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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!