Path of Exile 2 has received its first major content expansion titled “Dawn of the Hunt” featuring many new additions and improvements. Path of Exile 2 was released in December 2024 bringing new and old players back for another round where player counts reached just over a half million but had dropped, essentially off a cliff, in recent months but the highly anticipated expansion has seen a significant uptick. The free-to-play, up to six-player co-op has seen over 238,000 return since Dawn of the Hunt made its debut today.
Details for Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt (per official site):
- New Classes
- The Huntress, a spear-wielding warrior specialized in melee and ranged combat featuring twenty new skills.
- Ascendancy: The Ritualist is an Azmeri who has embraced a different, darker path including ritual sacrifices.
- Ascendancy: The Amazon is an Azmeri Elder elite guard featuring specialized fighting techniques
- New Ascendancy Classes
- Warrior: The Smith of Kitava are master blacksmiths who can forge their own weapons.
- Mercenary: The Tactician is a soldier specializing in combat with the ability to assist other members
- Witch: The Lich uses her Phylactery to bring powers of the dark arts into play
- New Skills
- Raise Spectre skill gem which can trap most monsters allowing the user to summon to assist in combat
- Summon Rhoa to aid in combat or mount in order to traverse at full speed while using ranged attacks
- Over 100 new support gems
- Over 100 new unique items
- New Encounters – Azmerian Wisps: “The Azmeri Spirit has made itself present in Wraeclast. When approached, these wisps will flee, and monsters it comes into contact with will be infused by it, making them more powerful. Wisps will also find and possess Rare or Unique monsters, granting them powerful new abilities, and powerful new rewards. There are twelve distinct types of wisp, each with their own mechanics and rewards.”
- New Endgame Maps
- The Fractured Lake is located in waterscape featuring rare monsters who are mirrored giving twice the challenge to defeat. A broken mirror containing either an amulet or ring which can be used for crafting special items is the reward for those who survive this map.
- The Ezomyte Megaliths is a fortress where players can seek out rune-carved stones to summon up to ten waves of boss enemies.
- The Silent Cave is a crystalline cavern containing a map Boss protected by rare monsters who’ve been imprisoned in essence crystals.
- Up to 5 more maps can be discovered
- New Encounters
- Rogue Exiles: “On your travels you will sometimes encounter Rogue Exiles – others like you who have been exiled and are openly hostile. They will challenge you – a fight to the death.”
- Unique Strongboxes: “In Dawn of the Hunt, as well as improving on strongboxes generally, we’re adding four new Unique strongbox encounters as well.”
- New Endgame Mechanic: Cleanse the Corruption, “Corruption has continued to spread throughout Wraeclast and has formed into larger and larger zones. In the centre of each one lies a Corrupted Nexus, the home of three new terrifying bosses, amalgamations of Corruption itself.”
- Endgame System Improvements include balance adjustments featuring a reduced number of towers while increasing how powerful they are.
- New Mechanic: Corrupted Essences, “In addition to other improvements to Essences, use a Vaal orb to corrupt an Essences encounter with a range of unpredictable outcomes. It could increase the number of essences, reroll all the essences to the same type or even upgrade the essences to Greater Essences.”
So that’s the bulk of the info regarding the new expansion. Gather your friends and embark on new quests to discover a whole range of new enemies, allies, items, maps, bosses, and more in Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt!