Path of Exile 3.19 is here, but with 3.19 has come a bunch of changes to the game's core looting experience, which many people are unhappy with. Of course, Reddit is set on fire with every major update, but is there something worth being upset about this time? In this article, we'll explain everything you need to know about if loot in Path of Exile 3.19 is broken.
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How Did Loot Change in Path of Exile 3.19?
There are a few primary changes to loot in 3.19 that we'll explain in brief. First, you've got the changes to rare mobs. In general, in 3.19 the idea was to make rare monsters, well, rarer, but to also make sure that the rare mobs you come across would be powerful and give good rewards.
There are fewer packs of rare mobs, but unfortunately, the rewards haven't been buffed nearly enough. Then, there are the changes to unqiues. In general, uniques are supposed to drop much less often but be more powerful and more valuable when they do drop. In general, they do drop less, it's true...
...But they aren't really much more powerful, nor are they more valuable, really, even if players are on average poorer than usual. This brings us to the last major change to loot in Path of Exile, a shadow change that was only briefly mentioned in a post from lead developer Chris Wilson.
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According to Chris, in terms of general item drops, GGG removed "a massive historic bonus to item quantity and/or rarity that applied to some league-specific monsters" and replaced it with a "moderate" increase to item quality. Chris notes that there are no other major reward-affecting changes in 3.19.
Together, this all adds up to loot in Path of Exile not being in a very good place.
Comparisons With Path of Exile 3.18
While there are very real problems with Path of Exile 3.19, it's important to look at this update in context. Many players are complaining that compared to the last League there's much less loot and that they have much less currency, but does that come down to changes in 3.19 or how 3.18 worked?
The answer is that it's both, but 3.18 was an especially lucrative League for many. Sentinels allowed for many players to get quicker access to money and valuable loot than before, and this scaled well into the endgame. But that's not the whole story, either.
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Sentinels would charge up mobs to make them both stronger and drop more rewards, so if you juiced up the wrong strong mob and ended up getting rolled by it, it's more likely you'd blame that on using a Sentinel at the wrong time or Sentinels not being tuned right in the League.
This is to say that Sentinels could easily have masked problems with loot already in the game as well as problems with the strength of particular mobs, and the jump from 3.18 to 3.19 could feel starker than it actually is simply because of what was going on in 3.18.
The State of Loot in 3.19 Path of Exile
So, it varies. A lot of folks are seeing many fewer drops, others aren't. If you're doing heists, for example, you're probably doing okay, while if you start doing Harvest lategame, you'll get decent amounts of currency to sell, too.
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If you're pushing hard into maps and want to get to yellow maps, this might be a harder and slower process, if GGG doesn't do any hotfixes, than usual, though. Trade is also especially active, since most are being pushed to trading if they want gear at all.
Earlier maps can make decent profits from gear you can sell as well as mechanics like essences, but while latergame maps are extremely tough at the moment, if you're the right kind of gamer, there's still lots of currency to be made in the higher tier maps, especially as relatively few people are at that point currently.
If you know your way around Path of Exile, there is still money to be made, but for the average player or the more casual player, you might be having a rough go of things in 3.19 as it stands right now. However, considering the outcry and the backlash, some kind of fix is feeling inevitable right about now.
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If you still want to play this League, consider checking out heist or don't feel like you have to power through content as fast as possible, as likely in the coming days we'll see some updates sort out some of the current problems with loot. Though, it's probably foolish to expect everything to be totally fixed.
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