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The Path of Exile 2 early access launch is almost upon us. We’ve already had a spectacular year for ARPG fans, with the Last Epoch release a roaring success and Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred a dramatic upgrade on the base game. Now, the long-anticipated sequel to one of the best PC games of all time is finally about to arrive. Ahead of PoE 2’s comprehensive content reveal this week, I sat down with game director Jonathan Rogers to discuss some of the choices that went into determining what made the cut for launch.
The Path of Exile 2 early access content reveal gave us a look at everything we’ll have to explore, and it’s pretty colossal. While we’ll only have access to six of the twelve classes that the full version of the RPG will offer, they each boast two initial subclasses (known as ascendancies). We’re getting just the first half of the Path of Exile 2 campaign for now, which will be repeated on a harder difficulty upon completion – but that’s just because the developer’s focus shifted earlier this year to ensuring a robust endgame packed with stuff to do from day one.
Rogers tells me the decision was made to opt for this second, ‘cruel’ difficulty playthrough to get players up to the expected level 65 before starting the endgame. “Part of what we’re trying to do with early access is get the game right, and I think that if we had scaled the endgame down then we wouldn’t really be getting the true reflection of what the game would be.” He also notes that it gives the team more chances to test how getting through the campaign feels. “The decision to change [priorities] when we were already quite close is something that really was necessary, but I think will put us in a much better position.”
The endgame at launch will feature four core mechanics – Breach, Ritual, Delirium, and Expedition – that are essentially ‘sequels’ to popular PoE 1 systems. Alongside this are two new ‘trials’ (themselves each inspired by past PoE leagues) that begin as ways to earn your ascendancies but evolve into full endgame systems. Then there’s the ability to find and fight uber bosses and an ultimate, pinnacle encounter as the final test of your build.
These systems now all have unique mechanics tied into them: Ritual will earn you a new crafting type that is used to make your other crafting items stronger, for example, while Delirium will grant ‘distilled emotions’ that can be used to nab passive skill nodes far outside the reach of your typical skill tree progression. “Something that I think people need to appreciate is important is that one of the reasons why PoE 1 endgame feels the way it does is because you have the choices about what you want to do,” Rogers explains.
“I think if you just play the same system over and over again forever, that can really grate on you – having the variety in the endgame is what makes it work.” He says that the current offering is what the team considered the minimum requirement to fulfill that need. “Unless we’ve got at least this number, I don’t think you would feel that variety. Four of them work one way and are built into the Atlas (the endless map governing endgame progression), and two of them work a different way with the trials, and so they feel very different.”
Path of Exile 2’s Atlas is one of the most dramatic departures from PoE 1, although it feels like a natural evolution of the fixed map seen in that game. Rogers notes that, while the old-style Atlas was built on the idea of exploration, “it never really worked as well as I wanted. I wanted that feeling of exploration to be a thing that you’d have in the endgame.” He says part of the inspiration came from the Delve league: “That was one of my favorites, I loved the feeling of making progress through a map. So I wanted to make something like Delve.”
He also points to the challenge of balancing maps. “There’s always going to be one map that’s the most efficient. It’s cool when you’ve got the idea of ‘different maps drop different things,’ but all of these things contribute to a situation where you get one map that’s ‘the best map’ and everyone does that map. I wanted to find a system that didn’t have that element, where we were able to do things freely like have some maps be better than others, or have certain item drops, and then the game is to find that stuff on the Atlas.”
The goal, Rogers says, was to find a balance between “I don’t get to pick exactly what I want to do” and the feeling of being able to scout out and influence your progression. This is done through the towers on the Atlas map, which both let you see further afield to plot your course and also use tablets to affect the mechanics that will appear on the maps in their vicinity. “Ideally if we’re doing our job right, there’s always another thing that you want around the corner.”
So if you’re a huge Expedition enjoyer, for example, will it be possible to ensure you always have access to it? “If you are crafting your maps, and crafting your tablets, then you will self-sustain, absolutely,” Rogers says. “If you are not able to run your maps as juiced as possible then you might not necessarily be able to sustain it – if you want to do [one thing] endlessly then you have to make sure that your build is good enough, but it is possible.”
As for crafting overall, we’ve seen a lot of dramatic changes with aspects such as the removal of gem sockets on gear. “I don’t think it’s as complex as PoE 1 was,” Rogers tells me, “but we do want to make sure that there are enough options that you feel like you’re getting power from everything.” The new-look sockets in PoE 2, for example, are essentially a replacement for the old crafting bench. “We’re always happy to make big changes and try things out – I think it’s really fun, personally, but we’ll see how the players feel.”
“With crafting, we had this constant issue where to make it as good as what the players wanted, the designers weren’t happy. And if the designers are happy, then the players aren’t. As soon as you’ve got that system, you probably need to ditch it because it’s just going to be a constant fight. The socket system we’ve got now is both making players happy and making us happy.”
Another dramatic change is that basic crafting materials such as Orbs of Transmutation and Augmentation are much more common in PoE 2 to encourage players to experiment with them early on. The temptation to hoard currency in the original is certainly strong, so I’m excited for this new economy. “It took quite a lot of mindset shift to be okay with taking things that were very rare in PoE 1 and making them very common in PoE 2,” Rogers says, “but now that we’ve done it, it’s like, ‘Why didn’t we ever do this before?’”
As for the class selection, Rogers says the choice of the six initial options “definitely did come somewhat from what was the closest to being ready, but we felt that we have to at least cover the main playstyles that we want people to be able to experience. Probably the one that bothers me the most that we didn’t get to do was the Druid – there’s a huge number of people waiting for that class, and we will definitely get that one out as soon as we can.”
With the need to ensure each class has a full suite of uniques, support gems, and ascensions in place, there’s a lot of boxes to tick in order to consider a class ready to play. “It ends up being such a large amount of work that we realized at some point that it would be easy to save some for later and pick our battles.”
Another major change has been the redesign of Path of Exile 2’s passive skill tree – perhaps the most iconic aspect of the first game. Rogers says organizing this was “a way larger amount of work than we had expected,” but that the PoE 2 tree is a “significant upgrade” over its predecessor. “There’s a lot more uniqueness going on, every cluster has got something going on with it that is nowhere else [on the tree].”
One other slight adjustment from the original game is that the starting area for each class is different for each of the two classes that start there (The Witch and Sorceress, for example, both begin at the heart of the Intelligence section). “There are actually three versions of the starting areas,” Rogers remarks, one for each subtype plus “a third version that you get if you’re neither of those two classes and coming from another side of the tree.”
The reason for this, he explains, is that the team found an interesting trend among players. “If you have stats that a player doesn’t need on a node, even if it contains stats that they do need, then they won’t pick it because they don’t want to ‘waste’ the fact that the other stats are there. You could make a ‘minion and spell damage’ node and a spellcaster won’t take it because it’s got ‘minion’ on it. So we found that we had to split those out.”
PoE 2 places an increased focus on skill combos and spell interactions. Monks can build power charges with one skill and spend it with another, while Sorceresses can lay down a wall of flame and send bolts of lightning crackling through it to set them ablaze. Does that mean an end to the famed ‘one-button builds’ of the first game? “I have a feeling that there will probably still be builds like that, but my hope is that they will never be as good as builds that require using multiple skills,” Rogers responds.
“PoE is a game that has item scaling that goes crazy, support scaling that goes crazy, so that means that it’s certainly going to be possible to get your character to that point in the endgame,” he says. “But I certainly would hope that if you’re playing the content that’s designed for where you’re at in the progression that you’re going to want to be using multiple skills and synergies in order to get the best out of your build.”
Rogers also notes that in a lot of cases, the content that didn’t make the initial cut is around 80% ready, with final tweaks, balance, and polish needed to bring it together. PoE 2 will start with more than 400 enemy types and 50 bosses, however, so it’s certainly no slouch, and that number is expected to roughly double by the full release. I already can’t wait – thankfully it’s just a couple of weeks now until the Path of Exile 2 release date lands.
Before we wrap, I check in on one feature that I discussed in a previous chat with Rogers – the ability to import a premade build and have it highlight your chosen skill tree nodes as you level up. “I believe we have an implementation of that somewhere,” he says, “but I don’t think it’s enabled for early access. It’s one of those things that we’ve never got around to fully making good, but I’m sure we’ll get around to it at some point.”
Path of Exile 2 early access begins Friday December 6. While the game will be free-to-play at its full launch, joining the early access requires purchasing one of the game’s supporter packs, which begin at $30. Players who have spent more than $480 over the first game’s lifetime will be granted automatic entry as thanks for the support. You can read Grinding Gear’s early access FAQ for additional details.
Make sure you’re ready to login on day one with our guide to the Path of Exile 2 system requirements, and keep your eye out for any Path of Exile 2 Twitch drops available at launch for some bonus cosmetics.
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