EARLY GAME AND GENERAL QoL FEEDBACK - (0.4 Last of the Druids league)

Path of Exile 2 Early Access Feedback (PS5 – ~1000 hours)

Hey devs, first off: I love the game! I’ve put in around 1000 hours on PS5 in Early Access and I’m still having a blast. Here’s my feedback, broken down into clear points:

1. More Support Gems & Spirit Gems in Acts 1–2
We simply don’t get enough support gems early on. Even when I already know exactly what I want to do with them, I burn through every single one and still end up hunting for more — this has happened on all five of my recent HCSSF characters (including stash sharing between the runs). It's not very friendly to exploring builds, you have to be super careful with how you spend them now.

The same issue exists with Spirit Gems. Unless you get lucky, the only reliable one is the guaranteed drop from the Ritual boss in Act 1.
As an experienced player it’s still very easy to make a mistake when choosing your persistent buff (for example, misunderstanding how it synergizes or whether something works with melee or ranged spells ect).

Realizing you’ve “wasted” your only Spirit Gem for the next several hours feels terrible and kills momentum.
New players who aren’t following a guide will have an even harder time. Please give us a bit more breathing room with these gems in the early acts.

Suggestion: Let NPC shop sell a few support gems or skill gems so you can save up for a new attempt if mistakes were made.

2. Exalted Orb Drop Rate in Acts 1–2
A ~50% increase to Exalted Orb drops in Acts 1–2 would be perfect. Right now it’s tough to justify swapping out gear in Act 2 because you’ve already invested so much (quality, gems, mods) into your Act 1 pieces.

A few extra orbs would let us experiment and upgrade without feeling punished, because remember not every time a player use a currency they get something out of it. They might try to make an upgrade unsuccessfully.

3. Gold Problems & Gambling During the Campaign
I never have enough gold to gamble meaningfully in Acts 1–3. Checking the shop every level feels safer than gambling, which kills the fun.
Suggestion to add some dedicated “gold chunk” loot drops (valuable items you can sell for a nice gold boost, similar to wands/jewelry in Diablo 2).

I loved learning which items were worth more in D2 — it gave a real sense of mastery and that satisfying “I’m getting rich!” feeling.

Please allow unlimited gambling as long as you have the gold (or atleast make it seem like they are actually running out of stock by removing the items from the store). Forcing players to kill uniques to unlock more gambles feels lame and artificial. If someone wants to grind gold on a twink or in hardcore to get an edge before a boss, they should be allowed to play that way.

4. Act 3 “Treasure” Quest Rewards

The optional treasure quest in Act 3 (before the time-travel part) is a missed opportunity. At that point in the game the difficulty is ramping up, so these should feel like a real reward.
Right now they’re worth only ~1500 gold — basically the same as a random yellow item. There’s zero reason to go out of your way for them as is.

Consider making them 10× more valuable so they actually feel like treasure!

5. Ideas to Trim the Campaign Slog

Act 1 flows great — keep it as-is.

Act 2 feels overly convoluted, because of the caravan/map system.
Examples of pain points when rushing through campain :Loading a map, hitting the big wall, having to backtrack, reload the caravan, pick a new spot, and exit again (all in ~10 seconds). 4 loadscreens.
Because we can't pass this big wall because story, it might feel cool the first playthrough but not anymore)

Keep the story/quest moments optional, but rewarding for the momentum of the gameplay. Like in D2. You can play through and not do quests but you get a nice reward when you do.
D4 is plagued with this slow down for obligatory yapping moments and it kills the vibe when you just wanna blast.

The crafted horn only works if you’re in the exact right position on the map and on the very front of caravan.
Simple fix ideas: Let player use the horn at the front nomatter where we are situated on the caravan-map, and make clicking a spot on the caravan-map load directly into that zone as the player (no extra steps with exiting the ride).

Act 3 is a bit too long and repetitive (towards the end.)

Consider making more of it optional side path stuff.

The Drowned City stuff → time-travel section could be tightened up significantly. Do we really need two huge Drowned maps before going through the portal and revisiting? feels like backtracking.

Also, there’s no town access while time-travelling. It’s annoying to open the time portal and have no stash or vendor. Feels like loading to load again.

Quick wins: Either place a stash + shop in the past, or just let us portal back to future town (portals are magic, after all!).

Act 4 feels fine so far.
The act boss stops the fight to yap about stuff too much! It feels bad that you cannot damage him during his many talks. Have him talk during the fighting instead. Like act1 boss


Endgame
the crow boss is also annoying to encounter in maps becuase of his many stages. Just give us his final stage in maps so we don't have these unkillable points.

When you reach level 90+, you stop leveling up much. AT this point the shops become stagnant, let us refresh the shops some other way than leveling.



Thanks for reading — excited to see how Path of Exile 2 keeps improving! Keep up the great work.