Patch 0.5.5 · Forbidden Rites
- All acts — updated & verified for rewards, drops, and routing (speedrun tips still need checking)
- Interludes — updated & verified for 0.5 (5.1–5.3 rebuilt, any-order routing, Fate of the Vaal)
- Working to condense every page — less text, easier to read
AI-assisted, community-verified ·
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Campaign Progress
Forbidden Rites — The League MechanicPatch 0.5.5 · temporary event league content
Forbidden Rites is an event league with its own economy and ladder, running until the 1.0
release. The mechanic is a reworked Ritual, split into a campaign half and an endgame half.
Because it is league content it is described here once, rather than repeated in every act —
you will meet it in every zone regardless of route.
In the Campaign
Acts I–IV + Interludes
- One Ritual in every area. Every campaign zone holds a Ritual encounter — not a rare spawn. Unlike endgame Rituals, these reward levelling items: crafting currency and a batch of equipment, rather than the Unique-only selection.
- Boss Ritual clusters. Twice per Act and once per Interlude, clusters of Ritual Effigies appear on the World Map.
- Bosses chain forward. Beat a boss Ritual and that boss is carried into the next Ritual in the cluster in the following area — you fight it again on top of the new one, building into an increasingly dangerous series of boss waves.
- Chain payout. Finish the full series and you can spend your accumulated Tribute on Unique Items.
- Aoife introduces each encounter. In a party, every player in the area must hear her introduction before the Ritual will start.
In the Endgame
Atlas · Maps
- Sacred Bloom. A league-exclusive currency that now appears in the Ritual reward window. Use it to add the Viridian Wildwood to a cluster of Maps on your Atlas — right-click the item, then left-click a point on the Atlas.
- The Wildwood. A separate fog-shrouded forest at the start of the map, where visibility drops the deeper you go. Follow and collect trails of Azmeri Wisps, then you are returned to the main map.
- Wisps empower the map. On leaving, monsters in the map area are affected by the Wisps you gathered — more powerful and more rewarding. The mix you collect determines the reward profile.
- Stacking Tablets. Using more than one Ritual Tablet now adds an extra Altar to a Map where possible, and increases the quantity of Wisps inside the Wildwood.
- Royal Lenience — new Ritual Atlas notable. Tribute already offered to the King may be used to Defer items, at 500% more Offered Tribute cost.
- Party Tribute. Party members now earn their own Ritual Tribute with their own reward selection, or can offer it to the King in the Mists.
Flagged — not in the patch notes
The Wisp types are community-derived, inherited from PoE1's Affliction league, and are
not named in the 0.5.5 notes: Primal (blue) upgrades normal monsters to magic,
Vivid (yellow) adds affixes to rares, Wild (purple) increases item rarity.
A fourth Sacred Wisp is listed by some sites with an unknown effect — unconfirmed. Note also that
the patch notes spell it Sacred Bloom; some pre-launch previews said "Sacred Blossom". Treat all
of this as unverified until you see it in play.
Speedrun & Efficiency TipsCommunity-sourced · collected from every act into one list
These used to sit in a collapsed box on each act page. They are gathered here so you can read
them once before a run rather than re-opening them five times. Act-specific ones are labelled.
- ◆Play with urgency. Minimise town time and never stop moving in a zone — even inefficient progress beats no progress. Target is roughly a 5-hour campaign.
- ◆Don't study layouts. GGG level designer Sunna said publicly that too much was reworked in 0.5 for layout study to pay off. Push forward even when unsure of direction.
- ◆Focus magic packs. Blue-name monsters give roughly 3.5× the XP of equivalent whites. Skip white packs unless you are under-levelled.
- ◆Stay on the XP curve. Margin of safety = 3 levels under the area, +1 per 16 character levels. Push XP when you fall outside it.
- ◆Don't mule. Push to the Red Vale weapon racks — guaranteed to drop a 2nd-tier Martial weapon (long quarterstaff, smithing hammer, tense crossbow).
- ◆Ration regals and exalts. One or two regals per act, ideally on weapon bases that hit modifier breakpoints. Save exalts.
- ◆Don't over-craft. Expect to finish a whole act without a weapon upgrade. The next real gear bracket is Tier 1 maps — save currency for endgame.
- ◆Save artificers, runes and whetstones for your weapon at the end of Act 4, once you know what you are carrying into the Interludes and maps.
- ◆Buy fewer times, more efficiently. When you do find an upgrade early, ignore vendors until the next act starts.
- ◆Use a regex in vendor search bars to highlight the bases you want. Cuts town shopping from minutes to seconds.
- ◆Use a levelling item filter with aggressive base highlighting for your build — hide junk, surface upgrades only.
- ◆Menu hotkeys. Hold Ctrl on the passive tree to auto-confirm points. Bind Quick Assign (no default key) for attribute nodes. Ctrl+Shift+L/R-click on the hotbar assigns weapon-swap skills.
- ◆Pre-organise your stash on Standard a few days before league start — tab names, layouts and highlights carry over to your fresh character.
- ◆Pick a levelling Ascendancy. Demon Form (Infernalist), Smith of Kitava, Sorcery Ward (Mercenary) give flat damage and survivability without needing specific items. You can re-spec for endgame.
- ◆Confirm your Ascendancy is final before the +2 SP completion turn-in at the end of the Interludes.
- ◆Act I — Cemetery. Do Draven first, then leave and re-enter to refresh the zone before Asinia — her drops scale with the higher zone level.
- ◆Act I — aim for Lvl 14 before the Geonor fight.
- ◆Act II — run Mastodon Badlands before Keth; Kabala drops a Lvl 7 gem, which is a large spike for every class.
- ◆Act II — delay ascension to Lvl 28. Skip the highly mobile Balbala fight in Traitor's Passage; farm a backup Djinn Barya from the Watchful Twins in Deshar, then on trial entry manually pick the Lvl 28 Barya rather than the Lvl 22 default. Better resistances at trial end — this is the speedrun meta.
- ◆Act II — trial room preference: Ritual > Chalice > Hourglass > Gauntlet.
- ◆Act II — aim Lvl 29 for Jamanra and Lvl 30 entering Act III.
- ◆Before maps — the Arbiter of Ash is no longer the top of the mountain; the apex is now the Arbiter of Divinity. See the endgame guide.
Permanent Campaign ChangesCore since 0.5 — these stay when the league rotates
These campaign changes are confirmed in the 0.5 patch notes — structural changes to zones, mechanics, and core content. The navigational visual cues GGG added now live in the act guides themselves, described in the zone where each one actually starts. Per GGG level designer Sunna, don't study layouts — much was reworked.
- ◆Act II — Dreadnought Vanguard removed. Jamanra is fought directly in The Dreadnought.
- ◆Act III reordered. Area order rearranged; the Act 3 sidebar zone list is the source of truth.
- ◆Matlan Waterways. Levers are now walk-over pressure pads; the final canal ships pre-drained.
- ◆Monster density reduced in the back half of the campaign, especially the Interludes.
- ◆Farrow (Acts 1–4). The Verisium Anvil now unlocks via the Runeseeker quest in Act 4; the per-act Runeforging ladder is Runes of Aldur–only.
- ◆Fate of the Vaal (core). 6 Ancient Beacons in Act 3 + 6 more in the Interludes open the Vaal Ruins portal.
Codex Features
Progress saves to browser
All waypoints marked
Patch 0.5 confirmed
Mobile friendly
All classes
Recommended zone levels