Forbidden Rites Event League Guide for Path of Exile 2

Forbidden Rites Event Guide Quick Overview:

1. Forbidden Rites event league is set to release on September 4th, 2026
2. The event league is smaller in scope and content compared to the previous one
3. Forbidden Rites introduces updates to the Ritual mechanic in a few meaningful ways
4. The league comes in with patch 0.5.5, which features a bunch of other fixes and improvements.
5. Patch 0.5.5 significantly reworks the Trial of Chaos

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What Is the Forbidden Rites Event in PoE 2?

As the news of the release of PoE 2 1.0 has hit, I’m sure lots of fans have started to wonder how to keep busy until December. And while the devs are rightfully dedicating their forces to put some finishing touches on the 1.0 version and everything that comes with it, they didn’t leave us hanging.

Forbidden Rites is an event league. It’s not as big in terms of content as Return of the Ancients, and it doesn’t feature a brand new league mechanic. It does, however, offer an enhanced version of the existing mechanic, namely ritual, and it also serves as another economy reset, if that’s something you wanted.

As specified by the devs, many balancing improvements that were meant for this patch didn’t actually make the cut and have been postponed until version 1.0. I don’t think that’s something super disappointing, as I’m personally advising fans to actually step away from the game until release, so you’re actually excited to play it then.

In any case, here’s everything this little event league offers:

1. Forbidden Rites in the Campaign
2. Trial of Chaos Rework
3. Faster Fortress Completion (endgame)
4. Runes of Aldur added to core gameplay
5. New Wildwood Encounters
6. New Endgame Soul Cores
7. Abyssal Ravines
8. New Expedition Tables

But that’s just the surface-level overview. Now, let’s dive into each feature and look at some of the details.

How Forbidden Rites Work During the Campaign

When you start a new character in this league, you’ll start encountering more Ritual sites, which replace Runes of Aldur. As you know, you get introduced to Rituals in Chapter 1 during a side-quest, but after that, they only appeared in certain zones in different chapters.

This time, however, you’ll be finding effigies as often as you found Runes of Aldur. In case, you don’t know how Rituals work, here’s a quick summary:

1. First, you kill the monsters that guard an effigy.
2. Then you activate the effigy, which revives the monsters that guarded it and also starts some kind of additional threat (such as hurricanes, waves of blood, etc.)
3. Once you’ve defeated the monster the second time, you earn tribute. This is the currency that can be spent on acquiring items (called “Favours”) available in the effigy.
4. There are usually 3 effigies in the zone, and you must clear all 3 to discover all the items on offer (all 3 effigies in the zone share the same amount of items, but you discover the ones that are blacked out as you clear each one)
5. Now, you can either choose to spend your Tribute on acquiring those items, or donate them to fill the bar for “An Audience with the King.” 

The endgame version of the Ritual has a bit more to it, but for the campaign, this is basically all there is.

Except for the fact that if you play in co-op, Ritual finally “works” for players who joined you. In other words, every party member can earn tribute, not just the host. Although, party members can’t reroll the “favours” shop, and they get fewer reward options. This is done for balancing purposes, so that players don’t abuse this for farming items.

Forbidden Rites Campaign Rewards

Here’s a neat part. The Ritual rewards that you get during the campaign have been reworked in such a way that’s meant to help you level up. Previously, you’d get a few choices of unique items, but it was rarely the uniques that your character could use immediately or at all. Now, the items on offer should be more in line with your character’s class, ascendancy, and build.

Unique items will not appear in every effigy. From now on, uniques will appear as “favours” under different circumstances.

Forbidden Rites Boss Rituals and Ritual Chains

If you look at the world map in each chapter, you’ll spot the new “epic” ritual effigies. There’ll be two of them in each act and one per interlude chapter. These will appear in the boss fight areas. Therefore, you’ll have to defeat the boss twice. Once the ritual is defeated, it will be added to the ritual in the next area, which makes it sort of a boss gauntlet within the ritual mechanic. As you complete these boss rituals, you’ll be offered the option to spend your hard-earned Tribute on unique items. To give you an example, for Act 1 you might encounter the following boss rituals that accumulate to a total of 4 bosses in the last one of these:

Area	Boss Ritual
Clearfell	Complete the Ritual with the Hag.
Mud Burrow	Fight the Devourer + the Hag.
Grelwood	Fight Brambleghast + the Hag + the Devourer.
Grim Tangle	Fight the Rotten Druid + Brambleghast + the Hag + the Devourer in the final four-boss showdown.

Each of these boss rituals has uniques that you can buy with tribute, which is pretty cool. Also, it’s safe to say that these changes will stay as core experience, because it’s not only a change; it’s an improvement.

 

 

Wildwood Explained

The endgame version of Rituals will stay mostly the same, but it will get a new difficulty. There’s a new item that might appear in the “Favours” shop called Sacred Bloom. This thing can be used to enhance a node on the Atlas map to add the entrance to the Wildwood on it. That entrance will appear at the start of the map. Wildwood is a unique area from one of the interludes, if you remember. It’s completely dark, and you can’t see much of anything. In the endgame, you’ll also have a limited time to stay there. Wildwood will contain “wisps”, which you can collect.

All Wildwood Wisp Types and Effects

There are four types of wisps that you can collect while roaming the Wildwood:

Wisp	Effect
Primal Wisps	Can turn Normal monsters into Magic monsters
Vivid Wisps	Can add extra modifiers to Rare monsters
Wild Wisps	Increase the rarity of items dropped by monsters
Sacred Wisps	Unkown

As you can see, each one has an effect that applies to the monsters on the map once you exit the Wildwood back into the chosen map. All four types can be collected and applied to monsters at the same time.

The number of wisps encountered in Wildwood can be increased by using Ritual Tablets on the Atlas nodes, so if you want to focus on those, you should collect more Ritual Tablets.

This is a very similar mechanic to the Azmerian Spirits from the Dawn of the Hunt or the Affliction league from PoE 1.

Forbidden Rites Challenges

Just like last time, Forbidden Rites features its own set of 8 challenges, which are pretty similar to the ones we saw in the Return of the Ancients. Here’s the full list:

1. The Riteseeker
2. The Hunter
3. The Ascendant
4. The Master
5. The Reliquarian
6. The Nameless
7. The Cartographer
8. The Vanquisher

The Riteseeker just requires you to complete all Rituals in the campaign. More specifically:

• Act 1 — Grim Portents
• Act 1 — Grave Tidings
• Act 2 — Desert Omens
• Act 2 — Ash and Bone
• Act 3 — Savage Wilds
• Act 3 — Blood in the Jungle
• Act 4 — Blood in the Water
• Act 4 — Tidal Omens
• Interlude — Shadow Over Ogham
• Interlude — Sands of Ruin
• Interlude — Death in the Ranges

 

 

Forbidden Rites Challenge Rewards

You’ll get 4 different rewards and a statue that tracks your progress:

• Locust Footprints Effect
• Locust Swarm Finisher Effect
• Wildwood Guardian Pet
• Wildwood Affliction Level Up Effect
• Event hideout statue

Alternatively, you can continue to play in the Return of the Ancients league and work on those challenges. Other endgame changes and improvements, such as the Trial of Chaos rework, changes to how the fortress is cleared, and more can be found in my PoE 2 Endgame guide.

Check out more Path of Exile 2 guides:

• Druid Guide
• Huntress Ritualist Guide
• How to get uniques in PoE 2

F.A.Q.