Path of Exile 2: A Quick Summary of what's new in Dawn of The Hunt

Dawn of The Hunt is an upcoming major update for Path of Exile 2, going live on April 4. This is the first de-facto "League" of the game, featuring swathes of balance changes to every class and a fresh economy to experience. More importantly, it's also bringing over a hundred Skill Gems, a new class, five new Ascendancies, and a host of new Endgame systems to taste.

Due to the huge scope of this update, the abridged content reveal itself is over half an hour long. In this article, we'll try to give you the cliff notes version of the biggest things about the Dawn of The Hunt update in Path of Exile 2.

Every major feature in Path of Exile 2 Dawn of The Hunt

At a glance, here are the biggest things Path of Exile 2 players can look forward to in Dawn of The Hunt:

The Huntress Class
Spears and Bucklers
Five new Ascendancies
Rhoa Mount
New Endgame mechanics and systems, and adjustments to Endgame experience
New crafting currencies and mechanics
100+ new Support Gems
100+ new Uniques
Big balance pass affecting all classes

Now, here's a (highly simplified) breakdown of each feature.

The Huntress Class, Spears and Bucklers

Wielding the Spear and Buckler, the Huntress class is designed as a melee-ranged hybrid. Instead of leaning into one side, you are meant to combo your melee and ranged Skills for maximum carnage. You can also tame a slain enemy and summon them as a temporary spirit companion.

Alongside the Huntress, you get the Spear weapon type (which can be thrown at range and used as a melee) and a Buckler that can parry rather than block. To start with, we're also getting 20 Spear Skills. You can learn more about the PoE2 Huntress class and her Skills here.

Five new Ascendancies

The Dawn of The Hunt update is bringing five new Ascendancies to PoE2:

Ritualist (Huntress): Spread blood plague, gain a third Ring slot, and sacrifice corpses to gain monster modifiers.
Amazon (Huntress): Become a durable powerhouse of raw damage, turn Accuracy into Crits, and tip your Spear with the Elements.
Tactician (Mercenary): Do actually effective crowd-control, and place down twice the banners for jolly co-operation.
Lich (Witch): Become an undead necromancer, bottle up your feelings into a Gem to empower it, and spread chaos in the enemy ranks with multiple curses.
Smith of Kitava (Warrior): Forge your own destiny, literally: hand-pick body armor modifiers, animate your weapons into a companion, and empower your Steel with the knowledge of a craftsman.

You can view their Ascendancy Nodes here: Ritualist || Amazon || Tactician || Lich || Smith of Kitava

Rhoa Mount

Path of Exile 2 finally got a Mount. You can learn the Rhoa Mount Skill as a Lvl 3 Buff Gem and summon the Rhoa to your side at will. While mounted, you can cast most projectile attacks and Skills, but you are highly vulnerable to Stun.

Endgame overhaul and new mechanics

Rogue Exiles will be even bigger threat than in PoE1 (Image via GGG)

Endgame was arguably the roughest part of the first Path of Exile 2 Early Access patch, so GGG is improving it to smoothen the progression curve with new features to spice things up:

Rogue Exiles: The acclaimed Dark Souls Invader mechanic from Path of Exile 1 has made it to the sequel. Their AI is tuned to be crafty with their Skills and adept with their usage of the advanced combat mechanics in Path of Exile 2, like dodge-rolling.
Azmeri Wisps: Follow the Wisp till it possesses an enemy to give it unique primal mechanics. Defeat the enemy to obtain riches and Talismans.
Towers are now much rarer and more potent, gaining exclusive bosses, mechanics, and the possibility of slotting up to four Precursor Tablets.
Cleansing and Corruption mechanic on Endgame Atlas: Hunt down the heart of the corruption to cleanse the map, unlocking Cleansed map mechanics and a unique boss.
Unique Strongboxes with fresh mechanics exclusive to them.
Seven new Endgame map types with mechanics specific to them.
Much easier Endgame learning curve thanks to retries on maps without penalties. The number of retries (portals) go down with more affixes on the map.
Waystones never drop below the tier of the map you're currently doing, making Waystone sustain much easier.

Check them out in greater detail with our guide on every new league mechanic in Dawn of The Hunt.

New Crafting currencies and mechanics

Hand-in-hand with the new Endgame mechanics, there are also new crafting currencies and mechanics to make deterministic crafting more viable. Here's a quick list of the new stuff:

Talismans: A new socketable type with more build-defining stat boosts.
Item Recombining from PoE1, but it will probably not be as exploitable as in the first game.
New Runes and Rune tiers: All Runes now have Greater variants and a few Runes that only drop from a boss-rush gimmick in the new Phaaryl Megaliths map.
New Essences: Essence Crystals are now corruptible through Vaal Orbs, and there are four new Ultimate Essence types.
Fracturing Orb: Locks a modifier in place, preventing it from changing with further crafting currency usage.
New Ring and Amulet bases: Gains additional Prefixes or Suffixes at the cost of the other. Obtainable from the new Fractured Lake map.
Omens drop 2.5 times as often in Ritual inventory.

Here's our guide discussing the new crafting options in Path of Exile 2 Dawn of The Hunt in greater detail.

There are also 100+ new Uniques, most of which will be chase items in the later Acts and Endgame. We will learn about these and the 100+ new Support Gems when the update drops on April 4. The Balance changes, however, are already detailed in the patch notes for PoE2 0.2.0.

Meanwhile, check out our other guides on the game:

About the author

Sambit Pal is an esports Journalist on Gaming and MMO at Sportskeeda. He has Master's degree in English Literature. In his spare time, he is an amateur sleuth trying to trace the Riven Mafia in Warframe, and a recovering Bethesda modding addict. He also secretly enjoys action Roguelites, a severe lack of gitting gud notwithstanding.

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Edited by Ripunjay Gaba