PoE 2 Forbidden Rites: Start Time, What Resets and How Long the League Runs

Path of Exile 2 starts a new economy today. Forbidden Rites is an event league launching alongside patch 0.5.5, and the two things worth knowing before you clear your evening are that it begins at 1PM PDT on 4 September and that it is not a one-month event — it runs until the 1.0 full release in December.

Forbidden Rites begins at 1PM PDT on 4 September. GGG stated it twice — in the event FAQ and again in the patch-notes post — so the time is firm.

Getting in is one step: on the character selection screen, pick Forbidden Rites and create a new character there. There is no separate download, no signup, no queue mechanic described.

Private Leagues are supported: they became creatable on 31 August, and become playable when the league opens. Standard, Hardcore and Solo Self-Found variants all exist, and the Hardcore version is parented to Standard Forbidden Rites — die in Hardcore and your character continues in the Standard league rather than ending up somewhere unrelated.

Event leagues in other games are usually a fortnight of novelty. This one runs until the 1.0 full release and ends alongside Runes of Aldur. GGG has dated 1.0 for 11 December.

That is roughly fourteen weeks, and it is the single most useful fact for deciding how much to invest. A character built here is not disposable after two weekends: it has a full league cycle to reach endgame, finish challenges, and matter. The counterweight is that the economy resets to zero today — every price you know is wrong until the market finds its floor again.

The league mechanic is Ritual, rebuilt around the campaign instead of the endgame.

Rituals in every campaign area. Unlike their endgame counterparts these drop levelling material — currency for crafting and a spread of equipment — so the mechanic pays you while you are still climbing rather than only after.

Effigy clusters sit on boss fights. Twice within each Act and once within each Interlude you find clusters of Ritual Effigies on the World Map. In those areas the effigies are not scattered at random: they are placed on top of that area’s boss. Beat a boss Ritual and the boss is carried forward into the next Ritual in the cluster, where it joins an increasingly dangerous series of boss waves. Finish the series and you spend your tribute on Unique Items.

Sacred Blooms are league-only. They drop as a Ritual reward and add the Viridian Wildwood to a cluster of Maps on your Atlas. Inside, you follow and collect trails of Wisps; when you leave, monsters in that Map are affected by what you collected — stronger, and more rewarding. GGG is explicit that Sacred Blooms cannot be found outside Forbidden Rites.

The challenge rewards are league-exclusive too. Completing 2, 4, 6 and 8 challenges awards the Locust Footprints, the Locust Swarm Rare Finisher Effect, the Wildwood Guardian Pet and the Wildwood Affliction level-up effect. From the very first challenge onward you also collect pieces of the Forbidden Rites Totem for your hideout, which permanently displays how many challenges you finished during the league.

None of those four rewards return later. If cosmetics are a reason you play, that is the deadline that actually binds.

This is the part most launch coverage buries. A large share of 0.5.5 is not league content at all, and applies to your existing characters in Runes of Aldur and Standard.

The Trial of Chaos rework. You can now leave a run at any point and resume later from the same room — the old “finish it or lose it” rule is gone. Each room now ends in a reward chest, so dying costs you the remainder rather than everything. Run rewards are now only Currency and Soul Cores; corrupted items are out. Completing an Inscribed Ultimatum with 10 Trials lets you continue immediately without supplying another one, twice per Ultimatum, carrying your modifiers and reward quality forward, with an optional double-or-nothing wager. The Trialmaster now stops time only at the start of a run instead of in nearly every room, and Uxmal’s arena has been redesigned outright.

Expedition is core content now. Farrow, Dannig and Expedition move into the Atlas as a core mechanic including in Standard, and Expeditions appear from Act 4 onwards. Expedition Tablets can be found in Standard and in Forbidden Rites — but not in Runes of Aldur. Stacking them scales the site: one adds an Expedition, two add a Verisium Remnant and 35% density, three add a second Expedition, four add another Remnant and another 35%.

Endgame. Large Abyssal Ravines can now appear across the Atlas, and Maps found on them are guaranteed to contain Abysses. Corrupted Nexus Maps can be retried after a failure. The Arbiter of Ash lost its blanket elemental resistance and now runs Fire Resistance with Cold Vulnerability.

Seventeen new Soul Cores. Thirteen in the Jiquani’s line and four Atziri’s, alongside a long rebalance of the existing ones — several now carry a Limit of 1, which is a build constraint, not a footnote.

Nothing is taken away. Every character from Early Access and from Runes of Aldur is still there, and the Runes of Aldur league itself keeps running until 1.0 — unfinished challenges in it are still finishable.

One asymmetry is worth noting: Aldur’s Saga cannot be obtained outside Runes of Aldur, though its special modifiers can appear naturally on Grand Expeditions when you use a Logbook in Standard or Forbidden Rites. So the old league is not made pointless by the new one, and the new one is not a strictly larger version of it.

A new economy means everyone starts from the campaign again. That is the actual price of a league start, and it is paid in hours before anything interesting begins: ten acts, the Interludes, then Ascendancy trials before your build is a build rather than a plan.

Our campaign route guide and Ascendancy guide cover doing that yourself. If the part you want is the league and not the run-up to it, our Challenge League leveling services exist for exactly this week — Acts 1–3, all Acts to 60+ or 70+, Trials for the full eight Ascendancy points, or a full campaign in party. Manual, on your account, no bots.

Myth: it is a one-month event league

GGG answered this directly in the FAQ. Forbidden Rites runs until the 1.0 full release and ends alongside Runes of Aldur — not a month.

Myth: Duelist arrives with this patch

Also answered directly, also no. Duelist releases on 11 December when 1.0 launches.

Myth: you have to play the league to get the Trial of Chaos changes

The opposite. Those changes affect the whole game regardless of league — you can check them on an existing character in Runes of Aldur or Standard.

Myth: the old league is being shut down

Runes of Aldur continues to run, and its content is simultaneously being added to the core game, so it becomes reachable in Standard as well.

The league went live on 4 September. What followed was not a quiet weekend: six hotfixes landed on 5 September alone — the first at 4:22 AM and the sixth at 4:34 PM by GGG’s own forum clock — and a seventh arrived on 7 September. The 6th passed without any.

Most of them are crashes, and they say nothing about how the league plays: client crashes in Hotfixes 1 through 5 (four of them in Hotfix 5 alone), instance crashes in 2, 3, 6 and 7. Three entries did change the rules.

• Hotfix 2 disabled the Atzoatl Map Device, which was causing buffer-underflow crashes, and told players to place a new map device in the hideout. Hotfix 4 re-enabled it. If you swapped your device on the 5th, that is why — and the microtransaction came back the same day.
• Hotfix 4 fixed Lost-men Zealots that could be invulnerable when revived in a Ritual. That is the league mechanic itself, patched on its first full day.
• Hotfix 7 closed the Trial of Chaos loophole. Joining a trial that was already finished no longer awards Ascendancy Points — only players in the instance when the boss dies get them. Until 7 September a friend could hand you those points. The same hotfix fixed the entrance to The Manor Ramparts going inactive after freeing Leitis, which was a progression stop rather than an inconvenience.

This list stops at Hotfix 7, posted 7 September. GGG has not called the run finished, and the first weekend suggests it may not be — anything numbered above 7 will be in the Early Access Patch Notes forum, not here.

Sources and Confidence

Every number and rule above comes from GGG. Where the studio has not published something, this article says so rather than estimating.

Checked 4 September 2026.