Path of Exile 2 devs respond to the cries of the loot-starved masses, buffing drops and promising more fixes in upcoming patches

Path of Exile 2 showing the Warbringer ascendancy class bludgeoning his way through a pack of hyenas

(Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)

If there's one point of feedback I've heard most from the roughly 300,000 people who, at any given moment, have been playing Path of Exile 2 since its early access launch, it's that we simply need more drops. That sprawling passive skill tree is only so satisfying to meddle with if you aren't getting the gear to make your build sing, and meager loot has left some PoE 2 players swinging the same sad club for upwards of a dozen levels. Luckily, Grinding Gear Games says it'll be loosening the loot tap, promising increased drops in an upcoming patch alongside tweaks to dodging and map checkpoints.

In a post on the PoE forums addressing feedback from the PoE 2 launch, GGG acknowledged that "one of the major problems that players have been experiencing is feeling that the game is not rewarding enough." To address the problem, the studio's making adjustments in "a few key areas."

First up, starting with a patch that was deployed earlier today, GGG said that it's increasing the drop quantity and rarity of loot from Rare monsters—the ones with the procedurally generated names like Stinkfist the Awoken in yellow font, who might suddenly knock half your health bar off if you hadn't noticed it saunter into the melee. Monster loot will now get a bonus in loot rarity and quantity for each mod affecting the monster, and rare monsters will have progressively more modifiers as players advance through the game.

Regal orbs, which upgrade magic items to rares, will be dropping 40% more often, while disenchanting rare items with six mods will give more regal shards. Lesser jewellers orbs, which can be turned into support gems for skills, got a 33% droprate buff. Gemcutter's prisms, which increase gem quality, got the heftiest increase, now dropping five times as often as they had before—and each one now increases gem quality by 5% instead of 1%. Your skills will thank you.

Lincoln has been writing about games for 12 years—unless you include the essays about procedural storytelling in Dwarf Fortress he convinced his college professors to accept. Leveraging the brainworms from a youth spent in World of Warcraft to write for sites like Waypoint, Polygon, and Fanbyte, Lincoln spent three years freelancing for PC Gamer before joining on as a full-time News Writer in 2024, bringing an expertise in Caves of Qud bird diplomacy, getting sons killed in Crusader Kings, and hitting dinosaurs with hammers in Monster Hunter.