I've basically lived in Path of Exile 2 since December 12, and Patch 0.4.0, "The Last of the Druids," makes the whole game feel like it got a new heartbeat. The Steam numbers are nuts, sure, but the bigger deal is how it plays moment to moment—snappier, less clunky, more "one more map." If you're jumping in late and trying to keep up with the market, you'll hear people talk about trading and PoE 2 Currency in the same breath, because prices don't wait for anyone and neither do your friends.

Druid In The Driver's Seat

The new Druid isn't a "stand back and cast" situation. You're in it. The two-handed Talisman setup pushes you to swap forms all the time, and it feels natural once it clicks. You'll drop a spell in human form, then shift and commit—no hesitation, no awkward pause. I've been running a moon-energy setup that calls in wolf packs, and the flow is the fun part: cast, shift, pounce, reset. My friend went the Shaman route and built around Rage in bear form, and it's the kind of build that makes you laugh because it just refuses to fall over.

Skills, Keystones, And Real Build Choices

There are a lot of new tools to play with, and it's not just "twenty new skills, pick one." They slot into actual plans. You can set up something like Volcano or Root Storm, then turn into a Wyvern and keep pressure on the whole screen. It's busy, but in a good way. The Oracle ascendancy's "Visionary" keystone is the one people keep whispering about, especially if you like elemental builds that scale hard without feeling like a spreadsheet project. You'll find yourself tinkering between maps, not because you have to, but because it's hard to stop tweaking.

Fate Of The Vaal And The Temple Game

Fate of the Vaal is the league mechanic I didn't expect to sink time into, then suddenly I'm planning room layouts like it's a second job. You find corruption inside maps, clear it to charge beacons, and then you place rooms in the Temple of Lira Vaal with adjacency in mind. Put reward rooms next to each other and the payouts can snowball, but the fights get mean fast. And yeah, Queen Atziri coming back as a pinnacle boss hits the right note—rich visuals, nasty mechanics, and voice work that makes the place feel expensive and dangerous.

Performance, Bugs, And The Early Economy Rush

GGG also did the unglamorous stuff: early crashes got stomped, the "invincible wolves" weirdness didn't linger, and the CPU-side performance changes are the kind you notice after an hour when you realise your frame rate isn't spiking anymore. The economy's moving quick, too—people sprint to mirror-tier dreams, and some will always look for shortcuts, but farming the new density and chasing Abyss tablets feels genuinely worth the time. If you want to stay competitive without burning out, keep an eye on what's selling, trade smart, and don't be surprised if you catch yourself comparing drops to poe2 currency rates mid-session instead of logging off when you said you would.