Loot is awful

There's a combination of problems here I think.

I'm level 50, act 1 cruel on my warrior, I have 1150 life, 40%+ to all resistance (fire is 70%), chaos is 0% because I've not found anything with it on or hit any mods while crafting.

There's a lack of item drops (rare and unique) and lack of currency through the campaign.

I have plenty of transmutes and augs, but not enough of anything else to be able to craft anything meaningful at this stage. Regals and Exalts are far too uncommon to be able to craft and with the lack of tools available to fix resistances, campaign damage taken is through the roof. Getting 1 shot by a crossbow sniper in Ogham Farmlands as a warrior is just mental.

Disenchanting should give more materials, 1 shard is pathetic, the number of shards should be determined by its item level and the rarity of mods it has with high tier items/mods giving full orbs not just shards.

As it stands I am hitting my head against the wall that is cruel difficulty because I have no gear and no means to craft any. Which to me sucks the fun out of what should be challenging but rewarding. Where's the reward?

+1

Unfortunately this is all very intended. People who played PoE 1 and don't enjoy PoE 2 know this already, the loot is ass on purpose, to create this sense of "difficulty", same as it was for other leagues. I think they were scared that people will get to endgame too fast otherwise, so they couldn't think of a way to slow the game down.

Crafting materials have been almost non existent, I found 2 essences and 3 regal orbs. Rares are so rare that producing regal orbs reliably takes very long, and because exalts are even rarer, crafting a "decent" item is very unlikely. Also, there's nothing fun in farming side bosses for 1-2 rares per run, when you are act 1 or 2.

It feels very very very bad that you hit a progression wall this early. If they would have put that at the end of campaign it would have been much more enjoyable, as it would at least give you some hope. I've finished act 2 after 10 hours, and it apparently doesn't get better, I don't want to do this for another 20 hours just to finish the acts.
Lets not even talk about making another character. I don't know what they were thinking with putting this much tedious friction in an Early access.

Totaly agree. We dont need lower difficulty we just need a gear to progress with.

Where are alchemy orbs , where is resistance gear, where are rare drops, where are crafting recipes, there is nothing to play with, immposible to fill resistances, the only option is gambling for trash items. 3 years of delay for complete and utter crap I wanna see Chris Willson and Jonathan play this common genious show us how is the game intended to be played

There absolutely needs to be an increase in the amount of currency dropped. Exalts may be a lot less rare than they are in poe1, but dropping one every 2 hours of gameplay when they are so mandatory to crafting feels very unrewarding; especially with crafting itself being a gamble. (And let's not even talk about chaos orbs)

"-Aw man, my weapon suck, let's invest what I gained in my last 8 hours to turn this nice magic into a good rare"
- it's trash, I vendor it
- 1 regal shard
"-Can't wait to try again in 8 hours !"

Maybe the drop rate increases exponentially ? I'm only mid act 3.
I still feel like they should be upped substantially tho, because I don't have the time in my life to spend an entire gaming week reaching the part of the game where rewards start feeling rewarding every league

agreed something's off
just finished act II and killing the boss are 30 minutes of learning git me a blue....disheartning

At lkeast make bosses guarantee a yellow or set of crafting currency so you can mke yourself one

Loot? What loot?

The loot is perfect. You're just used to instant gratification in games. The downside to that is then you make the loot super casual then you have to implement vertical progression cycles to keep people engaged because they've run out of things to do because you can face roll your way to reaching all of your goals in 1 week. Adjust your expectations and realize that the good things in life are worth waiting for, and enjoy the journey. Back in the day all online games were like this, and the fact that they're not is a large part of the reason all online games are shit now. I pray they wont cater to instant gratification crowed and make this game easier.

+1

I first thought it was better, considering I found 4 exalts and couple of regals in the first act, but then it somehow plummeted and now I'm level 24 and I'm still using three level 5 and two level 3 items I found in the first 2 hours because nothing better dropped and I have no currency to craft anything useful. Also, I don't want to waste the runes, because not being able to remove them again is total BS.

Especially the loot from bosses is abysmal and if crafting is supposed to be the way to go, the drop-rate of Regals and Exalts needs to go up by a LOT.

Agreed.

This can't continue. You players need to feel rewarded for effort.