A new patch addressing loot woes has arrived, and it is incredibly promising!
After nearly a full month into the Dawn of the Hunt Update Cycle, one of the biggest complaints and woes of the patch is being addressed by improving loot. Let’s get into what’s changing and how GGG is fixing things up in Update 0.2.0g.
When is 0.2.0g releasing
The patch is currently expected to be deployed on Thursday.
May 01, 2025 7:00 AM (GMT+3): The patch was rolled back as there were problems with Skill Gems disappearing. We’ll get this patch out again as soon as we can.
May 01, 2025 7:30 AM (GMT+3):
POE2 Forums
We have found the issue that caused the skill gems to be missing in 0.2.0g and will be fixing it internally ASAP and will try to redeploy 0.2.0g again tomorrow (Thursday May 1st PDT). We’d like to apologise again for any inconvenience caused.
General Item Drop Changes
Several things are changing with Item Drops. One of these big changes is that, outside of early Act 1 Bosses, all bosses will be guaranteed to drop a Rare Item when first defeated. Depending on what this item rolls, it should be more than enough to help early game gear keep pace with progression.
To further help with this, a Rare monster possessed by Azmerian Wisps will always drop a Rare item. In addition to this, Wisps were also made more rewarding by significantly increasing the Rarity it applies to a monster.
Gold, magic currency, quality currency, flask charms, and runes will drop less with higher Rarity in favor of Rare Currency like Exalted Orbs, Orbs of Alchemy, etc. Additionally, Gold also had a rare drop pool that will now half as often, but the amount of gold that drops is doubled to compensate.
Magic and Rare chests, as well as Strongboxes, were all buffed too. Magic Chests will always drop an item that is at least Magic, while Rare Chests and Strongboxes guarantee at least one Rare item. Additionally, Strongboxes are more likely to drop more items, with Researcher Strongboxes in particular dropping rare currency more often.
Tiered Magic and Rare items now drop more frequently, with Tier 2 Rares being four times as common (Tiers 3-5 only increased by 30%) and All Tiers of Magic being five times as common. These Tiered items cull more of the lower-tier mods when rolling. Tier 5 Magic Items will almost always roll their modifiers at the highest tier available, while even a Tier 2 Rare culls around 50% of rolls.
These Tiered items are almost assured to be worth the time to pick up and use for crafting and recombinating. Hopefully, this also compounds with the increased number of Magic and Rare Items dropping in general to allow more crafting options to be viable, especially in SSF.
Trials of Ascension Item Changes
With so many drop and chest-related things getting love, GGG made sure to not leave out the Trials, especially for the endgame.
Trial of the Sekhemas Chests now scale their rarity higher, with the basic Bronze Chests being equivalent to the Rare Chest changes detailed above. Arcanist Chests also received a change similar to Reseacher Strongboxes, favoring rarer currency drops. Arcanist and Royal chests have been made more common.
For Trial of Chaos, items and rewards will stop dropping as Corrupted as we reach higher levels in the Trial. In their place is more Rare currency to craft with. Additionally, Trials of Chaos under level 65 will spawn fewer monsters to deal with. This makes it easier early on and more rewarding later.
Endgame Changes
Much of the endgame content is also getting buffed loot, in line with the above changes, as well as some extra love.
Expedition
In addition to the chest change also being applied to Expedition chests, they’ve also had their Rarity from Remnants fixed to apply correctly. On top of this, these Remnants also provide greater bonuses and have some of their downsides adjusted.
The biggest change of all for Expeditions is that Expedition Artifacts, its currency, drops twice as much. Exotic Coinage was also increased in drop rate, but only by 50% instead of doubling.
Delirium
Delirium now provides more Rarity pe stage of Delirium in the encounter, scaling up to 2.5 times what it was previously.
Simulacrum modifiers on monsters have been weakened, making them less dangerous. Additionally, the scaling of the Delirious effect was reduced to 75-115% effect, from 100-140% effect.
Pinnacle Content
Corrupted Nexuses needed to acquire all Atlas Passive points is now 8, each granting 5 points per completion, up from 2 per completion. Nexuses are also more clearly visible from further away on the atlas, making them easier to spot. This allows Atlas Progression to more closely match how quickly Map Tiers can ramp up.
Audience with the King, Breach Splinters, and Delirium Splinters have had their drop rates improved to make these bosses more accessible.
Balance Changes
It’s not a patch without some number adjustments and fixing unintended mechanics.
Trinity has been adjusted to provide 3-6% more damage per 30 Resonance with an element at Level 14-20, from 7-10% more damage per 50 Resonance. Resonance also builds up at twice the speed, but also decays twice as fast when not maintained. Its quality now provides increased attack speed while over 250 Resonance, rather than more elemental damage per 50 resonance.
Beria’s Anguish was bug-fixed so its Critical hit Chance is no longer 100% with any bonus to Critical Hit on an enemy.
Skills that have no Mana cost and are not directly cast by us (Elemental Discharge, Doom Blast, etc) cannot have any additional costs applied to them through effects like the Lich’s Eldritch Empowerment or Derange Support. This does not apply to the skills we do directly cast, like those from a Wand.
Flash Grenade no longer blinds the user or their allies. This makes it more useful as a defensive tool, at least.
Battershout’s explosion is treated as Warcry Skill now. That surely won’t lead to any screen-clearing shenanigans, right?
Sceptres, Wands, and Staves can now correctly roll additional Sockets as a corruption. This will have a huge impact on the mid and late game power for many spells and minions.
Overwhelming Presence was fixed to be properly affected by Aura Magnitude again. However, its effect has now been capped at 90% maximum. No more pushing it to 99% and getting almost guaranteed Stuns and Ailments.
Monster Changes
These come across as half Spectre nerfs, half fixing actual problematic enemies. Which is which is up to interpretation, as these enemies were annoying to fight, but also make great Spectres in some cases.
- Bladelash Transcendents deal reduced damage and have reduced range.
- The Leap Slam used by Vile Imps and Unearthed Urchins can now be dodged, blocked, and evaded.
- Unwalker’s Scarab cloud deal damage less frequently.
- Fairdun Plaguebringer’s Detonate Dead skill deals less damage and has improved VFX.
- Vaal Enforcers have been temporarily disabled.
Official Patch Notes
Below are the patch notes in full, as posted on the forums.
0.2.0g Patch Notes
This patch contains significant changes to item drops, changes to the difficulty of Simulacrum, as well as other changes and bug fixes.
Item drop changes
- We modified the rarity value at which Normal Items no longer drop. This means that Unique Bosses will never drop Normal items except for a select few early in the game.
- We have halved the amount of “Rare Gold” drops. This means that if you roll a Rare item you get more Rare Equipment or Rare currency instead of gold. Rare Gold piles are now twice as large so you still get the same amount of gold as before on average.
- Gold, Magic Currency, Quality Currency, Flasks, Charms, and Runes are now much less likely to drop from monsters with high Item Rarity. These three changes generally result in around 20-30% more Rare Currency (Exalted Orbs, Orbs of Alchemy, Regal Orbs, etc).
- Tier 2 Rare items now drop 4x more often. Tiers 3 to 5 now drop 30% more often. The modifiers of Tiered Rares have also been improved by cutting out more low level modifiers making them better on average than before.
- Tier 2 and higher Magic items now drop around 5x more often. The low level modifier culling of Tiered Magics has been significantly improved with Tier 2 now culling 50% of the modifier range, and improving from there. Tier 5 magic items will usually only roll the highest modifier available for a given type. This means that Tiered Magic items should be a much better starting point for crafting or Recombination.
Unique Monsters
- Except for a few Unique Bosses at the start of Act 1, all Unique Monsters will always drop a Rare item.
- In campaign, you only get the guaranteed Rare item the first time you kill each boss. In maps you always get it.
Azmerian Wisps
- Rare monsters possessed by Azmerian Wisps now always drop a Rare item.
- Fixed a bug where the first Wisp in the Grelwood didn’t have its Item Rarity or Quantity stats.
Rare and Magic Chests
- Magic chests have drastically increased Item Rarity and Quantity, and also guarantee at least a Magic item. They are approximately as rewarding as Rare chests were before.
- Rare chests also have drastically increased Item Rarity and Quantity, and guarantee at least a Rare item.
- In Cruel Difficulty chests get a further +50% more Item Quantity and Item Rarity, and +100% more in Endgame making them very powerful there.
- We have changed the Map modifiers that increased the chance of finding Magic and Rare chests to instead add a fixed number of additional Magic or Rare chests.
Strongboxes
- Strongboxes have increased Item Quantity and Item Rarity, guarantee a Rare item as well as getting a further +50% more Item Quantity and Item Rarity in Cruel, and +100% more in Endgame.
- Researcher’s Strongboxes will now have a much higher chance to drop Rare currency instead of Magic currency.
- Reduced the variance in the number of items Strongboxes dropped. They should more consistently drop a good number of items.
Trial of the Sekhemas
- Regular Bronze chests now have the same base balance as Rare chests do in the Normal Difficulty campaign, including guaranteeing a Rare Item.
- Silver and Gold chests increase Item Rarity and Item Quantity by values significantly higher than before.
- Arcanist’s Chests have had the same improvements to drop composition as Researcher’s Strongboxes.
- Arcanist’s Chests (Currency) and Royal Chests (Jewels) are much more common.
- The chance of getting Silver and Gold keys as room rewards instead of Bronze keys has been significantly increased.
Trials of Chaos
- As you continue to increase the level you play the Trial of Chaos, corrupted Rares are phased out from the rewards, and Rare Currency stacks are phased in.
- Items that drop from monsters in the Trial no longer have a chance to be Corrupted.
Expedition
- Expedition Magic and Rare chests now have the same base balance as other endgame Magic and Rare chests.
- Normal expedition chests have also been improved.
- We also fixed a bug where Increased Chest Item Rarity from Expedition Remnants was not multiplying correctly with the Chest Item Rarity the chest already had. These Remnants will now have a greater effect.
- Buffed the rewards from most Expedition Remnant mods.
- Doubled the number of Expedition Artifacts that drop.
- Increased the amount of Exotic Coinage that drops by +50%
- Expedition Remnant upside modifiers have generally been buffed.
- Several Expedition Remnant downsides have been adjusted.
- The Expedition Remnant modifier that caused Monsters to have 100% chance to Avoid being Chilled, Frozen, Ignited, and Shocked has been replaced with a new modifier that increases their Elemental Ailment Threshold.
- Two new Expedition Remnant upside modifiers have been added, these can be found in Map areas.
Delirium
- Increased the amount of Item Rarity per depth in Delirium encounters. It increases to approximately 2.5 times what it was before.
- The Delirious percentage scaling with waves in Simulacrum has been reduced. Each wave now adds 5% Delirious (previously 10%), up to a maximum of 75% at Difficulty zero (previously 100%), and 115% at Difficulty 4 (previously 140%).
- Many Simulacrum modifiers have had the benefits they provide to Delirium Monsters reduced.
Accessibility to Pinnacle Content and Atlas Passives
- Reduced the number of Corrupted Nexus’ you need to complete your Atlas Passive Tree. Each Corrupted Nexus now grants 5 skill points allowing you to complete this task much faster.
- Increased the visibility of Corrupted Nexus’ so that you can see them from further away.
- Atlas Passive Skill Points have been retroactively granted. There are a few scenarios where you will have fewer Atlas Passive Skill Points after the patch. In this case, your Atlas Skills have been reset.
- Breach splinter drop rates have been increased by +50%.
- Delirium splinter drop rates have been increased by +80%.
- The chance of finding Audiences with the King in Ritual is increased by +50%.
Player changes
- Trinity now provides 3-6% more Elemental Damage with Attacks per 30 Resonance at Gem levels 14-20 (previously 7-10%, per 50 Resonance). On dealing Elemental Damage with an Attack Hit, it now gains 10-13 Resonance of the highest Elemental Damage type and loses 3 Resonance of the other types at Gem levels 14-20 (previously gained 7-10, and lost 2). You now lose 10 Resonance per second of specific types if you haven’t gained Resonance of that type in the past 8 seconds (previously 5 Resonance per second). Quality now provides 0-15% increased Attack speed while total Resonance is over 250, instead of +0-2% more Elemental Damage with Attacks per 50 Resonance of any type. This results in the same damage on average with easier build up.
- Beira’s Anguish Dousing Charm no longer guarantees a Critical Hit if any amount of chance to be Critically Hit is present on the enemy. It now will roll Critical Hit chance normally in these cases.
- Most Skills that have no mana cost which you don’t cast yourself are now also granted a hidden no skill cost stat preventing them from gaining additional costs, such as from Lich’s Eldritch Empowerment Notable Passive Skill. Examples include Elemental Discharge, Impending Doom’s Doom Blast and Blink. Spells you cast yourself granted from Wands and Staves will still be able to get additional costs.
- Bursting Plague now adds 100% of damage per second from Poison as Plague (previously 200%). It now stores up to a maximum of 20% of the Enemy’s maximum Life as Plague (previously 10%).
- The Starkonja’s Head Unique Helmet now causes Damage from Hits to be taken from your Damageable Companion’s Life before you (previously also non-Damageable Companions).
- Lightning Bolt’s base radius is now 0.8 metres (previously 0.5 metres).
- Impale inflicted on players now lasts 4 seconds (previously never expired). Impale inflicted on non-players is not affected by this change.
- Flash Grenade can no longer blind the user or their Allies.
- Battershout’s triggered explosion now counts as a Warcry skill.
- Hazards created by Rearming will no longer count towards the maximum allowance of that Hazard type.
Other changes and improvements
- Existing Crystalline Cores that are no longer obtainable have been deleted.
- Sceptres, Wands, and Staves can now correctly roll an additional Rune Socket as a Corruption outcome.
- The number of Monsters in Trials of Chaos areas below level 65 has been reduced.
- Bladelash Transcendent’s melee damage has been reduced, and their attack distance has been adjusted.
- The Leap Slam skill used by Vile Imps and Unearthed Urchins can now be dodged, blocked, and evaded.
- Urnwalker’s scarab cloud skill now deals damage less frequently.
- Faridun Plaguebringer’s detonate dead skill has had its damage slightly lowered, and the visual effects improved.
- Improved the visual effects of the Stalking Pustule monsters.
- Temporarily disabled the Vaal Enforcer Monster.
- Improved the visibility of connections between maps on the Atlas, especially in the desert biome.
- Added minimap icons for the Landmark Rooms found in The Titan Grotto, Deshar and Mawdun Quarry.
- Added a World Map icon for The Titan’s Fall in The Titan Grotto.
- Added checkpoints to the Twisted Domain.
Bug fixes
- Fixed a bug where the Silent Cave Map could sometimes be uncompletable.
- Fixed a bug where the Atlas could sometimes display the incorrect Atlas state.
- Fixed a bug preventing Fracturing Mirrors from spawning in Delirium.
- Fixed a bug where a checkpoint in the Fortress Map could sometimes place you in unwalkable terrain.
- Fixed a bug which caused some terrain in the Decay Map to sometimes be inaccessible.
- Fixed a bug where Overwhelming Presence was not being affected by modifiers to Aura effect. Overwhelming Presence now reduces Enemy Stun Threshold and Elemental Ailment Threshold up to a maximum of 90%.
- Fixed a bug where Manifested Weapons died when taking damage for you.
- Fixed a bug where Supporting Fire’s Command: Death from Above would fail when used on uneven terrain, becoming unusable.
- Fixed a bug where the Waistgate Unique Belt allowed Charms to be equipped in Flask equipment slots.
- Fixed a bug where Ritual Sacrifice would not grant you modifiers from Sacrificed Rare Monsters if you used it while affected by Temporal Chains.
- Fixed a visual bug where crafting on a fractured item with an Omen of Whittling, an Omen of Sinistral Erasure, or an Omen of Dextral Erasure could highlight the wrong modifiers.
- Fixed a bug where some Persistent Skills could have an incorrect Spirit cost when affected by Supports that should increase the cost.
- Fixed some instances where persistent minions were not being removed correctly when weapon swapping.
- Fixed a bug where Tamed Beasts could be active in a weapon set that did not have the appropriate attribute or spirit requirements met.
- Fixed a bug where the Lord of the Pit in the Deserted Map was not being affected by modifiers to Map Boss Difficulty, and were unable to drop a Vanquisher’s Book of Knowledge.
- Fixed a bug where Plague Bearer’s Nova was not considered to be area damage.
- Fixed a bug where Rattlecage, the Earthbreaker in the Crimson Shores Map would sometimes drop no items when slain.
- Fixed a bug that prevented Zicoatl, Warden of the Core from using their wall laser skill.
- Fixed a bug where Strongboxes with the “of Singularity” modifier would sometimes fail to drop an Unique item.
- Fixed a bug where certain monsters could re-emerge after being revived during a Ritual encounter.
- Fixed a bug where the red Boss arena perimeter blockers were not being removed correctly in the Steaming Springs, Burial Bog and Rustbowl Maps.
- Fixed a bug where the compare feature on the Passive Skill Tree was not functioning correctly.
- Fixed two client crashes.
- Fixed two client crashes that were affecting some characters on Consoles.
- Fixed 3 instance crashes.
