Path of Exile 2's 'biggest expansion ever' reworks its entire post-campaign grind for new and returning players alike

Path of Exile 2 has one of the best action RPG campaigns out there, and it's not even finished yet. It wastes no time pushing you through each act as you gear up and watch the world of Wraeclast unravel. But when it's over, you're handed a gigantic world map filled with dozens of locations and no advice on where to start your endgame grind.

That wasn't good enough for developer Grinding Gear Games, which is why it spent the last several months tearing everything out and rebuilding it so that PoE 2's endgame won't be as obtuse. All of it will be reworked in its "biggest expansion ever", Return of the Ancients, on May 29.

In Return of the Ancients, you'll start at the center of a set location on the Atlas, surrounded by patches of land warped by each of the game's unique "league mechanics," or side activities. It will be up to you to decide whether you want to stitch together the section of earth split open by the eerie green Abyss chasms, or to work on cleansing the area desecrated by twitching Breach hands.

Each section has a series of quests that will walk you through what's going on and end with a climactic boss fight. As you complete each step, you'll earn points to drop into the entirely remade Atlas passive tree, modifying how each activity works and increasing the difficulty and rewards.

"We wanted to really make sure that the new endgame stuff that we're designing really did feel like you had a sense of completion of the Atlas," game director Jonathan Rogers said during a recent press event. "And so that's something we really wanted to add here by explicitly saying, okay, if you do all these questlines, then sure, there is the infinite farm you can do and you can keep on playing, but you're sort of finished, right? All the progress bars are full. You are done. You can stop now and you can come back next league."

On top of the new quests, each league mechanic has been polished up to be more intuitive and more powerful as you invest time into it. For example: The Genesis Tree from PoE 1 has taken root in PoE 2, offering new ways to craft (or more accurately, birth) jewelry items you can't get anywhere else. When you touch a Delirium mirror and start getting ambushed by tough monsters, a new bar at the bottom of the screen will track your progress as you race to the final boss.

The massive walls that rise out of the ground in the teaser trailer are actually an entire fortress that you'll explore in the main endgame quest. Inside the walls are maps with unique modifiers that reward you with Atlas tree points. GGG knows it's dealing with min-maxing action RPG players and will let you auto-complete a section of them by defeating the new pinnacle boss at the center of the fortress.

Once you're free, most of the league mechanics have unique items, events, or passive tree upgrades that will send you to specific maps on the Atlas, like a node that causes Rogue Exile enemies to flee from a duel to gear up for a rematch in another map. GGG's new approach is to keep feeding you mini goals to achieve as you explore the Atlas rather than leaving you to search for interesting things on your own.

The endgame rework is the final phase of PoE 2's time in early access, Rogers said. That's why Return of the Ancients will be the last major update to the game before it hits 1.0 later this year (and after ExileCon in November). Rogers wouldn't give an exact date for it, but said that all of the ascendancies (sub-classes) for each class and the remaining two acts of the campaign will arrive in the full release. The five other classes GGG previously announced will be added afterward.

On top of all this, GGG managed to squeeze a new league mechanic where you craft runes and other items to modify your gear and gain access to new skills that utilize a resource called Runic Ward into the update as well.

PoE 2 hasn't had this big of a shakeup since it launched in early access two years ago. I've had my doubts about it reaching 1.0 anytime soon, but after seeing everything GGG has put into this update, I am finally ready to believe it'll be here before the end of the year.

Return of the Ancients, patch 0.5.0, drops on May 29.