Grinding Gear Games has lifted the curtain on Path of Exile 2’s Patch 0.4.0, “The Last of the Druids,” and it feels like the kind of patch that actually changes how you play, not just what numbers show up on your screen, especially once you start hunting for PoE 2 Currency to push new builds. It lands on 12 December alongside the Fate of the Vaal league, and the whole thing leans hard into the new Druid class, a proper rethink of shapeshifting, plus some performance work that should help people whose PCs usually start wheezing the second the screen fills with effects.

Shapeshifting Druid That Actually Flows

The big hook is how the Druid handles form swapping. You are a Strength/Intelligence hybrid caster, but instead of being stuck in bear or wolf mode on a timer, you use an Animal Talisman to flick between Human, Bear, Wolf and Wyvern with no cooldown at all. You cast in Human form, throw out something like Thunderstorm or Entangling Vines, then swap instantly into a beast to cash in on the control you just set up. Those spells keep doing their thing while you are in animal form, so you end up playing this rhythm game of “set up, dive in, bail out” rather than just face-tanking in one form until a buff ends.

Bear, Wolf And Wyvern Play Very Differently

Each form leans into a different style, and you feel that pretty fast. Bear is the obvious pick if you just want to stand in the middle of a pack and refuse to die. It runs off Rage, smashing through groups with skills like Rampage before you wind up Walking Calamity to cover the screen in fire. Wolf goes the other way; faster, colder, all about dashing between packs and calling in short-lived companions to cover gaps. Wyvern’s the oddball. It mixes melee and ranged, chews through corpses to build Power Charges, and feels more like a roaming finisher for the setup your Human spells did earlier. The Shaman and Oracle Ascendancies then push you into different extremes, either leaning into raw elemental nukes or weird clone setups that let you fill the arena with copies doing the heavy lifting.

Fate Of The Vaal Feels Risky In The Right Way

The new league mechanic, Fate of the Vaal, is clearly aimed at people who liked Incursion but wanted more control. You get a stone tablet and place rooms yourself, mapping out paths that eventually lead to Atziri’s Chambers. It is not just another “run this map, spawn that boss” loop. You are constantly weighing how greedy you want to be with the layout. The limb replacement system pushes that even further. You can swap body parts for upgrades that feel pretty wild on paper, but if you die, those parts are gone with the character. It is harsh, and people will lose progress to one bad lag spike, but that edge is exactly the kind of thing PoE players usually end up chasing instead of avoiding.

Performance Tweaks That Might Actually Matter

There is also a noticeable focus on performance, which a lot of players have wanted more than any new skill gem. CPU use has been tuned so fights that used to hitch, like heavy Abyss chains or high-intensity Delirium, should run smoother and hit higher frame rates, with GGG talking about something in the region of a quarter more frames in many cases. Monster density has been pulled back a bit, but loot quality is meant to be higher, so you are not wading through pointless packs just to scoop up shards afterwards. If you are planning to push Druid builds deep into endgame, those changes, along with the new forms and the extra motivation to chase cheap PoE 2 Items, might be what makes 0.4.0 feel like a fresh start rather than just another mid-league tweak.