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Path of Exile 2 developer Grinding Gear Games had previously and optimistically said a 1.0 full release might happen this year. GGG gave it a 65 percent chance of happening when I spoke with the studio in March. But those ambitions have now been ruled out.

Speaking after a presentation for the incoming Third Edict update, also known as 0.3.0, and answering a question asked by me, game director Jonathan Rogers said: “Yes I believe that we probably aren’t going to hit 1.0 this year.

“What it currently comes down to is there are two things we need to make sure of before we can have a release. The first one is that we have to have a campaign finished – that’s obviously important – and the second one is that we have to be in a balance-state where people are actually happy and things are going well. Until we’ve had a release where we’re sure both of those things are true, then we can’t release.

“It could be March [2026],” he added. “We release things every four months so December would be the next one and then March after that, so I would certainly hope that March could happen, but I’m not going to promise anything. Because ultimately it just comes down to: have we met those two criteria? At this point it would be quite hard to get Act 5 in December but we’ll see about that, and as for getting good balance: we have a little way to go with that. But I’m hoping things will be a lot better for this release.”

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The release he’s referring to is the Third Edict, the enormous incoming update for the Early Access version of Path of Exile 2, due 29th August. It will bring, among other things, the fourth act of the game, temporary interlude acts, the game’s first League, a new trading system, a crafting overhaul, a sprinting mechanic, an overhaul for Support Gems and a considerable rework of the existing classes and their skills. Note that there’s no new character class this time around but balance changes took precedence.

I’ll outline some of those changes but before I do there are two other pieces of more urgent news. One is in relation to server issues Path of Exile 2 has been having, which Rogers said were down to DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks. “I’m very aware of the server problems and this has been a major thing that our server admins have been looking into over the last three months,” he told our congregated group of press. “It’s basically all down to DDOSing; we’re getting DDOSed continuously.”

Grinding Gear Games has, in response, gotten rid of server hosts that couldn’t deal with the problem and added DDOS protection to those that remain. “By the time we do the 0.3.0 launch,” he said, “everything should have DDOS protection in front of it. We’ve done a lot of work in this area. Right now the servers shouldn’t be having any problems because all of that infrastructure’s in place, so as far as I’m concerned, that problem should be fixed.”

Shark monsters, check; octopus-armed pirate captain monster bosses, check…

The other urgent piece of news concerns a free weekend for Path of Exile 2, which will coincide with the Third Edict update on 29th August. For that weekend, you won’t need the £24 Starter Pack in order to play. And I heartily recommend you do play.

Now, to the Third Edict update. The long-awaited fourth act of the game – the penultimate act – takes place across a Polynesian kind of archipelago which you can sail around in any order you please. There are eight islands, 16 new areas, 12 new bosses and more than 100 new monster types. And when you’re done with them, instead of being funnelled back to replaying the existing acts, as you are currently, you will now play new interlude acts. Three of them. These are bespoke versions of the existing acts designed to offer a new experience, meaning yet more new areas and bosses and ideas. But these are temporary; when Act 5 does arrive, they will go.

The big change to Support Gems comes via removing the restriction of having one Support Gem type per character, and from introducing higher tiers of them. There’s also a brand new kind of uber Support Gem called a Lineage Support, which drops from bosses and has the power and potential to redefine your entire character build.

Sprinting is available to all classes and lets you hold down a button to get to places quicker and to outrun enemies, which sounds useful, but if you’re hit while sprinting you will be knocked down, so there’s some risk to it.

…monkey bosses, check. | Image credit: Grinding Gear Games

The myriad class changes are too exhaustive to list, but every class has been looked at and quite significantly altered and buffed. Arguably the most important addition, I say completely without bias as a monk player, is the ability for monks to fight with their bare hands, rather than with a staff, courtesy of the new Hollow Palm Technique. Thank you Grinding Gear Games.

The new, fully asynchronous trade system, meanwhile, gives you a personal merchant – a nice lady called Ange – who’ll stand in your hideout and sell your wares for you. Your items will be listed on the trade website and when someone wants them, it will teleport them directly to your Ange who’ll sell to them, even when you’re not around.

The crafting changes have made it easier to transform and augment items into super-items. Essences and orbs have been reworked and higher tiers of them added, and there’s a brand new Exceptional base item to collect and apply all these juicy bonuses too.

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Elsewhere, blocking and parrying have been reworked, more passive skills have been added to the already ridiculous passive tree – and passives with interesting abilities at that, not just percentage bonuses – plus attribute requirements for items have been lowered by a quarter across the board.

On top of all that we’re getting the game’s first seasonal League – the hope is to have one with each major update – called Rise of the Abyssal. This places you (a new you, I think) in a world plagued by abyssal invaders, and has you closing fissures and pits to the abyss that appear. It’s got some clever procedural ideas about the kinds of boss creatures that crawl out of the pits, and there’s the chance of finding a pit you can jump into, which will lead you to an abyssal city.

In other words: there’s a lot, and there’s more I haven’t covered here. It’s a significant effort by Grinding Gear Games to about-turn mixed recent reactions to the game. We’ll have to wait and see if it works.

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