After a disastrous recent update and a flurry of attempts to fix it, Path of Exile 2's next patch will bring 'two highly sought after improvements'

A Path of Exile 2 sorceress wearing robes and conjuring hourglasses with her hands on a purple and blue background
(Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)

Path of Exile 2's recent 0.2.0 update did not go down well with players. The update unleashed nerf-a-geddon unto numerous classes and abilities, while also making monsters tougher by fattening their health bars. The purported aim of the update was to make the later game more challenging. But the effect, at least according to players, was that it made the game feel way too slow, denying them that sense of empowerment and rapid progression that is at the heart of ARPGs.

Developer Grinding Gear Games addressed these concerns in a blog post on its website, defending some of the decisions while acknowledging the unintended consequences of others. Since then, it has issued several further updates. The latest, 0.2.0f, arrived two days ago, and respecced ascendency classes while also making changes to charms, the crafting system, and the endgame.

Now, GGG has revealed what's in store for the next update to Path of Exile 2. "With Patch 0.2.0f deployed, we're already planning the next wave of improvements we want to be making," writes the developer in a Steam post. "The main focus of 0.2.0g will be to address two highly sought after improvements as well as a flurry of other minor to moderate changes."

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The first of these improvements revolves around loot drops. Some players have experienced runs of bad luck in Path of Exile 2, receiving underwhelming new gear items from defeated bosses. Hence, the next update will be "raising the floor of the quality of their drops."

Presumably, this means there will be a minimum baseline regarding what loot you can expect from a boss, given this update coincides with another change to "increase the quality of drops from bosses overall". On top of that, players can also expect better quality loot from monsters possessed by azmerian wisps.

The second major improvement targets corrupted nexuses—special locations in the endgame that contain ‘corrupted’ monsters and unique bosses. Grinding Gear explains that these "can be difficult and time consuming to find and often players progress in waystone tiers much faster than they can complete the nexuses." Consequently, update 0.2.0g make corrupted nexuses easier to find, while also lowering the number of completed nexuses required for players to attain all their atlas passive points.

Grinding Gear Games says these are "just some of the changes we'll be working towards deploying over the next couple of weeks". The developer can't give precise date for when the update will arrive, due to the Easter weekend and an additional public holiday in New Zealand (where the studio is based). But it says that the plan is to get the update ready "as soon as we can".

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Contributor

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.

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