Grinding Gear Games are launching a major Path of Exile 2 expansion — Return of the Ancients. The update lands on PC and consoles, and to celebrate, the studio opened a free weekend: PoE 2 is playable without buying it from May 29, 1 PM to June 1, 1 PM PDT. A perfect window to come back if you stepped away after the last league, or to try the game for the first time.
What Return of the Ancients adds
- Hiveborn — a new enemy faction at the center of the league’s conflict.
- Genesis Tree — the headline mechanic. Inside the monastery of the Keepers of the Flames stands the Genesis Tree, a powerful weapon against the Hiveborn that you use to craft valuable currencies and strong items.
- New items, currencies and crafting chains tied to your progress on the tree.
In practice this is a full league reset: a fresh economy, new farming goals and a reworked endgame. For ARPG players that’s the main reason to log in — the economy and meta are always most alive at league launch.
The free weekend — who it’s for
Three days of free access cover two goals for GGG at once: pull new players into the league start and bring back lapsed ones. If you’ve only been eyeing PoE 2, this is the best window to evaluate the new systems with zero spend.
What this means for software users
In Path of Exile 2, “software” mostly means overlays, loot/trade filters and farming automation — not aimbot/ESP like in shooters. A major expansion almost always changes the rules under the hood:
- Genesis Tree introduces new currencies and items — custom loot filters and trade scripts need updating for the fresh patch, or they’ll skip the new loot.
- Hiveborn are new mobs with different behavior and drop tables, so old auto-farm routes break at launch.
- During a league start, GGG watch account anomalies (RMT, botting) more closely, so aggressive automation is riskier than usual in the first days.
Practical tip — let the league settle for a couple of days, update your filters for the new currencies, and don’t run auto-farm right at launch when scrutiny on accounts is highest. We keep a curated set of PoE 2 solutions in the Path of Exile 2 catalog.
Bottom line
Return of the Ancients brings a new faction, a new crafting mechanic and a fresh economy, plus three days of free access. Jump in to check out the content, but tune your filters and automation for the updated patch — at a league start that matters more than ever.
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