Grinding Gear Games has revealed the Dawn of the Hunt expansion for Path of Exile 2, arriving April 4. This patch (0.2.0) features the brand-new Huntress class, over 25 new skills, additional ascendancies, fresh endgame mechanics, and numerous quality-of-life improvements.
Meet the Huntress
The Huntress wields spears, balances ranged and melee combat, and can parry attacks using an off-hand buckler. She also tames beasts in the wild, letting you bring one creature along as a companion—complete with the mods it had before capture.
New Ascendancies and Skills
Three further ascendancies join the Dawn of the Hunt roster:
- Smith of Kitava (Warrior): Buff weapons on the fly or summon an animated weapon copy.
- Tactician (Mercenary): Pin enemies in place, drop multiple banners, and call in archer support.
- Lich (Witch): Sacrifice life for energy shield boosts and wield potent chaos damage.
Expect over 100 new support gems, 100+ new unique items, and powerful skill additions like Bind Spectre (trap almost any monster’s soul for summoning). You can also Summon Rhoa as a combat ally and even ride it into battle.
Endgame Overhaul
Dawn of the Hunt addresses endgame progression with redesigned towers, new unique maps, and Azmerian Wisps, which infuse and power up enemies for greater rewards. Players get up to six respawns per map, and cleansed maps introduce fresh monsters, challenging bosses, and new crafting items like Fracturing Orbs. Fan-favorite mechanics such as Recombination also return.
- Over 100 new Support Gems have been added to Path of Exile 2 to enhance build diversity. An example of added support is the inclusion of the Caltrops support, which allows existing skills to litter the battlefield with slowing hazards.
- Over 100 new unique items have been added to the game, including new Spear and Buckler uniques for players to find. The goal in Path of Exile 2 is to create a unique for every item type, adding excitement to drops. Jonathan Rogers suggests he WANTS players to break their builds with the powerful new additions.
- Over 20 new runes have been added, allowing players to craft new mods onto their gear and runes now scale with multiple tiers giving mods extended viability in the endgame. Crafting options have been expanded further with the introduction of more specialized socketable mods. The first wave arrives in the upcoming update on April 4.
- Dawn of the Hunt adds eight new maps for players to triumph over, extending the endgame.
- Four unique Strongboxes have been added to the endgame, adding more drops to increase content importance.
- Dawn of the Hunt adds Rogue Exiles as an enemy type, and they wield the same powers (with possibly more powerful uniques than the player) as the player. Rogue Exiles behave smarter than normal enemy faire, even utilizing the player action of a dodge roll to escape harm. They will challenge you to a fight to the death, and differing personalities of the Rogue will either talk trash to the player, show the player respect, or anything in between during the duel. These rogues will wield visible uniques in combat, and triumphing over them will give the player oodles of rewards.
Launch Details
The update drops Friday, April 4, accompanied by new leagues and all the core changes available for existing characters. If you’re ready to explore a brand-new class or crave an expanded endgame, Dawn of the Hunt promises to deliver plenty of reasons to dive back into Path of Exile 2. For the full rundown of the Dawn of the Hunt changes, check out the official landing page.
