PoE 2 0.5 Return of the Ancients: Content Livestream Summary

Return of the Ancients is the fourth major update for Path of Exile 2's early access since its launch in December 2024. This patch will introduce the long-awaited endgame Atlas update alongside a brand-new league mechanic: Runes of Aldur, and overhauls to many core league mechanics such as Breach and Ritual.

In the Runes of Aldur league, you'll find Ezomyte remnants in each area that can be inscribed with symbols. The Symbols in an area will allow you to choose specific crafting options, but upon choosing an option, the nearby dead will be risen to fight you. Your selected symbols not only dictate the reward you obtain on successful encounter completion, but also the modifiers that the Monsters obtain as part of the encounter, so choose carefully.

A new NPC, Farrow, with an Ezomyte Remnant

As you progress through the campaign and into the endgame, you'll find remnants with more and more symbols, granting access to more complex recipes, but also making the risen Monster more difficult as a result of stacking Monster modifiers.

Verisium is a crafting resource obtained from these encounters, and is used for several new crafting options. You can choose to craft a brand new resource onto your gear: Runic Ward, which will protect you from death should you lose all of your life.

A Body Armour crafted with Runic Ward

This crafting resource can also be used to craft brand new Runic Skills, which are a universal type of ability that have no Gem colour and no Attribute requirement, making them usable on most builds. However, Runic Skills also require the spending of Runic Ward to activate instead of Mana or Life, so you'll need to be equipped with some gear that grants this resource to be able to use them.

The new Frostflame Nova Runic Skill

As you progress through the campaign, you'll eventually reach the Mystic Refuge in Act 3, that will lead you to the ability to upgrade Unique items to a more powerful version. This mechanic should improve the usefulness of many Unique items in endgame builds.

And of course, a league named the Runes of Aldur wouldn't be complete without some new Runes to socket into your gear. This update will also introduce over 100 new Runes, allowing immense amounts of customisation and buildcraft.

During the progression of the Runes of Aldur, you'll find out that the origin of the remnants isn't of Ezomyte descent at all, and is actually Kalguuran. Runes of Aldur content will begin to blend into Expedition encounters from Act 4 onwards, and you'll be able to discover these remnants during Expeditions, making their symbols modifiers roll into the encounter and apply to all Monsters in the chain.

An Aldur Remnant in an Expedition encounter

In the endgame, Kingsmarch has been largely destroyed and is found off the coast on the Atlas map. This section of content on the Atlas will essentially provide a replayable version of Act 4 allowing you to venture to unexplored islands in an attempt to find the missing NPC Gwennen. During this journey, you'll tackle Expedition encounters on the mysterious islands which will include special mechanics exclusive to each island.

Face off against Medved

Finding Gwennen will begin a Boss chain starting with Medved, who will drop a Logbook upon being slain, allowing you to continue on to the other Expedition Bosses before facing off against a brand new Pinnacle Boss for this core league mechanic in 0.5.

The Infinite Atlas will now have fixed points of interest in patch 0.5. Areas in specific locations will contain specific content so that all players can follow the type of content they wish to pursue. This includes all of the current core league mechanics, such as Ritual, which has a guaranteed large cluster of Ritual maps spawned to the west of the Atlas start location.

Towers are still used to scout out areas on the Atlas map. However, upon completing your first Tower, you'll activate a new core endgame progression arc: The Origins of Divinity, which explores the mysterious Precursors and The First Edict. Fortresses will spawn on the Atlas map, locking off regions to be explored within. Maps traversed within the Fortress regions can have have special mechanics, such as Azmeri Spirits that will release from Rare Monsters upon their defeat and continue their path to a new host, allowing you to reap the rewards of multiple possessed Monsters from a single Spirit.

A new Fortress Map modifier

The completion of areas within the Fortresses will grant Atlas Passive Tree points which you can use to allocate points on the brand-new Atlas Tree, which is receiving a huge upgrade in 0.5. Given enough time, you can allocate all points in this new Atlas Tree, but many nodes have two or three different options to choose from, guaranteeing many different potential strategies for endgame farming. Atlas Tree nodes can have a very large impact on your endgame experience, for example one Notable will provide a choice to either gain random Shrine Buffs upon entering a map Boss Arena, or alternatively you could instead make the map Boss gain random Shrine Buffs, making the encounter more difficult but also improving the potential rewards.

The Living Metal Atlas Tree Notable

The Arbiter now has a fixed spawn to begin with to streamline early progression, but subsequent encounters are still accessed by finding and completing Citadels in the fog of war. However, this Pinnacle Boss is no longer the main Boss of the core Atlas. A new, larger threat has arrived!

A new Threat on the Atlas

Another new system to accompany the revised Atlas Tree in patch 0.5 is the new Masters of the Atlas, which is essentially an extra form of specialisation that you can apply to your endgame areas. These NPCs apply special modifiers to your maps, enhancing specific aspects such as map Bosses or certain content. Importantly, you can freely switch between these Masters on a per zone basis before opening the area in the map device, providing a lot of freedom to enhance your endgame experience.

The Trove Seeker Notable from Jado, a new Master

The Breach league mechanic in Path of Exile 2 is being overhauled and essentially replaced with the new Keepers of the Flame content from Path of Exile 1, with a few differences. Encounters will now begin with Unstable Breaches which includes a bar at the bottom of the screen that tracks how much time you have left. Killing monsters will push further and further towards stabilising the Breach, which will close the circle and spawn stronger monsters or even a Boss for you to face.

An Unstable Breach bar

As with all core league mechanics, Breach will have a natural guaranteed spawn on the Atlas map where the Hiveborn have taken control. You can venture to these areas to challenge the Hiveborn and begin your progression toward the new Breach Pinnacle Bosses: Tul and Esh.

One of the most important parts of the overhauled Breach mechanic is the Genesis Tree, which introduces powerful crafting to Path of Exile 2. The Genesis Tree can be used to craft gear and other items with a specific bias towards item bases and certain types of modifiers. However, to utilise this mechanic, you'll need to acquire Hiveblood and Wombgifts by completing Breach encounters, which can be spent on crafting to help progress your affinity with the tree. You can always respec your Genesis Tree points for free at any time, providing a lot of agency over your crafting options.

The Genesis Tree in Path of Exile 2

Eventually you'll be able craft a Breachstone using the Genesis Tree, which will allow you view the extent of the Hiveborn infestation on the Atlas. At this stage you'll unlock a new type of encounter that will allow you to defend Ailith, an NPC and member of the Monastery of the Keepers of the Flame, from waves of mindless Hiveborn Monsters. You'll also rarely encounter Breach Fortresses, where you'll be able to navigate to the centre and finally face the Pinnacle Boss of this league.

Like other core mechanics in the endgame, Delirium will have a fixed spawn so that you can always pursue this type of content if you wish. Upon first encountering a Delirium Mirror in an area, you'll find Elder Madox, who is trapped under the spell of the Raven Trickster, Tangmazu himself. Freeing Elder Madox will begin your quest deeper and deeper into madness in the pursuit of Tangmazu and his insane antics.

Delirium Mirror encounters have been updated to include a bar at the bottom of the screen that tracks how delirious you are. Venturing further into the madness will increase the difficulty and also have the chance to spawn special in-map encounters.

The new Delirium encounter bar

Liquid Emotions now have a new use alongside their usage in allocating a Passive Tree Notable on your amulet. You'll now be able to spend these currency items to add modifiers to Jewels, providing an option to enhance the potential power level of these items.

A Movement Speed modifier added with Liquid Emotions

Progressing enough Delirium encounters will reveal Tangmazu's exact location, but you're not done just yet! You need to work your way through maps with scaling difficulty where the Raven Trickster will duplicate the map Boss, but completion may yield a fruit that can be consumed to enter a truly mad state on your way to the Simulacrum.

Successfully completing a Simulacrum will yield the key to the new Pinnacle Boss of this league mechanic. Once you've gone through your first full cycle of this new content, you'll be able to repeat it by finding Grand Mirrors which will allow you to select a new location on the Atlas to begin the journey anew.

When you first open your Atlas after finishing the campaign, you'll be able to find an infestation of Ritual encounters to the west of your spawn point. Ritual encounters are largely unchanged, with Altars spawning Monsters that were slain in their vicinity, storing them for future Altars in the area with progressing difficulty. Monsters that are spawned by Altars grant Tribute, a resource that can only be spent in that area. However, Ritual rewards that can be purchased via the Ritual vendor window for Tribute are being changed in 0.5, with a guarantee that the baseline offered rewards will always be either Unique items or Omens.

Become Nameless to challenge a new Pinnacle threat

You'll eventually be able to challenge the King in the Mist, but similar to the Arbiter in this update, the King is no longer the main Pinnacle Boss for this content. Slaying the King in the Mists will push your progression further through the Ritual of the Nameless, spawning harder Ritual encounters where map Bosses are collected over several maps with increasing difficultly. If you can overcome this challenge, you'll be able to venture deep into the Wildwood to face a new threat.

The Spirit Walker is the third and final ascendancy option for the Huntress, available in 0.5. This class specialises into Azmerian Wisps, allowing you to attune to a specific type of three Wisp choices to gain the ability to be possessed by that type of spirit, gaining strong bonuses.

The new Huntress Ascendancy: Spirit Walker

You can even specialise into all three Wisps, which unlocks a secret Notable that cannot be allocated any other way. This node is free, and grants extra bonuses for each spirit type as a union for all three.

However, one of the options available to the Spirit Walker that is sure to be a fan favourite is Natural Order, which allows your character to utilise Tame Beast on Unique best-type Monsters, such as the legendary monkey encountered in Act 3.

The Monk will also receive its final option for ascendancy choices in patch 0.5: the Martial Artist. This class allows you to specialise into equipment types such as your equipped Gloves, which will modify the affixes on the item, granting stats that are generally much more powerful.

Martial Artist Concept Art

The Martial Artist will also be able to channel an ability to spawn mirror images of themselves that can then use a chose Attack ability, allowing you to create an army of yourself to do your bidding.

Another focus of this update is the introduction of a huge amount of Unique items with the intention of providing more options to endgame builds.

In addition to being able to utilise the new league, Runes of Aldur, to upgrade weaker Uniques into stronger versions, there are a swath of new Uniques items including The Raven's Flock which is sure to be a fan favourite considering it grants an effect not dissimilar to Righteous Fire in Path of Exile 1.

Raven's Flock, a new Unique Staff

Despite all of the new content in this patch, GGG have also tried to improve quality of life where possible, such a long-awaited Search bar function for the Atlas map in the endgame. You'll also be able to immediately check the value of specific items by clicking on them to reach the in-game trade site.

The largest quality of life improvement in this update however may just be the introduction of an in-house build guide tool that allows creators to provide the options for players to follow directly in-game. This feature will provide Passive Tree pathing choices and everything you'd expect, but it will also allow the creator to add notes to guide players to a smoother experience.

The Build Planner in 0.5

Path of Exile 2 update 1.0 will launch in 2026 following the ExileCon event, confirmed by game director Jonathan Rogers during the livestream reveal. This will mean that Path of Exile 2 will become free-to-play as part of that update, and you'll be able to play through the full campaign for the first time, including Act 5 and 6.