It’s hard to compare today’s ARPG titans when you have an expansive, complex, and all-consuming game like Path of Exile 2 leading the charge. With its broad class variety, seemingly overwhelming skill tree, and growing endgame, there’s a reason so many of us continually return to Grinding Gear Games’ monolith. Well, it’s about to get bigger and better. Here’s a look at the major Path of Exile 2 endgame changes coming in Patch 0.3.1!
Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.3.1 promises to be positively massive in scope, but it’s the sweeping endgame changes that have us drooling at the mouth. After all, that’s where the real fun begins in an ARPG, right?
Grinding Gear Games aims to alter Alchemy Orbs, Towers, Tablets, Citadels, endgame maps, Atlas Trees, and so much more with this patch.
Alchemy Orbs
First and foremost, Alchemy Orbs diminished in value and use following the tiered currency changes in patch 0.3.0. GGG wants to change that in this upcoming patch by ensuring they offer additional functionality when crafting, allowing Alchemy Orbs to be used on magic items. Using an Alchemy Orb on a magic item upgrades it to a rare item with four random modifiers.
Towers and Tablets
Following recent changes, Tablets now apply directly to Maps, meaning you can alter the content of each endgame map to suit your playstyle and desires. To ensure this system flows smoothly, “the ceiling for the amount of content you can apply to a single Map has been lowered.” To compensate, GGG buffed modifiers on Tablets by two to three times.
They provided a few examples:
- Collector’s now has a value of 10% to 30% increased Rarity of Items found in your Maps (from 7% to 10%)
- Teeming now has a value of 25% to 70% increased Magic Monsters (from 15% to 25%)
- of Strongboxes now has a value of 50% to 100% increased chance for your Maps to contain Strongboxes (from 30% to 50%)
Along with brand-new modifiers:
- of the Devoted – Area contains an additional Shrine
- of the Antiquarian – Area contains an additional Strongbox
- Crystallised – Area contains an additional Essence
- Exiled – Area is inhabited by 1 additional Rogue Exile
- Azmeri’s – Area contains 1 additional Azmeri Spirit
- Summoner’s – Area contains an additional Summoning Circle
- of the Summoning – Area has 25 to 50% increased chance to contain a Summoning Circle
And a quick rundown of Tablets in general:
- Unique tablets have their own individual number of uses
- When using Tablets in the reforging bench, the resultant item will have the sum of the input tablets as its remaining number of uses. However, this value cannot exceed the original maximum value
- When in an inventory like your personal one or a stash, the number of uses remaining on each Tablet can be seen on the bottom right of its icon
- Existing Tablets that have been applied to your Atlas will remai,n and you will not lose any value due to these changes
Endgame Maps
GGG felt that some of the game’s endgame maps were too long to tackle, so they’ve reduced the overall size of the following:
- Augury
- Bastille
- Blooming Field
- Channel
- Epitaph
- Fortress
- Grimhaven
- Hidden Grotto
- Oasis
- Penitentiary
- Rupture
- Savannah
- Slick
- Vaal City
- Wetlands
Citadels
The overall spawn rate of Citadels is bolstered by 66%.
Atlas Trees
To compensate for each endgame map featuring a challenging boss fight, changes were made to the Atlas Trees:
For example, the Crystal Realm notable on the Map Boss Tree, which previously added an additional Essence to areas containing a Map Boss, now only applies to areas with Powerful Map Bosses. Note this results in effectively no change; it is the same amount of Essences before and after.
In general the Map Boss Tree applies to all Map Bosses, with only a select few notables now specifically applying to Maps with Powerful Map Bosses. For example, the Fit for a King notable applies to all Map Bosses.
Additionally you’ll notice a number of other nodes changing throughout the core Atlas Tree to account for mechanical changes around Towers. We’ve tried to make sure these are kept approximately the same before and afterwards, so your Atlas Trees will remain the same.
Improvements
Modifiers that cause the area to be covered in Chilled/Shocking/Ignited Ground now cause much less ground to be covered. At least 66% of the ground effects currently covering the ground will be removed, this value is higher on lower tier Waystones.
We have fixed a few problems where Map Boss difficulty was not applying to many multi-form Bosses, so a few of the Maps with Deadly Map Bosses will now be more difficult as a result. It was always pretty odd that the second and third phases of some of these Bosses had ten-times less life than the first phase, this was an unintentional mistake.
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