According to the patch notes for Path of Exile 2, patch 0.3.0, which is expected to be released on August 29th, the new The Third Edict is much larger than the previous Dawn of the Hunt, including but not limited to the addition of a new act, the return of the league mechanic, various balance changes, and quality of life improvements.
Beyond that, there’s a crafting system that makes crafting more valuable items more predictable, and a new crafting currency that comes with it. Given the sheer number of changes included in patch 0.3.0, and the breadth of categories they fall under, here will introduce you to some of the biggest changes brought to this controversial sequel in this patch.
1. Sprinting Adds
When POE 2 was first released, players praised the dodge roll mechanism, which was mainly because this function, which can greatly improve the flexibility and movement efficiency of the character, was what the POE 1 players had long wanted. And in the practice of more than 8 months, it has also proved to be effective.
In this 0.3.0 patch, the developers have brought players a sprint mechanism that can quickly cross various exploration scenes. After August 29, you can sprint by holding down the roll key, which will give you a higher speed than some monsters with dexterity.
In this case, you can combine sprinting with rolling dodge, so you can easily retreat from the group of monsters to ensure that the distance between you and the enemy is safe enough, and then cast the remaining skills safely. The method of ending sprinting is also very simple, just use other skills to get out of this state.
Or you can use it as a way to travel quickly in the game, but please note that this is not a real mount system, so it is easy to miss those destructible treasure chests containing a lot of POE 2 Currency and gear on the exploration path. In view of this, the biggest role of this basic function is to reduce invalid travel time, and it is best used in some maps that require fast farming of gear or currency.
2. Support Gem Remakes & New
In Dawn of the Hunt League released in April, POE 2 significantly weakened the original character abilities, which caused many players to complain and even give up on the new game. In order to improve this situation, the developers restored all of them in this patch and improved the balance between them. Furthermore, Support Gem has been changed.
First of all, there will no longer be a limit on the number of Support Gems of the same type that can be used. This will allow more advanced players who have independently made builds to freely combine them, create more build possibilities, and give new life to previously invalid builds.
In this case, it is highly recommended that all players who are keen on attacking and casting spells focus their support gem options on Chaos build-up and spend more in-game currency to upgrade it, as this will allow you to deal serious damage to the health of some enemies with multiple elemental resistances.
Of course, patch 0.3.0 also brings 11 new Support Gem options to players, which is undeniable. But the ones that need to be highlighted here are 40 Lineage Supports, which are unique support gems newly added in this patch specifically for use in the endgame, which introduce very powerful and unique effects to your skills, sometimes completely changing the way skills work.
3. Defensive Changes
Even with the 0.2.0 patch significantly weakening the existing game content, Energy Shields has always been considered by players to be the most effective defensive attribute in combat, but this may change after the next patch is released due to the addition of Deflection.
In the next league, classes that focus on Dexterity will have a chance to convert Evasion into Deflection, which will reduce the damage you take by 40%, regardless of whether you are hit by actual damage or Ailment.
On top of that, the chance of this new defense being triggered can be up to 100%, depending on Monster Accuracy. Thanks to this mechanism, Ranger, Monk, and Huntress in the next league will have stronger survivability and more chances to deal higher damage.
For the sake of balance between the various roles, the developers have also added a defense mechanism for Warriors: Heatproofing mechanic available for all elements, which will increase your Armor in the build by 30% and increase the defense of Helmets against Cold Damage.
4. Shop Manager Joins
In previous game content, if you needed to trade with NPCs in the game, you could only wait for the shopkeepers to appear, but they were often negligent and could not provide you with POE 2 in-game currency or gear you needed. Not only that, you also had to wait in the hideout for other players to appear who could trade with you.
But now, a new NPC, named Ange, will become your shop manager and bring you a fully asynchronous auto-trade system adapted to the current popular game style: as long as you convert your previous Premium Stash tabs into this shop and put the items and the corresponding correct prices in it, it will help you make the corresponding transactions even when you are offline.
Overall, the addition of this new shop manager and trading system will make your trading process in Path of Exile 2 faster and smoother. Although this suggestion was made by players in the original game, the developers chose to put it in the sequel first, perhaps to test whether it is feasible and whether players really like it through this game that has already received polarized reviews. From my personal point of view, it is a very good addition.
These are the four major changes to the game content contained in the current patch 0.3.0 in Path of Exile 2. In fact, ever since the developers announced that the official version might be released at the end of this year, players have been discussing this sequel. Although it is not clear whether this patch is the last major patch for Early Access, the developers have brought a lot of sincerity. Let us look forward to it together.
