In Path of Exile 2 Early Access, there are a lot of skill options, and you can use them to build a nearly perfect character for easier exploration. In the major update released by POE 2 some time ago and the latest Dawn of the Hunt League, you can also use different ways to build different characters around the same skill.

For example, you can put Boneshatter skill gem in Titan or Warbringer builds with two different play styles, and you will get different game experiences: one will give you strong survivability and strong damage ability, while the other will always have super strong clearing ability to quickly complete all challenges in the leveling stage.

If you are an Exile who prefers to quickly clear a large number of enemies and enjoy the pleasure of fast leveling, then this guide on using Boneshatter Warbringer build to perform this series of operations is not to be missed. Here you will learn some of the build options and precautions you need to choose for each act in POE 2.

Act 1

In Act 1, which is just beginning to explore the game, the most important thing you should do is to build around the core Boneshatter skill of the build and use it proficiently so that you can build muscle memory when casting skills as early as possible, so as to maximize the effectiveness of the skill.

In terms of initial skill selection, you can use Earthquake and Shockwave Totem to form the best skill combination with Boneshatter, which will accumulate your stun effect on the enemy as soon as possible, thereby increasing the other damage you can inflict on it later.

If you are caught in a battle against a large number of group enemies, Infernal Cry will provide you with some strong clearing ability and additional damage, but it needs to be used before Boneshatter. Perfect Strike is usually used when fighting against the final boss.

Since you will enter and complete Trial of Sekhemas early in Act 2 to obtain Ascendancy class Warbringer and the skills it provides you, it is best to bring a shield when fighting in this scene so that you can adapt to the combat state of using a one-handed hammer and shield.

You also need to stack as much armor and health regeneration as possible in your Boneshatter Warbringer build. The best way to do this is to buy POE 2 Currency to upgrade some of the defensive gear you get early, such as armor and helmets, as much as possible to enhance the buffs and affixes it brings to your defensive capabilities.

Act 2

Compared to Act 1, the challenge you face here will be slightly more difficult, so you may want to add Leap Slam to your skill rotation, which will catapult you into the center of the group of enemies and cause damage and stun nearby enemies where you land.

Leap Slam can fully prepare you for the subsequent Boneshatter, especially if you upgrade it appropriately and choose support gems that provide it with super high buffs, which will allow Boneshatter Warbringer build to cause very high stun effects and physical damage to enemies.

However, it should be noted that you should not upgrade the level of Leap Slam to a level higher than the level that unlocks it, because too high a level will make it possible for Boneshatter’s subsequent damage ability to be out of sync, which will actually become a hindrance.

In addition, in Act 2, in addition to completing the most important Trial of Sekhemas to obtain Warbringer Ascendancy, you also need to upgrade some of your existing skills and gear as much as possible, and be familiar with the rotation and timing of each skill.

In fact, there is no specific recommendation for the support gem options in the first two acts of the game content, because the support gem levels you can obtain in the current process are all low, so you can try them at will.

But if you want to improve the fight against Bosses or increase single-target damage, choosing some support gems that add range effects to skills will be very suitable for this Boneshatter Warbringer build.

Act 3 Until Endgame

In the last part of the regular difficulty POE 2 game content, the active skills in Boneshatter Warbringer build will not change very much, just adding Hammer of the Gods and Seismic Cry, but the support gems behind them need to be adjusted on a large scale.

For example, you need to put Brink in Leap Slam, which will ensure that your active skill will not stun the enemy too much, making it easier to prepare for the core skill Boneshatter and smoothly enter the skill rotation.

You also need to put Heavy Swing in Hammer of the Gods. Although it will reduce the attack speed of this skill by 10%, the damage capacity is increased by 30%, making it more threatening to enemies or bosses without physical resistance.

For the melee-focused Mace Strike skill, you can also replace one of the two support gems that can cause stun to the enemy with Lacerate, which will help you deal continuous damage and increase your single-target damage.

After this series of changes, all the skills you put in Boneshatter Warbringer build will be well integrated, which can help you smoothly pass the three acts of the game content in Act 3 and Cruel difficulty.

It is also necessary to remind you that although the game content in Cruel difficulty is the same as the regular difficulty, because of the unique map refresh mechanism in POE 2, some dungeons or places with better farming benefits may not be fixed, and you need to search around the entire map. But you can interact with nearby checkpoints from time to time so that you can respawn at the nearest checkpoint after dying in battle.

The above are some of the build options and considerations for fast leveling using Boneshatter Warbringer build in the current POE 2 Early Access Dawn of the Hunt League. Hopefully, this guide can help you get through the leveling phase faster and into the more interesting endgame phase in challenging game content. Have fun playing!

This month, Path Of Exile 2 launched a major update that not only brought the latest Dawn of the Hunt league to players, but also brought a lot of new endgame mechanisms. The most noteworthy one is Rogue Exiles, who will use the same skill gems as the players and carry a Unique that you can pick up after the battle, which will make it more challenging.

In battle, you may find that the skill operations of these Rogue Exiles are more difficult to deal with than ordinary enemies or even Bosses because they are controlled by AI, because they can accurately dodge most of the attacks cast by the players and react to them, making the whole battle experience very close to PVP style.

Of course, like the enemies in POE 2, Rogue Exiles also have some difficulty level classifications. There are currently 12 prototypes of Rogue Exiles, and their difficulty will vary depending on Unique they carry. This guide will introduce you to the most difficult Rogue Exiles in the game, as well as the strategies you can use in battle so that you can successfully obtain the loot it contains.

1. Maligaro’s Virtuosity

In the exploration of POE 2, any player who is keen on using critical hits to defeat enemies or bosses in the most enjoyable way must be very much in need of the super high critical damage bonus provided by Maligaro’s Virtuosity gloves: on the basis of the default 100% critical hit, plus a 300% gain, this is the damage ability that most monsters cannot withstand.

So when this super high critical hit bonus is given to Rogue Exiles, any critical hit will kill you in one hit. This requires you to remain highly vigilant in the battle with it so that you can successfully dodge most of the stray bullets it fires.

Although this is one of the strongest exclusive Uniques that can be equipped in Rogue Exiles, they’ll likely be found in non-boss specific loot chests, so you’ll likely be fighting them equipped with the same gear.

The advice here is to find and equip some gear that matches it, such as gear that can increase your critical hit chance. Or you can buy POE 2 Currency to upgrade your gloves before you encounter it, so that you can have better affixes.

2. Defiance Of Destiny

In addition to gear that can provide critical hit bonuses, Rogue Exiles will also carry Defiance of Destiny, a gear that can increase survivability, to challenge you. It can restore 10% of the enemy’s just lost health before being attacked.

Although this endless health recovery will make you feel that Rogue Exiles cannot be truly killed, in fact, as long as your maximum attack damage directly exceeds 10% of its maximum health and continues to attack damage, it is very likely to kill it before the enemy recovers its health.

3. The Coming Calamity Heroic

In the campaign provided by POE 2, elemental resistance is very important, whether in the endgame or leveling stage, so The Coming Calamity Heroic, which makes your nearby enemies have no elemental resistance, can be said to be an indispensable armor in exploration.

But after Rogue Exiles has this gear, things may become less optimistic, because they have super strong all-element resistance, and this Unique effect will make you lose all elemental resistance, and you are in an unequal combat state from the beginning.

If Rogue Exiles has a powerful skill combination in this situation, it will be difficult for you to confront it head-on. So what you do in the battle is to keep a longer combat distance from Rogue Exiles as much as possible, and try to use some long-range active skills to cause more physical damage to it.

4. Beira’s Anguish

Also focusing on elemental damage, Rogue Exiles equipped with Beira’s Anguish will also deal 25% of their maximum health to nearby enemies after casting a skill that can ignite enemies.

This potential damage, which is adjusted according to the health of Rogue Exiles, can be the most difficult to deal with in combat, and a single cast can cause massive damage to your health. However, since this Unique effect takes effect only when you are taking fire damage, it may be your focus to dodge those skills that can cause fire damage in time.

Unlike Maligaro’s Virtuosity, even if you have Beira’s Anguish in a strong build focusing on fire damage, try to avoid confrontation with Rogue Exiles wearing the same gear, otherwise it may not be worth the effort.

5. Birth Of Fury

In the current POE 2 game process, many players will carry Birth of Fury to some endgame maps with more benefits, such as loot, POE 2 Currency or experience points, because it can create a burning ground in battle, causing 10% of its maximum health per second to group enemies.

When Rogue Exiles was first launched, due to its very high health, the damage caused by Birth of Fury may be several times the health of some medium-level players, so many players complained about it.

Fortunately, the developers listened to the players’ suggestions and reduced the total health of Rogue Exiles by 40%, which alleviated this problem. However, you still need to be extremely careful when you encounter enemies equipped with Birth of Fury during exploration, and enhance your fire resistance.

The above are the 5 most difficult Rogue Exiles types to fight against in the current POE 2 Dawn of the Hunt league, as well as some precautions for you in encounters with them. I hope this guide can help you have more chances of winning when you encounter them and smoothly take over the Uniques you need from them. I wish you a happy game!

In the ongoing Path of Exile 2 Dawn of the Hunt league, the newly added Huntress is a hybrid class that focuses on both melee and ranged attacks, and is good at using its spear to deal with various situations in combat. However, in the current game, many players are more accustomed to playing it as a character that casts ranged attack damage.

Here, Huntress build with Lightning Spear, a spear skill as the core has become the main choice for players who like ranged combat. Although this skill may cause low damage to enemies in early exploration, if you choose some correct support gems for it and other skills that can match it, your build will be very suitable for the leveling stage that requires fast map clearing and efficient farming.

Since there are more than a hundred support gems, skill gems, and gear belonging to Huntress in the current game, this guide will recommend some of the most suitable options for Lightning Spear Huntress build for you, as well as some precautions you need to pay attention to during the battle.

Build Overview

As mentioned earlier, since the core of Lightning Spear Huntress build is this powerful spear skill, all other options in the build are basically based on maximizing its damage, while using the electrocute effects provided by Wind Dancer, Ghost Dance, and Electrocute to provide you with strong defense.

When you are fighting against some bosses or enemies with strong survivability, you can use Storm Lance as your auxiliary attack skill, which will help you have higher single-target DPS. At the same time, Lightning Spear will also be enhanced to a certain extent by the addition of Storm Lance, so you will have amazing damage capabilities when rotating skills.

In addition to the physical defense provided by regular gear, you also need to pay attention to the gains they bring about Evasion Rating and Energy Shield, and you should buy POE 2 Currency as much as possible to improve their specific effectiveness. When you combine these gears with Ghost Dance, it will be difficult for the enemy to cause any substantial damage to you, making you more tanky.

Skill Gems & Support Gems

In the early stages of your quest in POE 2, you’ll want to first use Explosive Spear and Expedite skill link to Detonate Storm Lance, as this skill combination gives you strong damage and clearing capabilities in the early stages of the game.

Then switch to Lightning Spear once you have it, but remember to use Cull the Weak or Parry mechanic to execute some low-health enemies to accumulate Frenzy Charges, which can be used in the next Lightning Spear or Storm Lance skill you cast, giving you a greatly improved damage capability.

In fact, the true power of this Lightning Spear Huntress build only begins to show after you gain Frenzy Charges: with the help of Electrocute, Lightning Spear can apply stackable lightning damage to enemies, and with the link of Pin and Wind Dancer, you will continue to perform Frenzy Charges, and your Lightning Spear skill will also be strengthened to make up for the shortcomings.

But it should be noted here that you should not add Sniper’s Mark to your build until you unlock the first Ascendancy point and get Critical Strike, because your Critical Strike chance is very low before that, and you cannot use this skill gem to its maximum effect.

After you meet the above conditions and activate some nodes that can provide you with critical strike buffs in your POE 2 passive skill tree, you can use Sniper’s Mark to deal super high bonus damage to higher-level bosses or enemies with higher health and have Frenzy Charges.

Although Barrage can be used to double the number of Lightning Spear throws to provide higher DPS buffs, it costs a lot of mana, so if you have gear in your build that can generate mana for you continuously, you can consider using it.

Before you are ready to enter the endgame, you will find that your dodge rate is very high, so you can use Ghost Dance to add an extra layer of defense to yourself. It will restore your energy shield according to your dodge rate when you are hit to increase your survivability in combat.

Gear

When making a Lightning Spear Huntress build during POE 2 leveling phase, it is important to find a very powerful spear for it, especially those that can increase your physical damage or lightning damage, which are worth the large amount of POE 2 Currency you spend on upgrading.

If necessary, you can also use Artificer’s Orb to add a slot to your spear and place an Iron Rune or Greater Iron Rune in it for higher damage buffs. Please note that after you make a spear with the properties you need, please recycle the items with qualities or slots in time to obtain the large amount of currency needed to upgrade the spear.

For your armor, you need to choose those that can provide you with dodge rating so that Ghost Dance can better provide you with energy shield. It is also very important to have items that can provide you with some mobility, such as boots that increase your movement speed.

In addition, you should try to keep the elemental resistance capped at 75% when possible, because this is an important factor in ensuring that you can fight against monsters or bosses that focus on elemental damage.

The above are some options and precautions for Lightning Spear Huntress build that is very popular in Dawn of the Hunt League in the current POE 2 Early Access. I hope you can use this powerful build to successfully pass the leveling stage and get more loot that can be used in the endgame stage. I wish you a happy game!

In December of last year, the beloved Path of Exile released its sequel, becoming one of the most concurrently played games on Steam. Although the player base churn in POE was not too severe at the time, the number of daily active players and total players was declining.

But now, nearly three months after the release of POE 2, a new event has brought numerous players back to the game: during the Legacy of Phrecia event, the number of concurrent players reached a peak of 91,948, while POE 2 was only 80,879 at its peak, which is far more than the sequel!

But strangely, the number of concurrent players of the sequel was not greatly affected during the event, so where did all these players come from? And although POE may never break the heights set by POE 2, what are the reasons behind this phenomenal popularity? Will we see this again in the future?

These questions are the topics that are currently being focused on in the player community and social platforms, and this guide will answer these questions for you one by one based on the existing information and leaks. Whether you are a loyal fan of the original game or a player who is exploring the sequel and hesitating whether to enter POE to try it, the answers here may give you a correct direction.

Reasons For The Popularity Of POE

First of all, let’s take a look at why the original POE has set off such a phenomenal popularity, that is, because its game content has not been updated or improved for a very long time. Previously, Path of Exile would update four leagues every year, and each one would bring a lot of game content updates to players, such as new mechanisms, new bosses, and new POE 2 Items.

Before the early access release of POE 2 last year, in order to ensure the normal operation of the sequel, the developer used all the work teams that originally worked on POE 1 to develop POE 2, which led to the delay of the league that should have been updated in the original game. Although POE 3.25 Settlers Of Kalguur League was highly praised by players before, players lost interest in it during this long period of repeated grinding and exploration.

When this Path of Exile 2 was released in advance, it was thought that Grinding Gear Games would return the staff of the original game, but they did not. They have been solving some minor problems that POE 2 players have been struggling with, and officially announced that they will continue to use this team to develop the sequel until the release of Patch 0.2.0.

This caused some players who were loyal to the original game to protest because the developer broke the promise to treat both games equally to all players. After that, the players in the original game had no hope for new leagues or new patches, and jokingly called this the longest drought period in POE.

But fortunately, after announcing this news, the developer released a notice about the Legacy of Phrecia event to be held in POE, which will last for a month. And announced that it would destroy all existing classes and replace them with new game-changing ascendancies, which means that all 19 ascendancies will be redesigned, and those gear that could only be upgraded with POE Currency have also received some upgrades and improvements.

This was unexpected for all players, and made players feel that they had wrongly blamed Grinding Gear Games before, because this kind of experimental design also requires a very long time to study and explore. So many players who had given up the original game before began to return, and some players who were used to the old design also wanted to try these new game rules and gameplay, which gave this long-dormant game a new lease on life.

Why Hasn’t The Number Of Concurrent Players In POE 2 Decreased?

Although POE and POE 2 are both games of the same genre and have the same unique systems, they are fundamentally different because the original Path of Exile has decades of updates and quality of life upgrades, with the depth and level design that most pleases players, and it is difficult for new games to catch up with this depth of game content in a short period.

Especially the endgame of POE 2, although it uses a lot of data from the original to determine what players want in it. For players who have only tried this sequel, this exciting and difficult battle makes it a different game experience, but for fans of the original, the endgame here is not pleasing to them.

So the explosion of POE has little impact on the player group of POE 2, because the two groups essentially like completely different things, and there will be a steady stream of new players during the current POE 2 Early Access period, because they all want to try the extremely difficult gaming experience of farming POE 2 Currency.

Most importantly, one of POE’s most impressive feats is that it can retain players longer than other games. On July 1 last year, Settlers Of Kalguur League was able to reach 228,398 concurrent online players, which is the highest record for the game. At the end of July, the number remained at 163,118, which is a very outstanding number for a game that has existed for more than ten years.

The last question is, can POE maintain this super high popularity and move forward steadily? The answer is yes, because the sequel is currently only released in Early Access, and the official release time and game content are not completely determined, which leads to the players becoming bored again after the experience time is over. At this time, a POE with a better game experience and similar gameplay may become their next prey.

As you all know, after more than 6 months of POE 3.25, the developers finally responded to the subsequent league update of POE 1, but we did not get any news about the 3.26 expansion, but instead announced that POE 3.26 would be postponed indefinitely. This news has caused a lot of anger among fans of the original game. Perhaps in order to calm the anger of the players, GGG recently chose to launch a new event, Legacy of Phrecia Event, to divert the attention of the players.

The event starts at 12 pm PST on February 20, 2025 and lasts until 1 pm PST on March 23, 2025. Players will face a series of unique challenges and experience major changes in the class system.

To perform better in this event, you must prepare an excellent build. Here we’re sharing our event starter build, Pyroclast Mine Polytheist, to help you get a head start in Legacy of Phrecia Event!

Build Overview

Recently, seeing the rise of Polytheist ascendancy class, we wanted to use it to make a build that uses skills with both Projectiles and Nova tags. The only skill that meets this requirement is Pyroclast Mine.

With Pyroclast Mine, we can hit the same enemy multiple times with a single explosion. First the initial explosion of Mine, then the projectile AoE for each explosion, and finally these fireworks-like explosions. If you like flashy builds, this one is for you.

What we’re showing here is mapping with Pyroclast Mine using a 4-Link setup, so how far can this setup take us?

In reality, since we need to stick to a budget and make sure we can complete Legacy of Phrecia Event with the least amount of POE Currency cost, our equipment is pretty crappy, focusing mainly on life, resistance, and a few attributes. Tremor Rod in particular is definitely the most cost-effective choice for this build, and should at least get you into red maps.

In addition, we only use 2 Auras, Grace and Summon Skitterbots. Since Flammability is tied to Arcanist Brand and Detonate Mines is tied to Automation, it will trigger automatically.

It is recommended that you can get Detonate Mines Skill Gem as early as possible to save extra clicks. If you don’t want to invest in it, there is a Mine Mastery that also allows you to detonate mines while moving. You can unassign it when you don’t need it.

Although we don’t use Astral Projector in this build, so sometimes the explosion won’t fall on the boss, the overall damage feels good, especially when we get Ascendancy, which will be more powerful.

Ascendancy

For Ascendancy, we would grab Devout of Lunaris first. The quality of life brought by this node is unparalleled. However, if you want more defense, then you can get Devout of Garukhan or Devout of Solaris first, and finally Devout of Ralakesh, mainly because we are already using Charged Mines Support.

Passive Tree

Now, let’s move on to the passive tree for this build. We have different levels of the tree, so if you don’t know which nodes to choose, you can follow the upgrade tree here. We usually start with some damage and life nodes here, and then go to Shadow. Also, get all Mine nodes, Life nodes, and Reservation nodes here, and then finish the build at level 95.

Gem Setup

Next, we have different gems set for endgame and early/mid game. You can re-check them when you are ready to lower your health.

If you are using Pyroclast Mine of Sabotage, you can change it here. However, it is not recommended that you switch to it before getting Mana Reservation node and equipment.

Pyroclast Mine of Sabotage does much more damage than normal Mine, but it also reserves much more mana than normal Mine. So, until you can switch to Transfigured Mine, just use the normal Mine. They function the same, the only difference is the amount of damage.

In addition to Grace and Summon Skitterbots, this build also uses Discipline. It is connected to Arrogance to preserve life instead of mana, so that we can do Pain Attunement when life is low, giving us 30% more spell damage.

Once you get Whispers of Doom anoint on your Amulet, you can use another curse, which is Assassin’s Mark. Before getting Pyroclast Mine, you can upgrade as you usually do with Templars, that is, use Rolling Magma, Holy Flame Totem and Flame Wall.

Gear Setup

Now, to the most important part, the gear.

The gear for this build is very simple, you just need to focus on getting life, resistance and attributes. Among them, Mine Throwing Speed ​​should be made on your weapons and helmets, which will make a huge difference and provide you with a smoother map experience.

You can also try to get a belt with Mine Throwing Speed, or make your own using Essence of Zeal. Once you get enough POE currency, you can slowly upgrade your gear.

Since this is an evasion character, it has low health, so getting energy shields is also important. So we use Evasion Base or ES Base as our armor, combined with Grace and our Ascendancy, our evasion chance should be pretty high.

Another important stat is spell suppression chance. Although there are some on the passive tree, it should be easy to limit spell suppression if your gear is all rare. What’s more, you should also have your Eldritch Mods at this point.

Note that the endgame setup of this build is expensive. It’s only for those who really want to invest in the build and try some of the hardest content in the game. If you’re just using this build to accumulate some Divine Orbs and move on to the next build, then I think you can stop at the mid-game setup.

Victario’s Influence is a great body armor for this build. You can even get up to +4 gem levels with Corruption alone. Additionally, it provides higher reservation efficiency, which is very necessary for Pyroclast Mine of Sabotage, and the increased AoE and aura effects are obviously nice to have as well.

Finally, Replica Dragonfang’s Flight is great for boosting our damage, as it provides 3 additional gem levels. This reservation mod is great, as it also reduces life reservations for Discipline.

Anyway, that’s all for this Pyroclast Mine Polytheist build. Hopefully, the servers will be stable during Legacy of Phrecia Event, and we’ll see you there!

During the period of Path of Exile 2 Early Access, do players still remember POE 3.25, which was released in July last year? Yes, Settlers of Kalguur league lasted for over 6 months, but we still had no news about the next league.

However, recently GGG finally responded to this issue. Unfortunately, they did not specify the release time of POE 3.26, but brought the bad news that the next league will be postponed indefinitely. Yes, this league postponement is indefinite, and it may last for a long time.

Therefore, here we are mainly to help you understand the actual future of POE 1, and why I think you should be prepared for POE 1 to be completely closed after patch 3.26.

The Player Group Split Between POE 1 And 2

Two weeks after the release of POE 2, there are a few things that you should be able to see clearly. On the one hand, there is a clear split in the players, and on the other hand, there is a rather large difference between POE 1 subreddit and POE 2.

Looking at the data from the past few years, the number of players in POE 2 Early Access is on average higher than any POE 1 league. There are more than 1 million people registered for Early Access on Steam alone, which is at least $30 million in revenue, and that’s considering people pre-ordered the minimum $30 Supporter Pack.

However, for GGG, it’s not just about money, they have to keep players happy to retain them. Of course, they can also afford to lose players, because these people will still participate in POE 1.

What we want to emphasize here is that there are actually two types of players who have diametrically opposed views on the game. Some POE 1 players like the fast-paced endgame experience, with wide explosions appearing on the screen, blowing up the map one after another, and they only need to wait a moment to click on POE Currency and rare items dropped by the boss. But there is another group of people coming from games like Elden Ring who want the endgame to be like POE 2 campaign. These are completely different audiences.

POE 2 Bugs Appear Frequently

At the same time, there are some serious issues with POE 2 that affect the gaming experience and need to be resolved urgently. I mean some of these issues may even make your computer explode, turn your GPU into a smoke screen, or you will wake up to find that your account has been hacked.

The most serious problems are not game balance, but bugs and crashes. One of the things is the careless Windows 11 24H2 update, which caused a lot of CPU problems in the game, especially a serious crash on our loading screen. When players open portals between maps, we have to enable and disable multi-threading, or sacrifice half of the CPU capacity to run this game.

We must understand that it will take Microsoft a few years to replace the useless DEI to solve these problems. Anyway, we can only hope that GGG will be able to fix their game after this bad Windows update. After all, it is just one of the serious problems they are currently solving.

1.5 months have passed since Early Access release, and POE 2 players are still eagerly waiting for a ton of fixes and endgame issues that need to be changed.

POE 1 Might Be Ready To Terminate?

Meanwhile, POE 1 subreddit is on the verge of a nuclear explosion, because more than 6 months have passed since GGG released POE 3.25 update, and we have never seen such a crisis.

Before, the developer was crucified for testing a new idea in a few leagues, but now suddenly everyone wants to see him resurrected. To be honest, we do live in the age of prophecy, and maybe we may see it soon.

But what’s worse is that more people suspect that this may be their farewell to Path of Exile 1 development. Because unless the two development teams are completely separated, you can’t maintain league updates for 2 games every 3 to 4 months. Chris Wilson himself admitted this as early as 2019.

Developers May Be Stretched Thin

You can feel the pressure from embedding the core content of the old game into the new one. They had less than a few weeks to make the endgame, which they have been working on for years.

I mean, it’s probably been 5 or 6 years since we saw a snippet of POE 2 Act at ExileCon 2019. And the carefully polished 3 Acts we see today took 6-7 years. Rumor has it that there will be more details on these contents after the official release.

So, like we mentioned before, GGG made millions of dollars from POE 2 Early Access, but their only ongoing income comes from POE 1 League, which also requires development and maintenance costs. It’s a gray area to draw the line between which one must take priority now.

After the release, the developers have clearly shown less enthusiasm for completing the remaining 3 Acts of POE 2. Honestly, ask yourself which is more important? POE 2 endgame or POE 2 Acts 4, 5, and 6?

I believe most people want to fix the endgame and continue its development. But this is where I am deeply critical. If you want to make a brand new game, then why bring back the endgame mechanics from the old game that require you to kill and clear quickly? Many POE 2 players want the endgame to be slowed down, but these mechanics are the same requirements of the old game. So, GGG must decide which group of players they must cater to. If they want to separate the game, then they should completely avoid the content from POE 1 in POE 2.

My point is that if GGG pushes hard now, both games have quite strong momentum, they will succeed in winning over both player bases. This is an opportunity that cannot be missed, and this has been proven many times.

The Success Of POE 2 Sacrificed The Development Of The Previous Game

There are many people who are deeply concerned about POE 1. Because Settlers of Kalguur is the best state of POE 1 league update so far, many players returned because of the update of patch 3.25.

But the thing is, currently GGG is still using developers from POE 1 team to develop POE 2. These developers are literally the best developers in any action RPG.

Nevertheless, GGG has good reasons to allocate more resources to POE 2 at the expense of the expansion of POE 1. Like I mentioned before, POE 2 currently has more players and everyone is a paying customer. Second, POE 2 has been a tremendous success at the beginning. Despite the criticism, once they start adding crafting, endgame mechanics, and challenge leagues, the scope of success of POE 2 will be much larger.

Final Thoughts

However, this is not a priority at the moment, GGG can always balance the game, but for a large group of POE 1 players say, 6 months without any content, it’s really hard! So it is recommended that GGG first put all resources into fixing the major issues in patch 0.2.0, and once that is done as soon as possible, they can save the rest for the release of POE 3.26. In this way, Path of Exile can keep the momentum and effectively complete both without losing more players.

In short, prioritize the right things and let the right people do the right job to improve efficiency. This may help the two games run at the same time. GGG must decide and plan the overall strategy to usher in a better future. Looking forward to seeing the early arrival of POE 3.26!