Path of Exile 2’s early access run has already been a bit of a rollercoaster, and the 0.4.0 update turns things up again with the Druid finally going playable. For a lot of players who love shapeshifting builds, that is the big one they have been waiting for, right up there with chasing rare loot and stacking PoE 2 Currency to gear up new characters. The Druid pushes the roster to seven classes, which sounds decent on paper, but there is a catch coming from the devs about what the full 1.0 launch might actually look like.

Fewer Classes At Launch?

Right now, each available class has at least two ascendancies, so even with “only” seven, there is a fair bit of room to experiment. You are not short on ways to break the game in a good way. Still, Grinding Gear Games has made it clear they are not willing to delay 1.0 into 2027 just to get every single one of the twelve planned classes ready. That means some fan favourites like Templar, Shadow, Duelist, or Marauder might not be there on day one. It is the usual trade‑off: the team has limited time and people, and at some point they have to stop adding new toys and get the thing shipped.

What The Devs Actually Care About

Game Director Jonathan Rogers has been pretty open about their priorities. He told PCGamesN that finishing the campaign, getting balance into a good place, and making sure the endgame is something people want to log into every night are the main goals. Those parts come first, and everything else falls in line behind them. Once they are happy with the story flow and how builds feel in maps and bosses, they are prepared to leave early access even if the last one or two classes are not quite ready. From his point of view, launching with ten or eleven classes is totally fine as long as the core game plays well, and a lot of players would probably take a smoother experience over a bloated but unstable launch.

The Sword Problem

There is one odd non‑negotiable, though: swords. It sounds almost like a joke, but during the first year of early access there just were not any proper sword options, and Rogers has flat‑out said that shipping a fantasy ARPG without swords would be “bad”. He is not wrong. Most of us expect to swing a sword in a game like this, even if we end up playing a caster or a bow build later. So while you might be waiting a bit longer to roll your dream Templar or Marauder setup, you can safely assume that sword‑based skills and items will be there when 1.0 lands, giving melee fans something real to mess around with from day one.

Living Between Two Games

The bigger story behind all of this is how Grinding Gear Games is juggling two live projects at once. They are still pushing out regular leagues and updates for the original Path of Exile while building an almost entirely new game on top of that. Keeping that roughly four‑month update cycle for both titles means the team has to constantly shuffle people and time between them, and that is where you start to feel the compromises. Some players will be annoyed if their favourite archetype is missing at launch, and that is fair, but the current classes already have three ascendancies each, which means a lot of build depth right out of the gate. If the campaign hits hard, the endgame loops are fun, and there is a solid reason to grind for gear and path of exile 2 currency, most fans will probably accept a slightly smaller class list while they wait for the rest to arrive.