Path of Exile 2 is about to get more generous, but it almost went the opposite way: "This is going to sound ultra dumb"

Divine Orbs are almost synonymous with Path of Exile 2 and its predecessor. They’re a fundamental part of the trading and crafting economy, to the point where they’re frequently used as a pillar by which many of its items and other currencies are measured. In the new PoE 2 0.5 update, Return of the Ancients, the drop rate for them is going up. According to developer GGG, there’s a very simple and slightly silly reason for this – although, in a moment of mischievousness, the team almost considered going dramatically in the opposite direction.

As part of a recent Path of Exile 2 ‘Tavern Talk’ with hosts Sebastian ‘Ghazzy’ Bodensjö and ‘Darth Microtransaction,’ Game Directors Jonathan Rogers and Mark Roberts talk through a simple line in the Return of the Ancients patch notes that has potentially big ramifications for the action RPG’s economy: ‘Divine Orbs are now more common.’ While the currency is very useful in endgame crafting, allowing you to reroll the values of the modifiers on an item without changing what they are, it’s also a go-to community yardstick to judge the value of one method of farming against another.

In theory, more Divine Orb drops means players will be richer. It’s not as simple as that, of course. The league that’s just wrapping up, Fate of the Vaal, allowed players to generate incredibly high Divine counts by using a specific ‘snaking’ strategy to maximize the output of the Temple seasonal mechanic. While this format is becoming part of the core game in patch 0.5, that particular trick has been hit with a targeted nerf, ensuring it won’t be nearly as effective.

With that in mind, what’s the thinking behind the Divine Orb drop change? “I’m almost tempted to not mention the reason why we did that,” Rogers laughs. Roberts plants his face into his palm for a second, then smiles: “Just do it.” Rogers continues. “This is going to sound ultra dumb to some people, I suspect. The Temple had ridiculous amounts of loot going on due to snake strategy and all that sort of shit, right?

“So basically there was this concern – what we believed was going to happen is immediately, people are going to be like, ‘In the previous league I got X Divines per hour, and now I’m getting Y Divines per hour.’ Just annoying shit like that. So if we just change the drop rate of Divines, nobody will be able to make the comparison any more.” He laughs again.

Fortunately for us, GGG didn’t give into their other instincts. “I just want you to know that the troll answer that we legitimately thought we might do for a second is, ‘What if we just remove Divines from the game?'” Rogers continues, “That was a legitimate troll answer that we had as the opposite of this. But instead of doing that, we were like, ‘Okay, let’s make them more common.'”

Don’t expect your stash tabs to be suddenly flooded with Divines. “It’s not like they’re dropping like candy or anything,” Rogers notes, “but they are an amount more common that is such that it doesn’t make them quite comparable any more.” He adds, “That’s just down to the fact that Divines, for whatever reason, are the thing that people use as their way of comparing loot.

“There’s a lot of changes all over to the loot everywhere,” Rogers remarks of Return to the Ancients. “I guess it just makes the whole thing less comparable – that is truly part of the reason why we did that.” Somehow I don’t think that’ll stop players from drawing lines between the leagues, but I appreciate the effort.

Path of Exile 2 Return of the Ancients kicks off on Friday May 29. It’s set to be the game’s most approachable league ever, so jump in and maybe you’ll find yourself with a haul of Divine Orbs to call your own.