Grinding Gear Games just dropped the Path of Exile 2 0.1.1 patch notes, and honestly, it’s mostly about cleaning up the mess that comes with a massive Early Access launch. If you were expecting a total rework of the endgame or ten new Ascendancies, you’re gonna be disappointed. This is a "plumbing" patch. It fixes the pipes so the house doesn't flood.
The game has been out for a minute now, and the community has been vocal. Very vocal. From the sheer difficulty of certain boss encounters to the way gold drops—or doesn't drop—everyone has an opinion. This update specifically targets stability and the most egregious bugs that were literally stopping people from progressing through the acts.
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Why the Path of Exile 2 0.1.1 Patch Notes Matter Right Now
Early Access is a wild ride. You've probably noticed that sometimes the game just... stops. Or a boss forgets how to use its legs. The Path of Exile 2 0.1.1 patch notes address a laundry list of technical debt that GGG needed to pay off before they could even think about adding more "fun" stuff.
Most of the changes here are under the hood. For instance, there was a specific crash related to the way the engine handled certain particle effects during the Devourer fights. Gone. There was another issue where the UI would just freeze if you hovered over a specific combination of socketed gems while opening your inventory in a town. Also fixed. It’s these tiny, granular things that make the difference between a frustrating session and a smooth one.
People keep asking if the balance is changing. Sorta. But not in the "nerf everything to the ground" way we usually see in PoE 1. This is more about making sure the game actually works as intended. If a skill was doing 400% more damage because of a math error, they fixed the math. That's not a nerf; that's a correction.
Fixing the Infinite Loading Screens
We’ve all been there. You click the portal to the Next Area, the gears turn, and then... nothing. You’re stuck in the void. One of the biggest highlights in these notes is the optimization of the asset streaming system. Essentially, the game was trying to load too much at once, causing the client to hang. They’ve tweaked the priority of what loads first, so you should see fewer instances of being stuck in the loading screen ether.
It’s actually pretty interesting how they handled it. Instead of just throwing more memory at the problem, they reorganized the way the game calls for textures. This is especially helpful for people playing on slightly older hardware or Steam Decks.
Combat Tweaks and Boss Behavior
The difficulty curve in PoE 2 is famously steep. Like, vertical-wall steep. While GGG isn't making the game "easy," the Path of Exile 2 0.1.1 patch notes do include some subtle adjustments to boss telegraphs.
Have you ever fought a boss and felt like you got hit by something you couldn't even see? That's what they're trying to fix. They’ve adjusted the visual clarity on several Act 2 bosses. Specifically, the ground effects are now much more distinct from the actual ground. It sounds simple, but when everything is shades of brown and grey, a slightly more vibrant "I'm about to explode" circle is a godsend.
- The "Whirling Blades" animation for certain elite mobs was adjusted to better match the actual damage hitboxes.
- Fixed a bug where bosses would occasionally become invulnerable if they were stunned at the exact millisecond they transitioned between phases.
- Projectiles from certain casters now have a more consistent travel speed, making them easier to dodge-roll through.
Honestly, the dodge roll is the biggest change in PoE 2 compared to the first game, and a lot of these notes focus on making sure that roll feels responsive. If there's even a 50ms delay because of a bug, the game feels like trash. They’re narrowing that gap.
Gold and Economy Adjustments
Gold is a new thing for us PoE veterans. It feels weird, right? In this patch, they've tweaked the radius for auto-pickup slightly. It’s a small QoL change, but it means you don't have to literally stand on top of every single coin to grab it.
They also fixed a bug where gold piles would sometimes spawn inside walls. It was super tilting to see a fat stack of currency just out of reach behind a pillar. That should happen way less often now.
Class-Specific Fixes You Might Have Missed
The Monk and the Sorceress seem to be the focus of the most frequent bug reports lately. Specifically, the Monk’s "Internal Conviction" was interacting weirdly with certain support gems, leading to some unintended damage spikes.
If you were playing a Sorceress and noticed your Mana would suddenly stop regenerating for no reason, check the notes. There was a weird interaction with one of the passive nodes that triggered a "cooldown" on mana regen that wasn't supposed to be there.
The Ranger's Precision
Rangers have been struggling with a bit of "clunkiness" when using certain bow skills while moving. The patch notes mention a "fluidity fix" for the transition between moving and firing. It's not a stat buff, but it makes the character feel less like they're stuck in mud.
It’s also worth noting that they’ve fixed the tooltip errors for several skills. There’s nothing worse than a skill saying it does X damage when it’s actually doing Y. Clarity is key in a game this complex, and GGG is finally catching up on the documentation side of things.
Performance and Technical Stability
Let's talk about the DirectX 12 and Vulkan stuff. A lot of players were reporting massive frame drops when entering high-density areas. The Path of Exile 2 0.1.1 patch notes specifically mention a "shader pre-caching" update.
Basically, the game will now do a better job of preparing shaders before you encounter them in the wild. This should eliminate those micro-stutters that happen the first time a new monster type uses a fancy spell. If you've been having performance issues, it might be worth clearing your shader cache and letting the game rebuild it after this update.
What This Means for the Future
This patch is a signal. It tells us that GGG is prioritizing stability over everything else right now. They want a solid foundation.
If you're looking for the "meta" to shift, you might have to wait for the 0.1.2 or 0.2.0 updates. Those will likely be the ones that actually move the needle on power levels. For now, enjoy the fact that the game crashes less and the bosses are slightly more fair.
One thing that’s really cool is how fast they’re iterating. We’re seeing these small patches drop almost weekly. It’s a good sign for the longevity of the Early Access period. They're listening. They’re watching the telemetry data. And they're actually fixing the things people are complaining about on Reddit and the forums.
Steps to Take After Patch 0.1.1
Don't just jump back into the game and expect everything to be perfect. There are a few things you should do to make sure you're getting the most out of these fixes.
Update your drivers immediately. With the changes to the shader system and asset streaming, having the latest GPU drivers is non-negotiable. NVIDIA and AMD have both released "Game Ready" updates specifically for the PoE 2 Early Access window. Use them.
Check your loot filter. Whenever there's a patch, there's a chance a small change in the way items are categorized might break a custom filter. If you're using a community-made filter, make sure it's the latest version. You don't want to miss a rare drop because the game changed the internal name of an item base.
Re-evaluate your "clunky" builds. If you dropped a character because they felt "slow" or "laggy," give them another shot. The animation transition fixes in this patch might be exactly what that character needed to feel good again. This is especially true for melee classes that rely on precise timing for their combos.
Report the new bugs. Patches fix things, but they also break things. It's the circle of life in software development. If you find a new crash or a weird interaction, use the /bug command in-game. GGG actually looks at those logs, and it's the fastest way to get a fix in the next round of notes.
The road to the full 1.0 release is long. But with the Path of Exile 2 0.1.1 patch notes, we’re one step closer to a game that isn’t just deep and complex, but actually polished. Keep grinding, keep dying to things you probably should have dodged, and keep an eye on those forums for the next set of changes.