Eight months after releasing in early access, Path of Exile 2 is set to receive its biggest update yet, one that not only adds a heap of new content in the form of Act IV, three temporary acts, and even a seasonal league, but also brings big changes to how the game is played.
GameSpot had the chance to learn more about Path of Exile 2’s huge 0.3.0 update, The Third Edict, ahead of its release on August 29 during a press Q&A, which included a one-on-one interview with the game’s director, Jonathan Rogers.
In addition to learning more details about the update itself, which Rogers said takes “a good crack at solving every problem people are currently unhappy about,” we discussed why developer Grinding Gear Games thinks including a league as part of the update is essential, how GGG is looking to avoid the pitfalls of the game’s initially poorly received Dawn of the Hunt update, when players can expect a new class and the game to leave early access, and more.
Act IV And The Interludes
The Third Edict is headlined by the addition of Act IV, which introduces the Polynesian-inspired Ngamakunui archipelago, which is filled with new locations and bosses to encounter. The archipelago is made up of eight islands, and the act will be non-linear, allowing players to visit the islands in any order in search of a way to put a stop to the corruption threatening Wraeclast.
Act IV, however, is just the start. In an effort to make repeated playthroughs less of a chore, GGG is removing the game’s Cruel difficulty (which saw players play through Acts I-III a second time in order to reach the endgame) and will instead replace it with three temporary acts it is calling The Interludes. These smaller, bite-sized acts serve as elaborate side quests that offer a new, less-repetitive way to level a character to endgame strength without having to repeat the same content many players have already played through multiple times as part of early access.
The Interludes include 19 new areas and nine new bosses. Interlude I will see players return to Ogham in Act I to aid Renly. In Interlude II, players will meet up with Asala in the Vastiri desert. Lastly, in Interlude III will join Doryani to find a group of lost Vaal descendants.
It should be noted that while aspects of The Interludes, like new bosses, will be absorbed into Path of Exile 2’s endgame, the acts themselves are temporary and will be removed with the addition of Act V at some point in the game’s future.
Sprinting Into The Future
One huge gameplay change coming alongside The Third Edict is the ability for all characters to sprint. After a dodge roll, players can hold down the dodge button to break into a sprint, dramatically increasing their movement speed. Taking damage while in this state will cause players to be stunned temporarily, leaving them vulnerable to monsters. Using an ability will automatically bring characters out of their sprint state.
It’s a big change, and one that Rogers said he was at first hesitant about. He worried that the ability to essentially outrun monsters would make combat feel optional, something that could pose problems for the game long term.
Over time, he said he came to realize that for those who have mastery of the game or knew what they were doing, the ability to sprint would dramatically increase the speed at which they could go through the campaign and reach the endgame, improving replayability. For players who don’t have that level of mastery, simply sprinting through every encounter isn’t a good idea, as doing so will mean missing out on XP and result in underleveled characters that will likely struggle to clear later content.
“I just came to terms with the fact that it’s okay for people who have played through many times to be able to get that kind of level of speed,” Rogers said. “The other thing it does do, of course, is it gives you the ability to retreat if you want to, which is good for new players as well if they’re getting overwhelmed.”
Entering The Abyss
In case a new act and Interlude acts weren’t enough, GGG will also kick off Path of Exile 2’s first league as part of The Third Edict. Called Rise of the Abyssal, the league is actually a sequel to one from the original Path of Exile.
Over the course of Path of Exile 2’s campaign (and endgame), players during Rise of the Abyssal will encounter fissures spewing monsters. Slaying them and shutting the fissures will net players new rewards, including the ability to add new affixes to items and, in a tease, possibly characters themselves.
News that Path of Exile 2, which is still in early access (and doesn’t look to be leaving anytime soon), will be receiving its first league is certain to raise some eyebrows. When asked whether resources put towards the league might be better used to work on core content like future acts or classes, Rogers said he views having a league as part of the update as essential, as it gives players a new experience during the campaign and another reason to keep playing.
“If we didn’t do it, we could certainly get early access out faster,” Rogers said. “But I don’t think there’s a world where we could do that, because then I don’t think we would be successful, you know what I mean? We have to do it. None of that stuff gets thrown away at the end of the day…for the most part all that content gets folded in some way into the game again, either it be in endgame or maybe through the campaign a little bit. What you end up with is just effectively a larger endgame at the end, which I don’t think is a bad thing.”
Buffing Up Builds
Another massive part of The Third Edict are sweeping buffs to everything from various class skills to the entire Support Gem system itself. Whereas Path of Exile 2’s first major early-access update, Dawn of the Hunt, upset many in the game’s community with a lack of solutions to player complaints and unpopular nerfs (things GGG quickly looked to address in subsequent hotfixes), The Third Edict instead looks to give players more power in the form of expanded build options and buffs for underused skills.
One big way players will be empowered is through a core change to Support Gems. Whereas players previously could only slot one of each Support Gem into their skills, Support Gems can now be placed in as many skills as a player wants, vastly widening build diversity and options.
“Honestly it’s a bit scary because I think there will be a lot of fallout as far as stuff we need to look into, because it’s very hard to know what all the combinations are,” Rogers said. “But at the same time I think the existing system was a big blocker to all the different builds that people wanted to make, so I think that will be a big deal. Sometimes you get people going ‘Oh, there’s no builds to play,’ and that kind of stuff. I really don’t like it when people feel that way. That’s what I’m most excited to fix.”
A new type of Support Gem, Lineage Supports, are also being added. These extra-powerful Support gems are extremely rare and can drop from specific bosses, with 40 of them to discover in total.
When asked if all of the buffs, gem changes, and the addition of things like sprint might increase the speed and feel of Path of Exile 2’s combat, which has been praised for its slower, more deliberate combat compared to other ARPGs, Rogers said that wasn’t the goal.
“What we’re really trying to do there is lift the stuff that’s not working and not increase the stuff at the top end, especially through the campaign…what we’re trying to do really here is make sure that through the campaign you don’t get to the point where it becomes absurd too early,” Rogers said.
The buffs are part of the way GGG is looking to address player feedback that Rogers said hadn’t been treated with the “importance” it deserved with the Dawn of the Hunt update. During development of The Third Edict, Rogers said it was very clear what the game’s community was unhappy about, and the update looks to tackle them all head-on.
“I would say that we’ve got an answer to all of them; even if that answer isn’t correct yet, at least we have an answer to all the problems people have,” Rogers said.
When Will Path Of Exile 2 Leave Early Access?
The Third Edict is Path of Exile 2’s second major update, but there’s still a ways to go before the game is ready to release in full and go free-to-play. Rogers said in an interview earlier this year he hoped Path of Exile 2 would be ready to leave early access before the end of 2025. That is no longer the case.
“I definitely don’t believe that’s possible anymore,” Rogers said. “Things have taken a bit longer than we’d hoped. Ultimately, there’s two things that need to happen before we can leave early access. One of them is that we obviously need to finish the campaign. I don’t think that will take too much longer. But the other one is we have to get to the point of balance where everyone is actually happy with how things are. The general opinion needs to be that we’ve actually got it locked in. Obviously we can’t go into full release until we’ve sorted that out. Once those two things are true, then we’ll release.”
There are still five classes yet to be added to Path of Exile 2 as well. One nearly made it into The Third Edict, Rogers said, but ultimately didn’t make the cut.
“We still intended to get a class out for this one, we just didn’t quite finish it in time,” Rogers said. “There will definitely be a class in the next update, I’d say. I say definitely even though I probably shouldn’t, but the classes unfortunately have a bit of unbounded amount of time. You can go into them thinking you know what they are and then by the time you’re actually done, you’ve refactored a bunch of things a bunch of times and it’s way harder than you expect. We had a class in mind, we did a lot of work on it. We realized, ‘You know what, if we’re going to finish off all these bosses and things, we can’t quite finish the class,’ so it ended up not happening, but we’ll get there.”
All the while, GGG is still developing new content for the original Path of Exile, something Rogers admitted the studio struggled to balance earlier in the year when it put an update for Path of Exile on hold in the wake of Path of Exile 2’s launch. At the time, he said the team still had a lot to learn about running two games simultaneously.
Rogers said the team has since become more adept at operating two live-service games at once, in part because it has now merged both of the games’ development teams together and instead shuffles resources to either game as needed. He said the studio effectively being on a two-month alternating schedule between updates for the original Path of Exile and Path of Exile 2 is a “difficult but doable” balancing act.
“We’re kind of back in the groove, but it is hard, Rogers said. “It is very hard to get everything organized.”
All of the above barely scratches the surface of the update. The endgame is receiving 25 new maps filled with new monsters and bosses, including uber versions of bosses from Act IV. The Third Edict will even add asynchronous trade for the first time, allowing players to purchase items from each other without the need for the seller to be online, a system that if goes well, will also be added to the first Path of Exile. For full details on everything that’s changing in Path of Exile 2 with The Third Edict Update, including class buffs, item changes, and more, be sure to check out the official patch notes.
Path of Exile 2 is currently available on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC. Those wanting to play during early access will need to buy an early access supporter pack, though the game will become free-to-play upon leaving early access. Those wanting a taste of what Path of Exile 2 has to offer will be able to play for free from August 29 through September 1 with the arrival of The Third Edict update, with progress made carrying over to the full game.
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