The highly teased and speculated upon 0.5 content update reveal is finally upon us! GGG come swinging out the (fortress) gates with massive updates - including a new league mechanic, updates to existing content, revamped Atlas followed by a brand new Atlas Progression tree, two new ascension classes for Huntress and Monk, Pinnacle bosses, new unique items, new crafting methods, an in game Build Guide system, many quality of life updates, new skills and so much more.
Runes of Aldur League - The New Mechanic in Path of Exile 2
Meet Farrow. This fellow is under attack by the Undead in Clearfell, and after rescuing him, he’ll teach you all about Runecrafting - a skill you will be using to craft powerful items, by inscribing various runes onto Ezomyte Remnants. The Remnants come with some runes already inscribed into it, and it is up to you to pick the rest, which will influence the reward for beating the encounter.
Oh and naturally, these rewards don’t come for free. It is an encounter after all. For each rune, you fight an additional wave of increasingly difficult enemies. Every rune also makes these opponents tougher to beat in different ways - think in terms of using a fire rune empowers them with fire, or moon runes causing them to spawn celestial hazards.
As you progress, you will learn about Runic Inscription, and by using Verisium, which you can collect, you will unlock a new type of resource, Runic Ward. It acts as a second lifepool, and should you ever fall below 0 health, it will be there as a lifeline. Every single item can be inscribed to gain ward, and this process can be either a pure upgrade, granting ward with no downsides, a full conversion, meaning you lose the other innate defences, or a completely transformative process, adding new unique modifiers. You can even upgrade the damage of lower level unique weapons, potentially making previously weak items endgame viable.
Runic Ward is also used for a new type of skill system which will cost ward instead of mana. The abilities provided by these skills don’t have any attribute or class requirements, adding lots of build flexibility!
There are other goodies in there too, 100+ new runes and currencies, which unlock powerful new crafting methods or new stats not seen before for those item bases (spirit on boots, for example).
This all looks quite cool, and I am a big fan of the fact that you can pick your rewards, adding some deterministic (kind-of) rewards to mix up the normal randomness this game has an abundance of! The new crafting currencies are also sure to add a lot more build options, hopefully moving pressure for things like Spirit off from just body armor and necklaces.
Atlas Updates in Path of Exile 2
Now, this patch has been touted as a “big endgame update”, in fact one that is meant to be the final one before leaving early access, and there is a big list of things you can expect to see in 0.5 of Path of Exhile 2.
The game felt a bit directionless in the previous patches and GGG are hoping to remedy this with the addition of the Fortress. Upon completing your first tower, this ancient defense mechanism will activate and enclose an area of your atlas, adding powerful new encounter modifiers to your maps. It is meant as a one time activity that you complete for atlas points, culminating in an all new Pinnacle Boss fight.
You can spend the points gained from clearing the Fortress in an all new Atlas Skills tree - meant as an overall progression system that will increase how rewarding the content that you do is. Unlike the previous one, the choice here lies only in what you will prioritize first, as by the end you will be unlocking all 300+ nodes. GGG still wants you to keep some choice in shaping your endgame, so they have made many of the nodes multi-select, with 2 to 4 choices on them.
That’s not all, though, as you can also select one of three Atlas masters - Jado, Hilda, or Doriyani, all of whom offer missions you can complete for them, and as a reward, they will teach you their skills.
Swapping between these masters is free and is as easy as just clicking on them on the side of your Atlas.
Hilda for example can alter Unique bosses, making Azmeri spirits seek them out instead of rares, or adding a 25% chance to make bosses into their more powerful version.
This looks very exciting, and way more substantial than the previous system, giving you a goal similar to the one in Path of Exile 1 - finish your atlas tree, while remaining very distinct as you’re not picking and choosing what you want to interact with, but instead empowering every mechanic you have a chance of running into.
Changes to Other Leagues in Path of Exile 2
The developers themselves have stated that the existing leagues were hastily added to the game in hopes of having something to toy around with in version 0.1, and the leagues they have added since have been of a much higher quality. This is why in 0.5 Delirium, Breach, and Ritual are seeing major updates to hopefully bring them up to what the new standard is for leagues. Each of them now contains its own storyline and distinct area in the Atlas where you can follow it.
Delirium
For the Storyline, the first time you encounter a Delirium mirror, you will free Elder Maddox who is stuck in one of Tangmazu’s delusions. He tells you to go west to the Withered Willow, which is believed to be the origin of his power. So yes, you will be going to an actual, physical location in the world Atlas, so go west and look for the big, foggy area.
Additionally, the mechanic itself is overhauled. No more guessing how deep in the Delirium you are, and where you should be going! You can see which direction leads deeper by looking at the fog, and the deeper you go, the more challenging the enemies you face are. You can also track how long you have until the encounter expires. While in the Delirium, interacting with different colored mirrors will alter the encounter - red will transport you to a different area you need to get out of, and purple will empower the delirious nightmares you will be facing.
Completing the initial Atlas area will grant you points you can spend to boost the rewards of all Delirium encounters, just like before, except there are many more than just 8, and they are supposed to be way cooler. Completing the storyline culminates in a fight with Tangmazu, so you finally get to face the voice that has been taunting us since Delirium came out in Path of Exile 1!
As for the rewards, you can get liquid emotions just like before, except you can now instill jewels with them as well, and you have a chance of getting more powerful rarer emotions which allow new unique, otherwise unattainable instilled notables.
Breach
Similar to Delirium, the first time you encounter a Breach, Ailith will ask for your help in their Monastery to the south. This means there’s now also a dedicated area for the Breach storyline.
The revamped mechanic is meant to work the same as it did up to now, except you don’t have to run over grasping hands, you just have to kill monsters, and now you can actually see the progress of doing so, so you know if you need to speed it up!
You can also face Hive encounters, which will instead see you defending Ailith from waves of increasingly tougher enemies, while she collapses their Hive. The more walls you destroy on your way to the center of the hive, the more enemies you allow to swarm you, so don’t go too wild if you aren’t ready.
At the very center are Tul and Esh, marking the new bosses for this Storyline. Xesht still exists, and doing encounters after clearing the initial foothold will grant you access to his fight.
As for the rewards, they have added the wombgifts and the tree that already exists in Path of Exile 1, with this one being specifically made to create Currencies, Belts, Amulets and Rings. The tree is much larger and much more specific in modifiers, item bases and much more - including some unique modifiers, such as not before seen minion modifiers on rings.
Ritual
When you first complete a ritual in the endgame, Aoife will appear. She will guide you west, where you can start and complete the Ritual Storyline. In terms of gameplay, not much has changed - you still kill monsters in a circle, then revive them to kill them again. Each completed ritual carries on the killed monsters from the last one.
The new addition is the fact that King in the Mists is no longer the final pinnacle boss. To access the new one, named Bodach, you will have to complete a chain of rituals that will move from map to map, making the next one in the chain more rewarding, and the final one will also contain the final boss of the map. You can chain up to 5 bosses this way, making the fights incredibly hectic!
What has changed significantly is that the rewards are now just unique items and omens, making Rituals much more rewarding than before. You can also choose to instead offer the items as tribute to King in the Mists rather than taking them, so you can gain an audience with him that way.
Ascendancy Classes in Path of Exile 2
The two new ascendancy classes for the Huntress and the Monk are the Spirit Walker and the Martial Artist, respectively.
The Spirit Walker is all about using Azmerian spirits, the Stag, the Owl and the Bear, and you can choose to specialize in either of them, or dip into using all three. The really cool passive I can’t wait to try is the ability to tame Unique Boss beasts, which will be exclusive to this ascendancy.
As for the Martial Artist - This ascendancy is all about Seven Hollow techniques. Well, three of the seven to be exact, which this monk has mastered after years of training.
You have the options of creating illusions of yourself which you can assign skills they will use for you, manifesting bells around you, and taking that further - manifesting one on your back permanently, which rings when you critically strike it.
The most interesting ones for me are allowing you to socket runes as tattoos in your body, and the one that changes your gloves into more powerful versions, changing existing modifiers into way better ones. And yes, I asked Jonathan, this includes EVERY SINGLE Unique glove in the game. This alone cemented that I will be trying this Ascendancy immediately.
Other Changes in Path of Exile 2
In addition to everything you see here, there are 40 new Unique items, including Mageblood! They have not shown what it does yet, so we will have to find that out for ourselves.
One addition I particularly enjoy is the built in, in game build system. Creators of these builds will be able to create a .build file which will give in game notes on every item slot, and highlight nodes you should take based on your level. Hopefully, way less alt-tabbing to Path of Building now.
Oh, and Vaal temple is nerfed. The bug that allows for building the snake is no longer in the game, and this is enough to keep the rewards where they want them to be (hopefully).
Path of Exile 2 FAQ
Yes, two ascendancies, one for the Huntress - Spirit Walker, and one for the Monk - Martial Artist.
Runes of Aldur, which through runecrafting and collecting Verisium unlock powerful drops, new crafting methods, and convert your armor to have the new resource, Runic Ward.
By completing a Tower on your Atlas, you will open up the Ancient Fortress, which you can complete map by map or by rushing to the boss and obtain points that way.
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