Path of Exile 2 The Third Edict Info

Path of Exile 2’s Patch 0.3.0 – The Third Edict launches on Friday, August 29, 2025. This patch expands the campaign, introduces a new league, massive balance changes, and overhauls core systems like support gems, crafting, and trading. Here is a full overview of what to expect.

What Is Included in The Third Edict?

Patch 0.3.0 The Third Edict is a new, major patch for Path of Exile 2, which brings:

• Campaign & League Content
  • Act 4 + Interludes (Mini-Acts)
  • Rise of the Abyssals League
  • New Bosses, Islands, and Encounters
• Major Gameplay Systems
  • Support Gem System Overhaul
  • Crafting & Essence Rework
  • Async Trading + Merchant Tabs
  • Atlas & Endgame Changes
• Character Progression
  • Ascendancy Changes
  • Passive Skill Tree Updates
  • Major Balance Adjustments (Skills, Characters, Monsters)
• Quality of Life & UI
  • Item & Quest Improvements
  • New Unique Items
  • Updated UI and Microtransactions

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Act IV and Interludes

You can finally continue the main storyline after Act 3 alongside Doryani, who helps you seek the Instrument of the Third Edict. Travel to Kingsmach, hire a ship, and set sail for the Ngamakanui islands. There, you can explore eight islands, each with unique environments, dangers, and bosses: from the tropical beaches of Whakapanu to the volcanic Isle of Kin.

Act IV has a non-linear design: you can play the islands in any order. You will also find a dozen new bosses, and more than 100 new enemy types!

On top of Act IV, Cruel difficulty has been removed. Instead, three new interludes now bridge the gap between Acts 4 and the endgame. These are side stories that bring your character up to Level 65, which is the new entry point for endgame progression in PoE 2.

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The Rise of the Abyssals League 

Another big feature of 0.3.0 is the Rise of the Abyssals League, the first full league for Path of Exile 2. Your old characters still exist, but we highly recommend you create a new one on the Abyssals league, in order to fully enjoy all the new content!

Necromantic horrors called the Abyssals, created during the age of the Precursors, are breaking free from underground fissures across Wraeclast.

Core Mechanic:

• You will find fissures that drain the life of nearby monsters.
• Kill these monsters, and empowered Abyssals emerge.
• Defeat them to seal the fissure and earn rewards.
• Abysses grow larger, more complex, and deadlier as you progress.

Rewards:

• Closing fissures can reveal Abyssal Troves packed with loot.
• Some lead underground, where you will battle even tougher foes. In the Abyssal Depths, you will discover an Ancient Spire and the Abyssal commanders. Defeat them as well for even more rewards.
• Collect Ancient Bones to imbue gear with hidden Abyssal modifiers.

Use the Abyssal Modifiers at The Well of Souls (Unlocked during Act 2):

• Reveals the Desecrated modifier on items.
• Lets you transform it by choosing one of three options.
• During the Campaign: helps you add extra mods to gear more easily.
• During the Endgame: unlocks entirely new, powerful modifiers not craftable before.
• Also empowers Waystones, raising both difficulty and rewards.

You can do the Rise of the Abyssals league in Standard, Hardcore, and Solo Self-Found. All three modes have the same core mechanics and items, and you can create private league versions as well.

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Gameplay Overhauls

Support Gems Revamp

One of the most fundamental changes in PoE 2 is the overhaul of support gems. This enables a ton of new build possibilities. Here are the biggest changes made to Support Gems:

• Supports are no longer limited; you can link the same support gem to multiple skills.
• Support Gems now have tiers: Regular → Greater → Perfect, scaling in power. Each tier provides different stats, additional stats, and some higher tiers might even work differently from their lower counterparts. 
• A number of Support Gems with simple effects have been renamed with names that more obviously hint at their functionality
• Blood in the Eyes, Discombobulate, Unsteady Tempo, Unabating, Unbending, Untouchable, and Unyielding can no longer be engraved in the Gemcutting menu, and existing Gems will be deleted upon logging in.
• 11 New Support Gems introduced
• 40 Lineage Support Gems: Those are much more powerful Gems with unique effects available in Endgame:

New Skill Gems, Unique Items, and Other Changes

• New Strength Skill Gems: Fortifying Cry, Forge Hammer, Ancestral Cry
• New Dexterity Skill Gem: Toxic Domain, Ice-Tipped Arrows
• New Intelligence Skill Gem: Frost Darts
• New Strength Persistent Buff Gem: Iron Ward
• New Strength/Dexterity Persistent Buff Gem: Mortar Cannon
• New Dexterity Persistent Buff Gem: Mirage Archer
• New Intelligence Persistent Buff Gem: Ravenous Swarm, Siphon Elements
• Grim Feast has been completely reworked and re-enabled
• New Keystone Passive Skill to the north-west of the Monk starting location: Hollow Palm Technique
• New Keystone Passive Skill to the north-east of the Witch/Sorceress starting location: Ritual Cadence
• New Keystone Passive Skill to the north-west of the Witch/Sorceress starting location: Blackflame Covenant
• New Keystone Passive Skill to the east of the Monk’s starting location: Walker of the Wilds
• Over 10 new Unique items

• Multiple existing uniques have been adjusted or changed
• Over 50 new base item types
• 15 new Omens

Deflection & Sprinting

• Deflection: A new defense layer tied to evasion. If you evade, Deflection reduces damage even further.
• Sprinting:
  • Hold down the dodge roll button to Sprint
  • No limitation on how long you can sprint
  • Enables a faster movement option. Great for dodging, but risky; if you are hit while sprinting, you are knocked down.

Trading Improvements

• Async Trading: Trade even while offline.
• Items can be listed in your hideout via NPCs, and other players can purchase without both parties being online.
• How it works:
  • Unlock by defeating an island boss, then recruit NPC Ange to your hideout.
  • You can then set items for sale with your chosen price.
  • Ange manages the exchange even when you are offline.
  • Buyers are teleported to your hideout, where they can purchase directly or browse your stash.
• Uncut Skill, Support, and Reservation Gems can now be traded

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Endgame Updates

Maps & Atlas

• 25 new maps added.
• Splinter system: Each content (excluding the Arbiter of Ash) now drops Splinters. Those can be used at the Realmgate. Once inserted into the Realmgate, an interface will appear letting you pick your difficulty, each with a different Splinter cost
• To fit the Splinter system, the corresponding Atlas tree no longer affects the difficulty of the content, but purely affects the content in the Maps of the Atlas

• Existing Simulacrums, Breachstones, and Audience for the Kings can be right-clicked to get 100 of the relevant Splinter
• The Arbiter of Ash:
  • The Boss fight is now a static difficulty with infinite portals. The rewards of this fight now match the previous difficulty 4 rewards.
  • Atlas Passive Skill Tree has been removed, and some of the bonuses have become inherent to The Arbiter of Ash’s drops.
  • Added an Uber version of The Arbiter of Ash Boss fight, which requires the new Calamity Fragments to access. These are obtained from Citadel Bosses
• Acquiring Map Boss Atlas Passive points has been adjusted. 
• Olroth, Origin of the Fall no longer spawns in Logbooks.
• Mysterious anomalies can now appear on the Atlas.
• Items found in very high-level areas that can have random quality can now have up to 30% quality. Quality currency still cannot apply more than 20% Quality to an item.
• Items that can have a maximum of 2 Sockets now have a very low chance of generating with 3 Sockets in high-tier Maps.
• Items that can have a maximum of 1 Socket now have a very low chance of generating with 2 Sockets in high-tier Maps.
• The Abyss Map has been renamed to Marrow.
• The Detailed Records Expedition Notable Passive Skill now provides +1 to Level of Expedition Logbooks found in your Maps
• Expedition Logbooks found in your Maps always have 4 Implicit Modifiers. It no longer provides 30% increased Quantity of Logbooks dropped by Runic Monsters in your Maps.
• The He Approaches Ritual Notable Passive Skill now provides Revived Monsters from Ritual Altars in your Maps have 40% increased chance to Magic/Rare. It no longer causes Ritual Favours in your Maps to have a 30% increased chance to contain an Audience with the King.

Waystones

• Modifiers on Waystones have been reworked. Now every Modifier comes with a downside, a specific upside, and some amount of additional Waystone Drop Chance.
  • Downside Modifiers have been made weaker
• Unidentified Corrupted Waystones can now be used to access a Corrupted Nexus.
• Waystones can no longer have greater than 8 modifiers when Corrupted.

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Crafting Overhaul

Crafting gets one of its biggest reworks in PoE2 yet:

• New Currency Orbs that start dropping from late campaign and Maps:
  • Greater Orb of Transmutation, Perfect Orb of Transmutation
  • Greater Orb of Augmentation, Perfect Orb of Augmentation
  • Greater Chaos Orb, Perfect Chaos Orb
  • Greater Regal Orb, Perfect Regal Orb
  • Greater Exalted Orb, and Perfect Exalted Orb
  • These Greater and Perfect Orbs each have their own minimum modifier levels for the modifier they add to an item.
• New type of currency, Hinekora’s Lock, which can be used to foresee the result of the next Currency item used on it. Modifying the item in any way removes the ability to foresee.

• Essence Rework:
  • Now have 4 tiers: Lesser, Normal, Greater, and Perfect.
  • 7 new types of Essences

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Balance Changes

Patch 0.3.0 comes with a huge list of skill and ascendancy changes. The focus is on:

• Empowering underused builds.
• Increasing variety in viable skill setups.
• Shifting the meta away from just a handful of dominant builds.

Some of the main changes are:

• The following Ascendancies received major changes:
  • Warbringer
  • Smith of Kitava
  • Gemling Legionnaire
  • Tactician
  • Ritualist
  • Amazon
  • Pathfinder
  • Deadeye
  • invoker
  • Acolyte of Chayula
  • Blood Mage
  • Infernalist
  • Lich
  • Chronomancer
  • Stormweaver
• Passive Skill Trees also received some changes:
  • Several major Keystone Passives were updated, including Elemental Equilibrium, Eternal Youth, Giant’s Blood, Glancing Blows, and Resolute Technique.
  • Over 100 new passive clusters have been added across the tree, with the biggest changes around the Warrior, Mercenary, Witch, and Ranger areas.
  • Many existing clusters have also received updates

• Skill changes:
  • The base damage scaling of all player spells and secondary damage skills has been adjusted to scale better in the late game
  • The mana cost growth of all skills has been rebalanced
  • Banners no longer gain Valour and have a limit of 1 allowed to be placed
  • The Spirit Cost of Spectres has been adjusted
  • Mark Skills are no longer Spells

For the full list of Ascendancy, Passive Tree, and Skill changes, it is best to check out the official patch notes directly, as the list is long and packed with detail.

Example skill changes:

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Quality of Life Improvements

Patch 0.3.0 also includes plenty of small but meaningful updates to make PoE 2 feel better to play:

• Controller binding improvements.
• Updated stash UI.
• Revamped gem UI.
• Item filter improvements, including easier import options.
• Trading interface upgrades.
• You are now able to log directly into town or hideout by holding Ctrl while selecting a character (or Left-trigger + A/X when using a Controller).
• You can now use checkpoints to warp to the waypoint in an area, as well as to other checkpoints.
• Various Microtransaction changes
• Multiple bug fixes

The Third Edict is the biggest update yet for Path of Exile 2, with new campaign content, the game’s first major league, big system changes, and long-requested features like async trading. This patch definitely sets a strong foundation for PoE2’s future.

For even more details, you can also check the official patch notes.