(Direction to Windows fix as well at the very bottom.)

Hey everyone. First and foremost the game is simply amazing. Its going to take a lot in 2025 to top this and im going to safely say this will be my GOTY. The art direction is beautiful, the story is intense, the boss fight feel like Souls + MMO + ARPG and it flows perfectly. I will say the endgame maps leave some to be desired but we are in the very, very early life of this game. If this is the template going forward then we are in for one hell of an amazing time when it fully releases.

230 hours in at the time of writing this review. Multiple characters, and 1 at 73 currently. Daytrading and slowly working my way through the endgame up to level 100.

I was a massive fan of Diablo up until Diablo 3 and what i played of 4 made me sad that this is where diablo ended up. I have played Grim Dawn, Inquisitor Martyr, Diablo 1 and 2, Chronicon and many more... POE2 puts all of them to shame. Not that they're bad games, just POE2 does everything right except for 1 thing.

The Market. In 2024 its a cumbersome mess. The market is filled to the brim with scammers that GGG has said they will not do anything about, and that its to the end user to prevent getting baited. I do agree with this, but when you have 500K new players playing in a day, who arent Vaal gods, you're gonna run into a lot of issues.

The "Exchange" is already in the game, i dont see why we couldnt do this with items anyway.

What i have learned in trading is that everyone does whatever they can to interact as little as possible. I have a macro for inviting, thanking, then exiting all in 3 presses of a button. Most interactions are instant unless the "saar do not redeems" and the "Nihinigh Read barroons" try and scam you which is every other time.

From price fixing in the market, to tons of scams, it makes new players not want to use it. If you look at reddit, twitter, wherever, people are actively avoiding the market because of the Face 2 Face interactions GGG wants.

If they fix this, (not holding my breath, apparently POE1 players have been saying this since day 1), then i will have no problem with the game at all. I still trade, a whole lot, but no one else I know dares to use the market because of how much of a pain it is learning to daytrade on a frigging ARPG.

in conclusion a tl:dr





If you are getting terrible FPS with DX12 or your system is a bit older, this will drastically improve your FPS and Stability.

1. Most importantly you MUST run in windowed mode at the start.

2. Head to "/SteamLibrary/steamapps/compatdata/2694490/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/My Documents/My Games/Path of Exile 2/"

3. Open "poe2_production_Config.ini"

4. You want your .ini to look like this, with width/height being your own.

resolution_width=1920
resolution_height=1080
renderer_type=Vulkan
fullscreen=false
maximize_window=false
borderless_windowed_fullscreen=false

Save and exit

5. When you launch the game wait for the gears to stop and the POE2 logo to appear.

6. Right click POE2 in taskbar > More > Fullscreen inside KDE.

7. Enable FSR if you want, and done.

This will allow you to go fullscreen without it crashing rendering with Vulkan. There are other tutorials online tell you to set the fullscreen resolution to happen after the game starts, but this always crashed POE2 for me. Trying again writing this, same effect. You can try it if you want, but i will not be listing it here.

YOU WILL HAVE TO DO THIS EVERY TIME. So that is why we kept the .ini the way it is.


When precaching is on the game seems to continually overwrite the shader cache and causes intense stuttering. By doing this you will turn off the long pre-load time, and you will build the area as you go. It has taken me about 20 hours, but now i have 0 lag and went from 15-17 FPS to now 100~ on average after the shaders compile. This issue seems to happen on Nvidia and AMD from what ive seen online. This is the only fix ive found that works.

1. Turn off Precaching inside steam options. Steam > Settings > Downloads (bottom) > Disable Shader Pre-Caching

2. This will vary from machine to machine, but find your POE2 Cache. Mine was located in Appdata inside the PFX folder for POE2. Clear that out, then launch the game.

3. This will take some hours to build, so expect lagging at first, but press F1 on your keyboard to bring up the overlay in game and wait for the shaders bar to finish moving and give it a shot.

After doing this, i went from 15-20 fps with constant spikes and crashes to 100 FPS with 0 issues on an i7-7700k and a 3060. Literally playing better than windows now. Never a crash, and actual good performance. Seems like a lot, but it really isnt. Took me about 10 mins to do in total.

[WINDOWS USERS]

/r/pathofexile/comments/165nkla/how_i_fixed_cpu_stuttering_on_the_latest_patch/

This is on reddit. Follow this.

I will be improving this guide and adding it to the Path of Exile Discord. So you can find more info has it happens there.

Good luck Exiles!

[h3]STEAMDECK & LINUX FIXES BELOW, REVIEW FIRST:[/h3] (Direction to Windows fix as well at the very bottom.) Hey everyone. First and foremost the game is simply amazing. Its going to take a lot in 2025 to top this and im going to safely say this will be my GOTY. The art direction is beautiful, the story is intense, the boss fight feel like Souls + MMO + ARPG and it flows perfectly. I will say the endgame maps leave some to be desired but we are in the very, very early life of this game. If this is the template going forward then we are in for one hell of an amazing time when it fully releases. 230 hours in at the time of writing this review. Multiple characters, and 1 at 73 currently. Daytrading and slowly working my way through the endgame up to level 100. I was a massive fan of Diablo up until Diablo 3 and what i played of 4 made me sad that this is where diablo ended up. I have played Grim Dawn, Inquisitor Martyr, Diablo 1 and 2, Chronicon and many more... POE2 puts all of them to shame. Not that they're bad games, just POE2 does everything right except for 1 thing. The Market. In 2024 its a cumbersome mess. The market is filled to the brim with scammers that GGG has said they will not do anything about, and that its to the end user to prevent getting baited. I do agree with this, but when you have 500K new players playing in a day, who arent Vaal gods, you're gonna run into a lot of issues. The "Exchange" is already in the game, i dont see why we couldnt do this with items anyway. What i have learned in trading is that everyone does whatever they can to interact as little as possible. I have a macro for inviting, thanking, then exiting all in 3 presses of a button. Most interactions are instant unless the "saar do not redeems" and the "Nihinigh Read barroons" try and scam you which is every other time. From price fixing in the market, to tons of scams, it makes new players not want to use it. If you look at reddit, twitter, wherever, people are actively avoiding the market because of the Face 2 Face interactions GGG wants. If they fix this, (not holding my breath, apparently POE1 players have been saying this since day 1), then i will have no problem with the game at all. I still trade, a whole lot, but no one else I know dares to use the market because of how much of a pain it is learning to daytrade on a frigging ARPG. in conclusion a tl:dr [h3]tl;dr: Easily my GOTY and after 230 hours im still having as much fun as hours 1-20. Trading needs to be improved, maps need to have some love, but the game is early. Where the game is at right now is an amazing time. Im sure the final product will be incredible.[/h3] [h2]LINUX USERS:[/h2] [h3]USE VULKAN[/h3] If you are getting terrible FPS with DX12 or your system is a bit older, this will drastically improve your FPS and Stability. 1. Most importantly you MUST run in windowed mode at the start. 2. Head to "/SteamLibrary/steamapps/compatdata/2694490/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/My Documents/My Games/Path of Exile 2/" 3. Open "poe2_production_Config.ini" 4. You want your .ini to look like this, with width/height being your own. resolution_width=1920 resolution_height=1080 renderer_type=Vulkan fullscreen=false maximize_window=false borderless_windowed_fullscreen=false Save and exit 5. When you launch the game wait for the gears to stop and the POE2 logo to appear. 6. Right click POE2 in taskbar > More > Fullscreen inside KDE. 7. Enable FSR if you want, and done. This will allow you to go fullscreen without it crashing rendering with Vulkan. There are other tutorials online tell you to set the fullscreen resolution to happen after the game starts, but this always crashed POE2 for me. Trying again writing this, same effect. You can try it if you want, but i will not be listing it here. YOU WILL HAVE TO DO THIS EVERY TIME. So that is why we kept the .ini the way it is. [h3]TURN OFF PRECACHING AND WIPE CACHE:[/h3] When precaching is on the game seems to continually overwrite the shader cache and causes intense stuttering. By doing this you will turn off the long pre-load time, and you will build the area as you go. It has taken me about 20 hours, but now i have 0 lag and went from 15-17 FPS to now 100~ on average after the shaders compile. This issue seems to happen on Nvidia and AMD from what ive seen online. This is the only fix ive found that works. 1. Turn off Precaching inside steam options. Steam > Settings > Downloads (bottom) > Disable Shader Pre-Caching 2. This will vary from machine to machine, but find your POE2 Cache. Mine was located in Appdata inside the PFX folder for POE2. Clear that out, then launch the game. 3. This will take some hours to build, so expect lagging at first, but press F1 on your keyboard to bring up the overlay in game and wait for the shaders bar to finish moving and give it a shot. After doing this, i went from 15-20 fps with constant spikes and crashes to 100 FPS with 0 issues on an i7-7700k and a 3060. Literally playing better than windows now. Never a crash, and actual good performance. Seems like a lot, but it really isnt. Took me about 10 mins to do in total. [WINDOWS USERS] /r/pathofexile/comments/165nkla/how_i_fixed_cpu_stuttering_on_the_latest_patch/ This is on reddit. Follow this. I will be improving this guide and adding it to the Path of Exile Discord. So you can find more info has it happens there. Good luck Exiles!