Grinding Gear Games is throwing open the gates for Path of Exile II’s Return of the Ancients launch weekend. Here’s what returning and brand-new exiles should expect from the free access event, fresh league economy, and sweeping balance changes.
Return of the Ancients: When the Free Weekend Starts and What It Includes
Path of Exile II’s first major early access expansion, Return of the Ancients, is arriving with a full free weekend that removes the usual buy-in for Early Access. From May 29 at 1 p.m. Pacific through June 1 at 1 p.m. Pacific, anyone can download Path of Exile II, jump into the new Runes of Aldur league and experience the full campaign and endgame without restriction.
This is not a limited demo. You get access to the entire game as it exists in Early Access, including the new league mechanics, the revamped Atlas, the reworked endgame storylines and all current classes and ascendancies. Any characters you create and progress you make during the event will be saved to your account, so if you later buy into Early Access, you can pick up exactly where you left off.
Grinding Gear Games is also sweetening the weekend with free cosmetics tied to in-game milestones and a 50% discount on Early Access packs. If you were waiting for the right time to try POE2 without committing, this is the event built for you.
A Fresh League and a Fresh Economy: Runes of Aldur
Return of the Ancients launches alongside the new Runes of Aldur challenge league. In Path of Exile terms, that means a completely fresh economy and a clean ladder. Every player, whether they are brand new or returning from the first days of Early Access, is starting from level 1 with no legacy gear or currency advantage.
For returning players, this is crucial. Early Access launch characters stay in their own environment, but Runes of Aldur is where the action will be. Prices reset, crafting bases are re-contested and every drop has value again in the race to maps and beyond. If your memory of POE2 so far involves a half-finished character and a muddled stash, treating Runes of Aldur as a hard reset is the smoothest way back in.
New players benefit even more from this structure. Because everyone is progressing through the campaign at the same time under the new rules and balance numbers, build guides, trade prices and community advice will all be calibrated specifically to this patch and league. Trying to learn an ARPG in the middle of a mature economy can be brutal. Starting in Runes of Aldur means the learning curve is shared, not shouldered alone.
Mechanically, the league revolves around collecting and socketing powerful runes that modify encounters and rewards. While the finer points will evolve as players experiment, the important onboarding note is simple: you can engage with Runes of Aldur gradually. The base campaign does not require deep league knowledge. Learn to move, kill packs and keep your defenses up before worrying about fully optimizing rune setups.
Early Access, But Not Early Commitment
The free weekend is technically an Early Access promotion, but in practice it functions as an open beta that respects your time. There is no content gate that kicks in at a specific act or level. You can test different classes, play with friends, and even dip your toes into the new endgame systems if you push hard enough over the weekend.
If you walk away after the event, you still get the benefit of seeing where the sequel stands in terms of feel, class identity and performance on your hardware. If you decide to buy in, the 50% discount on Early Access packs during Return of the Ancients means you lock in cheaper access, along with cosmetics that would usually be priced at a premium.
For Grinding Gear Games, that trade-off is deliberate. Early Access is paid, which naturally limits how many fresh eyes they get on big systemic changes. Making the first major expansion weekend fully free lets them stress test servers, gather data on league and endgame systems, and show skeptical Path of Exile 1 veterans that POE2 is starting to find its own identity.
What Returning Players Should Expect From Class and Balance Changes
If you bounced off Path of Exile II at Early Access launch, expect your old knowledge to be only partially useful. Return of the Ancients arrives with broad balance passes across the board. That includes core skills, damage scaling, defenses and several ascendancies.
This is great news if your first impression was that certain archetypes felt underpowered or too brittle in early mapping. Some of the more fragile playstyles have gained tools for survivability, while overtuned outliers have been reined in to keep the new ladder competitive. The passive tree has seen enough adjustment that Grinding Gear is handing out a free passive tree reset to existing characters, but if you are coming back specifically for Runes of Aldur, you will likely want to start a new character anyway.
The upshot is that it is no longer safe to blindly follow an old launch-week build. Instead, look for build guides or content that explicitly reference the 0.5.0 patch or Return of the Ancients league. Not only will they reflect the latest numbers, they will also showcase new league interactions and revised endgame gearing paths.
For veterans, this is the real appeal of a new league. Those first few days are about experimentation and discovery all over again. The free weekend simply lowers the cost of re-engaging with that loop.
Newcomer Onboarding: How Friendly Is POE2 Now?
Path of Exile as a franchise has a reputation for being dense, but POE2’s early acts are noticeably better at easing players in. Interface prompts, clearer early gear, more readable skill descriptions and the reduced reliance on socket-color RNG make the campaign more approachable than Path of Exile 1 was in its early years.
Return of the Ancients also arrives after months of feedback on pacing, boss tuning and reward clarity. Early access launch highlighted places where casual players were hitting walls, and Grinding Gear has been iterating toward a smoother ramp from the first weapon drop to the first real difficulty spikes.
If you are entirely new, a simple onboarding plan for the free weekend looks like this:
Pick a class that matches how you like to play in other ARPGs, not one you think is mathematically perfect. POE2 is still flexible enough that most archetypes can complete the campaign comfortably once you understand the basics of life, resistances and mobility. Focus your first character on learning those fundamentals rather than on chasing an endgame meta build.
Stick to one or two primary skills and build around them instead of constantly swapping. This keeps your gear and passives focused and makes it easier to understand which mechanics are actually helping you survive and clear faster.
Do not stress about perfect crafting or min-maxing your tree while you are still learning boss telegraphs and positioning. The league is long, and the systems are deep. The free weekend is the time to absorb the feel of combat, test how responsive the classes are, and learn which archetypes you enjoy enough to play for an entire league.
The key advantage of starting now is social. There will be an influx of other new and returning players learning the same systems. Grouping up, joining new-player-friendly guilds or even just asking questions in global chat will be more productive when half the playerbase is also figuring out the new league mechanics.
Why Grinding Gear Games Is Pushing a Free Weekend Now
The timing of the event is not accidental. Return of the Ancients is the most important update in the Early Access cycle so far. It introduces the Runes of Aldur league, revises the endgame with new storylines and atlas progression, and layers in additional ascendancies that sharpen the identity of each class. In other words, this is the moment where POE2 starts looking less like an early technical preview and more like the full sequel Grinding Gear has been pitching.
By making the opening weekend free, GGG accomplishes several things at once. It reactivates lapsed Early Access players who may not have logged in since the initial launch. It draws in POE1 veterans who were waiting for a major league-style cycle to sink their teeth into. And it broadens the funnel to brand-new ARPG fans who might have been scared off by the idea of paying for Early Access.
At the same time, a fresh economy and rebalanced classes are much more compelling when they happen in front of a large, active audience. The free weekend ensures that trade is lively, group content pops quickly, and the race to endgame is entertaining to watch on Twitch and YouTube. All of that feeds back into long-term interest in the game as it marches toward a full 1.0 release.
From a business angle, the 50% discount on Early Access packs and cosmetics turns that heightened interest into revenue without locking anyone out. Players who fall in love over the weekend can invest at a lower price. Players who are still on the fence walk away having actually played POE2 rather than imagining what it might feel like.
Should You Jump In?
If you are a returning exile, Return of the Ancients plus the free weekend is the best excuse yet to see how far POE2 has come. The league start atmosphere, the fresh economy and the reworked balance all make it feel like a soft relaunch for the sequel.
If you are completely new, this is one of the rare chances to try a complex ARPG at the exact moment a huge chunk of the community is also starting over from scratch. Treat the weekend as your onboarding boot camp, ignore the pressure to perfect your build, and focus on whether the rhythm of combat, loot and progression clicks for you.
Grinding Gear Games is using Return of the Ancients to demonstrate that Path of Exile II is ready to stand on its own as more than just an experiment beside POE1. The free weekend is your invitation to decide if they are right, with no strings attached beyond the download.