, they can tell what rewarding is and what is not because they know what pieces of items would bring the most value to their build or even to other players.

The game doesn’t drop enough rare items, currencies, or “rarer” drops to keep the players excited about something. Most of the progression lies with dropping skill gems and upgrading them to increase your power. You rarely get rare items to get as “upgrades” for your gear or even enough currency Orbs and item bases to craft your gear while leveling up.

Not only are these items not dropping enough, but each character can also acquire gear designed for other classes, which makes things even harder. Path of Exile 2 needed an immediate fix, and they delivered.

Related: Path of Exile 2 Class Tier List: All PoE2 Classes Ranked

Path of Exile 2 Patch Notes and Hotfixes 0.1.0

It’ll be extremely hard to follow if you search their patch notes and hotfixes announcements since they release almost two or three changes a day since launch. However, here are the most important patch notes regarding the loot changes, and we’ll dissect how they will impact the game:

Rare Monster Changes

• Rarity bonus per rare mod has been doubled.
• +10% quantity bonus per rare mod.
• Increased the chance of rare monsters inherently having more modifiers as you progress through the endgame.

One of the main problems in Path of Exile 2 is the endgame loot. It might be less than 1% of the player base at this point in the game, but it is still worth changing immediately. Running maps and only finding two normal currency orbs and a few Waystones is not good.

Making the rare monsters drop way more per rare mod is a big change. Since quantity holds more weight than rarity when finding loot, this will surely give players way more loot. Most rare monsters have several rare mods, making them extremely hard to defeat, but at least now, you are rewarded way more loot.

Currency Changes

• Regal Orb drop rates increased by 40%.
• Disenchanting six moded rare items gives two Regal Shards instead of one.
• Lesser Jewellers Orbs drop rates increased by 33%.
• Reduced drop rate of Chaos Orbs, so other “rare” currencies drop more.
• Gemcutter’s Prism increased by 500%.
• Gemcutter’s Prism increases the quality of gems by 5% instead of 1%.

The currency changes are nice in the endgame, but they are aimed to help players throughout the campaign so they can craft their gear. Since currency orbs were scarce, most players found it hard to use or risk certain orbs to craft decent gear for their character.

Map Mod Changes

• Rarity mods have been increased by 2.5x more.
• Quantity mods have had extra rarity added to them.
• Much more likely to roll modifiers that affect drops or pack size than other less useful modifiers.

This supplements the rare monster changes above, giving way more loot than before. From experience, I rarely get Exalted Orbs from running maps, but after the patch, I got more than one Exalted Orb on each map, and most dropped from rare monsters.

Unlucky Drop Protection System Added

• No more than 50% of a unique monster drop can be gold.
• Act bosses and map bosses will always drop at least one rare.

This change actually helps you differentiate if you are getting loot or not. Since we wouldn’t know if a gold pile is “rare” or “normal,” we don’t know if we got lucky. With this change, we will secure a rare item, or at least a better one.