Path of Exile Bestiary Changes in Patch v3.2.1

Grinding Gear Games will be releasing a new patch for Path of Exile later this week. This patch will attempt to fix some of the issues that plague the currently ongoing Bestiary League (low currency drops, clunky net mechanics, a lack of beast spawns). The planned changes include slightly reducing the drop rates of nets, adding more beastcrafting recipes, and introducing beast trading. Here’s an overview of what’s coming:

Our goal is to deploy improvements to Bestiary League as soon as they are ready, rather than stockpiling them into large patches. In this vein, we have already released ten small patches since the league started, and have many more to go as feedback continues. This particular 3.2.1 patch requires a realm restart, so that’s why it has more changes than the other smaller patches did.

Please note that the below list is not the full patch notes, and it’s certainly not the last of the changes to this league. It’s what we’re going to have ready and tested for the middle of this week. Also note that anything can change! We may remove things on this list entirely if they don’t work out.

Thanks for your patience and feedback. We really enjoy watching the videos of awesome captures and beastcrafts!

Net Drops
We have also reduced net drops from bosses so that they drop regular items like before (it had a measurable effect).

(Edit: this used to say “We have fixed various bugs that caused nets to drop instead of currency from certain places like Labyrinth chests. This did not affect currency drops from regular monsters.”, but that was incorrect. They were working correctly.)

Net Throw Speed
We have increased how quickly you can throw nets. It’ll now be easier to quickly fire one off in combat without risking stopping for as long.

Recipe Sort Order
The most interesting recipes are now always at the top of the crafting window, so that it’s easier to find them. The big lists of levelling items and rares are further down the bottom and aren’t hiding any special ones.

Beast Trading
3.2.1 allows you to trade beasts with other players! Just buy a Bestiary Orb from Einhar, travel to your Menagerie and use it on a beast in a cage. It’ll convert the beast to an item which can then be listed on trade sites and traded to other players using the secure trade screen.

New Recipes
Our intention is to add some new crafting recipes in 3.2.1 and then keep adding new recipes to keep challenging expectations for crafting throughout the league.

We’re also planning many bug fixes and improvements to Bestiary play in parties (such as indicating when you successfully captured a beast, as it can be hard to tell with other players around).

This isn’t everything we’re working on, but is all of the Bestiary improvements that will be tested and ready to release this week. Once 3.2.1 is deployed, we’ll keep making further improvements to the league. Please keep the feedback coming!

This post applies to the PC version of 3.2.1. We’ll prepare it for Xbox also as soon as it’s ready, but that’s likely to be released on Xbox next week.

Edit: There’s also a change to how the “Craft X mod on Y type of item” recipes work, so that you can control what base type you get by inserting one for it to act upon. It automatically scours, also, so you can use the recipe many times in a row.