Changes coming in Path of Exile 2‘s first update of 2025 have been previewed in a recent developer diary. While bigger overhauls of the early-access action-RPG’s economy, progression, and class balancing will come in the future, fans have some worthwhile teaks to look forward to in the meantime.
Expected to drop around January 16, Path of Exile 2 patch 0.1.1 includes a host of changes to spice up the Diablo-like’s endgame and make other aspects of its dungeon-crawling grindfest less tedious for players. Those include four new tower maps—Alpine Ridge, Sinking Spire, Bluff, and Mesa—as well as more map variety overall to make exploring more rewarding and “less boring.”
Uniques will also get buffed to make rare loot more useful when found at lower levels and retain its power over the course of playing. And when it comes to pinnacle content, players will now get up to six respawn attempts when fighting the Arbiter of Ash boss, depending on the difficulty level. A number of enemies like Silverfist Commander, Plaguebearers, and Lost Men Zealots are getting reworked to feel more fair as well.
“Now, we have a huge amount of much more meta-shifting changes that we know we want to make, and one of the best things about having the game in Early Access with the endgame is that we now have a much better idea of where we want character power to be and what the balance of bosses and monsters should be relative to that,” game director Jonathan Rogers told fans over the weekend. “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.”
A league in Path of Exiles is like a season in Diablo, and with the game having just arrived in early access on Steam and console in December, it’s possible the game’s bigger overhaul won’t arrive until closer to the end of winter. Rogers said the team at Grinding Gear Games wanted to get these more immediate tweaks out into players’ hands before prepping the more major stuff for release.
Path of Exile 2 will go free-to-play like its predecessor once it releases in full, but for now it’s $30 to try. That barrier to entry has barely phased players on Steam, though. The multiplayer RPG about beating back the darkness is still one of the Valve-owned storefront’s top-five best-selling and most-played games a month after launching.
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