Path of Exile 2 1.0 reveals the Shadow class and an army-building siege league

by VideoGamer.com Staff Last Updated November 8, 2026

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Back to Oriath to finish the story Stealth, traps and a squire who carries your spare sword Raise an army, then sack a castle Ten classes on day one, two to follow

Grinding Gear Games used its ExileCon 2026 keynote in Auckland to lay out everything Path of Exile 2 brings when it leaves early access and goes free-to-play on December 11 (PST): the last two campaign acts, a stealth-focused Shadow class and a challenge league built around raising armies and storming castles.

The action RPG sequel has been in paid early access since December 2024 and is on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. The official ExileCon announcement post confirms the 1.0 headline features.

Back to Oriath to finish the story

Acts 5 and 6 bring 24 new areas and 18 new unique bosses. “Now in 1.0 the campaign is finally complete,” game director Jonathan Rogers told the crowd, according to Output Lag’s keynote report.

Act 5 returns to Oriath, where a giant chain across the harbour rules out an attack by sea, so players come ashore on the other side of the island and fight inward to drop it. The bosses on show included a huge Rat King lurking in the sewers and priests corrupted by the Twilight Order, and more than 20 named rare monsters now come with their own skill sets.

Stealth, traps and a squire who carries your spare sword

The Shadow fights with daggers and traps, and everything revolves around a new Stealth mechanic. Attacking from Stealth snaps you onto the target for an ambush, and each kill resets the Stealth cooldown, so a good chain lets you hop from victim to victim.

Traps work differently too: anything placed while hidden waits until you break Stealth, then goes off in the order you laid it, which means poison gas followed by a fire trap ends exactly as you would hope. The class also gets a Darkness resource and two Ascendancies at launch, including the Assassin.

The Duelist’s Knight Ascendancy hands you a Squire companion you can kit out with your own gear and skill gems, plus War Banners that buff you both and a Mounted Charge that drives a chariot into the enemy line.

Raise an army, then sack a castle

Conquerors of Wraeclast, the 1.0 challenge league, starts with rescuing captured mercenaries and then lets you hire troops with gold, position them before a fight and lead from the front once it starts. The campaign alone holds 23 battles.

The endgame is where it gets ambitious, as Inven Global’s breakdown details:

• A stronghold in Ezomyte, Maraketh or Karui style, each with more than 20 buildings and upgrades
• Up to three commanders who clear Atlas maps on your behalf
• 100 strongholds on a shared Atlas, fought over by rival factions for rarity bonuses and faction-wide perks
• New crafting materials that reroll chosen modifiers, at the cost of fracturing them

Elsewhere, roughly 70 existing uniques are being reworked and over 40 new ones added, the passive tree gains about 60 jewel sockets tucked inside clusters, and 25 new endgame maps arrive. GGG also says CPU performance is roughly three times better than in early access patch 0.1.0.

Ten classes on day one, two to follow

Not everything made the cut. Path of Exile 2 launches with 10 of its promised 12 classes, and Rogers addressed it head on: “We did promise you guys 12 classes and yes there are only 10. Now the other two will come, just not immediately.” He gave no date and did not name them.

We did promise you guys 12 classes and yes there are only 10. Now the other two will come, just not immediately.

Jonathan Rogers, game director, Grinding Gear Games

Rogers also apologised that porting Path of Exile 1 microtransactions to the sequel is still unfinished. Before December 11, the original game gets its own free expansion, Covens of Umbra, on November 13 (PST), with a witch-themed league and a redesigned Atlas where Threads of Creation replace Scarabs. Patch notes for Acts 5 and 6 have not been published yet, so theorycrafters have a few weeks of guessing ahead.

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