From Press Release:
7 May 2026, AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND – Uncover long-buried truths beneath a vast ancient fortress in Path of Exile 2: Return of the Ancients, where a new era transforms the endgame and reshapes its very foundations. Experience five new storylines, face 15 formidable new bosses, including four towering Pinnacles and explore new Ascendancy classes as either the Martial Artist or Spirit Walker while mastering many powerful new crafting systems.
- With over 50 hours of new endgame content, this expansion introduces a new challenge system, a host of powerful unique items, expanded crafting systems, and a completely reimagined Atlas Tree.
- Forge new paths with two new Ascendancy classes – the Marital Artist and Spirit Walker
- Improved campaign replayability, a new Build Planner, and numerous quality-of-life features to support every step of your journey.
Carve Power into Reality with Runes of Aldur League
The new league introduces Ezomyte Runesmithing through Farrow, a young blacksmith uncovering its ancient Kalguuran origins. After being rescued from an undead attack, Farrow introduces players to the ancient art of Runesmithing, which allows powerful items to be crafted by inscribing symbols onto Ezomyte Remnants.
Each Remnant contains a combination of pre-existing and player-selected symbols, determining the types of items that can be created. By combining different runes, players can craft a wide range of outcomes – from basic currency items to socketable runes with specific properties.
However, this power comes at a cost.
Activating a Remnant reanimates nearby undead, empowering them based on the runes used in the crafting process. For example, Fire-aligned runes grant enemies fire-based abilities. In contrast, Moon-aligned runes introduce celestial hazards such as falling lunar beams. This creates a dynamic risk-reward system in which more powerful crafting combinations lead to more dangerous encounters.
Upon defeating these enemies, players can claim their crafted item by breaking the Remnant. As players progress, they will encounter more complex Remnants with additional rune slots, enabling the creation of rarer items, while also increasing the difficulty of each encounter through additional waves of increasingly empowered enemies.
As players progress, Farrow discovers that Ezomyte Runesmithing originates from the ancient Kalguurans, who harnessed Verisium – a powerful metal capable of shaping reality through runic inscription. By collecting Verisium, players can unlock Runic Ward. This new defensive resource acts as a secondary life pool and also fuels powerful runic abilities.
Kalguuran magic introduces a new skill system powered by Runic Ward instead of mana, enabling flexible, class-agnostic abilities that can be combined with traditional skill gems for unique effects. Alongside this, players gain access to 100+ new crafting runes, including meta-crafting options like elemental conversion runes, tier-upgrading Masterwork Runes, or runes that can temporarily expand an item’s modifier pool.
Together, these systems significantly expand building and crafting possibilities, encouraging deep experimentation with powerful new combinations.
Uncover Ancient Secrets in The Fortress
Wraeclast lies in ruin after a devastating cataclysm, consumed by the creeping corruption of the Beast. Guided by the Vaal thaumaturge Doryani, players must seek out the makers of the Third Edict – the ancient Precursors – to uncover what path remains for a world on the brink.
As part of this journey, the Atlas has been transformed into a fully explorable endgame world, now covered with fixed objectives in every direction that offer clear destinations to discover and pursue, while towers remain essential for revealing what lies beyond.
In your first attempt to go to the towers, a colossal fortress arises from the ground, which has been awakened by an ancient protocol caused by the catastrophic effects of the Beast. To fend off the corruption, Plunge into the depths of the sprawling stronghold, activate its gates, secure the keys to its devastating precursor weapons, and disarm them.
This fortress marks the first of several new endgame storylines arriving in Return of the Ancients. packed with deadly new enemies, ancient machinery to restore, hidden secrets to uncover, and distinctive map mechanics and rewards, from relentless Azmeri spirit pursuits and essence-bound rare monsters to entire zones transformed into gauntlets of powerful strongboxes.
Unlike previous content, every boss in the endgame, including the returning Arbiter of Ash, is now reachable via a dedicated questline, removing the reliance on random key drops for first-time access.
Awaken new heights of power through the Atlas Tree and the guidance of the Atlas Masters
The Atlas passive tree has been significantly redesigned. Players can now unlock every node in the tree by completing maps throughout the Fortress. Many nodes now offer meaningful multi-choice decisions, allowing players to tailor their endgame experience without repeated respeccing.
Alongside the Atlas tree, a new system called Masters of the Atlas introduces Ascendancy-style progression for the endgame. Players can align with different masters – such as Jado of the Order of the Djinn or the monster hunter Hilda – each offering unique, asymmetric bonuses that can be swapped between maps at will, enabling build-defining bonuses.
Reshaped Endgame Storylines and Encounters
All four leagues introduced during Early Access, including the Delirium, Breach, Ritual, and Expedition, now have new storylines, dedicated crafting systems, and expanded mechanics. Each league now has a fixed location on the Atlas with its own progression arc:
- Delirium: The Hare and the Raven: A revamped fog mechanic with a visible depth bar, new mirror shard encounters, and Distilled Emotions that can craft mods directly onto Jewels. The storyline leads to a confrontation with Tangmazu, the Raven Trickster.
- As you push further, you encounter unique interactions like mirror shards that alter enemies or trigger intense survival challenges, offering greater rewards.
- Breach: The battle against the Hiveborn rages on. Ailith and the Keepers of the Flame, an ancient order of monks dedicated to preventing the invasion have held them at bay, but their numbers are fading as the Hiveborn continues to grow, forcing Ailith to call on for more recruits.
- Breaches now have a visible timer displaying the remaining time left upon encounter, and how each kill extends its duration. If a Breach is kept open long enough, it enters an enraged phase. During this, tougher enemies spawn, and the breach will remain open until they are defeated. Hiveborn also drops Wombgifts that can be fed to the Genesis Tree, a deep crafting system offering control over jewelry, and entirely new affixes useful for Caster and Minion builds.
- Ritual: After completing your first endgame Ritual, a lost spirit named Aoife appears, beckoning you to the Wildwood – now located on the Atlas. There, she reveals she’s bound by the King in the Mists and asks for your help. To free her, you must earn an audience with the King by completing escalating Ritual encounters, which are now exclusively Uniques or Omens.
- Beneath the Wildwood lies an ancient prison, where the King in the Mists draws power from the dark entity known as the Bodach. To stop it, a nameless champion must enter the prison, forcing you to undertake the Rite of the Nameless: a multi-map ritual where each encounter grows stronger, and rewards evolve based on your path through the Atlas.
- Expedition: Tied to The Runes of Aldur, Kingsmarch lays in ruins. Rog’s shop has been destroyed, but he is concerned for his missing wife, Gwennen. Launch an expedition to locate her, and use logbooks to send ships across a vast procedurally generated ocean, uncovering new islands, secret encounters, and vault bosses.
- As you explore deeper into the ocean, you’ll uncover unique island events, hidden interactions, and powerful bosses, including Medved and Uhtred, whose defeat reveals a mysterious, growing force within a Verisium meteor. To face it, you must seek out ancient Kalguuran artifacts, pushing deeper into a sprawling, choice-driven exploration system filled with escalating threats, secrets, and powerful rewards.
Tame beasts with the Spirit Walker and unleash illusions with the Martial Artist
Unleash the Huntress’s new ascendancy, the Spirit Walker – a master of Azmerian spirits who channels the primal power of Stag, Owl, and Bear. By attuning to different wisps, she gains devastating abilities: summoning stampedes, empowering projectiles with feathered boons, or fighting alongside a ferocious bear companion. Specialize in one spirit or unite all three to awaken the hidden power of the Sacred Wisps, enhancing every aspect of your arsenal. Beyond this, the Spirit Walker can harness Idolatry for massive bonuses using Idol socketables in your equipment granting greater power to minion focused builds, and even tame beast bosses, turning the Mighty Silverfist, Chimeral Beast, and Rakkar and Frozen Talon, or more into loyal allies.
Master Illusions and Spiritual Energy with the Monk’s new ascendancy, the Martial Artist. Create illusions that echo your attacks, manifest spectral bells that shatter enemies, and unleash devastating resonance with every critical strike. Fortify your body with stone to endure and empower your blows, while runic tattoos let you socket runes directly into your form. Ultimately, transcend your limits with the Way of the Stonefist, transforming your gloves into devastating weapons of immense power and unlocking a vast array of deadly build possibilities.
Challenge System, Items, and Quality of Life
Return of the Ancients marks the debut of Challenges in Path of Exile 2. Players who complete all eight challenges earn pieces of the Knight of Aldur armour set. Progress is visible to other players via in-chat display and a dedicated hideout statue.
The update introduces a rich roster of over 40+ new unique items including weapons, jewellery and armours. A few examples include the Raven’s Flock that causes a flock of ravens to circle around its bearer, dealing damage over time to anything near them. To Unique enemies, this effect causes the flock to grow in number, akin to a Raven Righteous Fire. What’s more, Liminal Coil is a chaotic new wand type which allows players to gain Physical and Chaos Damage for each cursed enemy. It also grants Coiling Bolts, a devastating projectile spell that splits and chains through every cursed target on screen, unleashing destructive cascades of coiling projectiles across the battlefield.
Quality-of-life improvements include navigational landmarks and trails throughout the campaign, a live-search Atlas map, and a native in-game Build Guide system. The Build Guide system allows community creators to publish a .build file format that displays passive trees, gem selections, item recommendations, and level-specific notes directly within the client. In addition, Shift-Alt clicking any item now performs an instant trade market price check allowing players to more easily sell their gear.
Road to 1.0 and Beyond
Return of the Ancients is the final major content update before the full 1.0 release of Path of Exile 2. The studio will continue to release balance and polish updates alongside event leagues during this period. The full 1.0 launch is targeted for 2026 after ExileCon, where all panels and reveals will be streamed online.
Venture into the fortress and beyond in Path of Exile 2: Return of the Ancients launching May 29 PDT, PC, Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, and the Epic Games Store. Any purchase of the Early Access Supporter Pack grants access to Path of Exile 2, including the Return of the Ancients content expansion, and the The Bloodreaver and Divinity Packs starting from USD 30.
For more information, please visit the announcement page at pathofexile2.com/ancients.
About Grinding Gear Games
Grinding Gear Games was founded in 2006 and is based in West Auckland, New Zealand. Its team members come from various countries and have diverse backgrounds, ranging from artificial intelligence and software security to industrial design and professional tournament gaming. In 2024, GGG released Path of Exile 2 into Early Access while remaining committed to the ongoing expansion and new content releases for the critically acclaimed Path of Exile.
