As Path of Exile grew and expanded over the years, so did the complexity of its monsters and their special modifiers. This eventually culminated in the Archnemesis monsters that feature a bunch of different effects bundled under a single thematic name, with there being no real way other than trial and error to figure out what they actually do.

Because of this, fighting these types of monsters as an inexperienced player can frequently end up being an absolute nightmare. Sometimes their effects are weak and easy to ignore, sometimes they require you to get a special loot-focused character to finish the monster off in order to maximize the rewards, and sometimes their hidden effects are so flashy and numerous that you won't even be able to see what's happening, let alone dodge all of it. Needless to say, it's a bit of a mess.

So in order to sort this problem out, Path of Exile's Update 3.20 will be reworking the Archnemesis system. The goal behind the rework is to make it blatantly obvious what the monsters are capable of doing, as well as to make most encounters a bit simpler and less chaotic while still keeping them tense and interesting.

Most importantly of all, under the new system you'll no longer need to fetch a magic-find culling character in order to maximize the value from specific monsters. Instead, rare monsters will be randomly granted a new pool of "special hidden rewards" that are independent of the monsters' actual modifiers. The more modifiers they have the more likely they will be to drop those extra goodies, though regardless of what type of monsters you end up fighting, an average character should be getting at least a bit more loot than before.

As far as I'm concerned, minimizing the amount of annoying busywork you 'have to' go through in order to feel like you're not wasting loot is definitely a step in the right direction. I can only hope Update 3.20 will bring with it even more of these types of tweaks as Path of Exile really could do with a bit of polishing to smooth out some of the rough edges left behind after the many, many expansions.

Once Update 3.20 goes live I'll make sure to let you know. Until then, you can read a little bit more about Path of Exile's future over at the official future.