Grinding Gear Games keeps teasing content for Path of Exile 2’s upcoming 0.5.0 patch — and the latest reveal is hard to ignore. Game director Mark Roberts stepped in personally to showcase two new unique items arriving with Return of the Ancients. Both are unusual even by PoE standards.
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Nightfall — Path of Exile 2’s New Unique Shield with a Teleport Mechanic
The first item is a Breach shield called Nightfall, tied to Breachlord Tul. In practice it plays less like a defensive tool and more like a gap-closing weapon.
Here’s how it works:
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Throw the shield forward — it flies out and hits enemies in its path
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Do nothing and it returns to you automatically
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Reactivate the skill while the shield is airborne — your character teleports to it and delivers a devastating downward strike
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Catching the shield or shattering ice crystals resets the cooldown entirely
According to the developers, with good timing you can chain these actions back to back and essentially become an unstoppable avalanche. It’s an aggressive, momentum-driven playstyle built for players who’d rather charge into a pack than wait at the back.
Redemption in PoE 2: A Brand New Grenade Launcher with Explosive Synergies
The second item is something the game has never really had before. Redemption is described as a Terat weapon of absolute destruction — a crossbow at its base, but one that refuses to behave like any crossbow in Path of Exile 2.
Standard ammunition skills don’t work with it. Instead, Redemption is built entirely around grenades, and once you’ve caused enough chaos on the battlefield, its true potential unlocks:
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Grenade skill cooldowns are bypassed entirely
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Fire rate increases dramatically
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Mixing different grenade types pushes damage even further
In short, it’s a grenade launcher — a weapon type rarely seen in ARPGs and almost never executed with this level of mechanical depth. GGG even built a completely new base item type specifically for Redemption, one that didn’t exist in the game before this patch.
Path of Exile 2 Return of the Ancients — Release Date and Patch 0.5.0 Content
This is the biggest Path of Exile 2 update since The Last of the Druids dropped in December 2025. The two teased uniques are just a small slice of everything arriving on May 29:
Both Nightfall and Redemption will drop as high-level uniques, meaning they won’t just land in your lap. But given the mechanics on show, the grind seems worth it.
Patch 0.5.0 Is the Last Major Early Access Update Before Path of Exile 2 Version 1.0
This isn’t just another league. GGG has confirmed that Return of the Ancients is the final full-scale update before Path of Exile 2 officially exits Early Access and launches as version 1.0. At that point the game goes free-to-play and the missing campaign acts finally arrive.
Until then, May 29 is the date to circle. Plenty of time to figure out a build around those grenades.
