Since Path of Exile 2 released its first league, Dawn of the Hunt, players have been complaining more and more about the lack of depth in the endgame content, and even the player community and social platforms are full of negative comments.

In view of this, the developers focused on improving the player experience in the endgame content in April and May, and are expected to launch a 0.2.1 patch this month to further improve the problems in the endgame. In this case, where the endgame content is becoming more and more important, it is becoming more and more important for players to farm more loot or specified materials in it.

For example, Expedition Logbooks are a key helper in the endgame content of POE 2 to help you unlock important encounters and obtain higher-level loot. So this guide will show you how to effectively farm Expedition Logbooks in the endgame content of POE 2 Dawn of the Hunt and how to use them so that you can get the best experience in the subsequent game progress.

Farming Method

Before farming Expedition Logbooks, make sure you have reached the endgame stage and can unlock Expedition encounters in Atlas. Maps containing this encounter will be displayed with a black and white spiral symbol on the map.

After you unlock the map containing this type of encounter with the corresponding Waystones, find an NPC that can give you explosives that can be used to dig around the area, and use the explosives it gives you to find loot and treasure chests hidden by the developers after the story or missions, including Expedition Logbooks.

However, you are not always lucky, and you may find more enemies with the help of explosives, and they all need you to defeat. After completing some battles, you can also find some Expedition Logbooks and other loot through the treasure chests left by these monsters.

Or if you think the above grinding is too cumbersome, you can also directly obtain the specified Expedition Logbooks through the in-game trading market and spend some POE 2 Currency. Although this is more expensive, it is convenient.

Some Tips

By the way, the generation rate of Expedition Logbooks in these treasure chests is actually not very high, but you can buy POE 2 currency to modify the affixes on the Waystones required to unlock the map to increase the quantity and quality of the drops contained in this map, so as to achieve the purpose of efficient farming.

Or you can increase your chances of encountering more profitable enemies by picking up more debris that can increase the loot drop rate or generate more rare monsters, thereby increasing the probability of Expedition Logbooks appearing.

Additionally, you can improve your Expedition Logbooks collection progress by modifying some of the options in your build. For example, Detailed Records Passive gives it a 50% drop rate bonus and guarantees it has three implicit modifiers.

Usage

Once you have gone through all the trouble to collect some Expedition Logbooks, you need to think about how to maximize their effectiveness.

If you don’t have a strong enough build to deal with a high-challenging encounter or the modifiers contained in it are not useful for you, you can trade them with other players in exchange for more POE 2 game currency.

If you can’t wait to earn more loot for your character through Expedition Logbooks, you can also take them to Dannig, a very important NPC in the game. It will take you to a special map area with an encounter larger than the normal battle scale.

Here, the combat strategy you need to use is actually no different from the normal one, but you need to rotate your skills a few more times. Of course, the loot you are rewarded with is also more and higher-level.

Alternatively, you can use it to unlock your encounter with Olroth, Origin of the Fall, but it’s worth noting that you can only unlock this encounter with Expedition Logbooks at level 80 and above.

Also, not every map that contains an Expedition encounter will contain this encounter, and you can tell if this boss will appear by whether a skull icon appears on the map.

After you successfully defeat Olroth, you will obtain a lot of loot, such as Olroth’s Resolve Ultimate Life Flask, which can greatly increase your health, and Heroic Tragedy Timeless Jewel, which can convert notable passive skills into other skills.

There is also a Book of Knowledge that gives you 2 passive skill points, which can be used to unlock passive skill nodes that can have a high buff to your build to increase the overall effectiveness.

The above is the current method for effectively farming Expedition Logbooks and maximizing their use in the current POE 2 Dawn of the Hunt league. Hopefully, you can use them to get a better gaming experience in the increasingly important endgame content with the introduction of this guide, and look forward to some updates brought by the 0.2.1 patch. I wish you a happy game!

Since the early access of Path of Exile 2 was released, it has received many reviews from the player community and social platforms, with mixed reviews. But when POE 2 released its first major patch and first league in April, a large number of negative reviews came, and the number was more than the very poor Lake of Kalandra League released in the original game.

Among these negative reviews, the most important one is that POE 2 Dawn of The Hunt League has many restrictions on many skills, making them very poor in some regular battles, and even after investing a lot of POE 2 currency, they can’t play the maximum effect in the endgame.

In fact, the developers also realized their mistakes, so they used the whole of April and May to release nearly 10 small patches to make up for the negative effects of this patch 0.2.0. Not only that, the developers also promised to release a new 0.2.1 patch in the first week of June to increase the playability of endgame content to alleviate players’ negative emotions about this sequel.

In addition, POE 2’s Game Director Jonathan Rogers recently accepted a public interview. He said that the developer will provide a skill library that can better adapt to the endgame in the next league as the main goal of the update, which makes many players very excited.

The Origin Of The Infamy

In fact, POE2 received a lot of praise when it was first released, because it has a completely different game style from the original and adds new classes, which makes many players who like to complete high challenges want to try it.

At that time, the diversity of builds in the game was still very high, which was the most obvious criterion for measuring the success of the overall design of action role-playing games. Here, players can use Infernalist to summon skeletons that can cause burning damage for fearless exploration, or use Invoker’s Ice Strike and Cast on Freeze to cause very large cold damage to the enemy.

However, if the environment in the entire game has been stagnant and players can only use a few powerful builds to complete all explorations, its appeal to players who pursue multiple game styles and gameplay will be greatly weakened. In light of this, the developers nerfed Trigger-based Meta Gems a week into the new league to encourage players to create more new build possibilities.

However, the nerfs were so severe, and the developers did not plan to balance the patch in the middle of the league, which resulted in most builds being far less effective than before, and only having skills like Essence Drain and Contagion that were not destroyed could make a good build options at the time.

In this situation, players often died in battles due to the weakness of their builds. Over time, players became more and more resentful in POE 2, because no one wants to not have a smooth exploration experience in a game that they paid for.

Developer’s Reflection

For these negative reviews, Jonathan Rogers first expressed his apologies to all players, and said that the original intention of this update was to allow players to rely on their own creativity to create a variety of skill combinations, so as to form a sharp contrast with POE 1, which focuses on a single skill as your main skill.

The assumption that the complexity of multi-skill gameplay would make players who love high-challenging content more interested in it was completely wrong after fact testing. So the game director promised players in the interview that the developers would learn from this lesson and make improvements in the next major patch and the next league.

Some Promises

In order to reduce the number of negative comments from players in major player communities and social platforms, Jonathan promised that in the subsequent game content improvements, the developers will pay more attention to expanding the basic effectiveness of a single skill, so that players can experience their unique combat power in the endgame content that they have to go through a lot of hardships to break into.

In response, he revealed that the developers will take a different approach to the league reset window, which means that instead of waiting for a league to develop to the expected perfect state, the league update time for POE 1 and POE 2 will be fixed at about 4 months.

But it must be admitted that the developer announced last year that the early access time of this sequel is only 6 months, so according to this trend, the developer is likely to delay the experience time in order to let players see their determination to achieve this major goal.

This is great for some players who just want to enjoy the current situation, but it is also likely to cause those who want to explore for a long time to think, because the extension of the experience time means that the official version of POE 2 will be far away.

In any case, the idea that the developers of Path of Exile 2 are striving for change is good, but its trust index in the hearts of players is not high, because there are many precedents for not keeping promises. 

If you are a fan of both the original and the sequel, then you can verify its development results through the new POE 3.26; but if you only play the sequel, you can also see their determination in the 0.2.1 patch released next month. I wish you a happy game!

Since the early access release of Path of Exile 2 on December 6, 2024, its developers have been constantly improving this action role-playing game that has always been at the center of player discussion, such as the major patch 0.2.0 released in early April and the various small fixes that followed.

But in fact, except for the week after the release and the latest Dawn of the Hunt league, players’ evaluation of POE 2 has been negative for the rest of the time. In particular, some old exiles who returned from the original work agreed that the endgame in the sequel did not have enough depth, and players could only do some meaningless farming and challenges in it.

Although in previous patches, the developers intended to improve the player’s gaming experience in the endgame, such as increasing the drop rate of loot in it, adding more unique maps in the endgame, and adding some new mechanisms for players to challenge. But unfortunately, it didn’t help.

Last week, the developer announced that it would release another major patch 0.2.1 in the last week of this month, which will focus on the improvements in the loot drop rate, Atlas and Map Mechanics in the endgame. This news made all players excited. But recently, the developer announced that the release of this patch is expected to be delayed until June.

Guessing Reason

In fact, this is not the first time that the developer has played tricks on the players, because such tricks are everywhere in the development and release of POE 2.

But for this delay, I think the reason can be guessed by players who know the two trump games owned by this developer: to make POE 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas expansion released smoothly.

Some time ago, the developer announced that it was expected to officially release the latest league in the original game on June 13. This is the longest time to update the league since the league mechanism was added to the game in 2013.

Prior to this, although POE 3.25 Settlers of Kalguur League was praised by many players, there was no new game content in nearly a year, which exhausted the players’ enthusiasm for it.

And most importantly, during the period when players were looking forward to the new league in POE 1, the developer announced that it would transfer all staff to the development of the first major patch of POE 2, which disappointed almost all old players who were loyal to the original.

So when the developers announced that they would continue to release POE 3.26, these players began to look forward to it again, expecting that there would be more fresh and interesting game content waiting to be explored.

To be honest, it’s not just the loyal old fans who are paying attention to this matter. Some novice exiles who have only been exposed to the sequel are also paying attention to it.

Because when POE 2’s early access is expected to end in early July, players are looking for a game with similar gameplay and the same exploration experience as a replacement. What could be more like a replacement than the original?

So they are waiting to see how much of an explosion this POE 1, which was released more than ten years ago, will bring. Judging from the comments about the two games in the player community or on social media, the developers seem to have realized that focusing on the original works in the current situation may help their reputation turn around.

So they announced that the release of POE 0.2.1 patch will be delayed, and some new game content in the patch will be announced as compensation. There has been speculation about the release date of this patch.

Since most of the patches for this game are released on weekdays, and there is a live focusing on POE 3.26 on June 5, June 6 is the most likely date.

Patch Content

To compensate, the developers also announced some of Socketables that will appear in POE 2 0.2.1 patch in this announcement, which can meet the requirements of those who no longer need the early socket bonus and want to start maximizing the effectiveness of their characters, and will probably provide more creative options for the endgame builds used by players.

Only 3 Runes, a Soul Core and a Talisman have been announced so far, and the remaining Socketables items may be announced one by one in subsequent patch notes. Next, here will be a detailed introduction to them and their possible impact on the subsequent game content.

Runes

Farrul’s Rune Of The Chase

It can be inserted into your unique boots to increase your movement speed by 5%. The only suggestion here is to add it to a boot that can provide you with high defensive capabilities, and buy POE 2 Currency to upgrade it, so that you have both high survivability and a certain degree of mobility.

The Greatwolf’s Rune Of Willpower

This rune can be placed in a slot on your Body Armour, and will increase your damage resistance by applying 10% of the damage done to mana instead of health. This is not very good for spell-focused classes, so you may want to equip some potions or gear that can restore mana.

Hedgewitch Assandra’s Rune Of Wisdom

This is perfect for a Wand or Staff used by a Sorceress or Witch, as it will increase the level of all your spells by one. Although it only gives a one-level bonus, it will make the build extremely effective if you have invested a lot of PoE 2 currency into the weapon you used to maximize the skill level affixes.

Soul Core

Tacati’s Soul Core Of Affliction

This can be placed in a slot on a unique helmet, and will reduce the resistance to chaos damage of enemies you curse by 8%. You can find it in Trial of Chaos Ultimatum encounters.

Talisman

Talisman Of Thruldana

This Talisman can be placed in your Martial weapon, which will reduce the duration of poisons you inflict by 25% and cause the targeted enemy to be affected by an additional poison at the same time.

Although the developers have once again promised to release more information in Path of Exile 2 0.2.1 patch before the end of this week, in fact, not many people are looking forward to it at the moment. I wish you a happy game!

As we all know, one of the biggest features of the game Path of Exile, which has been released for over 10 years, is that players need to select the appropriate nodes in a super-massive passive skill tree and combine them with specific gear to create different builds.

In the current game content, many passive skill nodes are divided into four categories: Small Passives, Notables, Masteries and Keystones. They all have their own uses and will show different effects.

However, relatively speaking, some Keystones have very noticeable and specific effects that make them very suitable for important parts of your build and can therefore have a huge impact on your playstyle in POE. In some player communities and social platforms, they are called build-defining nodes.

In order to let you choose and make the most suitable build for yourself more quickly after Path of Exile 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas League begins, this guide will introduce you to the currently most popular and most interesting nodes. You can choose a node to accord with your play style.

1. Mind Over Matter (also known as MoM)

Survival is always a player’s number one priority, both during leveling up and endgame content, making Mind Over Matter passive one of the most popular nodes, as it allows you to transfer 40% of damage from health to mana.

However, it is important to note that this passive will be very disadvantageous for classes that focus on mana-based spell damage, so you may need to buy POE currency to upgrade gear that can provide you with good mana recovery in your build and maximize its effectiveness.

In addition, you can also use other passive skill nodes to reduce mana consumption. For example, Eldritch Battery allows the energy shield you can generate to protect your mana from damage, which can ensure that those spells can run stably in your build.

2. Chaos Inoculation

We just mentioned that you can use Energy Shield to protect your mana from monster damage, but if the monster has Chaos damage type, it bypasses energy shields and deals serious damage directly to mana and health.

However, if you equip Chaos Inoculation passive node, these problems will be solved. This passive skill will limit your maximum health to 1 point, but will help you to be immune to all chaos damage you receive, which is very suitable for encounters that only deal chaos damage.

In this case, you will be able to focus on the generation and duration of Energy Shield to ensure that you don’t die quickly in the battle. In view of this, you may need to choose a node with faster recharge speed and faster recharge startup speed buff to match it.

For example, Zealot’s Oath, which can convert health regeneration into Energy Shield regeneration, is the best node for you to strengthen this important protection, because health regeneration will be more easily obtained in this build.

3. Blood Magic

For some classes that focus on ranged spell damage, mana storage may be more important than health in the build, because their mana consumption is huge when attacking from a distance. Therefore, you may need to choose a passive node that can keep mana in a healthy state for them, such as Blood Magic.

It will first remove all your mana, but your skills that originally cost mana to cast will become health under the influence of this node, and even aura skills like Purity of Elements will only consume your health instead of mana.

Although the passive effect brought by this Blood Magic sounds unfavorable for long-term exploration, it costs much less POE currency and is simpler to have the ability to increase health recovery during the builds process than to increase mana recovery.

This node will be more suitable for players who can only focus on one task, because they don’t have to spend too much time and energy on a huge skill tree.

4. Iron Reflexes

The first few passive nodes focus on your damage and build durability, but that doesn’t mean that PoE 1 doesn’t welcome builds that focus on defensive abilities in combat.

Once you have Iron Reflexes node that converts all dodge rating into armor, your gear that combines both properties will effectively help you reduce the amount of damage you take.

While Iron Reflexes may make you give up flexibility in your build, if you stack multiple armor values ​​with it as the core, you will be invincible in some low- and mid-level encounters.

By the way, you can choose some gear or passive skill nodes that can increase your Strength attribute to make it easier to deal with monsters that are not resistant to physical damage. Then you can active an Unwavering Stance passive to reduce the chance of being stunned.

5. Avatar Of Fire

Likewise, Avatar of Fire is a passive node that can be used to enhance your build’s defensive capabilities, converting 50% of all damage types you take except chaos damage into fire damage. While this may seem like a nerf rather than a buff, this is not its true effectiveness.

With the help of Avatar of Fire, all of your attacks will also deal additional Fire damage to enemies, which can make you lean towards Fire damage when choosing some skills gems or others build options to maximize this elemental damage.

Above are the build-defining nodes and their effects, based on the developer’s update trailer for Path of Exile 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas League and leaked information about changes to the game’s content.

As the specific changes will not be revealed until the developer’s livestream on June 5th, the specific statistics and attributes listed in this guide may change until the official release of the league.

As the official release of Path of Exile 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas League draws near, the developers have announced the first major change for players in this new update - a pause function.

With this function, you can pause the game and deal with urgent door opening or phone calls with a tap of ESC key; or pause your exploration process when you want to find the best next upgrade point in the huge passive skill tree. The pause function first appeared in POE 2, but the reputation was not too good.

The feature expected to be added to POE 3.26 is improved by the developers. In the subsequent game content, you can automatically pause when you open any full-screen menu or the game detects enough delay, which is very effective in avoiding painful disconnection and death in single-player mode.

However, in order to retain some of the more challenging battles in the game, such as the pinnacle boss encounter, the developers set some areas as areas where pause cannot be used. This change has actually made some players who have been fed up with the fact that there has been no new content added to POE 1 for ten months very excited, but some players have expressed that they want more quality of life improvements.

In view of this, this guide will combine the current game community and players on major social platforms to summarize some of the quality of life improvements expected in POE 3.26. However, it should be noted that the functions introduced here are all speculations and cannot be regarded as final results. Everything is subject to the official release of POE 3.26.

1. Add WASD

Since Path of Exile is an old game that has been released for more than ten years, the movement method used in it is still the previously commonly used point-and-click movement. However, as action role-playing games become more and more popular, more and more young players are pouring into them.

And with the frequent updates of the current new generation of game consoles, the movement method that more players are accustomed to has become WASD. So if POE can add this popular movement method to it, it may attract more new exiles to enter this legendary old game.

But unfortunately, the implementation of this function may be very difficult, because the game director and content creator of POE have said in interviews before that this movement method requires some very significant modifications to character rigs, which will consume a lot of unnecessary development costs and time.

2. Respec Skills With Gold

Many players should have noticed that gold coins were dropped as loot in Quality of Life teaser showing the pause feature. This new currency, added in POE 3.25 Settlers of Kalguur league, generally has been used for respec skills.

So when players saw gold coins appear in this new league, they really wanted to keep this highly practical use of gold coins. Because the current methods of respec skills require players to use a lot of POE currency and energy, this third method is very necessary.

3. Use Dodge Roll

As an important part of the controversial sequel, Dodge Roll is also expected to be added to the original game. It is a movement skill that allows players to quickly move a short distance, allowing players to easily avoid certain enemy attacks and area damage areas.

Its addition may make those players who return to the original game from POE 2 feel very familiar, and they can rely on the game instinct to get used to using this movement skill proficiently, which is very beneficial to expanding the original player base.

But the biggest effect it can bring is that it can reduce the use of those movement skills that consume mana or have restrictions, which will allow players to invest mana in spells that can cast super high damage, so that players can get a better gaming experience in the game.

4. Increase The Number Of Checkpoints

Even though the developers have increased the drop rate of loot in POE, it is still very difficult to farm some Cast on Death support gems that can generate portals to shorten exploration time.

So players really hope that the developers can increase the number of checkpoints in some maps owned by POE, especially the endgame maps, so that players don’t have to spend a lot of time looking for an already explored arena after a battle failure.

However, since the maps in the original game are smaller than those in the sequel, setting 2-4 checkpoints for each map is completely sufficient. For adding such a minor feature that can increase the fun of player exploration, I think the developers should not refuse such a request.

The above are some improvements that players currently need for the quality of life in POE 3.26. The developers may have completed all the game improvements, but a league will last at least four months, so they have enough time to realize these players’ expectations. I wish you a happy game!

After more than 10 months of waiting, we finally have an update for Path of Exile 1! The developers have confirmed that the 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas expansion will be released on June 13th!

Please note that this is not just an ordinary update, because the developers have stated that this is an Atlas Expansion. This is another Atlas Expansion since 3.17, which is really exciting! I believe that every old player of POE 1 can’t wait to log in to the game and experience its charm.

But at present, there is actually nothing except the short trailer that was released recently. So let’s talk about the information leaked in this trailer and what we will see in POE 3.26 League. Let’s get started!

Possible NPCs

First of all, for this trailer, it’s really short, only about 15 seconds of actual content. “These worlds are endless. And yet, they are a prison. Help me find the Originator.”

Venarius

There seems to be a new NPC speaking to us in the trailer, and it seems that we haven’t heard this voice before. Based on his description, he seems to know a lot about Atlas, saying that these worlds are endless, but they are a prison. Maybe he is speaking from past experience, or maybe he has seen what Atlas can do to people.

But honestly, this guy’s voice sounds a lot like Venarius. Since his story is intertwined with Atlas, it’s not surprising to me that he is involved in the update called Secrets of the Atlas.

So maybe this new character is a version of Venarius, possibly a younger version of Venarius. This may seem like a wild guess, but it makes sense, because the developers have played with this concept before in Scourge league, where the key NPC Alva is related to an alternate timeline, and the last person to die seems to be Alva from a different timeline. So we may see something similar.

Then there is the existence of Path of Exile Mobile, which we haven’t heard about in a long time. But the game was originally planned to have its own campaign, set 20 years before POE 1 campaign, starring a young Venarius, and of course, Valdo, but he is more commonly known as Shaper.

Shaper

Now, one thing to mention about this opening clip of the trailer is that the scenes where this guy walks around feel very similar to the scenes where Shaper walks through the various areas of Atlas in War for the Atlas trailer. They both feel very empty, which fits with the conclusion that this character believes the world in Atlas is a prison.

And the music, maybe you noticed that the song used in Secrets of the Atlas trailer is new music. However, it’s so similar to Shaper theme that it could be foreshadowing something Shaper-related.

Zana

Although Zana isn’t mentioned in the trailer, there’s been a lot of talk about Zana making an appearance in POE 3.26. Because at the end of Siege of the Atlas storyline, Zana left, vowing to find a way to permanently destroy Eldritch Horrors and stop them from ever reaching Oriath or the Atlas again. Patch 3.26 is meant to uncover the origins of Atlas, so I’m guessing Zana could be a part of that.

So what if this is all about Zana? What if Zana and her father went down a similar path before? We see a lot of information about Zana in this trailer.

First, we see red petals all over the floor, which could be portals to different worlds, or more likely a schematic diagram of Atlas. Look closely and you can see all these lines, like branches or roots, that all connect in the middle but are still clearly separated.

Additionally, the compass-style image on the ground immediately reminded me of Synthesised Map and Synthesis Boss Arena. Overall, I’m getting a lot of Synthesised vibes from this trailer, and I know it’s not just my imagination. This is extremely similar to the floor design we saw Venarius standing on in Synthesised League trailer.

I’m guessing if this in itself is a hint that Zana is the origin, and if she’s Echoes of the Atlas at the center? Anyway, seeing these red petals bursting from the word “secret” is likely another hint that Zana is hiding something from us.

What Could This Atlas Expansion Update Possibly Bring?

Now what can we expect from this update, especially since this is a brand new Atlas Expansion after 3 years?

The precedent for past Atlas Expansions is that these updates are usually very large in scale and contain two major parts, not just one. Typically, players get an update that includes new challenge leagues, as well as the skill balance, quality of life, and even a rework of POE currency economy system that you’re familiar with, etc.

On top of that, we have Atlas Expansion portion of the update, which usually includes a very big change to the endgame Atlas progression, and one or more new Pinnacle Bosses. In addition, there are Challenge Leagues to go with it.

In the past, whenever an Atlas expansion was released, the Challenge Leagues became easier, such as Ritual league when Maven was released in 3.13, or Archnemesis league in 3.17. Then, we also get the normal skill balance and quality of life content.

At this point, we don’t know anything about Challenge League in 3.26. But for 3.17, they announced Challenge League name a week after the expansion name was announced, so I expect we’ll see that trailer about a week before next week’s livestream.

Is This Atlas Update Really A Good Thing?

Finally, I want to take a moment to discuss what the release of Atlas expansion means for POE 1. As I said before, this usually represents a vast change in Atlas progression. For example, in 3.13, Atlas passive skill tree was updated for the first time. Originally, there were small trees for each Atlas area, but in 3.17, Atlas areas were removed. However, I think overall this is a very positive change.

So what will POE 3.26 do with Atlas? To be honest, I am a little worried about this, just because the current Atlas is so good, I even think it is the greatest addition in the history of Path of Exile 1. Therefore, if the new changes are not as good as in the past, there may be a lot of resistance from players.

However, having said that, in the past, whenever I thought something was great and couldn’t be improved, the developers always proved me wrong by making adjustments and improvements to the system that I thought couldn’t be improved. So I am sure they will find a way to massively improve the current Atlas and keep the player’s gaming experience!

That’s my opinion of POE 3.26 trailer. We are currently three weeks away from release, so please be prepared to start your adventure in this new Atlas expansion!