Path of Exile 2 patch notes have arrived as developer Grinding Gear Games unveils the first major update of 2025 following its return from break. PoE 2 update 0.1.1 is absolutely packed with quality-of-life features, buffs to equipment, and several major upgrades to the endgame. GGG also teases that one of the most-requested features is on the way, although it won’t make its appearance yet – a specialized stash tab to hold all your endgame Waystones didn’t quite make the cut, but will be introduced as soon as it’s ready.
For now, Path of Exile 2 patch 0.1.1 is already plenty big enough to keep us busy. Game director Jonathan Rogers noted that this new update avoids class balance changes, although there are a few key changes to the RPG’s ‘meta gems.’ Skills you put into these special gems (which include the popular ‘cast on shock/freeze/ignite’ effects) can now no longer gain energy – this won’t affect most of the best Path of Exile 2 builds, so don’t worry too much, but it’s worth keeping in mind. If you decided to play a solo self-found character and are regretting your choice, you’ll now have the ability to migrate them into the trade league.
Probably the most welcome change will be the ability to overwrite your socketed runes with new ones. You’ll lose the one you had in there previously, but this will make it much easier to adapt to that fantastic new item you found by adjusting your resistances accordingly, bringing things closer to how item crafting works in the first Path of Exile. You’ll also be less likely to roll some of the “less-desirable” modifiers when crafting gear – and, if you’re desperate for an upgrade, Alva will now allow you to gamble for items when she’s placed in your hideout.
If you’ve been playing since launch, there’s a good chance you’re in the PoE 2 endgame now, and there’s plenty to look forward to. Those long loading times have been cut down, and checkpoints have been introduced in endgame maps, meaning you should spend far less time wandering back through areas you’ve already cleared in search of those last few enemies. Citadels can appear closer to the starting Ziggurat, and can be more readily picked out in the nearby fog of war, making them far easier to find.
The density of monsters and events in endgame maps has been dramatically upgraded. You’ll also find more bosses across the endgame, and a new Overseer’s Precursor Tablet will allow you to use completed towers to add map bosses to nearby maps on your Atlas. The addition of four new tower maps along with a rework of the existing one should also make the least interesting part of the endgame a lot more varied. You can also see map biomes when you hover over them.
Much of the frustrating visual clutter in many areas has been reduced to make it easier to see skills and effects, and the overall visibility of enemy effects has been improved. Additionally, a lot of monsters have been nerfed to bring the overall difficulty down a touch, with a particular focus on reducing or removing skills that target or hit you when enemies are off-screen. You’ll also see slightly fewer enemies in Utzaal and the Dreadnaught, meaning you shouldn’t be quite so easily swarmed by the mobs.
If you make it all the way to the game’s current ‘final’ boss, the Arbiter of Ash, you’ll now have up to six respawn attempts to defeat him before you’re forced to go through the process of unlocking the fight again. That means you can actually try and learn the fight without being overly punished for a single failure. You’ll have fewer attempts at higher difficulties, and GGG is working to introduce this feature to other pinnacle fights in the future.
Item-wise, 108 unique items have been adjusted, with buffs in almost every case – Rogers says the team wants to make these more exciting to find, especially if you pick one up at lower levels where it might be a nice upgrade even if it doesn’t fit into your overarching plan. The notorious Temporalis unique body armor, however, can no longer reduce your skill cooldowns below 100ms.
Charms will now be much easier to keep track of – they’ll play an effect on your character so you can see when they’ve been triggered, and their active charges can be seen in the lower left of the screen. Among the other key changes, the effectiveness of armor has been improved by “approximately 15%,” you can shove more types of small monsters out of the way when dodge rolling, and Breach events will have a slightly lower density of mobs and small chests to make them a little less valuable.
Path of Exile patch 0.1.1 launches Friday January 17. There’s even more in the full patch notes courtesy of Grinding Gear Games, including individual breakdowns of every unique change and plenty of bug fixes.
Still hard at the grind? Be sure you haven’t missed anything important from the full Path of Exile 2 quest list, and grab the best PoE 2 loot filter now that the creator of the first game’s most popular offering has deployed their update for the sequel.
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