Path of Exile ‘loot goblins’ highlight RPG’s magic find woes

pcgamesn.com:

Path of Exile ‘loot goblins’ are the talk of the ARPG game’s community right now – a description for players spending hours upon hours farming with minimal rewards in search of one extremely high-payout enemy. Many fans say this phenomenon, which has become the focus of much endgame play in PoE patch 3.19, is emblematic of both big problems with the magic find system and ongoing frustrations about the Path of Exile Archnemesis mods.

To put it in plain terms, ‘magic find’ is a phrase used by Path of Exile players to refer to the equipment stats ‘increased rarity of items found’ and ‘increased quantity of items found’ (although the latter is sometimes called ‘quant’ for clarity’s sake). The term is derived from the equivalent stat in Diablo, and essentially boils down to your chance of finding rare items and currency. The higher your magic find, the more good stuff you’ll get and the better it is likely to be.

Magic find has long been a popular thing to build for, because who doesn’t want more good loot to drop? However, you do have to make sacrifices to include magic find in your build, because it takes up stat space on your equipment. The more magic find you have, the weaker the rest of your build is likely to be – a fair trade-off, all things considered. However, this has lately combined with the recently introduced, extra-challenging Archnemesis mods to dramatic effect.

A series of special Archnemesis modifiers referred to as ‘god-touched’ (each tied to a different god within Path of Exile’s pantheon) turns monsters into much more dangerous versions of their usual form, but with their dropped items converted to valuable currency and other rare end-game items such as maps and divination cards. These creatures can drop a