Path of Exile 2 Receives Massive Update But Won’t Launch Out of Early Access in 2025

Path of Exile 2 is set to receive content update 0.3.0, titled The Third Edict, on Aug. 29, 2025.

Celebrating the update, the game’s developer announced that the period from Aug. 29 to Sep. 1, 2025, will be free to play with no limits on character leveling, and all progress made during this period will be saved to the player’s account.

As for the content of The Third Edict, it will open up Act Four with 16 new areas and 12 new bosses, along with three interlude acts expanding the story. The Cruel difficulty has been removed, and a new league, Rise of the Aryssal, will bring new challenges to the game.

The support gem system has been overhauled and will now feature multiple levels, as well as the ability to have multiple copies of the same support gem. On top of that, 40 new lineage support gems and 12 new skill gems will be added to the game.

Endgame content will be expanded with 25 new maps, new encounters, high-tier currency, and 150 new notable passive skills. The crafting system has been revamped, with changes to essence crafting and other item crafting mechanics.

Sprinting will be added in Path of Exile 2 for faster movement, along with a new asynchronous trade system that will let players buy items even when sellers are offline.

Besides that, a major rebalance will affect all classes, with buffs applied across the board.

It is worth noting that game director Jonathan Rogers stated in talks with Eurogamer that the game won’t launch out of early access in 2025. As a possible release window for Path of Exile 2 version 1.0, he cited March 2026.

“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,” said Rogers.

Developed and published by Grinding Gear Games, Path of Exile 2, a sequel to 2013’s Path of Exile, was released as a paid early access title for Windows PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S on Dec. 6, 2024.

As of the time of writing the game has a “Mostly Positive” rating on Steam with 129,487 reviews and an all-time peak of 578,569 concurrent players according to Steam DB.