One of the things that we have had a lot of feedback about is item drops feeling unrewarding in various situations. Over the last two weeks we have done a major rework to item drops in order to try and address these issues. We are going to be deploying these changes in 0.2.0g later today.
Item Rarity
In order to control the items that monsters drop, they primarily have two stats added to them. Monster Item Quantity is a stat that increases the number of items that are dropped. Monster Item Rarity on the other hand determines how good the items are that drop.
In order to prevent too much item spam, in Path of Exile 2 we want to rely on Item Rarity more, and Item Quantity less. This means that the effect that Monster Item Rarity has on your item needs to be powerful, and noticeable. Currently we believe that this stat is not affecting drops enough.
For example, when a Wisp has possessed a monster, it gives the monster +2 drops and 300% more Monster Item Rarity. The rarity is further increased by each monster that the wisp affected as you were chasing it. This should in theory result in noticeably better item drops, but in practice it doesn't feel meaningful enough.
This is just one example, but this problem affects drops game wide, from all monsters and chests.
We are making some very significant changes to the way that Item Rarity affects the items you get. Here are some of the highlights:
- 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 (Exalt, Alch, Regal, etc).
- Tier 2 Rares now drop 4x more often. Tiers 3 to 5 now drop 30% more often. The mods of Tiered rares have also been improved by cutting out more low level mods making them better on average than before.
- Tier 2 and higher Magic items now drop around 5x more often. The low level mod culling of Tiered Magics has been significantly improved with Tier 2 now culling 50% of the mod range, and improving from there. Tier 5 magic items will usually only roll the highest mod available for a given type. This means that Tiered Magic items should be a much better starting point for crafting or Recombination.
These changes significantly improve the effect that Item Rarity has on the quality of the items you receive. Overall you should see significantly better items when killing more challenging content.
One side effect of this change would have been to make Player Item Rarity that you get on mods on your gear more valuable also, which is not our intention. In order to counter that, we have reduced the effect that these mods have.
We have also lowered the Map Item Rarity mods on Maps as these were having too large of an effect after these changes. The overall effect of these mods will still be similar to before, but the displayed number is lower.
Unique Boss Drop Protection
Even if a monster has high Monster Item Rarity, sometimes you can still get a bad drop because you happened to get unlucky.
Drop protection involves adding an additional item in the case where you didn't get lucky with the items that naturally dropped. We already have some drop protection rules in place to prevent some of the worst cases, but we didn't think that they went far enough.
We have made the following change:
- Except for a few Unique Bosses at the start of Act 1, all Unique Bosses will always drop a Rare item.
- In the campaign, you only get the guaranteed Rare item the first time you kill the boss. In maps you always get it.
Azmerian Wisps
Azmerian Wisps were a great example of content that wasn't feeling rewarding enough because Item Rarity was not having enough of an effect.
Wisps now feel much better from those changes alone, but we also made the following changes:
- 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
We didn't feel that Rare and Magic chests were exciting enough to find. Ideally each time you see one, you feel excited to open it.
In order to fix this, we made the following changes:
- 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 mods that increased the chance of finding Magic and Rare chests to instead add a fixed number of Magic or Rare chests.
We did need to lower the chance of these spawning, but you will still get a lot better items overall. This is especially true in Endgame where the number of rare / magic chests was lowered substantially, but the major increases in results from these chests more than make up for that.
Strongboxes
Strongboxes, as a baseline, have been increased to be equivalent to the new balance for Rare Chests. Specifically:
- 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.
Of course strongboxes also have mods that allow for further increasing Item Rarity. These mods were adjusted down for the same reason as the Map Item Rarity mods, they were having too much of an effect relative to other mods after the changes to Item Rarity more generally. They have the same effect as before, but show a lower value.
Trial of the Sekhemas
Sekhema Trial chests were very underwhelming considering the amount of work you need to do to earn them. We have made significant changes here:
- 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.
Trial of Chaos
In the Trial of Chaos, we were finding that Corrupted Item rewards were no longer valuable in Endgame.
In order to improve the rewards, we have made the following changes:
- 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
Expeditions also received some improvements:
- 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%
Delirium
The rewards you were getting from Delirium for going deeper into the fog were not high enough. We also thought that the maximum difficulty of Delirium was a bit too high, limiting which builds were able to play this content.
We have made some changes here too:
- Increased the amount of Item Rarity per depth in Delirium encounters. It increases to approximately 2.5 times what it was before.
- Reduced the max difficulty of Delirium from being a 5x total increase to a 3x total increase.
Accessibility to Pinnacle Content
In order to find loot more easily, it helps to be able to gain access to being able to fight Pinnacle Content more easily. We have made the following changes here:
- 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%
Other Changes in 0.2.0G
We also made some changes to Corrupted Nexus':
- 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.