Path of Exile 2 0.2.0h patch notes preview: Private Leagues, Breach buff, New Stash tabs, and more

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Path of Exile 2 early patch notes for 0.2.0h: All major changes and improvements

Path of Exile 2 is dropping patch 0.2.0h at the end of this week, meaning the release will happen sometime before May 17 (as Sunday patches are quite rare). With that in mind, GGG has given us an early look at the new stuff the update is bringing. While these are not the full patch notes, they basically cover everything important coming at the end of this week.

While they previewed some nifty UI changes for Path of Exile 2 patch 0.2.0h, there's now much bigger fish to fry: Private Leagues. After the release of patch 0.2.0h, it will be possible to purchase your own trade-enabled personal League in the game.

With this, you can basically start your own community League, be it for some homebrew races, or just to get a de-bloated fresh economy.

In patch 0.2.0h, these Private Leagues won't immediately have mods or fancy personalization options. However, these provisions will almost certainly happen in the future.

Path of Exile 2 early patch notes for 0.2.0h: All major changes and improvements

Strongboxes got substantial, and now they'll get style (Image via GGG)

Without further ado, here's everything GGG outlined in their blog about Path of Exile 2 patch 0.2.0h, which should serve as an early patch notes documentation.

Private Leagues

"We plan to enable Private Leagues when 0.2.0h releases using the Path of Exile 1 website for now. There will be no extra mods available for these Private Leagues but we'll be expanding the functionality of them soon. We wanted to get the ability to create Private Leagues released sooner rather than later for those that want to start over in a fresh economy by themselves or with their friends."

Quick-Use Currency Buttons on Strongboxes and Essences

Patch 0.2.0h adds Quick-Use buttons below the labels of Strongboxes and Essences in Path of Exile 2. For Strongboxes, the currency displayed is dynamic based on the state of the Strongbox and is only displayed if that currency is in your inventory. As an example, if the Strongbox is unidentified, it will only display a Wisdom Scroll.

If it is Normal Rarity, it will display an Orb of Transmutation; if it has one magic modifier, it will display an Orb of Augmentation. It will also be able to have buttons for Orbs of Alchemy, Exalted Orbs, and Regal Orbs. GGG will intentionally exclude rare crafting currency like Divine Orbs, as that would be a mistake to use.

Essences have also received the same change, but with Vaal Orbs for corrupting them into the Corrupted Essences.

Breach Improvements

Breach had significant issues with spawning monsters in very narrow or tight areas. It was expected to be worse in those areas because you can only fit so many monsters in a given space. This made Dawn of The Hunt's Breach nerf worse than GGG originally intended and resulted in a very boring experience where you felt like you failed, even though there was little you could do about it.

The patch will make monster spawns in Breaches more reliable. This drastically raises the minimum experience of a Breach encounter.
The minimum time of a Breach, assuming no monsters are killed, is extended to 20 seconds from 12 seconds.
The time extension granted by killing monsters also accounts for Monster Power. This means if you kill Magic or Rare enemies during the Breach, it will extend the time more than killing Normal monsters.
Previously, GGG spoke about dropping fewer stacks of Splinters in larger quantities, but instead of that, they're making a more drastic improvement. The game will now vacuum up all the Breach Splinters dropped during a Breach encounter and drop them at your location when the Breach concludes. If you are in a party, it will drop multiple stacks that are randomly allocated.

Azmerian Wisp Improvements

Azmerian Wisps will undergo two changes with patch 0.2.0h:

When you activate a second Wisp while pursuing one already, that Wisp will now always target the same Rare monster as the one you were already chasing. This was uncommon during the Campaign and mostly presented itself in Endgame, especially with Atlas Tree investment, but when it did happen, you would lose one of those Wisps commonly which felt purely negative.
The other change is that the Spirit of the Spring Hare and Spirit of the Fox were far too rare; we've made these three times more common. They can create some pretty hectic and rewarding outcomes, and GGG wanted to give more opportunities to encounter these and their rewards.

Rogue Exile Visibility Improvements

Rogue Exiles had one main issue. Often, you would be clearing through a Map and all of a sudden have a large life bar on the top of your screen with no connection to a boss or monster.

This was because the Rogue Exiles had a very large aggro range. Patch 0.2.0h reduces this aggro range, so they are far more commonly on-screen before it appears. That way, you see them before the life bar presents itself.

If you were to hit them off-screen using projectiles or other skills, they'll still aggro immediately, though.

The second issue is that even when you did find one and they were on-screen, you could barely see them, especially in darker maps.

To alleviate this, the patch will add bot Minimap Icons to them once they've engaged in combat. It will also make the light on them far brighter to help them stand out and be more obvious when surrounded by other enemies.

Further Item Drop Improvements

GGG previously did many positive item drop changes in 0.2.0g, but there are still some outliers they're working on improving.

Patch 0.2.0h will make Perfect Jeweller's Orbs, Level 20 Uncut Skill, and Spirit Gems significantly more common. These will still be relatively rare, but it was often the case that people would get very far into their Endgame and character progression before even finding one.

Item Labels Additions to Important Items

For those not using custom Item Filters and who were in Endgame, you might have observed some more important items not being obvious enough. Path of Exile 2 patch 0.2.0h is adding outlines to the labels for Precursor Tablets, Expedition Logbooks, and Expedition Chests to help them stand out when you have many other items on the ground around them.

Shrine Improvements

Two big changes are coming to shrines with Path of Exile 2 patch 0.2.0h:

The Greed Shrine and the Corrupting Shrine will be disabled. These were just bad and often you right-clicked off the buff because converting good items into Gold, or Corrupting equipment is rarely beneficial.
Some of the rarer Shrines such as the Diamond Shrine and Divine Shrine will appear far more often, and we've extended the duration of almost all Shrines. Some of the Shrines will now last 90 seconds (from 45 seconds) and some 60 seconds (from 45 seconds).

New Stash Tabs

The following new Stash Tabs (one of which GGG brought up back in April) will be added in Path of Exile 2 patch 0.2.0h:

Ritual Stash Tab: will be able to store your Omens and Audience with the King Fragments.
Socketable Stash Tab: will hold all your Runes, Talismans and Soul Cores. This tab comes with a button that allows you to upgrade your Runes from one tier to the next, instead of having to use the Reforging Bench.

These will be for sale in the Microtransaction store shortly after the patch is deployed.

Other Improvements

Here's a quick-fire list of other changes coming with patch 0.2.0h in Path of Exile 2.

Updated the visibility of the 'Corridor' skill for the Arbiter of Ash to be far more clear very quickly.
Added bindable actions for being able to quickly allocate Strength, Dexterity, or Intelligence on your passive tree. You can bind these to keys and then hold those keys down when selecting attribute nodes to quickly allocate them to your desired attribute.
Added a new batch of submissions to the Twilight Reliquary Key. Thank you for your Support.
The patch is adding a Filter property to be able to Filter Unidentified Items by their Item Tier.
Charms can now go into the Flask Stash or any stash with the Flask Affinity set.
A new quick-travel button for Town on the right-hand side of the Waypoint screen.
Added the shortcut for Ctrl+Right-Click to bulk move currency items of the same type between inventories. This is common mostly when doing larger trades of currency using the Currency Exchange.
0.2.0h also fixes fifteen separate Client or Instance crashes.

Check out our other guides on the game:

About the author

Sambit Pal is an esports Journalist on Gaming and MMO at Sportskeeda. He has Master's degree in English Literature. In his spare time, he is an amateur sleuth trying to trace the Riven Mafia in Warframe, and a recovering Bethesda modding addict. He also secretly enjoys action Roguelites, a severe lack of gitting gud notwithstanding.

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Edited by Sambit Pal