Path of Exile 2's first big patch of 2025 is here, bringing new maps, quality of life tweaks, unique item and monster rebalancing, and—let's see—improved visuals for 'Chaos Pustules'

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

(Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)

Path of Exile 2 is kicking off 2025 with its first major patch—and it's a doozy. As promised in the patch preview released last weekend, Grinding Gear Games has returned from its holiday break to tackle some of the most pressing issues and smooth out some of the friction players have faced in the weeks since PoE 2's early access launch. Patch 0.1.1 delivers a long list of additions and changes, ranging from retuned endgame maps to rebalanced uniques to general quality of life tweaks.

First up in the patch notes, GGG's targeting frustrations players have run into when progressing into endgame mapping. Players attempting the Arbiter of Ash pinnacle boss will now have a bit more wiggle room to work with as they learn the fight: At its base difficulty, you'll get 6 respawn attempts, with the number of respawns decreasing at higher difficulties.

Citadels, challenging endgame nodes on the Atlas map that—in addition to offering rare loot—drop key fragments needed for facing the pinnacle boss, will now be easier to locate: They'll be marked by a pillar of light in the shrouded portions of the Atlas map, so you can clear your way towards them more directly.

Four new types of tower maps will have been added, and map areas are also getting checkpoints and a minimum threshold of three rare monsters. Roughly one in four maps will now have bosses, and GGG has adjusted map areas to "have more distinct specialities for the content they contain." Some maps might spawn twice as many chests; others might have 50% more rare monsters, or essences, or strongboxes.

Monsters that have been particular nuisances for players, like grenade-throwing Forsaken Miners and meteor-dropping Lost-men Zealots, have been nerfed, hopefully meaning fewer sudden deaths and map-ending murders from off-screen. Likewise, the visual effects for enemy abilities and hazards have been adjusted to make it clearer when you're standing where you shouldn't be. According to the patch notes, all sorts of exploding corpses, Volatile Plants, and Chaos Pustules should be easier to spot in the visual noise of high-speed map clearing.

There's a pile of quality of life improvements and general changes: Filled sockets in gear can now be overwritten by other socketable items. Armor effectiveness has been buffed by 15%—but considering how rough of a state armor is in, that might not be enough. "Most monsters smaller than a skeleton" can be pushed out of the way while dodge rolling. The world map should load faster. Burning Ground won't spawn under levers anymore.

If that wasn't enough, GGG's decided uniques needed some buffs. Unique items have gotten a rebalancing sweep so wide-reaching that the relevant section of the patch notes is over 2,400 words long. Unfortunately, some players aren't convinced that the changes are enough to make all but the best uniques worth using. Still, it might be a good idea to survey any spare uniques you've got hanging around in your stash—some of them might be more relevant for your build than they were yesterday.

There's plenty more tweaks and fixes hitting with Patch 0.1.1, so feel free to peruse the patch notes at your leisure. As for what comes next, GGG said in their patch preview video that deeper reworks will be on the way for character and monster balance, but "those types of changes are going to have to wait until we are ready to make a new league with a new economy for people to play in. That's still a little while away yet."

Lincoln has been writing about games for 11 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.