Path of Exile 2's massive Return of the Ancients update gave Grinding Gear Games' action RPG a massive spike in popularity over the weekend, but it's also proving to be a seriously buggy release, and the devs are already trying to iron out some major issues.
Patch 0.5 for Path of Exile 2 arrived a few days ago, bringing six new endgame storylines as well as new Ascendancy Classes, Pinnacle Bosses, and crafting systems, with Grinding Gear Games calling it "our biggest update ever." With that, in combination with the fact that the game just had a free weekend, it's no wonder that so many people have been playing it – it hit a peak of 421,596 concurrent players on Steam alone yesterday (thanks, SteamDB), which is the most it's seen since its early access launch, when it hit 578,569.
Obviously, plenty of people are having fun – you don't hit those numbers if they're not – but the update hasn't been without its issues. Plenty of users on Reddit have been sharing bug reports, from crashes to quest blockers.
"I'm not sure what's going on but it feels like they game is super buggy. Going through the campaign, I had to restart many times. Quest kept breaking. Characters not completting quests. Had Alva bug out 3 times and unable to talk to her until an area restart," one Reddit user writes.
"I have crashed to desktop no fewer than 15 times today. I can't recall a single CTD in god knows how many thousands of PoE1 hours," says another. "Am I crazy or is Delirium not dropping rewards as well?" another reads.
Thankfully, Grinding Gear Games is already on the case, trying to smooth things out. "While the launch was relatively stable and we've already deployed a number of fixes, there are still some issues we're working to resolve as quickly as possible," the team writes in a new blog post. These issues include endgame progression issues, such as a blocker in the Rite of the Nameless questline and Jado's quest, a bug that can see monsters in the Vaal Ruins become immortal, and more.
Elsewhere, the devs promise that "divine tinks will be back soon" once a bug "preventing item filter sounds from playing" is fixed, and client issues – like crashes, being unable to allocate passive skill nodes using a controller, and your number of passive skill points displaying incorrectly – are also being targeted.
All good targets for Grinding Gear Games to work on, but as fans are pointing out, "there are many more bugs" that still haven't been addressed – one Redditor from the thread above reckons it's "the buggiest league start i ever had," and content creator Talkative Tri summarises the general community sentiment as it being "the buggiest Path of Exile 2 and Path of Exile release of all time, especially in the endgame."
That's not to say that the devs aren't going to get to those issues too, of course. "Thank you for all of your reports and feedback so far. We'll continue working through these issues and will keep you updated as fixes become available," the devs conclude in their latest post.
