Grinding Gear Games has announced Forbidden Rites, Path of Exile 2’s first limited-time event league, arriving with update 0.5.5 on 4 September. It centres on Ritual encounters throughout the campaign, culminating in increasingly crowded boss fights, while also substantially reworking the Trial of Chaos; the changes aim to make a widely disliked progression mode faster, more flexible and more rewarding.

Each successive campaign Ritual adds another boss, with encounters eventually combining up to four bosses, and the event has eight challenges with exclusive cosmetic rewards. The Trial of Chaos will allow players to pause between rooms, replaces more awkward objectives with monster-clearing encounters, and extends endgame runs from 10 to 30 rooms; players can also gain all three Trialmaster fragments in one sufficiently deep run.