Path of Exile 2 fans are eating well this year! Patch 0.5.0: Return of the Ancients drops May 29 across PC, Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, and the Epic Games Store, and it's stacked: more than 50 hours of fresh endgame stuff, six brand new questlines, 15 boss fights (four of which are at the Pinnacle level), plus two Ascendancies that completely change how their parent classes play. The Monk gets the Martial Artist, and the Huntress gets the Spirit Walker.
The headlining addition is Runes of Aldur. A young smith named Farrow walks you through Ezomyte Runesmithing, a long-buried Kalguuran tradition. You etch runes into Ezomyte Remnants to forge gear, but here's the catch: cracking open a Remnant wakes the undead nearby, and they show up powered by whatever runes you used. Go fire heavy and they fight you with fire. Go lunar and suddenly you're dodging celestial beams. Bigger crafts mean scarier monsters and better loot, which is just a great gameplay loop. If you haul in enough Verisium then Runic Wards are unlocked, which is basically a second health bar that doubles as fuel for an entirely new mana free skill system you can mix freely into your existing gem setups. There are over a hundred new crafting runes, including some spicy meta options like elemental conversion and tier bumping Masterworks.
Story-wise, Wraeclast is wrecked. The Beast's corruption is everywhere, and Doryani points you toward the Precursors for answers. The Atlas itself has been rebuilt into an actual explorable map with set destinations dotted across it, while towers still light up what's hiding past the fog. Then a giant fortress erupts out of the ground and you've got to push through it, opening gates, grabbing the keys for its precursor weapons, and powering the whole thing down before the corruption catches up. There's big news for endgame veterans: every Pinnacle and major boss, returning Arbiter of Ash included, now sits at the end of a proper questline. You don't need to pray for keys to drop.
The Atlas tree got an overhaul too. You unlock everything by actually playing maps, and a lot of nodes now branch into meaningful choices instead of forcing constant respeccing. There's also Masters of the Atlas, which is essentially endgame Ascendancies. You pick a patron like Jado or Hilda, slot in their bonuses per map, and can swap freely between runs.
All four Early Access leagues are back with reworked stories and proper homes on the Atlas. Delirium adds a depth meter and lets you craft mods onto Jewels with Distilled Emotions. Breach gets a visible timer, an enraged phase if you keep it open, and Wombgifts that feed into the Genesis Tree. Ritual sends you to the Wildwood to free a spirit named Aoife, with a multi-map Rite of the Nameless escalating the deeper you go. Expedition ties straight into the Runes of Aldur plot, with Rog searching for Gwennen while you set sail across a procedural ocean full of islands and vault bosses.
In terms of Ascendancies, the Spirit Walker channels three Azmerian wisps (Stag, Owl, Bear) and can unite all three to awaken Sacred Wisps, plus she gets Idol socketables for minion builds. She can tame beast bosses like the Mighty Silverfist and Chimeral Beast and bring them along as allies. The Martial Artist leans into illusion echoes, summoned spectral bells that detonate on enemies, runic tattoos socketed straight into the body, and the Way of the Stonefist, which makes your gloves your primary damage source. They both feel distinct in a way that should keep theorycrafters busy for months.
Smaller but meaningful additions include: challenge system, with eight challenges granting pieces of the Knight of Aldur armour (other players can see your progress in chat and on a hideout statue). Over 30 new uniques are landing too, including the Raven's Flock, which spawns a damaging flock around you that grows in size as you hit unique enemies, and the Liminal Coil wand, which scales physical and chaos damage off cursed enemies and casts a chaining bolt skill that chains between cursed enemies across the whole screen. There are some quality of life updates too, such as campaign landmarks and trails for navigation, a searchable Atlas map, a native Build Guide system that ingests community .build files with passives, gems, and gear notes baked in, and a Shift+Alt instant trade price check on any item.
This is the final big drop before 1.0, which is aiming for sometime in 2026 after ExileCon. That’s a wrap for Path of Exile 2’s Return of the Ancients update. It will launch on May 29, 2026 as patch 0.5.0. Stay tuned to GamingTrend for more Path of Exile 2 news and info!
