Path of Exile 2’s 1.0 Release Will Add 2 Acts, 2 Classes and a Faction War

Path of Exile 2‘s December 11, 2026 full release will complete the campaign, add the Shadow and Duelist, and introduce Conquerors of Wraeclast, a league built around armies and castle control. The game will leave Early Access and become free-to-play across all platforms.

Acts 5 and 6 complete the campaign

The final two acts finish the story of the chase after the Beast, returning players to Oriath and taking them beyond it. They add 24 areas and 18 major bosses, including an encounter with the Blight. Act Five brings players back to Oriath to face the Twilight Order and The Beast, while new rare monsters will have their own abilities, appearances, and modifiers. Bosses from the new campaign areas will also appear across more than 25 endgame maps.

The Shadow and Duelist add new combat options

The Shadow brings daggers and the Assassin and Infiltrator Ascendancies. Its stealth system lets players see enemy vision cones and circles, then attack from outside those ranges for bonuses. A kill resets stealth, creating opportunities to move between ambushes. The class also has eight traps. They wait while the Shadow is hidden, then detonate in the order they were thrown when the character attacks. A Freeze Trap followed by a Concussive Trap can shatter a target, while Poison Gas, Concussive, and Fire Traps can be combined to spread and ignite a cloud.

Darkness adds another layer to the Shadow’s skills. Blade of Night builds the resource, Shadow Extraction turns marked enemies into shades, and Eclipse spends Darkness to empower attacks with stealth effects for a limited time. Blade Vortex and Fire Trap are among the skills arriving with the new dagger options.

The Duelist brings swords and skills including Cyclone and Hemorrhage, along with Blood and Sand and Ready Stance. Its Knight Ascendancy has an equipable Squire companion, War Banners with different effects, and Mounted Charge, which sends the Duelist into battle on a golden chariot. Swords can be used two-handed, dual wielded, or paired with a shield, and new skills for existing weapon types will also arrive in version 1.0.

Conquerors of Wraeclast builds toward a faction war

The league introduces army recruitment during the campaign, with more than 70 points of interest offering chances to find soldiers, battle enemy forces, defeat bosses, and earn loot. Players can arrange troops for raids and join the fight themselves. Supplies and rations keep squads fed between battles, which grow into castle sieges and boss encounters, including a fight against Valen, the Dread Carnifex. Gold can go toward castle upgrades.

Players can build and defend a stronghold, then join the Karui, Ezomyte, or Marraketh faction. The league’s story also involves a plot to revive the vampire lord Severa. In the endgame, factions can fight over as many as 100 castles on the Atlas. Holding one gives its faction a route to nearby maps, additional item rarity, and access to hunting grounds with rare monsters and better loot.

Battle rewards include Treasury keys and currency for crafting. Players can replace selected item modifiers with fractured mods that remain fixed through later crafting. Commanders offer another way to deploy an army. They can take troops through endgame maps, follow routes across multiple maps, or use Tablets. Commanders keep the gold, while their troops may return with useful items.

The Atlas, gems, and items are also changing

The Atlas passive tree will shrink from more than 300 nodes to about 70. Players who take a direct route through its skills should have around 50 by the time they face the Arbiter of Divinity. The main passive tree will gain nodes for existing and new classes, and Jewels will move into skill clusters instead of sitting on outer travel nodes.

Support gems and skills are getting changes too. Elemental penetration supports will be consolidated into one, Brutality will have a smaller chaos damage penalty, and Chain will no longer reduce damage on its first hit. The Mercenary will get a reload rework, the Acolyte of Chayula a new look, and performance improvements are planned across the game.

Version 1.0 will add new item base types, rework more than 70 Unique items, and bring in about 40 more. One new armor base grants immunity to curses, and a new pinnacle boss will join the endgame.

Which part of the new classes or faction war would you most like to see in action? Follow us on X, Bluesky, YouTube, Instagram, Steam, and Telegram for more on the road to the December release.

Path of Exile 2

Developed by Grinding Gear Games

Path of Exile 2 is a next generation Action RPG created by Grinding Gear Games. Set years after the original Path of Exile, you will return to the dark world of Wraeclast and seek to end the corruption that is spreading. Path of Exile 2 is a free-to-play online multiplayer game with co-op for up to six players.

• Genre Role-playing (RPG), Hack and slash/Beat 'em up, Adventure
• Platforms Xbox Series X|S, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Mac
• Perspective Bird view / Isometric
• Modes Single player, Multiplayer, Co-operative, Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO)
• Release December 6, 2024
• Publisher Grinding Gear Games, Kakao Games
• Age Rating

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