Path of Exile 2 0.5.5: Best Quality-of-Life Changes
While it’s easy to glance at the fancy banner of the new Forbidden Rites League in Path of Exile 2 and spot the big updates coming this patch, a lot of the smaller, and yet no less interesting, quality-of-life changes…
While it’s easy to glance at the fancy banner of the new Forbidden Rites League in Path of Exile 2 and spot the big updates coming this patch, a lot of the smaller, and yet no less interesting, quality-of-life changes often go under the radar.
The thing is, these updates are sometimes some of the most impactful things, even if they don’t seem that earth-shattering. Stuff like menu and UI changes can be some of the most crucial things in an ARPG like PoE2, so getting these right and listening to player feedback makes the difference between a mid game and a masterpiece.
Along with a slew of important bug fixes, here are some of the best quality-of-life changes that we received in patch 0.5.5, whether you noticed them at first or not.
10 World Map Waypoint
Where Was I Again?
Have you ever gone pretty far off in a direction on the World Map, and suddenly the whole thing just gets too big, and you can’t really remember where anything is anymore, never mind the last map you actually attempted? This, in turn, forces you to sit there endlessly scrolling across the screen, trying to find where you just were.
Thankfully, there's a fix for this now. When you center the World Map, you’ll see a small golden circle hovering by the edge of your screen. Simply click this circle, and it’ll take you all the way to the previous map you attempted, saving you the endless search and a lot of wasted time!
9 Unstable Breaches
One at a Time Please
Have you ever been blasting your way through a breach, clearing out the mobs at a breakneck pace and filling that breach meter, when suddenly a huge amount of massively buffed rare mobs spawn around the starting point and just utterly annihilate you? Yep, happens to the best of us.
When there are that many rare mobs spawning all at once, some freezing you or throwing chaos bolts all over the place, it can be hard to even move. Luckily for us, now these rarities will only spawn in waves of five at a time. This makes it far easier to deal with them, especially when you’ve got super juiced up breach maps.
8 Ghastly Relics Buff
The Abyss Reveals its Plunder To Me!
And speaking of league content, there was also a little buff to this node on the Abyss Atlas Tree. Previously, with this node active, when you encountered a large chest in one of the Abyssal underground sections, it would instead transform into a special Abyssal Strongbox.
First, these were a bit buggy in the first 0.5 release, but the bugs have been patched. More importantly, any large chest you find will now be changed into a strongbox, not just the final one. This means more currency, more omens and more chances to get rich! It might even be worth checking the whole Abyss area now, instead of beelining it to the end.
7 Atlas Passive Point Notifications
So Many Choices, What Should I Pick?
This is a tiny change, but a welcome one. Sometimes, when you are completing certain maps, you might not have realized they were actually overlapping with one of the league content zones. For example, the maps around the Well of Souls will give you Atlas points, but the radius can be a little unclear.
Now, once you’ve completed the objective on a map, like closing a breach or completing a ritual, you’ll get a little pop-up showing that you’ve earned a point on the Atlas Tree. It’s always good to allocate these points as soon as possible, as the next map can benefit greatly from your decision!
6 Multiple Ritual Tablets
More Slaughter, More Tribute! Lovely
In the previous league, ritual farming played a pretty important role. If you were looking for important and valuable belts, like the Headhunter or Mageblood, the best way to get these was by doing rituals.
However, getting enough tribute to actually buy these things was another story. Now, if you add more than one ritual tablet to the map, it will attempt to add another ritual altar, extending your trip and granting you even more points than before. Using this alongside unique tablets is a great way to store tribute and defer items so they become cheaper later on.
5 Party Balancing
The More The Merrier
This is a pretty small one that might not affect many players, but it’s worth mentioning. If you like playing in a party, this one is for you.
As this is a Ritual-focused league, if you’re playing with multiple people, each person will now receive their own tribute and their own pool of rewards. While these can’t be re-rolled like the party leader, they can be spent on the King in the Mists if they have any left over.
What’s more, certain things like elevators in the Trial of Chaos have also been made larger and quicker, meaning it’s easier to get your entire party on without accidentally leaving someone behind. No more messing around with those pesky levers and fiddly lifts!
4 Stash & Currency Exchange Shortcut
There’s No Such Thing as Too Many Divine Orbs
In the endgame of Path of Exile 2, if you care about making a good amount of currency and maxing out your build, you’re going to be spending a lot of time in the Currency Exchange. The thing is, when you open the exchange, it automatically opens up your inventory, which isn’t always what you want.
Now, however, there’s a new button on the bottom left of the currency exchange window that opens up your Stash alongside the purchasing window. Now, let’s say you’re collecting a ton of Exalted Orbs from your recent trade; you won’t need to fill your inventory several times over. You can just open up your Currency tab and dump in all your winnings!
3 Matriarch & Patriarch Halls
Infinity Just Became Slightly Less Infinite
While you might already be aware of some of the larger Fortress changes, there is a more subtle one that massively reduces the time it takes to conquer that huge span of the map.
After you’ve done the quest version of the Fortress, you might remember that the Matriarch and Patriarch Halls are added to the World Map, forcing you to head off in one direction, away from the center, hoping to find them. Oftentimes, this would take ages, forcing you to run low-tier maps just to travel as quickly as possible.
Now, these halls will spawn far closer to the center of the map, meaning you won’t have to travel as far to find them. This speeds up your main Atlas Tree competition, so you can focus on other league mechanics.
2 Trial of the Sekhemas Improvements
Zarokh, Here I Come
This was another one that I totally didn’t see coming, and it was kind of hidden behind the Trial of Chaos stuff. The Trial of Sekhemas has always been an odd one, and fairly loathed by players, due to it feeling cut off from the rest of the endgame.
This is mainly because the Atlas buffs that you build up over a long time of playing don’t apply within Trials. To deal with this, GGG decided to buff this trial specifically by adding bonuses to trials above level 65.
This will allow larger packs to spawn; rare monsters with more modifiers, improved items dropped by bosses, and even the ability to find Exceptional items within the Trial. It might not seem like a lot, but if you’re grinding a lot of Sekhemas, this is a nice little buff.
1 Trial of Chaos Changes
A Brief Calm To The Chaos
And, of course, how could I talk about good quality-of-life changes without mentioning the Trial of Chaos? I briefly touched on a couple of things earlier in the list, but that barely scratched the surface.
This particular trial has always been a pain point because some of the rooms were so finicky, and it seemed to take an age to get through the darned thing! Now, this has been improved drastically.
To mention just a few things, more rooms will be combat-focused, with less time spent waiting between them. Rewards will be Soul Core and Currency-focused, with the opportunity to continue a run past room 10 to guarantee three Fate Fragments. There is more leniency when escorting the statue, and Uxmal’s arena has been simplified.
These are just a few of the amazing changes you will experience when running through the trials, and honestly, this has made me actually start to enjoy it! So good luck hunting those Divines and Soul Cores, because the Trial of Chaos is now a certified farming method.