PoE2 Needs to Rethink XP Loss – Here’s a Simple Fix

Remove exp loss. End of.

While I’m here, I just want to share some thoughts on the RNG-heavy nature of crafting and build creation in PoE2.

Right now, the randomness in so many parts of the game—especially crafting—can really pull players out of the experience. It often feels like you’re stuck in a frustrating loop of chasing your own tail, constantly gambling on outcomes instead of building toward something meaningful. That kind of unpredictability might work in small doses, but when it’s the foundation of major systems, it starts to feel more discouraging than exciting.

And the crafting UX doesn’t help. Having all these different subsets of currency spread across disconnected systems just makes the whole process feel more disjointed and overwhelming. It’s not that depth is bad—but there’s real beauty in simplicity, and in systems that feel intuitive, not exhausting.

There’s so much to love in PoE2, especially the combat and world design. I just hope GGG considers refining these systems so that building characters feels creative and rewarding, not like a slot machine.

You have x% to lose 50% of your current xp and gold. Every death increase the chance, after 100 deaths you will hit the cap and you always lose. Maybe a rare item can revert this chance. Deal?

At least we don't have to make the naked trek back to our body to retrieve our gear. I remember my first time dying to Duriel in D2. Took me longer to retrieve my gear than to finish the fight once I got it back.

But yeah exp loss on death isn't very popular right now and it creates too much friction in its current form. We need a way to recover some of that exp at the very least like they have in Grim Dawn. The exp penalty is smaller and you get 50% of it back by collecting it from your fallen corpse. Even souls games, which this game is determined to copy give you the chance to recover your souls to level up. I don't understand why they are so determined to keep this system in the game.

I didn't mind the xp loss as much in 0.1 but in 0.2 there is so much bs that can randomly one shot you even with almost done build plus getting higher level monsters for more xp being less straightforward that makes it more frustrating.

What is "Omen of Amelioration"?

And yes, the endgame in its current stage is a giant statcheck. If you die, you are "not geared enough". Thats the "logic".

Not sure how much of actual skill is taken to consideration if your 3k hp disappears in 0.5 seconds...

But at least we have multiple attempts, which is nice. For me xp loss isn't as annoying as losing a map, and had to grind until you find a new event map, or later on, a tower cluster to juice another map...


And before you say "omen of Resurgence" you need to be low life to triggered. So if the first damage brings you to 36% and you get another hit, its c'est la vie...

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Kraivan#1745 wrote:

What is "Omen of Amelioration"?

And yes, the endgame in its current stage is a giant statcheck. If you die, you are "not geared enough". Thats the "logic".

Not sure how much of actual skill is taken to consideration if your 3k hp disappears in 0.5 seconds...

But at least we have multiple attempts, which is nice. For me xp loss isn't as annoying as losing a map, and had to grind until you find a new event map, or later on, a tower cluster to juice another map...


And before you say "omen of Resurgence" you need to be low life to triggered. So if the first damage brings you to 36% and you get another hit, its c'est la vie...

Yep this is the actual problem like i mentioned before.
But I also get the xp loss being annoying i had a 94 infernalist in 0.1 and that char had less playtime than my current 88 Melee Huntress. I didn't get a lvl up in the last 3 days. Since I die way to often 160 so far. Some of them are purely my fault. Sometimes I just do dump mistakes. But the amount of times where I randomly did get oneshot and couldn't even figure out what killed me so fast in recordings of my own gameplay is to damn high.

Hi all,

First of all, I just want to say that I love this game, even if it can be incredibly frustrating in some aspects... My main issue is that a game should stay a game—it should bring most players fun and enjoyment!

Here's my wishlist for GGG:

1. Crafting

Please give us a real crafting system—a way to improve gear after spending many hours in the game. Crafting shouldn't be a gacha/gambling mechanic. It should reward and satisfy players who dedicate time collecting materials. For those unlucky with RNG during farming sessions, there should be a reliable path to good gear. Time invested in the game should feel meaningful, not just a roll of the dice.

2. XP loss

This feels just plain stupid, especially when after level 95, a full map run might only be worth ~1% XP or less. Imagine this for GGG devs: “If you find a bug in your code, you have to roll back to last week’s version... and if it happens near a release, rollback to last month!” ;-)

3. The broken/overpowered build loop

The game is brutal, and tons of things can insta-kill you. So to be safe, players naturally go for strong map-wiping builds (who said Spark in Season 1? ^^).

But then GGG doesn’t just nerf them—they delete them from existence instead of applying light adjustments. So for Season 2, players go for Amazon with Lightning Spear because it still clears screens fast. And even then, you’re bound to get randomly one-shot at some point anyway (who said Expedition mob telegraphs? :-p)

4. Party play

I usually play with friends and family, but as soon as we party up, the game gets significantly harder—sometimes absurdly so. It should be the opposite. Unity is strength should apply to players, not just to the mobs! :-p


Just my two cents after more than 1000 hours of gameplay. I know the game is still in early development, and honestly, in many ways it's already so polished that it's easy to forget that. I really hope the GGG team reads the forums and takes this kind of feedback into account. :)

Have fun and enjoy the game!

I completely agree, the most frustrating thing I've found with both POE 1 and 2 is the XP loss on death and has been the main reason why I've stopped playing either game a number of times before coming back after a long break.

Earlier today I dinged level 79 and for about an hour my ingame experience was this.. start a map.. slowly move through killing mobs.. get 2 bars in.. get one shot by a mob xp bar resets to zero... respawn.. carefully kill the mob that killed my char and move through the rest.. then hit the rare mob with drain mana and can move twice as fast as my char armed with a club and batters my char to death.. xp bar resets to zero again.. TL:DR this has happened a lot to the point where I'm having trouble getting motivated to play and do maps.

From the sounds of it I'm not the only one finding this extremely frustrating, plus keeping this mechanic in at least for early access is like shooting yourself in the foot with a RPG because if GGG want ppl to test and help make things better then why keep something in that is potentially making ppl walk away when they get frustrated after being killed over and over and over by OP mobs, lack of decent gear, crafting not in a good place and everything else ppl have highlighted in other posts all over these forums.

Moving forward I would suggest that the devs look at potentially curtailing the XP penalty substantially or removing it with a view long term of completely replacing it by something else for example durability on equipped items on death as it would also give another use for gold, but I'm sure the devs could come up with something a little better.

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Bav101#7255 wrote:

Moving forward I would suggest that the devs look at potentially curtailing the XP penalty substantially or removing it with a view long term of completely replacing it by something else for example durability on equipped items on death as it would also give another use for gold, but I'm sure the devs could come up with something a little better.

Durability is a very bad system as well. It comes with various issues. If the penalty is to low it doesn't matter that you have to repair sometimes.

If the penalty is to high you are risking players getting soft locked due to being unable to repair their gear.

If you are interested, there are very good resources why durability is a bad system in most games.