Path of Exile 2 Update 0.2.1 Changes Overview

Update 0.2.1 focuses heavily on Chase Unique Items found in the endgame, adding multiple new Unique Items and powerful new Chase Socketables to go with them.

New Items

In total, there are 22 new Endgame Runes, 7 Endgame Talismans, 15 Endgame Soulcores, and 9 new Unique Items. We won’t go over all of them here, but here are the ones we feel are the most worth pointing out, and ways they might work when building around them.

Lioneye’s Glare is one of the few items that were shown before the patch was released. It’s quite the powerful item as is, but effects like the Amazon’s Penetrate and Falcon Dive synergize particularly well with the high flat Accuracy it provides. The Barrage effect it provides can also synergize with items like The Deepest Tower, which reduces Presence Radius, creating a good balance of using Lioneye’s Glare for Clear, while Deepest Tower elevates bossing potential.

Cadiro’s Gambit is an interesting Quiver that rolls several powerful projectile modifiers at random. The more interesting part of this wording is the distinct wording of “Each Arrow”. This could make Death’s Harp a very appealing option to pair with it, rolling several different Arrow types per attack. The only downside here is that almost all of our raw damage would need to come from our Rings. We could also combine this with Lioneye’s Glare and leverage the Barraged Projectiles for more rolls at the desirable effects.

Adonia’s Ego is a bit of an odd weapon, but its unique skill, Pinnacle of Power, has the potential to be absurdly strong. By heavily investing into Maximum Power Charges and using the Powertread Boots, we’re able to get a Maximum 10 Power Charges. This allows Pinnacle of Power to provide 82% More Elemental Damage, or 160% if we also trigger the Twofold Support, for a 50-second baseline duration.

In addition to this, any Power Charge we build up before or after using Pinnacle of Power also grants us 12% increased Critical Damage bonus, for a massive 120% Critical Damage Bonus. If we want to take it even further, we can also try to fit in Charge Infusion as well, which will occasionally consume a charge but provide a bonus to Critical Chance as well, giving us the most possible benefits from Power Charges possible.

Unique Changes

In addition to the new Chase Uniques and Socketables being added, there are multiple improvements to the availability of these items as well. Additonally, some existing Chase Uniques were buffed to make them more appealing.

Most notably, Uniques will roll the item after determining the tier of the Unique, rather than starting with Item Class. This makes Unique Amulets, Belts, and Rings of every tier much more common, while indirectly making other items slightly less common.

The “Common” tier Uniques will also decrease in drop frequency as Item Rarity on a Map increases, making these incredibly common Uniques drop less, instead favoring rarer Unique items. This, alongside the other changes, will make Chase Unique more of an actual goal, even for those who may be playing on SSF, where these are less common.

Headhunter now steals a monster’s modifiers for 60 seconds, up from 20. This is good as compared to POE1, Rare Monsters are far less common. I’d hope that the Ritualist’s Ritual Sacrifice Ascendancy Skill will see similar changes in the future, if only for the quality of life it’d bring.

All three Variations of Guiding Palm have received significant changes, as well as distinct names:

Guiding Palm of the Heart (Fire)
- Grants added significantly more Added Fire Damage to Attacks
- 7-13 All Attributes changed to 20-30 Strength
- Grants 25% of Damage as Extra Fire
- Permanent Meteoric Shrine Effect
Guiding Palm of the Eye (Cold)
- Grants added significantly more Added Cold Damage to Attacks
- 7-13 All Attributes changed to 20-30 intelligence
- Grants 25% of Damage as Extra Cold
- Permanent Freezing Shrine Effect
Guiding Palm of the Mind (Lightning)
- Grants added significantly more Added Lightning Damage to Attacks
- 7-13 All Attributes changed to 20-30 Dexterity
- Grants 25% of Damage as Extra Lightning
- Permanent Tempest Shrine Effect

While these Permanent Shrine effects only provide the attacking portion of the Shrine, these effects can often contribute meaningful damage and status effects.

Mjölner now has significantly more physical damage as well as additional Levels of lightning Skills, rolling a range of +2-4 Levels instead of a static +1. At the maximum value, this also gives a small chance to corrupt it to +5 to Lightning Gems, which would be a very costly upgrade over a normal +4, but a good increase overall.

It’s unique Meta Skill, previously called Lightning Spell on Melee Hit, is now called Thundergod’s Wrath. This enhanced version not only removes the mana cost of the socketed Skills, but also adds up to 200% increased damage at level 20. This is a significant power boost for this item, and shouldn’t be overlooked.

The Spire of Ire Spear had its Base Damage increased by ~60%, as well as having the range of its Life Leech rolls doubled. Overall, a significantly stronger option.

Kaom’s Heart has been boosted from +1,000 Life to +1,500 Maximum Life. This not only makes it stronger but also significantly raises the amount we can get by corrupting it as well, up to a maximum of 1,830 with a perfect roll.

Yoke of Suffering now causes enemies to take 15-20% increased damage per Ailment on them. This is a significant upgrade with the new minimum being above the previous maximum. It’s a great damage multiplier for Ailment Builds.

Prism Guardian’s Spirit Scaling has been doubled, granting 1 spirit per 25 Maximum Life instead of 1 per 50 Maximum Life. Good news for some Spirit stacking builds.

Finally, Bringer of Rain had 100% increased Critical Hit Chance added as an Affix. This makes it worth the cost of losing our Body Armour, especially while still granting the effects of Giant’s Blood without the downside.

Endgame Changes

General

Volatile Plants deal significantly less damage and only spawn 2 plants. Additionally, all Volatile Plant effects end when the monster that created them dies.

Endgame map variety has increased, and a wider variety of monsters can appear in each biome. This should result in far more varied experiences during maps.

Several Waystone Modifiers were also adjusted:

Curse Modifiers now periodically cast the curses, rather than always applying them.
- This makes Temporal Chains maps more accessible to most builds.
The Increased Enemy AoE Modifier “Of Giants”, is disabled.
The Additional Projectiles Modifier “Of Splitting” only appears starting at Tier 6.
Elemental Penetration Map Modifier is reduced to a fixed 10-15% range at all tiers of maps.

Ritual & Omens

Similarly to Volatile Plants, the Smothering Ritual type had its damage lowered and also spawns volatiles less frequently. The same also applies to the Chaos Pustules of the Tainted Ritual type.

Rarer Omens have been made approximately six times more common. This means the more desirable (and useful) Omens that interact with Annulment and Chaos Orbs are going to be easier to find.

The Immured Fury will no longer break Rituals by attempting to respawn.

While not directly tied to Ritual, the Viridian Wildwood is also seeing some changes, making them map itself more rewarding, but also making it easier to spot Omen Altars on the map. Additionally, the frequency of these Omen Altars has been increased.

Breach

The Twisted Domain, or the Pinnacle Boss area, now drops an increased amount of Catalysts. Great for those endgame rings and amulets.

Speaking of Rings, though, all Breach Rings dropped by Clapsed Hands in the Twisted Domain will be rare. This means that these particular rings, which are already fairly hard to get will no longer be able to be crafted by Essences. This severly limits their ability to be endgame items without a heavy dose of Omens or Recombination luck.

Monsters in the Twisted Domain were also made more rewarding including a higher chance of Rare and magic packs, with the “It that Watches” enemy type also being reduced in frequency. This should lead to an overall easier and more rewarding time.

Expedition

Explosives in Logbooks now have a larger explosive radius. This does not apply, to Map encounters.

Several spawned locations and entities are more common in Logbooks, including all types of Remnants and special Breakables. Additionally, Multiple new Special Remnants were added:

Frigid Bluffs can now spawn Unique Monsters encased in Ice.
Ezomyte Remnants in Barren Atoll drop a larger quantity of Runes.
Barren Atoll now spawns more Strongboxes, which also have an icon on the minimap.
A New Remnant Type has been assed to Lush Isle Expeditions.
Each unique Type of Special Remnant has a unique icon to help it stand apart for others.
Other Points of Interest in Logbook also have new icons

Official Patch Notes

Below are the patch notes in full, as they are on the Forums.

Features:

Added 22 new Endgame Runes.
Added 7 new Endgame Talismans.
Added 15 new Endgame Soulcores.
Significantly increased the number of “Mythic” unique items that drop
Changed uniques item drop calculation to no longer consider an items class. This will make unique rings and amulets significantly more common.
Reduced the number of “Common” unique items that drop as Rarity on areas increase allowing more of the better uniques to drop instead.
The bonus to the number of uniques that you got while playing in a party was significantly higher than we intended and has been lowered significantly. With the other changes to unique rarity, you will still be getting a significant buff to the number of Rare and Mythic uniques you are finding, but the overall number of uniques in party play will be lower due to finding less Commons and Uncommons. This should fix the significant advantage that party play had over solo play for wealth acquisition.
Item modifier tier numbering has been reversed so that smaller numbers represent stronger modifiers, with 1 being the best available modifier of that type.
Adjusted the appearance of all Omens, the same number of Omens appear but which omens they are has been adjusted heavily to have the rare, and more powerful ones appear more frequently. The rarest ones should appear six-times more frequently in the Ritual Tribute Window as an example.
Added a ‘Refund all Passives’ option in the Passive Skill Tree. This will only appear if you’re able to afford refunding every allocated point.
Massively increased the chance for Corrupting a monster trapped in essence to upgrade essences to greater, and greater to corrupted.
Improved the Passive Skill Tree search functionality on Mouse and Keyboard. After typing within the search field, press ENTER to have the Passive Skill Tree move around the tree to show you nodes which match.

Monster Balance:

The Smothered Ritual type that spawns Chaos Volatiles has had it’s spawn frequency halved and the damage lowered.
Fixed an issue where Volatile Plants were dealing a little over double their intended damage.
Empowering Volatile Plants Mod on rare monsters has had it’s damage reduced.
Volatile Plants and Empowering Volatile Plants now spawn 2 volatiles at once instead of 3.
Volatile Plants & Empowering Volatile Plants now disappear when the rare monster that spawned them dies.
Forsaken Miner’s death animation no longer leaves a primed grenade on their corpse.
Rat Tornadoes from the Infested Ritual type have had their damage and move speed reduced slightly.
Draven, the Eternal Praetor’s melee damage has been reduced slightly, his projectile cleave has also been reduced.
Improved the Visual Effects of Chaos Volatiles.
The Lightning Storms Strongbox modifier now causes fewer lightning bolts, and its lightning bolts have improved visuals effects.
Lowered the damage of the Unearthed Runecaster from expedition
Unearthed Runecaster’s projectile now correctly deals both fire and cold damage.

Endgame:

Drastically increased the variety of endgame maps. Previously, some maps (like Hidden Grotto) spawned way more frequently than others. Now, each map type should spawn approximately as frequently as any other.
Lessened the restrictions on which packs of monsters could appear in different atlas biomes, this will result in a significant increase to the variety of monsters appearing in Endgame Maps. The few monster pack types that were available in all biomes were appearing significantly more frequently than they should have, making endgame combat much less interesting than it should have been.
The distance that you can see features in the atlas fog of war is now based on the distance to the nearest revealed map making this much more consistent. This means you no longer have to frequently check an unknown distance in the fog when searching for citadels. This did make citadels slightly harder to find, so we increased the spawn rate of them also.
Cities on the Atlas now mostly spawn in loose clusters of three, with one of each city type per cluster.
Endgame Waystone modifiers that applied curses to the area now instead periodically cast the respective curse on ground targeted areas, the same as the player casted skills.
Disabled the “”of Giants”” map modifiers, Area of Effect modifier.
The “”of Splitting”” map modifier now only appears in Tier 6+ maps ,additional projectiles modifier.
The “”of Penetration”” map modifier no longer has tiers and has a value of 10% to 15%, reduced from 15% to 25%.
Rogue Exiles in Endgame Areas have a much higher chance to spawn with Unique Items.
The Ritual modifier that spawned Chaos Pustules now spawns them at a much lower frequency and have been increased in size slightly so they are more visible (this does not affect their damaging area of effect).
The Viridian Wildwood unique map now contains more enemies and more rewarding encounters.
Added visual indicators to Omen Altars inside the Viridian Wildwood Unique Map, these visuals can also be seen behind the darkness.
Adjusted the frequency of Omen Altars inside the Viridian Wildwood to reduce variance and increase the average per map.
The Twisted Domain now drops significantly more Catalysts on average.
Breach Rings dropped from Clasped Hands in the Twisted Domain are now always Rare.
Monsters in the Twisted Domain are now more rewarding.
Lowered the number of “”It That Watches”” monster in the Twisted Domain.
Increased rare and magic pack chance in the Twisted Domain.
The base radius of explosives in Logbooks has been increased by 25%. Regular map encounters are unchanged.
Additional Logbook content such as hidden caves are now guaranteed at all levels.
The Frigid Bluffs Expedition Logbook area now spawns unique monsters encased in ice. These monsters can be broken out with explosives.
The frequency of Special Remnants in each Expedition Logbook area have been more than doubled.
The amount of Remnants in Expedition Logbooks has been slightly increased.
Special destructibles in Expedition Logbook areas (such as the Crates of Gold in Barren Atoll) now spawn more frequently.
Expedition Logbook areas spawn more monsters and a slightly higher proportion of rare monsters
Many chests found in Expedition Logbook areas are now guaranteed to drop a rare item.
Ezomyte Remnants in the Barren Atoll Expedition Logbook area drop larger amounts of Runes.
Crates of Gold in the Barren Atoll Expedition Logbook area drop significantly more gold.
Barren Atoll Expedition Logbook areas now have a much larger quantity and variety of buried Strongboxes, and these Strongboxes now have minimap icons.
Replaced the functionality of Expedition Remnants unique to the Frigid Bluffs Expedition Logbook area.
Added a new type of Expedition Remnant that can appear in Lush Isle Expedition Logbook areas.
The minimap icon for Expedition Remnants that are specific to each type of Logbook now have their own unique icon.
Various points of interest in Expedition Logbooks now have their own minimap icon.
Inscribed Ultimatums that lead to a boss now indicate which boss will be found.
The Immured Fury will no longer try to respawn in ritual encounters and prevent the encounter from completing.
Improved the Visual Effects of Delirium Spite Monsters Lightning Ball skill.

Uniques:

Added 9 new Unique Items. Most of these are aimed at providing endgame chase uniques for a variety of builds.
Increased the overall power of several existing endgame Unique Items:
Headhunter now steals enemy modifiers for 60 seconds (previously 20 seconds). This change automatically affects existing items.
The Hammer of Faith unique Two Handed Mace now has 250–300% increased Physical Damage (previously 200–250%). Existing items can be updated with a Divine Orb. It now also grants random Shrine Buffs for 20 seconds (previously 10 seconds). This change affects existing items automatically.
The Guiding Palm Unique Sceptres have received significant updates. None of these changes affect existing versions of these items other than the flat damage changes, which can be updated using a Divine Orb:
The Fire variant of Guiding Palm is now called Guiding Palm of the Heart. It now grants Allies in your Presence 15–23 to 28–35 Added Fire Damage to Attacks (previously 4–6 to 7–10). It now grants 20–30 Strength instead of 7–13 to all Attributes. It now grants you 25% of damage as extra Fire damage, and a permanent Guided Meteoric Shrine buff that causes meteors to rain down around you when in range of enemies.
The Cold variant of Guiding Palm is now called Guiding Palm of the Eye. It now grants Allies in your Presence 15–23 to 28–35 Added Cold Damage to Attacks (previously 3–5 to 6–8). It now grants 20–30 Intelligence instead of 7–13 to all Attributes. It now grants you 25% of damage as extra Cold damage, and a permanent Guided Freezing Shrine buff that causes freezing shards to fire around you in a spiral when in range of enemies.
The Lightning variant of Guiding Palm is now called Guiding Palm of the Mind. It now grants Allies in your Presence 1 to 56–70 Added Lightning Damage to Attacks (previously 1 to 10–15). It now grants 20–30 Dexterity instead of 7–13 to all Attributes. It now grants you 25% of damage as extra Lightning damage, and a permanent Guided Tempest Shrine buff that causes lightning bolts to strike the ground around you when in range of enemies.
The Mjölner unique One Handed Mace now has 250–350% increased Physical Damage (previously 150–200%) and grants +2–4 to Level of Lightning Skills (previously +1). Existing items can be updated using a Divine Orb.
The Lightning Spell on Melee Hit Meta Skill granted by Mjölner has been renamed to Thundergod’s Wrath. It now causes Triggered Spells to cost no Mana and grants them a level-dependent amount of increased damage, up to 200% at Skill level 20.
The Spire of Ire unique Spear now has 167–201 to 267–333 Chaos damage (previously 106–146 to 181–221) and 10–20% of Physical damage Leeched as Life (previously 6–10%). Existing items can be updated using a Divine Orb.
Kaom’s Heart now has +1500 to maximum Life (previously 1000). Existing items can be updated with a Divine Orb.
Prism Guardian now grants 1 Spirit per 25 maximum Life (previously 1 per 50). Existing items can be updated with a Divine Orb.
Defiance of Destiny now grants 10–20% of missing Life Recovered before being Hit (previously always 10%). Existing items can be updated with a Divine Orb.
Yoke of Suffering now causes enemies to take 15–20% increased damage for each type of your Elemental Ailments on them (previously 5–10%), but also now reduces Ignite, Shock and Chill duration by 30–40% (previously 20–30%). Existing items can be updated with a Divine Orb.
Bringer of Rain now has 100% increased Critical Hit chance in addition to its other modifiers. This change does not affect existing items.

Miscellaneous Changes:

Defeating Balbala in Normal difficulty Traitor’s Passage will drop a quest version of Balbala’s Barya if you do not currently have the quest item or if you haven’t already gotten your Ascendancy Points from using the Balbala’s Barya).
Optimised the Physics of monsters found in Freythorn.
Incremental Audio added for the Monk Character Class.
Incremental Audio improvements for various monster abilities.
Incremental Audio improvements for various player skills.
Search Filters within the uncut Support and Skill Gem UI are now cleared when exiting the menu.
The Affliction in Trial of the Sekhemas that caused you to have no Energy Shield now instead applies 50% less Energy Shield, so that it isn’t immediately dead on arrival when you are Chaos Inoculation.
Increased the trigger radius of Clasped Hands inside Breach Encounters.
Firestorm can now consume Ignites from corpses in front of you in addition to living enemies.
Quest rewards can now be quick-moved on Gamepad.
Updated ‘accept trade’ to R1 on Gamepad for disenchant window and player to player trade on Gamepad to be more consistent with the rest of the game.
Shrines are now much more reliably interacted with when using Gamepad.
Added a new gem tag “Barrageable” to indicate Skills that can be made to repeat, to clarify which Skills Barrage and similar effects can and cannot affect.
Added support for a new type of Microtransaction: Character Skin.
Improved the audio of the Unique Item ‘Wake of Destruction’.
Improved Lachlann of Endless Lament’s AI when fought in a party.
Improved Rattlecage, the Earthbreaker’s AI when fought in a party.
Changed the classification of some chests so their labels are always shown.
Added an option in the Game Tab to always priortise interacting over using skills. This options is on by default.
Added popup text tips for Options, Exit and Patch Notes buttons on Gamepad.
Purchasing an equippable microtransaction from the in-game store now displays an option to equip it to your current character immediately.
The Socketable Stash Tab has been updated with spaces for the newly added socketables in this patch.

Bug Fixes:

Fixed many significant cases of players or monsters getting out of sync, especially in party play.
Fixed 4 Instance Crashes.
Fixed 3 Client Crashes.
Fixed a bug where Delwyn could have no viable target for Azmerian Wisps to chase.
Fixed a bug where Ice Shards could use incorrect values for determining critical hits, potentially resulting in long periods of the same outcome.
Fixed a bug where Blink couldn’t be used to dismount a Rhoa Mount.
Fixed an issue where the Hungering Stalker monsters could fail to engage the player.
Fixed a bug where the Tracking Scroll of Treasures microtransaction was not working correctly.
Fixed Tactician’s Cannons, Ready! notable not causing totems to use skill when you fired attack projectiles from some skills that fired projectiles upwards such as Hailstorm Rounds and Siege Cascade.
Fixed desync that could occur when disabling your crossbow.
Fixed a bug where Omens in Titan Inventory Expansion did not work.
Fixed a bug where melee attacks and blood hunt did not correctly clear the culmination combo counter after use.
Fixed a bug where some arrows could be invisible when fired.
Fixed a bug where the Hexblast Curse indicator did not match when triggered by low duration curses.
Stacks of blocks from Ancestral Aid Support are no longer consumed if supported skills are cancelled early.
Fixed an issue preventing the Rare Monster in the Haunted Treasure Landmark room from dropping any items or granting any experience on death.
Fixed a bug that allowed players to warp back to an empty arena with Temporal Rift at the start of the Trialmaster fight.
Fixed Comet being de-sync for other clients when manually performed.
Fixed a bug where Spectres could get stuck in their wisp form.
Fixed an interaction that could cause Charge Infusion to grant the wrong amount of stats when weapon swapping.
Fixed a bug that could cause valid Support Gems to be greyed out when crafting Support Gems.
Fixed chance to not consume crossbow ammo causing desyncs for other party members.
Fixed a bug in Utzaal that could cause the entranceway to the fight against Viper Napuatzi to not appear.
Fixed an issue where 1 Affliction, 1 Pact, 2 Minor Boons and 1 Major Boon were all appearing fifty to one-hundred times more commonly than intended. This often resulted in the first two Minor Boons, first Major Boon of every Sanctum run to be these. These ones were also some of the least interesting, and least powerful, so overall you should now be getting more powerful boons as your first ones!
Fixed a bug that could cause Attack Speed to be much slower than intended while dual wielding.
Fixed a bug that caused monsters with inherent Energy Shield to have less Energy Shield than intended when summoned as Spectres or Tamed Beasts.
Fixed a bug that could cause Halani, the Water Goddess to repeat her dialogue.
Fixed a bug that could cause Expedition Logbook areas to fail to generate.
Fixed a bug that allowed Sceptres dropped by Rogue Exiles to have invalid Runes socketed in them.
Fixed a bug on gamepad where you could not enable more than one Tamed beast companion of a different monster type.
Fixed a bug where hideout map devices stat interfaces could not be collapsed.
Fixed cosmetics menu info popups for Gamepad.
Fixed a bug where player 2 could be unable to enter a character name when creating a new character on Gamepad.
Fixed a bug where Presence Raidus would not be displayed when playing on Gamepad.
Fixed a bug on Gamepad where the Gemling Legionnaire’s “Gem Studded” notable didn’t work on gamepad.
Added missing error message on Gamepad when trying to open a Corrupted Nexus without meeting it’s requirements.
Fixed the Atlas not removing visual corruption after cleansing a Corrupted Nexus map until after you changed areas.
Fixed a bug where some Microtransaction combinations could cause weapons to have Black Squares surrounding them.