Last week, Path of Exile 2 developer Grinding Gear Games confirmed The Third Edict would arrive on August 29 at 1:00 PM Pacific (4:00 PM Eastern), but we’d have to wait until today to get more details. Well, those have finally arrived, and it’s shaping up to be an impressive content update. For starters, The Third Edict will add Act Four, taking players to a Karui archipelago called Ngamakanui to hunt down pieces of a great weapon, the instrument of the Third Edict. In total, the new zone has eight islands to explore, and the team confirmed Act Four is non-linear, so players can explore the islands in any order. Expect over a dozen new bosses and more than a hundred new monster types in Ngamakanui.
One of the biggest additions players will likely love is that they’ll no longer have to play through the game twice to reach the endgame. Instead, The Third Edict introduces three new temporary Interlude acts, a set of side stories with 19 new areas and 12 new bosses. Clearing these acts will take players to level 65, where the endgame begins. Even at Early Access launch, having to replay the campaign in Path of Exile 2 was a bit of a slog and really deterred me from making alts and trying other classes.
Next week’s update will also bring Path of Exile 2’s first full League, called Rise of the Abyssal. Having bided their time underground, the Abyssal are emerging from the depths throughout Wraeclast, and players will need to fend them off and seal the fissures. As players progress through the game, these Abysses will increase in size, power, and variety. Successfully closing them will reward valuable items and a random chance to travel underground to fight the Abyssal directly.
Each time players close an Abyss, there’s a chance that ancient bones will drop that can be used at the Well of Souls in Act Two. These imbue items with abyssal magic to add hidden Desecrated modifiers. When revealing the modifier, players will have the opportunity to transform it by selecting one of three options. Additionally, the Well of Souls can be used to affect Waystones, adding new modifiers to push difficulty and rewards.
Another highly-requested feature that’s being added with The Third Edict is sprinting. By holding down the Dodge Roll button, characters enter a sprint after finishing their roll, allowing faster navigation when out of combat or a quick escape from sticky situations. There’s no limit to how long a player can sprint, and sprinting is not limited to any particular character class.
The Support Gem system has also been reworked, and players can now use as many copies of the same Support Gem as they like. Each Support Gem now has multiple tiers, so they can also be upgraded. That addition, coupled with major balance changes and new skills, will result in hundreds of new builds, as 150 new clusters have been added to the passive tree.
Unsurprisingly, plenty of new items are being added in Act Four, along with a crafting update that adds higher-tier versions of all basic crafting currencies. The Third Edict also adds 25 new endgame maps, featuring environments, monsters, and bosses from Act Four and the three Interludes. Players will also run into new endgame encounters, such as a wild sandstorm or a massive maelstrom. These new encounters feature Uber versions of the Act Four boss and the bosses at the end of each part of the Interlude. That’s not all, as a new Support Gem type is being added: Lineage Support. These are essentially Unique items for supports, and 40 are being added throughout the endgame.
Finally, Path of Exile 2 is adding asynchronous trade, allowing players to buy items from other players without requiring the seller to be present. Considering how much of the game can revolve around trading, being able to list everything you want to sell and not having to connect with the seller sounds amazing.
I really enjoyed my time with Path of Exile 2 when it entered Early Access. While I didn’t get a chance to return after the first major content update, the additions in The Third Edict might be enticing enough for me to give it another go.
