Grinding Gear Games is continuing its rapid series of updates for Path of Exile 2 with the brand new patch 0.1.0d. This one focuses primarily on trigger gem energy gain. In short, making it easier to pop off during a boss battle.

We also see balance changes to Ultimatum monsters. Grinding Gear Games clearly wants these to feel consistently challenging, rather than have select monsters more tough than others.

The rest? Well, it’s your typical bug fixes and quality of life updates. We’ll start this article by diving deeper into the trigger gems and energy gain changes, as well as Ultimatum boss balance. Then, we’ll take a look at everything else.

Trigger Gems Are Easier to Use Against Bosses

Grinding Gear Games has made no secret of the fact that energy gain for trigger gems has been a struggle. Primarily, if the team was to balance around boss fights, it would make them all too easy to trigger while fighting regular monsters.

So, fiendishly clever those guys are, the team has introduced ‘Monster Power’ into the calculation. In simple terms, that means you gain more energy if you’re fighting against a more powerful monster.

In practice, this should feel quite balanced no matter who you’re fighting. You’re either gaining loads of energy from hitting a powerful monster, or hitting multiple smaller monsters to gain roughly the same amount.

There is an additional change though: it’s going to be a little more challenging to gain energy when using Flame Wall. Now, energy gain is based on the strength of the ignite effect.

You may also notice additional changes that Grinding Gear Games hasn’t announced here.

Balancing Ultimatum Monsters

The changes to Ultimatum monsters are a lot simpler. Broadly speaking, the challenge was all over the place. You may have fought an Ultimatum boss and walked away without a scratch, while another felt like cut content from Dark Souls.

Well, that should be a thing of the past. Grinding Gear Games has strived to bring a baseline of balance to these monsters. This also involves reducing the number of mobs that fight alongside a select number of them.

Elsewhere, the following items will no longer spawn if you’re on a life or near the alters in the Vaal Soul Core room:

  • Stormcaller Runes
  • Blood Globules
  • Heart Tethers
  • Impending Doom Rings

Quality of Life Changes

Now that we’ve got the meat of the update out of the way, let’s take a look at the quality of life fixes. Some of these were also announced during the first big patch.

We’re taking these directly from Grinding Gear Games itself:

  • Passive Block chance now applies to blockable hits from all directions, as opposed to just hits from in front.
  • Player size is now set to Zero units while dodge rolling instead of One unit.
  • Some smaller monsters can now be pushed while dodge rolling. This includes monsters such as the Adorned Beetles in Keth.
  • Inscribed Ultimatums and Djinn Baryas now display whether you will obtain Ascendancy Skill Points upon completing the Trial of Chaos or Trial of the Sekhemas respectively.
  • Removed World Map Pins for encounters that were not from specific locations in Areas. ie. From Monster drops.
  • Improved attack in place behaviour.
  • Rain of Arrows and Firestorm now have a hit-rate limit to prevent cases of them absolutely obliterating very large bosses. This will have little to no impact outside of boss fights with very large hitboxes.
  • Leech has been buffed.
  • Boneshatter now more reliably hits your target.
  • The duration of Armour Break has been increased to 12 seconds (previously 6).
  • To improve performance, Incinerate now creates circular areas of ignited ground instead of segments.
  • Added CTRL+Click shortcut to open the Currency Exchange at the appropriate NPCs.
  • Added a button to travel to the Trial of Chaos on the world map.
  • Added art for Close Combat Support.
  • Added 2D art for the Defiance of Destiny Unique Amulet.
  • Added “Ascendancy Skill Points” as a keyword, which details how sets of Ascendancy Points are obtained.
  • Added search functionality for Gemcutting and vendor inventories when using a controller. Keybinds for searching Stash on a controller have also been updated.
  • Added Gemcutting restrictions option for Gamepad.
  • Added suggested Supports for Time of Need.
  • Updated the suggested Supports for Bonestorm.
  • Added an option for opening the Trade website to the main menu for consoles.
  • Runes now sell to vendors for more Gold.
  • Updated art for Reserved Life and Mana.
  • Updated the description on Runes to clarify that once socketed they cannot be replaced.
  • Auras and Curses that affect ally or enemy resistances now display values in the Skill popout panel.
  • Tweaked the audio of the Kiwi Pets, Chimera Pet, and Baby Crowbell Pet to reduce their impact in town areas.
  • Updated the wording on the Invoker’s “…and Protect me from Harm” Ascendancy Passive Skill to clarify its functionality.
  • Updated the description on Hexblast to clarify that it only detonates a single Curse per Enemy in its radius.
  • Updated the description on Fiery Death Support to clarify that the Supported Skill does not need to kill the ignited enemy itself.
  • Reduced the defenses provided to monsters by the Magma Barrier modifier.
  • Walking Goliaths no longer use their suicide attack if they are Rare.
Steam

Bug Fixes Galore

Wrapping up the patch notes is a series of bug fixes, again direct from Grinding Gear Games.

  • Fixed a bug which caused enemies to be Primed for Stun or Electrocute earlier than intended while in a party.
  • Fixed a bug where Gemling Legionnaires with the Integrated Efficiency Ascendancy Passive Skill allocated could lose their 3 additional Skill Slots if they were empty when entering a new area.
  • Fixed a bug with party member reviving when using WASD input where you could revive party members from too far away.
  • Fixed a bug where “Waystones found have a chance to be a tier higher” on the Atlas Passive Tree wasn’t working.
  • Fixed a bug where the Audio Mix setting was not being remembered when restarting the game.
  • Fixed a bug where one of the small Passive Skills in the Fleshcrafter cluster was not connected to the Notable Passive Skill. It is possible for your Passive Skill Tree to be reset if you had this cluster allocated, apologies!
  • Fixed a bug where you could not open a portal in The Riverbank in Cruel difficulty.
  • Fixed a bug where some of Zalmarath, the Colossus’ skills could persist after their death.
  • Fixed a bug where opening a full-screen panel while disenchanting could prevent you from performing any actions until you relogged.
  • Fixed a bug where some fire spells, such as Volatile Dead and Incinerate, were not functioning correctly with Raging Spirits.
  • Fixed a bug where “Buffs on you expire Slower” from the Prolonged Assault Notable Passive Skill and other Chronomancer Ascendancy Passive Skills was applying to Debuffs and other effects as well as Buffs.
  • Fixed a bug where non-reviving Minions were spawning a Remnant from the Grim Feast Buff when dying in your presence.
  • Fixed a bug Infernalists with the Pyromantic Pact Ascendancy Passive Skill allocated were considered to be on Low Infernal Flame if they were at 50% of Maximum Infernal Flame or lower, instead of 35%.
  • Fixed a bug where the world map icon for Candlemass in Cruel was not updating correctly.
  • Fixed a bug where you could be unable to upgrade Gems despite satisfying the Attribute Requirement by having the Adaptive Capability Gemling Legionnaire Ascendancy Passive Skill allocated.
  • Fixed a bug where Fiery Death Support was not dealing damage correctly.
  • Fixed Infusion Support Gems on Herald skills applying the gain damage as extra elemental damage to all attacks instead of just the damage from the Herald skill
  • Fixed a bug where Expedition encounters could fail to generate in the Decay Map.
  • Fixed a bug where Quality on the Sacrifice Skill was causing Minions to Revive 0-5% more slowly, instead of more quickly.
  • Fixed a bug where the exit portal for the final boss in Trial of the Sekhemas did not visually display upon killing the boss.
  • Fixed a bug where socketed Skills you didn’t meet the requirements for were missing their name in the Skills menu when using a controller.
  • Fixed a bug where the Elemental Storm skill granted by the Stormweaver’s Tempest Caller Ascendancy Passive Skill could sometimes place the storm underneath you.
  • Fixed a snapshotting bug with the “Loads an Additional Bolt” Crossbow modifier.
  • Fixed a bug where the Contagion Skill was not spreading Poison.
  • Fixed a bug where Tempest Bell could become invisible.
  • Fixed a bug where NPCs were missing their name labels in Hideouts when using a controller.
  • Fixed a bug where signing into a guest account on PlayStation 5 could delete your friends list in-game.
  • Fixed a bug where you could sometimes be unable to enter your hideout on PlayStation 5.
  • Fixed eight instance crashes.
  • Fixed six client crashes.
  • Fixed a client crash that could occur on Xbox.
  • Fixed three client crashes that could occur on PlayStation 5.
Steam

Guides